| | | Candidate,
There are 3 ways to make me cry: - Death in my immediate family (has never happened)
- "Salute movies," where the ending of the movie has one soldier saluting another somberly while F15s fly overhead
- THIS BOOK
| | | | | | Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. | | | | | | Who remembers this book??
Synopsis: Boy gets dogs. Boy teaches dogs to hunt. Dogs die. Everybody is sad.
I still think about the part where the grandpa talks to Billy about raccoon traps. He tells him that raccoons will grab hold of something shiny and get stuck. And even though they could free themselves by letting go, they never do.
Sounds like a lot of people I know. | | | | | | | | "Thank you. I needed to read this. I am shamefully guilty of talking about what I wanted and not doing anything about it. I got tired of hearing myself talk about the same wishes, so I stopped talking about them but also stopped working towards them. Finally I am very sick of my bullshit..."
--Ariel I. | | | | | | | | Yesterday we talked about courage. The guy who stood up to a bully of a boss. The person who turned back from Mt. Everest 300 feet from the peak, knowing it wasn't safe.
And for people like you and me, I talked about the courage of being honest about what we say vs. what we really do.
Courage also means saying "no" to something that's a waste of your time -- of letting go of the traps that have held you back. They feel comfortable but no matter what, they're still traps.
For example, one of the greatest tragedies I see is people spinning their wheels and wasting their limited time on this earth with a bad business idea. They've fallen prey to the popular idea of, "Try everything! See what sticks!" Wrong.
They genuinely want to live a Rich Life. They want more, but they get stuck by not knowing how to formulate something worth going after.
"Hey Ramit, I want to create a new productivity app that will help gerbils run faster! Yeah! That's what I'm going to spend my time doing!"
I just want to shake them by the hair and say, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?"
What a waste. What would it mean to look back on yourself, 20 years from now, and realize you spent time doing something that made no difference? That left no impact on this earth to your friends, family, or the people around you?
I won't let that happen to myself, and I won't let that happen to you. Your time is valuable and we ALL have something special to contribute to this world.
I can tell you this because I've fallen into this trap myself.
In yesterday's video, I talked about how I spent over $50,000 creating a product on health insurance only to find that NOBODY wanted it. Hear the full story at 17:07 here. | | | | | | Click "Display Images" to see which one of my products fell into the "Labor of Love" category. | | | | | | What I realized later that I forgot to mention is that this wasn't the only time this happened to me.
A few years ago, I came up with an awesome idea for a new course. My modeling indicated it would generate over $1 million/year. It would be totally new but pull from a genius business model invented decades ago. And it would be massively scalable.
I spent 3 months doing my own research, then I excitedly turned it over to our Product Team. I told them to look into it and build off of what I'd initially done.
They came back about 2 months later with one recommendation: NEVER DO THIS.
This has happened before. On our team, we have a nice balance of "Irrationally Optimistic" (me) and "Extremely Guarded and Wary of Ramit's Crackpot Ideas" (my team). However, I usually get together with them and it ends up working out.
This time, they put their foot down. They showed me 10 different reasons why this would never work. They showed me more sophisticated models than mine. And they showed me several points I hadn't thought of.
So, with a heavy heart (just kidding, I have no heart), I killed the project. They were right. I was wrong.
The happy ending to this story is that I avoided wasting time and money creating a product destined to fail. Unlike the health insurance flop, I frontloaded the work.
You see, most people come up with an idea, work on it tirelessly for months, then launch it, only to hear...crickets.
You can shortcut the heartbreak.
If you've talked about the idea of wanting MORE for yourself, here's a way to know that you're working on the right thing.
Check out my 5-page printable idea guide that walks you through the action steps. You can use this guide today and print it out to use any time you come up with a new idea. It works for business ideas AND individual product ideas. In fact, it's the exact framework I've used in my business to create a multimillion-dollar product line.
Download the free guide to finding a profitable business idea here: | | | | | | | | 
-Ramit | | | | | | | | For me, part of living a Rich Life is about having experiences (and time) to check out something new. Here's a photo I took in the basement of the Colosseum in Rome. | | | | | | | | What does a Rich Life mean to you? Reply to this email and let me know. | | | | | | |
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