Today, Ramit Sethi, one of my favorite CreativeLive instructors and online business icons, hosted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on ProductHunt, where he personally gave 29 impressively in-depth answers to questions from people within his community.
The topics of the AMA today ranged all the way from Neil Patel chiming in to ask about how Ramit consistently drives incredible engagement with his email marketing efforts, to how he overcame the belief that formal education is the answer to everything.
Since his class, How to Make Money and Grow Your Business, inspired such a radical change in how I brand myself, what I emphasize when selling my services, and how I go about building meaningful relationships with my clients, I wanted to hear how he inspires (and convinces) people to invest such large sums of money into his digital products.
Over the course of the past 8 years, Ramit has had several multi-million dollar product launches from his website, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. All of which were launched exclusively to his engaged community of blog readers and email subscribers.
I’ve always been so curious how Ramit identifies and locates the types of customers that resonate so well with his products. So, pulled straight from his class, How to Make Money and Grow Your Business, is his talk about how to truly understand your target clients.
If you want more, here’s the exact question I asked Ramit during his recent AMA:
“Aside from believing 100% in the immense value you’re providing through your highest priced courses and content (and actually delivering on that value), what would you say have been your biggest lessons in terms of how to effectively communicate that value and get someone to jump on board? In short, what are your best levers for convincing people that now is the time to invest in themselves?”
His answer was two-fold, and it blew me away. It had so much depth, yet was so simple.
Here’s Ramit:
1. Be selective.
“If you start with the principle that you’re going to create world-class content, and you follow through, be extremely selective about who you allow to use it.”
“Instead of chasing bottom-barrel customers like so many people, treat your material with reverence and teach your market to do the same.”
“That means, if you truly have the world’s best product, content, material, why would you discount it by 50%? You wouldn’t. Why would you play from a position of weakness by offering incentives, $1 trials, and all sorts of gimmicks? You wouldn’t. You would make some very careful strategic decisions about who you allow to use your material, playing from a position of strength, rather than who you can ‘trick’ or ‘market’ into using your material.”
2. Be willing to give up the short-term dollar in exchange for a long-term relationship.
“We turn down millions of dollars by prohibiting anyone with credit card debt from joining our flagship courses. To my knowledge, no other company does this. It’s not a gimmick, it’s our actual values.”
“Last night, we sold out of a new course way faster than we anticipated. We could have opened up more seats and generated $50,000 more. We discussed it for less than 60 seconds and knew that was never an option.”
“But, we made sure to tell students what we were doing, so they understood our values and principles. By living this for year after year, not as some marketing hoax, but truly believing it and following through, people start to see they can trust you. And trust is super-rare in this world.”
“By the way, you might notice the corollaries between these points and dating. Instead of pickup tricks, one of the best things you can do is improve yourself. Once you improve yourself, whether that’s getting fit, getting interesting hobbies, becoming more socially skilled, you can become more selective. And you can give up short-term tactics for long-term relationships with the caliber of person you want. More about that here.”
As evidenced by much of his Instagram feed, Ramit truly believes in the transformational power of his content, and cares deeply about helping others.
In fact, this core principle has become the driving factor in his business.
Ramit personally reads over 1,000+ emails every day, and frequently responds to members of his community. This level of genuine dedication can’t be faked, and it’s the foundation for how he’s been able to establish such meaningful relationships with his clients.
Check out Ramit’s class, Money and Business for Creatives, right here on CreativeLive for so much more.
