22 April 2010 ~ 2 Comments

Lunch with Ramit

Business

Wednesday I see this tweet from Ramit Sethi, who runs one of my favorite blogs http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/ and I absolutely had to see if I could meet up with him. Know Ramit from his blog I sent him the following email-

Subject line: Like free food? Let me take you out to lunch!

Hi Ramit,

I read your book, volunteered to be a beta tester for your iPhone app, and tell my friends about your blog all the time. I saw on your twitter that you are in NYC, and I am a big fan of yours, so I want to take you out to lunch. What’s the catch? Well you wrote this post- http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/10/12/the-best-20-youll-ever-spend/ So of course I am going to pick your brain.

Pick a time and a place and lunch is on me. Even dinner, brunch, or a late night snack at 2:30 in the morning!

Thanks in advance,

Ilya Rivkin

He actually responded to me the next day saying –

Can you meet today at 12pm in union sq? In 30 min? Sorry for late notice but it’s only time I have

Sent from my iPhone

Luckily for me, I work within walking distance from Union Square. We already have two lessons learned even before I got to talk to him. First, you can reach out to someone and get a response. And second, someone in his position is just like a VC. Be ready to meet up within a half hour of an email or phone call. I walked over to union square and had some extra time so I bought his book at the Barnes and Nobles which was right there. It was the last one and the front cover had some minor defects. So I asked the cashier if I could get a discount and he gave me 20 percent off. Now Ramit loved that I did that. That’s what his site is all about.

Here is a breakdown of some of the advice that he gave me. He said that if I look at people that I admire,which happen to be him and Tim Ferris for example, I’ll see that they have a focus. Ramit focuses on personal finance, and Tim focuses on lifestyle design. He said I can’t be known for ten different things, I have to be either the iPhone guy, or the cycling guy. I can’t be the guy that does hardware engineering, and iPhone and business, and cycling and chess and etc.

So how do I get really good at something? He said to just start making things, offer my services to someone trusted(key word) for a discount or free. And to make something useful, not just cool and shiny because cool and shiny doesn’t mean anything in five years. Reading blogs is nice and all, but at the end of the day things have to get done! Stop thinking and start doing. Set goals. For example I’m going to reach out to 10 people each week and get one contract by the end of the month. Once you get really good at something you don’t have to worry about a job ever again.

The last topic we talked about was more controversial. I’m a fan of finding out cognitive biases and finding out how to tweak them, but it turns out I have one I might not have realized. My worry is that being an engineer, it is possible to turn into a commodity. Which would be very bad. I also told Ramit that the start-up scene in NYC is getting big. His response was that if I want to be in a start-up then I should move [back] to Silicon Valley because they have much more VCs and start-ups and that the mindset over there is completely different, where the engineer is elevated to a much higher social position( there it is cool to be an engineer). I’m not sure If I completely agree with that last part. I still think that NYC is going to be the place to be in a couple of years, but what he said definitely got me thinking.

Overall I thought having lunch with Ramit was awesome, and I plan to take what I learned from him and apply it to make awesomeness.

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  • http://twitter.com/alexisgoldstein alexis goldstein

    Ramit is wrong about NYC. If you really deconstruct what Apple is doing, you'll see why.

    The iPad is the intersection of Liberal Arts and Technology. Apple is making it easier than ever for developers to create apps. The Frameworks make amazing effects and animations accessible to more developers than ever before. The playing field is changing, and being an engineer is now no longer enough. You need to be a Renaissance Developer. Or, you need the best designers, the best creatives, the best contacts. There is nowhere better than NYC to get all that. NYC is the center of publishing, of finance, of fashion. It is still the undisputed center of the world, and when you're in New York, everyone comes to YOU.

    And it's not just the start-up scene that's growing in New York. We have amazing co-working spaces. A Jelly every Friday. A really strong Drupal meetup. An incredible hacker's collective with NYC Resistor. A vibrant Burning Man community. The best mainstream AND fringe parties. These are all important pollinators to the Renaissance Developer. And we have probably the US's best Transportation Commissioner in Janette Sadik-Khan, who's making HUGE steps to make NYC a really bike-friendly city. Who would have ever imagined a car-free Times Square?! Yet Sadik-Khan made it happen. NYC is on the cutting edge of green, too.

    Sure, it's cool to be an engineer in Silicon Valley. But do you want to be a cool engineer, or do you just want to be cool?

    Silicon Valley is definitely the past. But New York is the past, the present, AND the future.

  • http://twitter.com/alexisgoldstein alexis goldstein

    Ramit is wrong about NYC. If you really deconstruct what Apple is doing, you'll see why.

    The iPad is the intersection of Liberal Arts and Technology. Apple is making it easier than ever for developers to create apps. The Frameworks make amazing effects and animations accessible to more developers than ever before. The playing field is changing, and being an engineer is now no longer enough. You need to be a Renaissance Developer. Or, you need the best designers, the best creatives, the best contacts. There is nowhere better than NYC to get all that. NYC is the center of publishing, of finance, of fashion. It is still the undisputed center of the world, and when you're in New York, everyone comes to YOU.

    And it's not just the start-up scene that's growing in New York. We have amazing co-working spaces. A Jelly every Friday. A really strong Drupal meetup. An incredible hacker's collective with NYC Resistor. A vibrant Burning Man community. The best mainstream AND fringe parties. These are all important pollinators to the Renaissance Developer. And we have probably the US's best Transportation Commissioner in Janette Sadik-Khan, who's making HUGE steps to make NYC a really bike-friendly city. Who would have ever imagined a car-free Times Square?! Yet Sadik-Khan made it happen. NYC is on the cutting edge of green, too.

    Sure, it's cool to be an engineer in Silicon Valley. But do you want to be a cool engineer, or do you just want to be cool?

    Silicon Valley is definitely the past. But New York is the past, the present, AND the future.