Your Move: The Underdog’s Guide to Building Your Business

by Ramit Sethi

If you think about it, what would a business mean for you? What would it mean to be able to earn an extra $1,000 per month, or $5,000… or even $25,000 every month?

People value what they pay for. If I gave you this book for free, you might be excited for 5 pages, but most people wouldn’t make it past that. But if you pay, you’ll use it. There’s a 1,000-fold difference between a free reader and a paying customer. I’m not exaggerating — in our business, previous customers purchase 2,000 times more than first-time buyers. In other words, it’s better to have a small group of committed people than a large group of random readers!)

I started to understand how business really works, and I realized we’re standing at the greatest opportunity in our lifetimes. For the first time, we don’t have to wait for some gatekeeper in Manhattan or at some fancy company to choose us and give us a shot. We don’t have to toil for 30 years, chasing a meaningless credential or kissing up to the right person, and wait for a lucky day. We can actually create our own luck.

How many people do you know who are afraid of investing in the stock market because they’re worried about losing money? What those people don’t realize is they’re losing money every single day, thanks to inflation. They never took even a single weekend to read a good book about personal finance, so they don’t understand that by not investing, they will absolutely, positively run out of money.

But the biggest failures aren’t things you did. They’re things you didn’t do. Playing it safe is one of the biggest failures possible. The first step is learning to recognize it in every facet of our lives.

the very best in the world are relentless at mastering the fundamentals. Kobe Bryant spent hours working on dribbling drills every day.

Dave Chappelle and Jerry Seinfeld practice comedy sets in small comedy clubs to this day.

First, you want to stay sharp. Second, you can always learn something from everyone, no matter what they do. And third, the bigger your business gets, the more impactful a single insight can be.

My stuff is really good, and I’m going to charge for that and if you are not ready to pay, or you can’t afford it, that’s OK.”

There are people out there who, if you can connect with them emotionally, if you can show them you’ve helped other people like them, if you can promise them the results they want, AND deliver, they’ll pay you $1, $5, $500, $5,000… and they will be happy to do it.

The world is not a zero-sum game.

When you can connect and really solve their problems, the price is a mere triviality.

Remember, making money is a byproduct of adding massive value to the world (Rule #1).

By taking the money I make and reinvesting it back into making my business even better.

The more money you make, the more value you can create.

Most entrepreneurs won’t talk about revenue, because it’s scary and it’s intimidating.

But it takes a lot of trust for someone to actually pull out their wallet and pay you money, because they believe you can help them solve their problems.

Rule #1: People pay me for the value I create. In other words, if I create value, people will be more than happy to pay me for it. Rule #2. The more I make, the more value I can create. I can invest back into the business, by building systems, creating technology, and hiring new people. Rule #3. Money is a marker that I’m doing the right thing. We’re going to avoid fake proxies of success, like how many people like my Facebook page. Instead, we’ll focus on the ultimate sign that you’ve created something the world wants: Sales.

It starts with these 4 simple words: “Tell me about that.”

In our experience, business is the most fun (and most profitable) when you focus on helping great people get better.

Steve Jobs once said, “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.”

In fact, I believe in doing less — and doing it better. Our business doesn’t do half the things that many of our competitors do. Yet we’re bigger than they are.

I want you to focus on internalizing the idea of focusing on the right things. Anyone can be “efficient” — meaning they can do a given task pretty well. But very few can be “effective,” meaning they select the right things to work on in the first place.

So he finally figured out what works for him: He created a “Top 50 Favorites” list of contacts on his phone. He prioritizes them when it comes to hanging out. When he has a free minute, he calls/texts the people on his Top 50 list. Then he told us, at the end of the year, he re-evaluates who should be on the list and shuffles/deletes/adds to it. It can only be 50 people, so every year, he makes the tough decisions as to who’s in his Top 50.

When we let ourselves and our businesses become vanilla, when we try to appeal to everyone, we instantly become a commodity.

“Our parents were concerned with keeping us safe.” Which makes sense. They told us to not take too many risks, to fit in, and jump through the hoops. It’s great advice if you’re prioritizing safety.

“It's not great advice if you want to be excellent, because by definition, excellence is sticking out from the herd. It's excelling ahead of everyone else.”

Focus on Your Customers, Not Your Competition

There are a million different ways to approach any topic. The key is: Instead of focusing on the competition, focus on your audience.

Who is your audience, and what do they want that they are not being served right now?

If you are solving a problem that’s important to people, AND if you have the credibility so that they believe you can solve it, then price becomes a mere triviality.

set up weekly, monthly, and quarterly “to-dos” for things like reviewing my systems, planning strategy, even to find fun things to do in New York City.

I batch most of my meetings for the afternoon, but try to include at least a 5-minute buffer between them. I found when I stacked too many meetings in a row, I’d really lose my energy, and that’s when bad things would start to happen.

Finally, within each task, I include the URLs of any necessary documents. I click the URL, and I’m instantly taken to the right place in the document — down ...

the start of a program, we ask, “Why’d you join?” During the program, we include surveys built right into the curriculum, or we may send out occasional emails. Then at the end of the course, we’ll ask “How did it go? Where are you compared to where you expected? What could we do to improve?” We’re looking to improve the product of course, but it’s also a way to mine for amazing testimonials.

First, you need traffic. In other words, you need people coming to your website (or your store) who are interested in what you’re selling. When it comes to traffic, the key takeaway is quality over quantity. You’d rather have 100 people who are desperate for your service, than 1,000 who are mildly interested. Traffic is the lifeblood of your business — that means generally, the more traffic you have, the healthier your business. If you run an online business, this is pageviews. If you have a retail store like Zara, it’s foot traffic. Traffic also builds over time: The first day a restaurant opens, only a few people might stop in.

Next, you need a product. And it has to be good! The world’s best marketing and a never-ending flood of traffic can’t save a shoddy product. That’s why in the information products space, there are so many fly-by businesses that make A LOT of noise for a few months… then quietly disappear. Building a great product takes work. A great product is based on what people actually want, not what some “expert” sitting up in his ivory tower thinks they need. We spend months, even years doing our research and developing our programs. While you don’t have to spend that much time, you do have to listen to your customer. Remember: great products don’t rely on discounted prices. If you sold the world’s greatest product at preventing hair loss or stopping acne, why would you discount? People would be happy to pay full price if it solved their problem once and for all. Finally, you need a sales page. This is where you ask for the sale. In our business, we use sales pages. If you’re a garage owner selling car services, this is your list of services, like tune-ups, tire rotations, and oil changes. Some of our sales pages are over 70 pages long. A sales page doesn’t need to be short! We spend 50-70% of the time really talking about the problem. We reveal their secret dreams and biggest pains, we talk about the other solutions available to them… and only then do we talk about our solution. And when it’s time to ask for the sale, we ask unapologetically.

According to Sam, an effective system “focuses our limited attention and willpower on the things that matter.”

Today, my site brings in more than $10,000/month — while I’m busy enjoying my full-time job and two kids. But before I could turn my blog into a profitable, automated business, I had to learn how to sell. And I hated selling. I thought selling meant you had to scream at people in ALL CAPS. I didn’t want to do that, so instead I barely sold at all! I might add a line at the very end of an email once in awhile. The results: Some months I made a couple thousand dollars. But other months I made $0. These inconsistent sales weren’t going to cut it. So I learned to overcome my fear of selling — and ended 2015 with four consecutive $10,000+ months.

If you want to sell with confidence, before you do anything else, you need to understand your customers like they are good friends. The reason is, you already know how to sell to your friends. You sell them on what TV show to watch next and what restaurant they absolutely need to try. And it’s not sleazy. Part of that is because you have their best interest at heart. But it’s also because you know them so well you can make valuable recommendations.

To sell, you need to know four key things about your customers: their hopes, dreams, pain points, and fears.

I recommend 5 questions at the max. Make 2-3 of those open-ended. You learn so much more when people explain their answers instead of just selecting “Yes,” “No,” or “C.” Also, that way you can capture the person’s words and feelings. Here are some questions that gave me amazing insights that’ll work for you: What do you want for yourself [in specific topic]? What are you doing now? How does that make you feel?

What’s your alternative? How does that make you feel?

Live to fight another day, and trust that your future self will be able to solve problems later on.

Here’s what I chose to become really good at: Writing Cracking the code on why people do what they do Understanding how to create products that people want — and products that get real results

That’s it! For anyone starting out today, here are the three things I recommend you become world class at: Learning how to sell Writing amazing emails or blog posts that people open and read Learning how to build a team (even a small one)

things that worked from $0 to $100,000 won’t always work when you’re trying to crack $500,000. They certainly won’t work at $5 million. Therefore, you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. This is really, really hard.

Remote work. Working remotely is amazing… until you see how much amazing work your team can do when everyone is working under the same roof. Writing product launches from scratch. Writing fresh launches is great… until you’re faced with the daunting task of writing 10-20 of them in a year. “I Will Teach You to Be Rich.” IWTYTBR is a fine name. There’s a lot of powerful brand awareness around it, until you’re trying to recruit a new employee who doesn’t know your story.

It’s the psychology that separates the winners from everyone else.

And I think the same is true in business. It’s our psychology holding us back as the “Dorm Room” version of ourselves… and stopping us from reaching our “CEO” version. But when we master this part of our psychology — I call this the psychology of growth — it’s like we’ve been running with a heavy weight vest on, and now we’ve taken it off. Suddenly, you feel like you’re flying. Every movement feels light, almost effortless.