40-minute video on mentoring, writing effective emails, and the financial crisis
I talk to my friend Ben Casnocha (who wrote My Startup Life) a few times every week. About a month ago, he came up with a great idea: to record our conversation so, maybe, other people could get something valuable out of it.
Here’s our first try. Imagine a pilot episode — it’s not completely smooth, but it gives you a good idea of what we’re up to, and we talk more in-depth about things than we usually can on our blogs.
In the video, we talk about:
- Finding a mentor
- Writing good emails to get people to pay attention to you
- An update on the I Will Teach You To Be Rich Scholarship
- Building a portfolio before you need it…and a bunch more stuff
Hope this is useful!
TDTV #2: Ben Casnocha and Ramit Sethi from Think Different TV on Vimeo.
Ben’s notes on the video:
0:59 Ramit explains what he’s telling his readers about personal finance in these tumultuous times
5:00 Has the media done a good job explaining the crisis?
8:00 Ben says he admires those who have conceded the complexity of the situation
8:50 Ben says most young people he talks to don’t really care what’s going on in D.C. re: finance industry
9:08 Ben says if you’re going to be an engaged citizen, you should follow what’s going on even if it doesn’t affect your own situation
11:16 Ramit says ignore macro-economics and focus on what you can control
13:10 Ben says if you take “only focus on things you control” to its logical end, people shouldn’t focus on anything going on in Washington.
15:38 Ramit talks about his scholarship
17:48 Ramit says doing things that can scale — and reach a large audience — is most fun
19:53 What are the keys to a successful outreach to get 15 mins of a busy person’s time?
21:24 Ramit says personalize the outreach
23:50 Ben says asking good questions is key and the key to a good question is specificity
24:38 Ben cites Geoffrey Moore’s strategy to dominating niches and leveraging success as analogous to escalating communications in a relationship
25:35 Ramit asks Ben what the best way to get 15 minutes of Ben’s time is – Ben says he’s biased toward people who do their background research
27:10 Ramit: “Build a portfolio of work online that you can point people to”
28:59 Ben confesses that he judges people based on appropriate apostrophe usage in “its” and “it’s”
29:54 Ramit talks about the “lamest, most ridiculous” emails he gets
31:10 Ben says in early days of a relationship your communications need a clear call to action, but eventually you should be able to say something and have the person react
32:32 Ramit says his use of “eom” in the subject line reflects the intimate nature of his relationship with Ben
33:27 Ben riffs on mentors: don’t ask explicitly for someone to be a mentor, and it takes time. Relationships have a natural pace to them.
37:00 Ramit says ask your mentor good questions
38:31 Ben says also try to add value and bring up those topics for which there is no expert.
More videos: Btw, if you liked this…I’ve also released some new videos (not released anywhere else) on my Facebook page, so join here:
