Yesterday, while flipping channels at 2 in the afternoon, I realized something: “The Real Housewives of Orange County” was playing on not one, but TWO channels at the same time. Two different episodes, at once. Is this heaven?

Besides that show, and Jersey Shore, one of my other odd loves is reading online articles about education (see my bookmarks about education.) In fact, wade into virtually any online discussion about education, and you’ll quickly notice the following beliefs:

• Majoring in English or psychology is useless. Study the hard sciences
• Anyone who spends $50,000/year for a college education is a fool
• “Elite” colleges are simply for rich kids whose daddies got them in, and they coast until they get their 6-figure job
• Do anything possible to graduate without debt! Better to go to that state school than the expensive school!

Unfortunately, each of those above “beliefs” — which are usually presented as fact — is wrong.

Yet online commenters have been increasingly vocal about pushing these beliefs, spreading them until the point where they seem almost axiomatic.

And yet, today we have an incredibly detailed and persuasive guest post from someone who disagrees with me.

Someone who thinks that many universities — even elite schools — are a waste of money.

Someone who argues that you can do the most important part of education on your own.

And someone who shows us that, even if you’ve graduated, it’s critically important to understand how we make our educational choices, because they reveal so much about our invisible scripts, or the hidden choices we make — often without even knowing them.

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “education is the most important thing you can do,” you know what I’m talking about (especially if you’re Asian).

Josh Kaufman is one of my friends and one of the people I call when I’m stuck on a marketing or systems problem. When it comes to education, I like to hear opposing views — if that they are written by smart people, not anonymous pitchfork-carrying online warriors.

So here’s Josh — with some counter-intuitive arguments, but carefully delineated and argued. I don’t agree with everything, but there will not be a better 15 minutes that you spend today.

If you’re intrigued, you can get his new book: The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Busines.

Remember, this post is not just about education. It’s about blindly following what “everyone” says in our careers, personal finances, relationships, and virtually all of our major decisions.

Josh Kaufman: Unbundling College: How to Avoid Spending $100,000 (or more) on a Credential You Don’t Really Need

On my way back from a recent trip to New York City, I found myself in a rush hour subway car bound for JFK International Airport. It was a long ride, and you can only be smashed next to someone for so long before it becomes more comfortable to strike up a conversation than endure the cramped silence.

One of the interesting people I met on that subway car was a young woman (let’s call her Jennifer), who was beach-bound to celebrate graduating from a masters program “in Boston.” After prying a bit, she told me she had just graduated from Harvard Business School.

I asked her what she planned to do next. “I’m moving to the west coast to work for a consulting company,” she replied.

“Are you excited about that?”

“Not at all,” she said with a grimace. “I want to work in developing countries, but the World Bank said I had to have a masters degree, so I went to HBS. When I applied after graduation, they told me that they’d already ‘filled their quota of Americans,’ and there was nothing they could do. I don’t want to be a consultant, and I know I won’t enjoy it, but it’s the only other job I can get that’ll pay enough to cover my student loans.”

For all of her intelligence and drive, Jennifer was an indentured servant.

Then Jennifer asked me what I do for a living. I told her that I’m a business teacher, and that I’d just finished my first book.

What I didn’t tell Jennifer is that I teach people to avoid making the same mistake she did.

“You can’t put a price on a good education”… or can you?

If you ask your parents or mentors how to become successful, their answer will most likely include four interrelated invisible scripts:

• “Get the best education you can.”
• “Colleges provide the best education.”
• “The best colleges are expensive.”
• “More college is better.”

Like so many of the invisible scripts we grow up with, three of these assumptions aren’t necessarily true.

After graduating from high school, almost everyone will tell you that you should obtain a bachelor’s degree – at a minimum. If you’re smart and want to become extra successful, go to medical school to become an MD, go to law school to become a lawyer, or get an MBA to become a C-level executive with a company jet, stock options, and golden parachute.

Most people seem to think that that the path to becoming a successful person is linear, non-negotiable, and unchanging: go to school at the best institution you can get into (where “best” equals “most expensive”), and pay whatever it takes to attend. Common wisdom says that no price is too high to pay for a “good education”, as long as that education comes in the form of a degree from a prestigious school.

Common wisdom is dead wrong.

Separating education from credentialing

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge advocate of getting a world-class education. Here’s the rub: education and credentialing aren’t the same thing.

Education is the process of learning something useful – concepts, knowledge, and skills that improve your life in some way. Education is what happens in your head, not necessarily what happens in a classroom.

Credentialing is the process of completing a (mostly arbitrary) set of criteria in exchange for a social signal – a degree, certificate, or other form of verifiable proof you’ve played by the rules.

If you want to succeed – to do work that matters, make a difference, and live a rich life, you owe it to yourself to get the very best education you possibly can. That does NOT mean mindlessly mortgaging your financial future (and/or the financial stability of your family) in order to obtain an expensive and unnecessary credential.

Education and credentialing are sold as a bundle, but you’re usually better off unbundling them as much as you’re able. By treating them as separate tools with different objectives, you expand your available options enormously.

Where the scripts came from…

It’s not that our parents and mentors are misguided: the world of credentialing has changed dramatically in the past few decades, and the scripts haven’t caught up.

Twenty five years ago, college was less expensive by a factor of ten, even after adjusting for inflation. You could pay most of your costs by working for minimum wage part time and full time over the summer, and the degree opened enough doors to make a credential a pretty good investment. According to research published by USA Today:

The average debt for a college graduate has soared 50% in the past decade, after inflation, according to the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit advocacy group…

Today, students who don’t want to borrow at higher rates have few other options. Twenty-five years ago, students who wanted to avoid debt could use money from part-time and summer jobs to help pay for college. But since then, college tuition has risen at twice the rate of consumer prices. Tuition has soared much faster than pay has for the kinds of low-wage jobs that students tend to hold.

In 1981, a student could work full time all summer at minimum wage and earn about two-thirds of annual college costs, according to an analysis by Heather Boushey, economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Today, a student earning minimum wage would have to work full time for a year to afford one year of education at a four-year public university – and that assumes she saves every penny, Boushey concluded.

A recent article in The Economist paints a similar picture:

“College fees have for decades risen faster than Americans’ ability to pay them. Median household income has grown by a factor of 6.5 in the past 40 years, but the cost of attending a state college has increased by a factor of 15 for in-state students and 24 for out-of-state students. The cost of attending a private college has increased by a factor of more than 13 (a year in the Ivy League will set you back $38,000, excluding bed and board). Academic inflation makes medical inflation look modest by comparison.”

The benefits of credentials have declined over time, but the costs have increased dramatically. It’s basic math: the higher the cost and the lower the benefit, the worse the return on your investment.

Credentialing is primarily social signaling

“This is a story about us, people being persuaded to spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to create impressions that won’t last, on people we don’t care about.” – Tim Jackson, in a TED talk on conspicuous consumption

College credentialing has become a luxury market. Students (and their parents) aren’t really buying education – they’re buying social status. The credential is seen as a straightforward path to prestige.

In “The Prestige Racket” journalist Daniel Luzer of the Washington Monthly exposed one of the primary reasons behind the last few decades of credential inflation: perception engineering.

Today George Washington, like many “up-and-coming” second-tier schools – American University, New York University – is ruinously expensive. After decades of offering a low-cost education, GW took a sharp turn upmarket in the late 1980s under the presidency of Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. The university went on a high-class building spree, financed by a dizzying series of tuition increases. When Trachtenberg took office, undergraduate tuition was $14,000 – below average for a private, four-year college. By the time he left in 2007, it had mushroomed to $39,000 a year (or, including fees and room and board, a whopping $50,000) – making GW the most expensive school in the United States.

What Trachtenberg understood was that perception is reality in higher education – and perception can be bought. “You can get a Timex or a Casio for $65 or you can get a Rolex or a Patek Philippe for $10,000. It’s the same thing,” Trachtenberg says. The former president gambled that students who couldn’t quite get into the nation’s most exclusive colleges – and who would otherwise overlook a workmanlike school like the old GW – would flock to a university that at least had a price tag and a swank campus like those of the Ivy Leagues. “It serves as a trophy, a symbol,” he says. “It’s a sort of token of who they think they are.”

What’s amazing is that this strategy worked. During Trachtenberg’s tenure, applications for undergraduate admission increased from 6,000 to 20,000 a year, GW students’ average SAT scores increased by 200 points, the endowment increased to almost $1 billion…

Welcome to today’s increasingly elite higher education system, where lavish campuses, high tuition, and huge undergraduate debt loads have become the norm. In dogged competition for affluent, high-scoring students, today’s second-tier colleges aim to achieve higher prestige by aping the superficial characteristics of America’s traditionally elite schools. Indeed, there are few alternatives for ambitious administrators. “If you want to rise, you try to do the things that make you look like Harvard,” says David Labaree, a professor of education at Stanford University. “It’s hard to take a different path.”

(Reading this article is instructive – reading the comments from GWU alumni is even more so. Watch what happens when people believe their social status – which they’ve paid for – is in jeopardy.)

Expensive credentials are rather like expensive cars – you’re paying a lot of money for a depreciating asset whose value declines within five years of purchase. When purchasing a car, you can choose between a Rolls Royce and a Honda Civic. Both will get you where you need to go, but at a dramatically different cost. Is the short-term bump in perceived social status really worth it in the long run?

The Student Loan Industrial Complex

Make no mistake – credentialing can certainly open doors, but it can just as easily close them if you pay too much. If you finance your credential with student loans, you can quickly find yourself in a position where you’re paying the equivalent of a mortgage. Today’s student loans are often mortgage-sized, and work pretty much the same way. You’ll pay 5-10% interest, depending on whether or not it’s a Federal or private loan, and the payments amortize like a mortgage loan. For the first few years, you’ll be paying mostly interest, and if all goes well, you’ll ultimately pay 2 to 3 times the original principle to discharge the loan.

If you find yourself experiencing financial hardship for any reason – unemployment, layoffs, medical emergencies, etc, you’ll quickly find yourself in what I like to call the “Student Loan Death Spiral”. Every time you defer a payment, miss a payment, apply for abatement or forbearance, or consolidate your loans, you’ll rack up automatic additional fees on top of your original principle. That can quickly make your total debt load grow to unmanageable proportions overnight. (For details, see this detailed infographic: The Student Loan Scheme: Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery)

Student loans are also subject to another unique legal provision (at least in the US): they can’t be discharged in bankruptcy. No matter what happens in your financial life, your student loan debts will follow you to the day you either pay them off or die. (The only other loans that fall in this special federal “no escape” category are debts from criminal acts and fraud.)

Taking on loans to finance a credential can make becoming a successful person more difficult than it really needs to be. Debts make it difficult to change course, even if you find you don’t like your new life as much as you thought you would. And, just like credit card debt, they can quickly overwhelm you if you spend more than you can pay. Know the risks before you sign on the dotted line.

Never forget that colleges, universities, and student loan providers are businesses, and have a vested interest in maximizing the total amount you pay for a credential. The more you pay, the more limited your options and the lower your return.

What to do if you ABSOLUTELY need a credential

Sometimes, you really do need the piece of paper. If your desired job mandates a credential as a legal requirement of doing business, you may have to suck it up and get one. The only time a credential is worth the cost is when it’s used as a non-negotiable screening criteria to do the work you already know you want to do, and there’s no other way. If the path you want to take absolutely requires a credential as a screening mechanism, it pays to do what you can to get the best signaling value as quickly and as inexpensively as possible.

If you absolutely must have a credential to do what you want to do, NEVER EVER PAY RETAIL. Here’s what you can do to minimize the direct costs of credentialing:

• Counterintuitively, apply to the most well-known and prestigious programs you can. Well-endowed private universities are usually in a much better position than public universities and community colleges when it comes to awarding financial aid, grants, and scholarships, so “expensive” schools can give you the highest signaling value AND end up being less expensive in total. Aside from the time and money you invest in applications, there’s little harm in applying to evaluate your true options. Remember, it’s not about the sticker price – it’s about what you ultimately pay in total for the credential, and how much money you borrow to pay for it. If you can get a degree from Harvard or Stanford for a few thousand dollars, by all means, go for it.
• Apply for EVERY financial aid program, scholarship, and grant you can – even if you think you won’t get it. Way too many people disqualify themselves for financial aid instead of letting the selection committee decide. My wife and I both completed our undergraduate studies on full-ride scholarships neither of us believed there was any chance we’d receive.
• Establish residency before you attend. Most US colleges and universities give massive discounts to citizens of the state they’re located in, typically as a condition of state funding. Never pay “out of state” tuition – most residency requirements are ~1 year, so establish residency by taking a “gap year” before you attend to save boatloads of money.
• Look for little-known backdoors. Competition to get into top programs can be intense, but there are often hidden backdoors if you’re willing to do some research and try an unconventional approach. Backdoors can help you pull off anything from getting an accredited bachelors degree in one year for $4,000 to skipping the admissions process and graduating from Harvard for $40,000.

In addition, here are five things you can do to ensure your credential investment pays off:

1. Don’t enroll in a credentialing program if you’re still figuring out what you want to do with your life.

Many people advocate going to college as a way to “explore the world” and “find yourself.” Here’s the secret: you can do this quite well on your own, without paying a college five-figures per 36-week-year for the privilege.

I’m a huge advocate of “gap years” – intentionally and mindfully taking some unstructured time to explore the world and experiment on your own. Most colleges allow you to defer enrollment for up to two years after you’re accepted, so there’s little reason not to take them up on the opportunity.

If you’re young, rent an apartment close to whatever college you think you’d like to attend, so you’re surrounded by people your age. (You don’t have to be accepted to a university to live near campus.) Talk with professionals in whatever field you’re interested in exploring. E-mail or call a professor or TA in your intended field and ask them which books you should read, who you should talk to, and which conferences you should attend. By showing more initiative than most enrolled students, you’ll receive help exploring any field you’re interested in – before paying tuition.

Even accounting for living costs, gap years are an inexpensive but valuable education – your time is fully your own, and you can invest that time in any way you deem best: starting a business, meeting people, traveling, or doing research on your own. (Partying is also an option, if that’s important to you.)

You can also use this time to optimize the remainder of your education and credentialing. Find a way to graduate in 2-3 years instead of 4-5 (by planning your course load and testing out of classes), and you can easily save tens of thousands of dollars.

2. Don’t seek a credential in a field where skills and experience matter more than the certification.

In a recent New York Times article, Allison Brooke Eastman, an aspiring photographer, revealed that she racked up $170,000 in student loan debt pursuing a photography degree – a situation so bad her fiance broke off their engagement when he found out.

No matter how you slice it, Eastman’s credential was a waste – she could’ve learned just as much (if not more) at a fraction of the cost by picking up a top-of-the-line camera, buying a computer and a Photoshop license, paying for tutoring with a pro, and shooting pictures until her shutter wore out.

That’s what Mark Cafiero, a professional wedding photographer in Denver, did – he’s a self-taught photographer who’s been shooting photos for most of his adult life. Mark regularly charges over $4,000 to photograph a wedding, and he’s booked solid. He has also created two other successful photography-related businesses on the side. No one cares whether or not he has a degree – his skills speak louder than any piece of paper can, and he has more work than he can handle.

3. Don’t seek a credential when the up-front cost is more than a year’s starting salary in the field.

The field you intend to work in matters enormously. There’s no kind way to say this: if you pay $100,000+ for a degree in a uniformly low-paying field like social work, you’re a fool, and your credential will probably ruin your life. Sad, but true.

Before committing to a field and irreversibly loading yourself up with debt, interview/shadow/intern with people who are actually doing what you think you want to do. Ask about what it took to obtain the required credential. Ask if their investment was worth it. If you get the impression that they regret their choice, think twice.

4. Don’t seek expensive credentials in fields where jobs may not exist.

No credential will help you get a job if there are no jobs available. Some industries and markets have become financial death traps that require you to obtain expensive credentials to enter, only to discover no jobs exist to pay the student loan bill. The worst thing you can do is assume “it’ll all work out” without doing the research.

Law is a perfect example – a field that, for decades, was known for producing graduates that were able to immediately secure stable, high paying jobs. Borrowing huge sums of money for law school was a necessary evil, but expected compensation was more than enough to foot the bill.

Many recent law school graduates are now unemployed, but have over six figures in non-dischargeable debts. Here’s a common story of the Student Loan Death Spiral in action:

“I was admitted to one of the top 14 law schools in the country. And while I did well there I was forced to take out $150,000 in student loans. I know that is a lot of money but I figured this is prestigious, I can get a job making six figures. 2 years after graduation I was still unemployed… I filed for bankruptcy (which got rid of my $50,000 of credit card debt) which did nothing to stop the loan officers from the DoE. As it stands now I owe $412,329.57 (they expect monthly payments of nearly $4,000) and I am still unable to find a job. I am screwed, I think I will probably kill myself.” (Source)

This is a structural supply and demand issue that’s not likely to resolve itself in the near future. In short, this guy is royally screwed.

The same general principle applies to jobs that have traditionally been considered prestigious and high-paying, leading to oversupply. Take being a college professor: there are far more PhD-holders than available tenure-track jobs, particularly in the humanities. To make matters worse, having a PhD means that employers outside of academia consider you “over-qualified” for jobs, and won’t hire you. The PhD glut means that for every teaching position, there are thousands of possible candidates who are willing to work as adjuncts for low pay, just to do something. It’s like playing roulette: the only way to win is not to play.

An extra note of caution if you think that you’re smart and ambitious enough to beat the odds: that’s what everyone else in the market was thinking when they signed on the dotted line. Beware Excessive Self-Regard Tendency – if the structure of an industry is not in your favor, it doesn’t matter how smart or skilled you are.

As a general rule, avoid entering markets where the suppliers are desperate for whatever work they can find.

5. Borrow as little as possible, then mercilessly negotiate your debts.

The more you borrow, the higher your risk and the lower your return on investment. Pay as little for your credential as you possibly can, and find ways to pay for the rest without taking on debt. Here are a few things you can do to minimize your borrowing:

• Get as many scholarships, grants, and assistantships as you can.
• Work a part-time job or freelance while in school to pay for expenses.
• Minimize your daily living expenses, so you’re not racking up credit card debt alongside student loan debt. (For extra credit, live in a van.)
• Participate in paid co-op and paid internship programs that have a record of hiring participants full-time after graduation.
• Graduate as quickly as possible – less time in school equals less tuition and fewer fees.

Once you’ve reduced your total debt load as much as possible, do everything you can do negotiate the best possible interest rates with your lenders, and set up automatic payments to avoid unnecessary fees. This is a classic example of Ramit’s 85% rule – a few hours here can save you tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands of dollars throughout your life.

Whatever you do, don’t buy the line that student loans are “aid” – loans are actually reverse aid that makes your total cost much higher. The quickest and easiest way to screw up your life is to take on too much debt, so minimize your total debt burden as much as possible.

Remember, the primary value of the credentialing process is the credential itself, so the best strategy is to optimize for total cost and speed. After you graduate, focus your time and energy on doing real work and investing in your knowledge and skills on your own.

DIY has the best ROI

Most of the people who go to college say the same thing: most of the value of the experience had nothing to do with the school itself. As Ramit mentioned a while ago in “Your College is Not a Technical School”:

I think I could probably learn 80% of my college career simply from reading the books. But the last 20% – the hardest and most valuable part – came from talking to people, bouncing ideas off them, doing my own startup stuff, and making a bunch of mistakes. And I did all of this in the relative safety of college, where the worst that can happen is you get a “-” next to one of the letter grades on your transcript…

In the end, I think it’s actually more risky to focus exclusively on classes. Why? Because you have to compete against everyone else who will be trying to get jobs using the same criteria: grades. I hate competing against other people directly, so I’d rather simply go around them.

I agree with Ramit – those things really are the most valuable parts of college, and they have nothing to do with college itself. The freedom to experiment, explore, and socialize are the true benefits of the college experience – classes and tests mostly get in the way. Why pay unnecessary rent to a university for benefits they’re not actually providing? Might there be other viable ways to reap these benefits?

You can learn the essentials of most skills far more quickly and less expensively by reading, researching, traveling, meeting people, making friends, and experimenting on your own. With a little curiosity, hard work, and dedication, you can succeed on your own terms – and save a ton of money in the process.

Real-world experience (and results) will always trump credentials when it comes to getting rich. If you want to start a business (which is the quickest way to become a CEO), you don’t need a credential – what you really need are Economically Valuable Skills, a solid business idea, and a willingness to test it.

If your work can provide benefits that other people want or need badly enough to pay for, they simply won’t care whether or not you have a credential. Money in the bank speaks for itself.

As for potential employers, think about it from their perspective:

• Would you rather hire someone who took marketing classes in college, or someone who actually helped a business get a 1200% return on their marketing investment?
• Would you rather hire a random computer science major, or someone who’s actually built a fully functioning web application with real, paying users?
• Would you rather hire someone who has taken a leadership class, or has actually recruited, lead, and managed a functioning team?

The more you invest in learning Economically Valuable Skills and gaining real-world experience, the more economically successful you’ll be. Learning the basics on your own, or enlisting the help of practitioner teachers, will help you learn the fundamentals without mortgaging the next 20-30 years of your life.

Mastering the art of business is how you get rich. If you’re ready to get started, you don’t need to wait for an acceptance letter from an Ivy League school. Here’s how to get started immediately:

• Read great books. Authors spend years distilling their wisdom and experience into a form you can buy for less than $20, or borrow from the library. There’s no better educational bargain out there. Here’s my curated list of the best business books to help you get started.
• Take business courses from practitioners. Learning directly from people who are already doing what you want to do is a great way to accelerate your learning process. Online business courses like Ramit’s Earn1k and my Personal MBA Business Crash Course can shave years off of your learning curve, and are worth the investment. (Watch out for “get rich quick” schemes, though – there’s no such thing as an effortless, instant path to financial success.)
• Start your own business. Owning your own company is the quickest and easiest way to learn the ropes. Bootstrapping your own venture, even a small one, will teach you an enormous amount about how businesses actually work – skills you’ll use for the rest of your life.

Here’s to a rich, successful life – without unnecessary debt.

Josh Kaufman is a business teacher and the author of The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business. He teaches craftsmen, programmers, designers, artists, and professionals how to learn the fundamentals of modern business without mortgaging their lives. Learn more at PersonalMBA.com.

During the 2008 election, Senator Obama went to visit Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, to discuss tech policy. Andreessen, never one to mince words, asked Obama, “How concerned should we be that you haven’t had meaningful experience as an executive — as a manager and leader of people?”

Obama’s reply?

“Watch how I run my campaign — you’ll see my leadership skills in action.”

That is a powerful response. And like him or not, his campaign was executed masterfully.

“Watch me and see.”

My goal is to give you the strategic and tactical advice to say that with confidence — and then back it up. Say it when you’re starting a new side business. Say it when you’re negotiating for a job. Say it when you’re trying to pick up a new hobby.

In fact, this is exactly what I said on the first day of this year. Whenever you try something different that challenges people, you’ll get trolls and whiners. So when I launched my 30-day course on hustling, the common criticisms were: This is the same old stuff, you’re only doing it to make money, this stuff doesn’t work, I don’t have time.

“Watch me and see,” I said.

30 days later, here are some of the incredible results that IWT readers have gotten:

$13,000 RAISE
“When the interview panel asked about my education experience, I handed each of them a copy, explaining that I wasn’t able to fit all my experience on the previous resume. They were definitely impressed by the preparation and foresight. I start next month earning $13,000 more a year! (Plus I used your techniques for not giving away my salary expectations.)” – Amy

NO MORE PROCRASTINATION + $2,500
“In the course of just a few weeks, I’ve essentially BEAT my procrastination habit, which was slowly killing my freelance writing career. I applied for and landed a new gig editing and writing for a well known personality’s website. I earned about $2500 more (AMAZING!) than I usually do simply by accepting more assignments with the confidence that I could complete them.” – Tanya

$10,000 PROMOTION
“In the last month I have successfully negotiated a promotion that includes a 6k raise, with an additional 1k each month for the next four months, and then a review to see if the 1k per month continues.” – Karen

TRIPLED PROFIT
“Prior to taking the hustle course, I sold my hand made gnomes for $40 each (in December I sold 13 X$40 for a total of $520). Using the info from the hustle course, I have sold 7 gnomes X $200 for a total of $1400–nearly 3 times the profit for half the price.” – Karen

Negotiated $1,500 in savings on a Ford F-350 Pickup
“I did successfully help a friend save more than $1,500. I started by just offering general money saving advice to a number of people, but that was not well received. A person who doesn’t even need the money–took my advice (and the free copy of IWTYTBR) and used it to negotiate an additional savings of about $1,500 on an Ford F-350 pickup.” – Wayne

You can see more results here, here, here, and here.

Now I want to show you what I was doing behind the scenes.

A 30-day hustling challenge: Why?

I started off with several bombastic promises for the course:

• You’ll get more done in 30 days than you accomplished in all of last year
• You’ll be able to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars
• You’ll be able to get disproportionate results, or extraordinary outcomes that are disproportionate with the amount of work you put in.

Here’s why:

Most people have become comfortable with mediocrity.

For many of us, the people around us rarely challenge us. For example, it’s almost taboo to call someone out for bullshitting their way through yet another excuse. Instead, we allow ourselves to use the same old tired cliches: “I don’t have enough time to do that,” “I could never get X results,” “I didn’t go to X university / I don’t have Y,000 blog readers / I don’t live in Z city.”

Interestingly, when I call out loser commenters on this site — respectfully but firmly — they love it. Few people around us have the honesty to tell us we’re simply making excuses for things we could do.

And so I wanted to show you that with a week’s work with the right guidance, you could accomplish more than in an entire year.

Guidance matters.

I got 2 months’ of results from 2 months of working out with a personal trainer. I learned more from a conversation with a master copywriter than from 4 months of reading books. And in this course, I showed you tested methods to change your behavior, including experts like BJ Fogg, Derek Sivers, and Tim Ferriss.  Telling yourself to “try harder” is not enough. Telling yourself you could get the information for free “if you really wanted” is delusional. Trusted guidance matters.

I’m well aware that the surrounding market is sleazy.

The name “I Will Teach You To Be Rich.” A course on earning more money. If you were to stumble on this site, what would you think first? Scam, of course.

I work in one of the most difficult markets of all: money. Where there’s lots of money to be made, there are scammers. There are schemes. And there are a few legitimate people who offer incredible value.

That’s why I have to prove that my material works — to separate myself. And proof doesn’t come from me saying it works, it comes from you actually getting results on your own.

Yes, there are other background factors that enhance credibility — like the fact that I have a book, or went to X college, or have 300,000+ readers/month — but there is nothing as persuasive as you getting results.

But if we’re speaking frankly, most of the material on earning money is pure sleaze. In fact, go search for [earn more money] to see what I mean. Compare any of that — free or paid — to the material you’ve read here.

My goal is make my free content more valuable than anything else out there. Which means that my premium content is of a quality level that most people have never seen before. Here’s what one of my readers sent me:

“I really like where you are heading. Your free material is better than what I paid for in college. You should have a “Ramit in lieu of college” course, because your info is much more applicable to the actual world.” – Wayne Patton

I hope I can continue to do that for you, because I know that in a world filled with “Top 10” lists and linkbait junk, true quality is rare — and when I spend time investing in you and you get results, you’ll keep coming back…and one day explore some of my premium offerings.

Skepticism is not a strategy.

I spoke to one of my top Earn1k students last week — she earned over $80,000 in 8 weeks — and she was talking about how much her entire viewpoint has changed. Once you realize that you can control your situation — how much you earn, how much you work, where you live, etc — it’s amazing to look back at ourselves a few years ago…when we were skeptical and disbelieving that any of this could work.

Skeptics always have an excuse because it’s easier to be skeptical than to take the risk of trying something and possibly failing. Skeptics use codewords — much like racists do — to mask their fear and loathing of something different. For example, they’ll say they don’t have enough time (when everyone has the same 24 hours per day). They’ll complain about having “already tried that,” but when you dig in and ask them what they actually tried, they’ll demur.

There’s nothing I hate more than vocal skeptics — not only because they cheat themselves out of their own potential, but because they convince others that they can’t do it, either.

As Seth Godin said,

“A check in your wallet does you very little good. It represents opportunity, sure, but not action.

Most of us are carrying around a check, an opportunity to make an impact, to do the work we’re capable of, to ship the art that would make a difference.

No, the world isn’t fair, and most people don’t get all the chances they deserve. There are barriers due to income, to race, to social standing and to education, and they are inexcusable and must fall. But the check remains, now more than ever. The opportunity to step up and to fail (and then to fail again, and to fail again) and to continue failing until we succeed is greater now than it has ever been.”

I write for the As, Bs, and Cs — but I systematically ignore one of them.

Imagine the world has As, Bs, and Cs in any field. In this one, the As are already managing their money, they’ve read my book (and others), and they’re earning as much as they need to lead the lifestyle they choose. They’re already doing it.

The Bs are the greatest in number. They have the potential to do something great, but for whatever reason — like actual barriers, self-imposed barriers, or external responsibilities — they  haven’t achieved what their potential first. They can be reached if you communicate to them in the right way.

The Cs are a lost cause. Sure, they might be salvageable to help, but that’s not something I’m interested in or capable of. This enrages certain people who believe that we should help everyone, but I live in the world of practicality, not utopia. If I have the chance to help an A become an A+ in 3 months, or a C become a B- in 3 years, who am I going to choose? There are other people who make it their life’s work to work with Cs, but it’s not me.

And so this is also applicable for you. When I teach negotiation, or interviewing, or automation, or even earning more money, I teach you how to focus on the right level of analysis for you. It’s ok not to please everyone. I’d rather spend my time hyper-focused on exactly your needs than try to serve everyone.

I’m separating out the people for the next step.

The first step was hustling. We covered how to use automated scripts to live anywhere, quit your job, or get promoted.

Then we covered the psychological techniques from the worlds of social influence and persuasion to dominate your goals.

Next, I showed you how to negotiate better than 99% of people to get higher hourly rates, meetings with top executives, and how to convince people to pay you for your valuable services.

And finally, I showed you the fundamental differences between people who win and people who dream, and the characteristics of both.

Now I’m turning the entire hustling series on its head to show you how to take your new skills…and get paid for them.

For the last 30 days, every post on this site has had a box to join a free Earn1k Insider’s List. While this is the last public post on the 30-day hustling course, I have an entire week of new material for the people who took action and signed up.

Even with tens of thousands of new people who signed up, it’s still incredible how few people (relatively) take even the smallest step to sign up for something where they’ll get more free material. It goes to show you how low the bar is for taking action — and why people who take action get disproportionate rewards.

The Invisible Scripts — What’s stopping you from the next step?

Last week I asked you “What do you want more of?” But inside that survey I snuck in a question: “What do you worry about?”.

Do any of these sound familiar?

“I worry about spending too much time doing the wrong things.” – Justin

“I worry about being ordinary when I see others doing so well for themselves with the actions and risks that they have taken.”  – Erik

“I worry about not having big enough ideas, or not knowing enough people.” – Erica

“I worry about wasting all my time reading your site and like minded sites and not taking action, missing out on a great deal of reward. I just don’t think my ideas are good enough and that I have the determination to carry them through. I’m very good at starting things, not so great at finishing.” – Phil

“I worry that about not having enough savings to launch a business. I worry about not having enough skill to make money on the side. I worry about not being able to connect with the right people to make money.” – Wade

“I worry that I will be stuck in my current low paying and dead end position because I do not know how to tackle applying for and landing better jobs.” – Julie

This month has been all about giving you baby steps to show you that hustling works. Negotiation works. Your own barriers can be overcome (relatively easily) to get you disproportionate rewards.

You can get big results with small actions.

You can leave your job within 6 months and work for yourself (or travel). Not all of you, but many of you.

You can control how many hours you work, how much you make, and where you live.

So in the survey, I also asked this:

Based on those responses, I’ve put together a 1-week MBA on hustling — going step-by-step to find the right idea to start earning money on the side. This starts on Sunday.

In private, I’ll include far more detailed material than the stuff you’ve read so far. For example, in a webcast, I’ll show you not only what to say, but how to say it – and then I’ll do live teardowns of negotiation tactics.

Here’s some of what I’ll be releasing next week on the Insider’s List only:

• A 3-step process you can follow to find your first profitable idea and start getting paid right now
• Live webcasts, including The Psychology of Mind Reading: How to Get Deep Inside People’s Heads
• Case studies on how some of my students — just regular people — earned tremendous amounts of money and have quit their job, traveled, or simply stuffed their bank accounts

With the free material you’ve seen so far, my goal was to get you to accomplish more than you accomplished all of last year.

With this Insider’s List, I’m stepping it up: My goal is to make this one week worth more than the average MBA.

And after a week of that material, which is still free…

Earn1k 2.0 launches

Earn1k 2.0 is the culmination of the work I’ve been doing on hustling, earning more, and psychology over the last two years.

Personally, I don’t really care about the dollar value in my bank account — but it’s a fairly accurate marker of whether you’re doing something valuable or not.

That’s why I teach my students how to earn $1,000 on the side first — then $1,000/month — then $2,000, or $5,000, or $10,000/month.

Some of them want to work more to earn more. Others want to work less and are more than satisfied with a few extra thousand dollars every month.

Some of them quit their jobs, never to set foot in a 9-to-5 office again.

But it’s not for everyone.

By definition, the people who haven’t taken 8 seconds to sign up for the Insider’s List will not be invited to join Earn1k. That’s because I’m not publicly releasing it this time. I’m just opening it up to people who have raised their hands and asked to take it to the next level.

It’s not for people with credit-card debt.

It’s not for people who are still stuck on basic questions like “How do you stay motivated?”

It’s a little ridiculous to tell people who Earn1k is NOT for, but I also feel confident enough to choose my customers since I’ve helped hundreds and hundreds of students get results.

Here are a few Earn1k students telling their story:

You can join the Insider’s List here: Earn1K insider list sign up form

Sneak peek at next week

This is a simple overview of what’s coming next week. You’ll see far more detail starting Sunday.

Step 1: Start with your goals

Too many people jump into the tips/tactics without understanding why they’re doing what they’re doing.

It’s better to do something WRONG than to do nothing at all. But if you can spend a little time planning — and still continue executing — you can save hundreds of hours of missteps.  Starting with your goals helps point you in the right direction for getting started.

For example:

“I just want more money” - Let’s say you simply want to earn an extra $1,000/month because you want to pay down student loans. Great! Your first goal, then, is to generate income. As a simple rule of thumb, figure out the most profitable market that matches your skills and pursue it relentlessly.

“I am passionate about painting” – Conversely, if your passionate about painting, you wouldn’t want to, say, start a freelance business helping with marketing and sales.  You already know you want to earn income painting, so spend your time researching different services you can offer to create paintings that people will pay for, like re-designing an entire room of your customers house to fit the painting.

Remember: Start with your goals and follow up with the tactics.

Step 2: Match your skills to earning money on the side

This is a simplified process to turn your skills into side income. Next week during the private course, I’ll get into it in extreme detail. But I encourage you to try these principles with your skills.

I’ve written about this in detail, but just take it one step at a time.

1. What industry are you in? Oh, finance? Ok, you probably don’t want to be a freelance investment banker. But..hmm….you spend all day doing analyses. How can you use that? Example: Excel is a breeze to you. Maybe there are people (like me) who HATE Excel yet need detailed analyses for their business. Could you build models for other people?
2. Identify your skills and interests — then think more broadly. People want to pay you money to solve their problems. Are you great at writing press releases? (I’d pay for that.) Are you fluent in Chinese? Boom, I’d instantly be a tutor for Chinese kids since their parents will love/trust someone who speaks Chinese — even when tutoring their kids for any subject.
3. If you don’t have any marketable skills, there are still options. Etsy is a perfect example of people making great side income — and many of them don’t have any skills that would commonly be considered “valuable.” Yet they do well selling niche products to a niche audience. If you aren’t some professional with software-engineering skills or online-marketing experience, that’s okay.

Remember: People pay for solutions, not your skills.

For example, last year I did a webcast where I was suggesting ways for people to earn money on the side, and I mentioned that I hate cooking, am not good at it, and would love it if someone cooked for me. I got an email later that night from Andrew who said, “Ramit, I can help. I can teach you everything you need to know over one weekend, and you’ll know 3-5 great dishes to cook.” I appreciated the offer, but wrote back, “Thanks for the offer! But you don’t understand. I don’t want to learn — I want someone to do it for me.” He ended up sending me another proposal and 2 weeks later I started paying him over $1,000/month to prepare all my meals (Read the detailed case study on how he did it here: from $0 to $1,500 in 2 weeks.)

Again: People have problems. They want solutions. They don’t care what you’re “interested” in.

Step 3: Identify skills that people will pay for

Start by thinking of how your skills can solve other people’s problems right now.  Write down the top three skills you have that can solve other people’s real problems today.

Now, which one of those is most likely going to actually pay you for your services?

“Niche it Down” to target your market.

You’ve probably heard this a million times, but note that this is a critical piece in selling your skills as a service, and one that many people skip for the latest SEO tactic because tactics are easier to chase.

The first question: Who are you targeting?

Most people will say: “Anyone interested in using social media for their business.” Or, “Uh… people with terrible websites!”

Wrong. It’s nearly impossible to reach everyone and anyone, being specific is key.

Let’s say you need a website for your carpet cleaning business. Who are you going to hire to handle that for you? Acme Graphic Design and Web Development, where they build websites for giant corporations and commercial industry? Or Jack’s small business web design, which targets only local small businesses looking for a simple setup?

Of course you’d choose Jack… and you’d pay more, too.

Remember: the more specific you are, the more you can charge.

During the bonus week I will be walking you through step-by-step how to go even deeper and identify skills people will pay for with 2 more advanced frameworks.

Step 4: Join my private bonus week to start getting paid to hustle.

I’m going even deeper into this concept during the bonus week to help you find your first profitable idea and start earning money on the side.

Enter your info below to join the list and start getting paid.  I’ll see you inside next week:

(Can’t see the above form?  Click here.)

I’m closing the list down on Sunday at 3pm Eastern (2/6) before the private week begins, so sign up now if you’re ready to start getting paid for hustling.

And that’s it. Thanks for reading the 30-day series on hustling. It’s been a pleasure.

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Two weeks before the manuscript for “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” was due, I was stuck on the last chapter of my book and didn’t think I could finish. I picked up the phone and called one of my friends and asked him what to do. He listened, he commiserated, and then recommended a book that helped me push through the uncertainty to deliver a manuscript I was proud of.

Everyone loves a dream team. Think about it — in the movies, when somebody important is in trouble, they pick up the phone and call the right person and get it taken care of.

• Relationship problems? Your two girl friends will know the answer
• Not sure what to do about life? Dad’s been there and he’ll talk it over with you
• Got arrested? Call your lawyer, who just happens to know the judge

Think about your own dream team. If you have a job interview tomorrow and you’re not sure what to say, who would you call? Or you have to buy a fancy suit — who would know what to get?

We each have people in our lives who are masters at what they do…and they help us when we need it.

I have my own dream team.

Whenever I’m stuck, I call up one of my friends to help out. Maybe it’s a marketing question, or being stuck on writing, not knowing how to get my publisher to do something quicker. Whatever the case, I have a group of close friends who all help each other back and forth.

One of those friends is Tim Ferriss.

He wrote The Four-Hour Workweek and, recently, The Four-Hour Body.

And we share a love of testing, psychology, human behavior, and ridiculous antics.

I can’t think of something more powerful than being able to call up a friend or family member and ask them for help. Especially the ones who are truly masters at their field.

I’ve been pretty fortunate to build up an amazing group of friends who have done interesting things. For example, I can call up a lawyer friend, or a best-selling author, or my friend who sold his company for tens of millions of dollars, or a pro athlete — and ask them what they think of a situation.

But if you can’t call those people up yourself, I want to at least let you peek in on how I do it.

And tomorrow, I want to invite you to a dream team meeting I’m holding.

Tomorrow, Tim Ferriss and I will be talking about the Psychology of Testing — live. And I’d like to invite you to come and listen in.

In fact, I’d like you to be a part of it, so I’m leaving around 25 minutes for live questions.

Why testing? Because although it’s not sexy, testing is one of the most important ways to accelerate and get disproportionate results. Instead, on most sites, you see people talking about Twitter (!!) and top 10 lifestyle hacks(!!)  and the importance of starting a blog (!!). Total BS.

Testing is as much a series of tactics as a methodology and mindset, and it has helped me get hugely disproportionate results.

Tim and I will talk about:

• The psychology of testing – what we both test, what we’re too nervous to test, even how we’ve tested dating
• Disproportionate results – everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. How does somebody like Tim get so much done? What tools does he use? What does he focus on and what does he simply NOT do?
• The power of a social network – and how to get access to influential people if you’re not famous

There’s really no way to get access to Tim and me, live, answering questions, but the second-best thing I can do for you is to invite you to listen in, live.

Sorry about the late notice, but I just confirmed this for you. The talk is at 10am PST tomorrow, 1 PM EST (Wednesday, 2/2). There are only 1,000 slots on the call so if you can’t make it don’t worry, I’ll send out a recording to my Earn1k Insider’s List.

Details of the webcast:

• When: Wednesday (2/2) at 10 AM PT (1pm ET).  Be early as only 1,000 can attend.
• Where: IMPORTANT: Sign up below to get the secret registration URL
• Will it be recorded: Yes, but I’m only releasing the recording to my private Earn1k Insider’s List.

Update: The live webcast just ended and people are raving…

@ramit holy crap man – this was just as good, if not better, than your last webinar with BJ. solid. @tferriss you rock my worldless than a minute ago via Twitter for MacDanny Lamas
DannyLamas

Don’t worry, you can still sign up for my private list below to get the recording when I release it:

(Can’t see the form? Click here to sign up.)

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How do you use persuasion to change others’ behavior — or your own?

2 days ago, I held a live Q&A with my mentor, Stanford psychologist BJ Fogg. He’s the father of the field of Captology — Computers As Persuasive Technologies — and he taught me most of what I learned in psychology and persuasion early on.

It was a fascinating call.

We covered material on:

• Classic psychology studies on behavioral change and persuasion
• Theoretical concepts from academia as well as applied techniques we’ve developed — and tested — ourselves
• Rich examples of how humans behave irrationally — and how to use this to ethically influence others
• Using persuasion techniques to get a dream job
• Live Q&A with readers on how to motivate themselves, how to stay focused on an idea, our favorite psychology books, and more

My new technology system limited the number of concurrent listeners to 1,001, and we had 1,001 the entire time.

I thought I’d share some of the comments from people who attended:

 

@ramit I got more out of BJ’s answer to my decision paralysis question than in years’ worth of literature I’ve read. thank you so muchless than a minute ago via webDanny Lamas
DannyLamas

 

 

thx @ramit + @bjfogg for webinar. Amazing scientific insights on getting foot in door, becoming an expert, persuasion & behavior change.less than a minute ago via webErica Oh Martinetti
Ericanista

 

 

@ramit thanks for the awesome webinar. That was the best 1hr I invested in my life.less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhoneBen
trakmotn

 

 

@ramit @bjfogg Loving the webinar guys. Really enabling. I’ve already written down (and acted upon) my steps for achieving my long term goalless than a minute ago via webJohn Anyasor
janyasor

 

 

@ramit The interview with @bjfogg is amazing. It is highly practical. Thanksless than a minute ago via webAnanth Majumdar
thisisananth

 

 

Really digging the foot-in-the-door persuasion effect in this @Ramit Sethi / @BJFogg webinar.less than a minute ago via EchofonLindsay Lennox
lilennox

@bjfogg & @ramit – thank you for last night’s webinar. Fascinating stuff I’ve already been able to apply.less than a minute ago via webBrad Wilson
BradleyCW

 

Here are some of the other areas we covered:

• How a classic persuasion technique increased persuasion from 17% to 76%
• How “self-persuasion” increased persuasion 3% to 32% — on a major behavior
• The psychology of “baby steps”
• Why “motivation” is overrated (ever say, “I just can’t get the motivation to work out / work on this project”?)
• Using behavior to change attitude (read that again…it’s opposite of what most people think)
• Why we’re certain we’d leave a dangerous smoke-filled room…but why a simple intervention reduced that number from 75% leaving the room…to only 10% (and how you can protect against negative social influence)
• Why “educating others” with more information is overrated
• Persuasive triggers that work better than information alone
• BJ’s tip on having your clients fall in love with you
• A killer technique when doing group presentations
• What the best salespeople and extroverts have in common — and how to systematically study it and adopt it
• The difference between deep academic studies and pop psychology (and the value in both)
• Our respective favorite books on psychology, influence, and persuasion

I’ve put together the full 1-hour recording for you, along with a transcript and recommended book list.

This is free to readers of “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” — but if you find it useful, as others have, all I ask is that you do two things.

1. Treat it like something you spent $1,000 on. Use it. Implement it. Don’t just listen to it and then move on with your life. There are dozens of profoundly useful and applicable techniques that you can use to kickstart a project, get out of a rut, improve your health, make more money, improve your relationships, excel at work, and challenge your beliefs about behavioral change.

2. Tell 3 friends about it. Every one of your friends has an area of their lives where effective persuasion techniques could help them excel. I kept it free so you could spread the ideas that BJ and I talk about. In a profound way, you have the chance to help your friends accomplish more. What could be more powerful than that?

Again, I invested thousands of dollars and 16 hours of work to put this webcast together. And it’s yours free, because I know that by investing in you now, you’ll be back to invest in my work — whether my free material or my premium courses.

You can get the recording of BJ Fogg and me, Ramit Sethi, here:

 

(Can’t see the above form? Click here to sign up.)

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This week we’ve been focusing on the psychology of hustling, or how to unconventionally achieve disproportionate results.

You’ve read:

• How to test responses at bars, which includes rich examples of testing in bars, streetside markets, and dozens of other areas
• 5 fascinating experiments from the world of psychology and persuasion, where I showed you how little behavioral control we actually have — and how we can use ethical persuasion principles to influence yourself and others

Today, 3 case studies of people who’ve taken my psychological methods and implemented them — and one who failed.

* * *

3 patterns about this week’s progress

In the 200+ comments where you listed how you’d implemented this week’s challenge of meeting 3 people before Wednesday, I noticed some interesting patterns:

1. People want to help you.Most people were SHOCKED at how responsive people are when you email them with a genuine question. People WANT to help. They WANT to meet you. They WANT to give advice. But nobody asks.
2. It’s easy to do nothing. Some people had emails sitting in their Drafts folder for YEARS. This week, they finally sent them — and got responses within 5 minutes! What held them back? (Hint: It wasn’t just “motivation.”) Where else can you identify this in your life?
3. Advanced tactics for later. Sophisticated readers will notice after a while that it’s not just about being able to meet people…it soon becomes about meeting the right people. That’s a topic for another time.

Overall you did an excellent job reaching out.

But by far the most interesting thing I noticed was that some people were still making the mistake of focusing on THEMSELVES. ‘Can *I* take him out to lunch? What should *I* ask him? *I* think….*I* want….”

One of the advanced techniques I teach to my Earn1k students is how to get in your customers’ heads — how to focus on them — and it’s applicable not just in business, but in your personal life too.

It sounds obvious, but it’s HARD.

It means deeply understanding people’s hopes, fears, and dreams before you pitch them on something.

This isn’t just about making money. It could be about helping your boyfriend lose weight, or your wife manage her money better, or having your partner and you both resolve to quit your jobs and travel the world.

For example, if you’re trying to get a raise, what would make your boss instantly say yes?

If you want to show your boyfriend that he, too, can quit his job and travel the world for 6 months, what would get him to take action?

If you’re trying to land a $30,000 deal that your competitors are only charging $2,000 for, how do you make yourself irresistible?

If you’re trying to sell services to a 24-year-old woman vs. a 42-year-old woman, how would your pitch differ?

Using psychology to ethically influence other people is not about nifty persuasion tricks and hacks. Ethical persuasion is first and foremost about deeply understanding your audience.

I know, I know. That’s not as sexy as “81 Mindhacks That Persuade Girls to Drop Their Panties!!!” But understanding others — when done properly — works better than you would believe.

Case study: Meeting a busy person using Mental Scenario Planning

For example, reader bp wrote about her experience in meeting an extremely busy professor — with winning results:

Week 2 results:

I decided to call one professor I absolutely admire about career advice. Unfortunately, he’s quite unapproachable (excentric genius kind of person). Considering I have phone anxiety and generally don’t talk much to people at college, I started with a simple test.

I typed up a list with all the phone numbers of ALL of the professors I’ve ever had a class with, and some stuff I could talk to them about (well, a question per professor, so the call wouldn’t be strange.)

Getting past the secretary:

“Hi, this is a student of ..“ – forget it, the professor is almost always occupied.

”Hi, I’m calling about the professors’ new book.“ – sometimes works.

“Hi, this is (my name) from (the company I occasionally work for), I’m calling about his lecture on (etc, etc).“ – works awesomely.

Talking with the prof:
“Hi, I’m a student, calling about your lecture in -“ – asked me to go to office hours for such things. Didn’t care.
“Hi, I’m a student working on a project about (lecture topic). I’m attending your lecture, but there’s one or two questions -“
- Professor is interested 8/10 times and if prompted, agrees to meet me for a coffee. Of course, then it takes a few hours to think up a project…

In the end, I have coffee dates with several profs for the next week – including today. Today I met the professor I originally targeted and we talked about my project (which I had spend the entire day on – thinking it up, making some daring assumptions to have preliminary results – he loved one of the ideas), about our love for that topic (didn’t need to fake that one), recent developments (Did you know – ? I did, but it’s nice to hear that students read industry blog abc

Results: I’m going to grad school with a horrid GPA – to one of the most profilic and brilliant people in my field. I’m officially working on a project I faked – and it is actually quite interesting. Also, I’m totally over my phone anxiety.

Life officially rocks.

What bp is doing here is quite sophisticated. She is mentally crafting a “scenario plan” of how the person will respond if she says A, B, and C. This is extraordinarily difficult. Try for yourself: Visualize the person you are trying to meet, and come up with 3-5 different pitches. How would they respond? You’ll notice that it is actually physiologically taxing to understand the world from another person’s perspective.

But the best people can do it — and they achieve disproportionate results.

BP is the winner of this week’s Taking Action award, and she gets $250 (for taking others out to coffee) or 15 minutes on the phone with me.

Case study: Overcoming fear

Here’s another example from reader Jonah, who writes about how he overcame his fear of reaching out to new people:

WEEK 2 RESULTS

On tuesday I wrote down 5 people that I found fascinating and wanted to meet. One of them is a local entrepreneur who have done some really amazing things.

Now I’ve noticed that giving first is a good start so I decided to test something, the “just a heads up” following an engaging question about his/her business/philosophy. Because I’m quite web savvy it comes naturally to suggest improvements and provide solutions to technical problems. People are often very grateful because they might often love the web but hate the tech.

This time I simply pointed out some bugs in a newly released project of his and followed up with some other stuff. After a few emails he asks if I want to grab a lunch on friday? Sure! Then he emails me today that it’s on him as well!

One thing I learned is that I often make up worst case-scenarios in my head when waiting for a reply when in fact this is just another negative script. I’m not sure what the best way would be to get rid of this but I’ll try to break it down (why am I often expecting the worst?). I’m thinking it’s often a defense mechanism so that while I’m waiting i’m trying to create a rescue plan _just in case_. This is nuts.

Jonah did two things:

1. Offered value by pointing out bugs and offering ways to help FIRST
2. Critically examined his own fears of making up “worst-case scenarios” in his head. “What if they say this? What if they say that?” While most people try to attack the ATTITUDE, you can short-circuit the entire premise by simply attacking the behavior. Execute a behavior and often — not always, but often — the attitudes will follow.

Case study: Using psychology to earn tens of thousands of dollars

One of my students, David N., recorded a video talking about a psychological technique that he learned from my Earn1k course on earning more money:

(Skip to 0:18 to for the main meat.)

Video notes:

• Using my techniques, he switched from a 9-5 job to freelancing. Despite only working 7 months last year, he made 15% more than his old job. And he traveled the world in the remaining 5 months.
• Using my Earn1k DIFT Technique, he ANTICIPATED what his clients would need. This is so different than waiting for someone to tell you what to do. How different? This alone was worth tens of thousands of dollars to him last year alone
• If you’re interested, get on the Earn1k pre-launch list to hear when I open the course again

BONUS case study: Confidence and conversational skills

A few months ago, I spoke to one of my students, Rachel K., on a recorded call. She wanted help with her freelance-photography idea.

And she was failing! In fact, on the call I yelled at her and told her to stop being creepy and to start understanding the people she was talking to.

Here’s the call. It’s pretty funny. Listen here:

(Can’t see the audio player? Click here for the file.)

Read the transcript here:

Rachel-Marie: So I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about confidence, and so probably in a little bit broader category, because if you asked me something I’m really certain about, like what’s your favorite brand of ice cream, I can tell you I love Ben and Jerry’s and you wouldn’t believe their fish food, it’s got this really cool chocolate-flavored fish-shaped yummy things in it. But when I get to talking freelancing and working on the side, I don’t have that same level of confidence, I don’t like to go up to people and just say, you know: Hey, I’m Rachel, I’m into photography and I can take some really great pictures for you.

Ramit Sethi: Got it. Well, Rachel, I wish I could help you but I have a confidence problem myself, so…

Rachel-Marie: No way!

Ramit Sethi: [Laughs] I’m just kidding. Alright so what happens when you go up to someone, tell me what happens?

Rachel-Marie: I think for me it’s something that’s probably more personal, and it’s something I care about, not just as…

Ramit Sethi: Just tell me the behavior, what happens when you go up to someone. What do you do?

Rachel-Marie: Smile, say: Hi, how’s it going?

Ramit Sethi: Go on.

Rachel-Marie: Wait for them to respond, kind of strike up a little bit of a…

Ramit Sethi: Hold, on. Let’s do a little role playing.

Rachel-Marie: Okay.

Ramit Sethi: First of all, don’t try to get too flirty because we have a lot of people listening on the line here, okay, and I’m recording this too. So try to keep your distance.

Rachel-Marie: So, Ramit, what’s your cell phone number?

Ramit Sethi: Right, right. So we are at a conference, and I’m just standing there, you come up to me, so go ahead.

Rachel-Marie: Hey, I’m Rachel, were you…

Ramit Sethi: Hey, I’m, Ramit.

Rachel-Marie: Hey, nice to meet you, Ramit, where are you from?

Ramit Sethi: I’m from the Bay area, what about you?

Rachel-Marie: I’m from Minnesota, what do you like to do for fun?

Ramit Sethi: Well, you know, I guess – the reason I’m here, I’m just really interested in this conference and what they’re talking about, but normally I’m just like, I write, and I like to bowl a lot and eat, kind of spicy food, I don’t know.

It’s kind of a weird question, no one has ever really asked that at a conference? What do you like to do for fun?

Rachel-Marie: I like to ride horses and I like to take photos. Hey, do you know anybody that likes to have pictures taken of their kids?

Ramit Sethi: Whoa, whoa, whoa—what! What do you mean?

Rachel-Marie: So, I like to take photos and I’m a professional – I’m a photographer on the side, and I have a day job and all that kind of stuff, but I’m looking for some people that might like to have some photos taken of their kids.

Ramit Sethi: Ah! Let’s stop here. Great, thank you for doing that, you did a great job. Okay, put yourself in my shoes. What do you think I just thought?

Rachel-Marie: This is coming out of left field.

Ramit Sethi: Yes, coming out of left and you sounded like, kind of, creepy. In fact if you were a dude you would definitely be a creep. Okay, luckily for you, you are a woman, so women can’t really be creepy. So well, 99 percent of them cannot. So you’ve got that going for you, but here is the deal, you, in that example were one of those people who just to a conference, and is like one of those leeches, just trying to get business from people. Like, really – if you were a guy, it would be like a guy who goes to a bar and just hits on anything that moves. And as soon as he gets a negative response he just goes to the next girl. And that’s like – girls and guys are really smart, they pick up on that. Did you pick up on how I didn’t like that?

Rachel-Marie: Yes, I did.

Ramit Sethi: So you have to lay a foundation, when I go up to someone, let’s say I go up to a girl, I love using these examples because picking up a guy or a girl is like so applicable to everything. I don’t just. I’m not just like: “Hey, I’m Ramit, come over to my house right now.” That’s so weird. So engage them, talk to them, and let’s take your example. I liked your example, what I might do something like this: I might say, Hi… First of all, do you actually ask people what they like to do for fun?

Rachel-Marie: That’s actually a question I ask a lot of people.

Ramit Sethi: And how is the response?

Rachel-Marie: You get people that don’t have anything that they classify as fun that they do, and then you get some people who just really get into talking about their passions.

Ramit Sethi: Nice, okay. So that’s pretty interesting. And do you actually ever ask people: “Hey, do you know anyone who would want pictures taken of their kids?

Rachel-Marie: Probably people that are closer to me, not necessarily people that I actually just met.

Ramit Sethi: Right, what I might do is something a little bit more low-key. Because remember – honestly your best pitching is not going to happen at an in-person event, where you’re just cold pitching, it’s just not going to happen. Alright, and you have a big downside risk which is seeming really sleazy, and very low upside potential, which is, like, getting a client. It’s just not going to happen when you’re cold emailing people – I mean cold-meeting people in person. What I might do is like, tell them a little bit about yourself what you like to do—briefly, nobody really cares about you anyway. And then—they don’t care about me either—and then engage them, ask them a lot of stuff, because no one ever really ask people what they do. And no one ever really listens. They just talk about themselves. So engage them, listen, and after a while, you say: Well you know, if you happen to know… Actually what you want to do is maybe like tell a story: Actually it was like really surprising, last week I got, like, my tenth client – or I got my first client with twins, and that was, like, incredible. Normally I deal with children like blah-blah-blah, but now I dealt with twins, it was such a different experience. I had to think how to position them, I had to figure out to make each other cry. So it was really surprising.

Then they’re like: Oh, yeah. They’re like into the story, they’re like offering feedback, it’s natural, it’s not weird. And then at the end, you know, natural like, “Yeah if you know anyone who is looking for photography for their children, let me know. But otherwise, I’ll keep my eye out for any bowling tips I learn and I’ll let you know. Friendly, right?

Rachel-Marie: Yes, I get that.

Ramit Sethi: Super-friendly, so that is answer number one to your question, which is don’t come off too sleazy and strong. Number two let’s talk about your confidence issue. If I say: Hey, Rachel, what do you do?

Rachel-Marie: So I would say that I’ve got a corporate day job where I work in financial reporting and go to meetings.

Ramit Sethi: Be real: Hey Rachel, what do you do?

Rachel-Marie: I’m a business analyst for a Fortune-100 company.

Ramit Sethi: That’s it?

Rachel-Marie: If they’re in a corporate world, a lot. I typically in my off hours stuff – I just try to forget that little piece of my life.

Ramit Sethi: Okay, here might be a different response that might help: “Actually during the day I’m a business analyst for a Fortune-100 company but I actually, after work I’ve started to do this pretty interesting thing, I’m actually starting to actually take photographs of children and I’m trying to learn how to turn it into a business, so it’s been really interesting as I take this passion I may have had for the last 15 years, and now I’m actually trying to grow it and help take pictures of children, so that’s what I’ve been working on recently.” Now if you’re really passionate about it when you say it, guess what, people are drawn to passion, because a lot of people don’t have it. The way you just said that made me want to kill myself. I almost just hung up the phone just now.

Rachel-Marie: [Laughs]

Ramit Sethi: You know it and I know it, I could tell from your voice and everyone else could too, so we know you’re not passionate about that, so guess what, acknowledge that and move on, talk about what you are passionate about, that’s what people really care about anyway. Does that make sense?

Rachel-Marie: Yes, it does.

Ramit Sethi: Does that answer your question about confidence?

Rachel-Marie: It does.

Ramit Sethi: Anything else I can help you with?

Rachel-Marie: Not at the moment.

Ramit Sethi: Alright. Here is what I want for next week, I want you to go and I want you to introduce yourself to five people and I want you to say it with confidence. Before you do this I want you to practice it, okay. Practice how you’re going to introduce yourself. And maybe even sketch out the conversation. I’ve done this before, myself. If it’s a really important conversation you can actually bullet point it and sketch it out, how you think it will go. Trust me, that really helps, you have little arrows in your quiver, you’re ready to go. You don’t have to use all that stuff, but you’ll have it. And I’ve always called it tools in the tool box. Come back to us next week and let us know about these five conversations and how they went, and did they improve your confidence or not. Will you do that?

Rachel-Marie: Yeah, I can do that.

The good news is that, a few months later, Rachel has now found another job, lost 20lbs, moved to her dream location (Nashville), and is earning hundreds / month on the side. In fact, I hired her.

What now?

Understanding the psychology of persuasion is critical because people are not rational. Yes, we “should” be out there meeting people and staying fit and managing our money, but we’re not. Why not? How can we understand our limitations and work around them?

Persuasion is also critical to ethically influencing other people. I’ll write more about ethical guidelines in the coming weeks, but you can certainly change people’s behaviors for the better if you always aim to persuade people to do what they already want to do.

I’ve only scratched the surface of getting inside people’s heads. It is HARD — astonishingly hard. I often spend HOURS drafting one email.

But once it’s done, it usually works. And I achieve disproportionate results from it. Like David, my student, who used my DIFT Technique to quit his job, increase his earnings 15% (working only 7 months/year), and get tens of thousands of dollars on a new deal. It wasn’t easy. But his rewards are now disproportionately higher than even the amount of time he put in.

As you know, in about 3 weeks I’m opening up my Earn1k 2.0 course on earning money on the side. It includes end-to-end, step-by-step material to help you hustle and get paid for it — earning thousands/month on the side.

It is expensive and very effective for people who take action.

Today, I’m making a small part of that course — one lesson — available for free.

It’s on how to get get deep inside your customer’s head (and how I charge a $1,500/hour consulting fee).

Sign up below to download the Earn1K Lesson: How to get deep inside your customers head.

This is only available for 24 hours. There will be other bonuses for my list, but not this one.

(Can’t see the above form? Click here to sign up.)

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Think back to college and that class where you studied a book you’d already read. “Ugh, I’ve already gone through this,” a lot of students said. But then, in the hands of a master professor, you saw the book in an entirely new light. Nuances, details, entire themes — a superb teacher can show you things you never noticed.

There’s nothing like hearing from a master teacher — especially when it comes to hustling.

So tonight, I invited my friend Noah Kagan — founder of Appsumo (great deals), formerly of Facebook, Mint, and Gambit — to share 3 stories of how he’s hustled to turn rejection into success, earn ridiculous amounts of money, and befriend hard-to-meet people.

Noah Kagan

This is a Master Class on hustling, including:

• How he got rejected for the job…and still became employee #4 at Mint
• How he turned a single cab ride into a $250,000+ payday
• How he convinced a famous venture capitalist to give a $25,000 speech…for free

You’ll learn:

• How to separate yourself from people who claim they want to hustle…but never take action
• Techniques to turn anxiety into action — using online tools and psychological mindsets
• A LIVE experiment where he’ll show you how easy it is to contact important people — and get a favorable response

Noah also recorded a Master Class for Earn1k, which is very expensive, but tonight I convinced him to offer this to my readers for free.

Details of tonight:

• What: Noah will share 3 stories of hustling, psychological techniques, and then leave plenty of time for Q&A
• When: Tonight (1/12) at 6pm PT (9pm ET)
• Where: IMPORTANT: Sign up below to get the secret URL
• Will it be recorded / waaaa I am in Europe / waaaa other excuse. Please don’t ask about recordings or rescheduling it. If the topics above are important to you, I trust you’ll find a way to be around tonight. Noah’s tips have been priceless to me and I’m asking him for a big favor to appear for you.

Here’s the link to attend:

(In addition to the webcast link, you’ll also get all-new material about hustling, psychology, earning more, and becoming a top performer):

(Can’t see the form? Click here to sign up for the webcast on hustling.)

P.S. Make sure you’ve added your best example of automating positive scripts by leaving a comment on Monday’s post. Remember, the best entry by tonight (1/12) gets an iPad and a 15-minute call with me.

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It happened again last month.

One of my friends told me an interesting factoid — “Did you know that Victorian houses in SF used to be considered cheap models, but now everyone loves them? — and I said “Hmm, interesting” and continued chewing my sandwich.

Two weeks later, I was walking with the same friend, and I said, “Hey, I heard something interesting…did you know that Victorian houses used to be —”

“GOD DAMNIT!” she said. “*I* told you that!”

Ah, yes. I forgot. Again.

It’s become a running joke that I hear someone’s idea, then 2 weeks later mention it to the SAME PERSON…which drives my friends crazy. But for some reason, it seems hilarious to me.

So today I’m delighted to be able to OPENLY take credit for one of my friends’ ideas and tell you how it’s improved my life.

I met Paul Singh a few years ago, and I was so impressed that I hired him for my last company, moving him and his wife to the Bay Area.

Little did I know that he was one of the world’s premiere lifehackers.

After a few months of exchanging techniques, he shared a technique that I’d never heard.

“I put away $3,000 every year just to meet interesting people.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I just put it into a separate account and force myself to spend it.”

“Interesting….” I said.

A little while later, I went to my 5-year college reunion. I met another friend, Steve, who was speaking on an alumni panel. He had moved to Seattle to work for Microsoft, but he had a particularly amazing strategy that I fell in love with.

“When I went to work for Microsoft, I knew I’d eventually want to move back to the Bay Area to start a company. So I made it a point of keeping my relationships warm.”

How did he do that? Here’s where it gets insanely awesome:

“I made a promise to myself that if anyone invited me to lunch, or even coffee, I’d fly to San Francisco to do it. I basically treated the plane flight like an hour-long car ride.”

How much did that cost him in a year? Maybe a few thousand dollars.

But guess what? Steve did start a tech company and, using his carefully cultivated relationships, he’s gotten terrific press for his company, which is profitable and killing it.

Yesterday, I wrote about recognizing and banishing the negative scripts from your life…and automating the positive scripts. Paul and Steve both automated positive scripts — of investing in themselves.

And of course, since I love to take credit for my friends’ ideas, I now set up a sub-savings account and force myself to spend on meeting interesting people.

Here’s an actual email I sent to somebody who I want to meet

[Initial email was the basics: Hi who I am, how I can help him, etc. We went back and forth. Then I wrote this:]

“If there’s anything more I can tell you, please let me know. If a phone call or even coffee in LA makes sense, just let me know and I’d be delighted to do it.”

I live in New York and San Francisco and it was important enough to meet him that I offered to fly to have coffee with him in LA. Even one meeting with him could change my business.

(Sidenote: He hasn’t responded after our initial back-and-forth, so I added this to my “Failures” tag. But I continue to send him updates on my business and I know eventually he’ll respond.)

If you read this and say, “Waa I can’t afford $3,000 per year to travel around and meet people, you’re missing the point. This is not about the amount of money — you could do the same with $20/month by taking 2 people out to coffee. The point is the mindset: Investing in your friends and relationships pays off, hugely.

We all claim relationships are important. But when you look at “objective” measures — your calendar (time) and spending (money) — are your actions really matching your claims?

* * *

3 case studies of automating positive scripts

1. Jackie Schmidt

Backstory: Jackie went from thinking she was horrible at business to creating a referral program that brought in so many clients she had a wait list a mile long that represented over $80,000 in revenue—and she did it in just 6 weeks

Old Script: “I’m terrible at business and can’t think of ways to improve it.”

Automation: Jackie used my Earn1k technique on “referral machines” to outsource her marketing. Most of the work was completed beforehand — as I teach in the course — and once she recognized the opportunity, it was a 5-minute email to seal the deal. I’ll be sharing a detailed case study from Jackie on my Insider email list.

2. Adam Baker

Backstory: Baker was a newly married family man accumulating debt upwards of $18,000. He made the decision to clean up his debt, sell everything he owned, and spend a year living in Australia. He paid off $18,000 in debt and saved over $17,000 before living overseas in Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand.

New Script: “The first step to living a life of passion…is to remove the barriers that hold you back.”

Automation: Baker’s mantra: Sell Your Crap… Pay Off Your Debt… Do What You Love… In the year leading up to the trip he sold all of his possessions (down to two backpacks) and payed down $18,000 in consumer debt. In June 2009, they left for what was to be a year in Australia, but quickly turned into more mobile travels through Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and finally back to Indiana. And now he’s added “earning more money” to that list through terrific products.

3. Eva Motch

Backstory: Eva is a designer who wanted to find a better job for 6 months. She not only quit her job and received a $12,000 raise, but found work on the side at a $4,000-a-year clip (with more to come).

Old Script: “I hate my job and want to quit, but will wait until something better comes along.”

Automation: Eva implemented a plan to apply to leads on Craigslist systematically, and in so doing stumbled upon the full-time job and salary bump.

BY THE WAY, Jackie (#1) and Eva (#3) were members of Earn1k, my step-by-step on earning money on the side. Later this month, I’ll be opening up Earn1k 2.0 — an updated version of the course with powerful techniques to turn your existing skills into side income. As Eva told me, “Your class honestly and truly helped me, and I will make many times more in my life because of it. “

TO DO TODAY

1. Share your example of automating positive scripts. Make sure you’ve added your best example of automating positive scripts by leaving a comment on Monday’s post. Remember, the best entry by Wednesday, 1/12 (11:59pm PST) will get an iPad and a 15-minute call with me.

2. Mark your calendar: Live webcast on hustling tomorrow night (1/12). Tomorrow night (1/12), I’m holding a webcast with my friend Noah Kagan, founder of Appsumo (great deals), formerly of Facebook, Mint, and Gambit and I’m going to ask him about:

• How he got rejected for the job…and still became employee #4 at Mint
• How he turned a single cab ride into a $250,000+ payday
• How he convinced a famous venture capitalist to give a $25,000 speech…for free

Webcast details:

- The webcast will be WED (1/12) at 6pm PT (9pm ET).
- Please don’t ask about recordings or rescheduling it. If the topics above are important to you, I trust you’ll find a way to be around tomorrow evening. Noah’s tips have been priceless to me and I’m asking him for a big favor to appear for you.
- I’m only sending the webcast invite to people on my private list, which includes all-new material about hustling, psychology, earning more, and becoming a top performer.

How to attend tomorrow’s webcast

Sign up below to make sure you get the webcast invite email:

(Can’t see the form? Click here to sign up for the webcast on hustling.)

This week you’ll also get unreleased case studies on earning more and bonus videos on time management from my advanced Earn1K course.

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There’s a great story I know about a very sophisticated marketer who writes 30-page long emails. Someone asked him, “Does anyone really read those?”

He laughed. “Only the buyers,” he replied.

There are profound differences between people who consume and people who take action. It’s not just about buying something, either — it can mean testing your assumptions, pursuing your goals, or producing valuable material that helps others.

Today, you’ll learn…

• The background of a simple psychological experiment I ran earlier this week
• 3 breaks I’ve created that have allowed me to get into one of the world’s top universities, to earn over $100,000 in one hour, and to influence millions of people in a positive way to help them lead a richer life.
• What you’ll be getting for the next 4 weeks, including material on psychology, negotiation, and hustling your way to success

The focus of this week has been to begin peeling back the curtain to see how top performers think. When I talk about 2011 being the Year of the Hustle, this means we are NOT going to be doing things like:

* Starting 5 projects but flaking out on all them

* Having 20 ideas of things we “should” do, but talking ourselves out of every one

* Getting really excited about a business idea with a friend, but getting let down when he doesn’t follow through

* Making New Year resolutions of all the things we’re going to do, then doing nothing and getting depressed in February that we’re doing exactly the same thing as last year

What we ARE going to do is take action. That means educating yourself enough to take action — and then implementing. You will learn 100x more from doing something than from reading about it.

But having someone tell you, “Ugh, just go do it” is not enough. There are complex psychological, cultural, and even physiological reasons we don’t do the things we “know” we should do. So today, we’ll continue exploring…

…and I’ll show you precisely how you’re going to take more action this MONTH than in the last 3 years, combined.

Behind the scenes of a psychological campaign

You may not have realized it, but the 2 posts earlier this week were a psychology case study.

In the first post, I told you what I’d be giving you this year: free material on hustling, including how to find a better job, earn more money, and take action. The number of comments: 180.

In the second post, I wrote about challenging un-tested assumptions, and asked people to leave a comment with how they were going to specifically test their assumptions within 48 hours. Number of comments: 57.

When you ask people to take action, you will dramatically eliminate a huge percentage of people. This is why people leave hundreds of comments talking about how excited they are to have free content wash over them, but when you ask people to take action, a fraction of the people respond. Same as in the email I sent out to people who subscribed to my list.

In other words, everyone gets excited when you tell them what you are going to do for them…BECAUSE I DIDN’T ASK THEM TO DO ANYTHING. When I do, people get a lot quieter.

And the same is true of people who take action.

I can tell you, to the dollar, that certain users (the ones who leave comments or subscribe to my email list to receive more content or do XYZ action) are FAR more likely to take action and succeed. We measure it carefully.

This is also why grocery stores who charge even a few cents per plastic bag see a 95% decrease in customer use of plastic bags. Using small barriers strategically works astonishingly well.

Now let me share how action has helped me leapfrog even my own expectations.

My top 3 breaks

Here are 3 breaks I created through action that have paid off handsomely.

1. The first break I engineered was getting into my top choice for college, Stanford. This consisted of writing over 30 drafts of my college essay, deeply understanding the psychology of the admission committee, and overcoming the self-defeating barriers and cognitive-dissonance — including “I don’t have enough money” and “I could never get in there” — that plague so many high-school students. And yes, there was a lot of luck involved. For extensive details of how I did it, how I got into Stanford.

Result: Met incredible people; had experiences like speaking at conferences in Hawaii and Japan; learned about social influence and persuasion; got dream jobs and internships.

2. The second break was resisting the temptation to go make $120,000 at a big-name company, even though it was essentially the “default” thing to do out of college. In fact, all you had to do was click a few buttons on our internal recruiting system, and you’d be scheduled for an interview at one of these firms. When you went — assuming you prepared and did your homework — you could land a job and be earning a very nice living as a 22-year-old.

However, imagine if the “default” behavior is earning that kind of money. How easy would it be to turn that down — with your eye on something bigger and more meaningful (as I describe here)? In the coming weeks, I’ll share how to use psychological and decision-making criteria to guide your choices to long-term outcomes. In my case, I turned down job offers to co-found my own company, where we grew to several million users and raised millions in venture capital.

Result: Learned how to build a company from the ground up, tested marketing ideas to grow to several million users, and raised venture capital.

3. Finally, my third big break was focusing on “I Will Teach You To Be Rich.” When I went full-time on IWT, I was able to refine my techniques and material to influence millions of people.

Result: Launched my book to become an instant NYT/WSJ/Amazon best-seller, then grew my business over 1000% in one year, including earning $100k in 1 hour. Helped millions of people optimize their finances, automate, invest, earn more, and stop thinking of frugality as the only way to live a richer life.

In the coming weeks, I’ll outline the techniques and tactics used to achieve each big break.

But for now, let’s get back to the psychology.

Example: The Manifest Destiny Fallacy

There is a funny thing that people in the self-development world do. You’ll see this in blog comments all over the web: They’ll say things like “That’s obvious” or “Do you have anything NEW???”

I call this the Manifest Destiny Fallacy, and I’ve written about it before:

“Have you noticed how lots of people always want more and more information, but rarely implement what they already have? A couple years ago, I started realizing how lots of personal-finance readers were constantly asking for more and more information — more blog posts, more book reviews, more financial magazines — but would often just READ, not take action.

To put it bluntly, I have lots of friends who read blog post after blog post, but have STILL not automated their money, started investing, or even put together an aggressive plan to pay off debt.”

So I wasn’t surprised when I recently got this email from a reader named Kyle.

“I’ve been a subscriber to your emails for a couple of weeks now. And I have NOT really been doing anything you’ve suggested in your emails. Buy 200 books to get a lunch with you? Set up for direct deposit? Set up your bills to pay automatically? I mean, this isn’t really breakthrough stuff. If you’re actually making a decent amount of money here, I gotta start something like this… Maybe your premium content is a little more useful, and that’s just awesome you can make so much money on so little.”

My response:

“What would you like to read about?”

Kyle responded:

“I would really love to read a kind of “Day in the Life” of your life. What do you do on a daily basis? How much time do you spend writing, researching, relaxing, golfing, etc.? And an overview of your finances. How much do you actually make? Where does in come from? 50% book sales, 30% courses, 20% affiliate offers? I would love to hear about how YOU are making money. That would be much more interesting than little things I can do to save or do. Thanks for the quick response!”

Now, Kyle asked for some good stuff. And this month, I will be sharing details of how I run my business, including how to generate multiple streams of income. But there’s also a huge fallacy in his email. Do you see it? Here’s what I wrote to him:

…i am willing to bet you have not done all the stuff in my book/materials and, if you did, you would find some tremendous results (be able to put away $1k/month, have more free time, automate investments, etc).

be careful of always wanting NEW material. it’s better to implement the stuff in front of you

The Manifest Destiny Fallacy is about always wanting more and more…and never stopping to implement what’s in front of you. This is why I get emails from people who say things like, “Ugh, what else do you have that’s NEW?” Or: “That’s obvious” or “I can’t do that because….”

Whiners always look for something else, something new, because it’s easier than implementing what works.

What’s coming this month

Starting Monday, I’m launching a free 30-day course on hustling. IF YOU TAKE ACTION, you will make more progress this month than the last 3 years.

Here are the details.

Week 1 – The invisible scripts of luck and success. My post on the invisible scripts that guide us was one of my most popular posts ever. I’ll include case studies of invisible scripts that hold us back — and how to turn those scripts into constructive and tactical success.

Week 2 – Psychological techniques to dominate. How can you strategically use concepts like cognitive dissonance, the Fundamental Attribution Error, and techniques from the worlds of social influence and persuasion to hit your goals? I’ll show you specific experiments, case studies, and techniques to use immediately.

Week 3 – Negotiating your big breaks. I’ll show you how to negotiate to get higher hourly rates, to get meetings with top executives, and how to convince people to pay you for your valuable services. Including ready-to-use scripts and case studies of people using them.

Week 4 – Creating your first big break. There are fundamental differences between people who win and people who dream. I’ll show you characteristics of both. And then I’ll show you how I took people from whining to winning…in their own words.

What you need to know:

* This material is free and will be on my blog

* Each Monday, I’ll give you an action item for the week. You can choose to take part or not, although I can mathematically tell you that the people who participate are far more likely to succeed in hitting their own goals

* By Wednesday of each week, submit your results for the action of the week

* Each Thursday, I’ll reveal the winner, who will get a prize and 15-minute call with me to discuss psychology, personal finance, or earning more

* You will fail. That’s fine. This month is about iterating, trying different things, and figuring out what works. Better to fail trying than to do nothing at all.

* Speaking of doing nothing, if you simply want to read content and let it wash over you, please go find another blog. We will systematically mock people who complain and do nothing

* At the end of this month, I’ll be launching Earn1k 2.0, a new version of the most comprehensive program on hustling and earning money on the side

Am I doing this out of the goodness of my own heart? Yes, but I also have a business to run. I’ll also be releasing additional material via a free email list, including:

• Rich case studies of people who’ve hustled their ways to success — by finding better jobs, living bi-coastally, living in multiple countries, or even quitting their jobs entirely to work for themselves
• Interviews where you can submit your own questions — and get answers from best-selling authors, TV personalities, marketing juggernauts, lifestyle hackers, and more
• If you follow along with what I’ve put together, you’re going to work harder than you’ve ever worked before. But in 30 days you will have hustled to create a BIG break in your life

At the bottom of each post this month, you’ll see a bonus that you can get by subscribing to my private insider’s email list. It’s free, and in exchange for you trusting me with your email address, I’ll give you material that will blow your mind.

Here’s the email list (1-click unsubscribe — I hate spam.) Sign up to get an early look at the insider material I’ll be sending out this month.

(Can’t see the above form? Click here.)