Tight
Speaker 2friends and welcome to the Jasmine star show. I'm so happy you're here and I'm going to try something a little different. I want to personalize the conversation with you because I tell you every week that I read the podcast reviews because it gives me insight into who you are, what you want to hear more from, and an opportunity for me to understand the pressure points in your life in business and offer a little insight so I have to give a shout out to she she loves. She says, I'm learning so much about social media, but with every podcast I'm inspired to be my authentic self and to that she actually loves. I say, thank you. Also gonna give a shout out to stalker zero zero she says, but for real, her encouragement and business information is beyond remarkable. She's always on point with what she's sharing and demonstrates how to have a successful business and how any person can achieve their goals. Thank you. Stalker. I hope we're not stocking . I hope we could be friends. Lastly, let's give a shout out to Tyga . She says, I have many podcasts download, play. Actually rarely can just sit and listen to them like it's a friend talking to me and Jasmine is just that. She's the only podcast I've been able to listen to for hours and to Tyga . I say thank you so much more than anything. I want the podcast to feel like we're friends having a conversation. So how about we open up those conversations with the reviews, so I'd love to connect with you there as well. Now speaking of connection, I had the opportunity to connect with today's guest. His name is [inaudible] and he's the author of the New York times bestseller. I will teach you to be rich and is a financial guru for millions of readers. He's known for his unique blend of business and finance and psychology, and I know y'all like really? It's interconnected and you are going to see how he blends all of this seamlessly. In this interview, I loved talking to her meet about how to set your prices for your business, his proven technique to charge a luxury prices y'all. That was super fascinating to me and the exact words to say when somebody tells you, Oh, that's too expensive y'all, regardless of what stage of business you're in, you will be taking notes in this interview. I know I was. So without further ado, let's talk about money, honey, your books, your programs, your social media all seem to revolve around one central theme and hold on. It's not anything business or finance, it's mindset. So when I scroll through your Instagram, I see quotes, I see screenshots, I see tweets and you talk about words that people should remove from the vocabulary and how they could switch their lens to a more positive outlook. Now, as a photographer, you know I had to have that pun, right? Turn it, change their lens. Before we get into tactical things about pricing and business, can you talk a little bit about what this means to be changing your mindset in regards to pricing? I want to set that and use that as a foundation as we move forward.
Speaker 3Yeah. Thank you for having me. And I am so excited to talk about psychology pricing business because I think now more than ever, it's easy to forget that for thousands of years people have happily paid to clothe themselves, to entertain themselves, even when times are tough. People want those things. And it is so easy to forget that and to think that we simply go back to subsistence farming. And that's not the case, right? I'm sensitive to what's going on right now, but I also want to remind creators, entrepreneurs, business owners, that what you're doing is important. And I had somebody write me on Instagram just a couple of days ago and she said , uh , she said, I'm a nurse. And she said, for the last couple of years I have been toying with the idea of starting a business. She said, it all seems so foolish now to sit around and talk about my passion and creating logos. And I said to her, you know what? I respect what you're doing. I love that you're in the healthcare field, but to somebody who needs a logo, that's not foolish. It's really important. And I don't want to minimize, if somebody wants to buy a pair of socks, if somebody wants to get a piece of art for their wall, that's not foolish to them right now. I have a lot of things I need help with in my business. It's not foolish to me and I'm willing to hire and employ people to do that. So
Speaker 2you're taking this to church, we're like in a minute into this and I'm like, amen girl. Like we haven't even got to the mindset and I'm like, dude, drop in podcast Mike over here. Okay for that. Thank you.
Speaker 3Every creator and everybody who has even thought about creating it will be so easy in the coming weeks and months to think that none of that matters anymore. But actually I believe it really does matter. And there are children at home right now with parents who don't know what to do. If you've ever been a teacher, help them create lesson plans, help them create activities. If you, I'm not a very good cook. If you know how to cook, there are people out there who want to watch. So there are lots of things we can do. But when it comes to mindset, you know, a lot of this was created because of the stories I used to tell myself. And when we tell ourselves stories, we don't realize that we are telling ourselves stories. Oftentimes we just think it's reality. So I grew up , uh, my parents are immigrants from India and I grew up , uh, like we would hardly ever eat out. And when we did, we would not ever order appetizers ever.
Speaker 2Hold on. But for me as a daughter of immigrants, did you guys order something to drink or did you guys get water? Oh,
Speaker 3okay, great question. Cause I bet we have the same answer . So always water. But in the rare, rare, rare case where we got like a Pepsi or whatever, one Pepsi shared with six on your birthday, that's the way you do . So growing up, you know, one of my, one of my rich life dreams was to be able to go to a restaurant and order an appetizer and not worry about the price. Now think about how small that dream is. What is it, 10 bucks, maybe 15 and if you live in a big city, and yet when I finally was able to do that, I felt rich. My next dream was when I moved from the West coast to New York. I wanted to be able to get in a taxi. If it was a hot August day on the way to a meeting and not have to get off the subway, dripping in sweat, what is it? Two bucks, three bucks. That was the dream. But I felt rich when I did it. Now my dreams have gotten a lot bigger, but the stories that I told myself that, Oh, that's not for people like us. We don't buy those kinds of clothes. We don't hire a personal trainer. These are stories that I internalized. But I think that all of us, if we look around and if we study successful people like you and the people you bring on episodes here, we start to realize, man, some of the things we told ourselves might just not be true. They just might be part of a story that we believed. And that is when you have the moment to be able to change your story. I love that moment. That's what I live for.
Speaker 2Oh , okay. So we're starting right at the right at the place that I know is so particularly needed. Now we're going to get into tactical things, but I'm always going to loop us back to that, the stories that we're telling ourselves in our capacity to change the narrative. So , um, something that really intrigues me specifically watching your work over the years is your belief and your preaching that what you charge your first three to five clients doesn't matter. And you are so crazed about this that you use the pay certainty technique to know they'll pay. So let's break this down.
Speaker 3Okay. When you're starting out, pricing is such a hot topic. How much should I charge? Am I undercharging myself? Well, I find I put out what I think I'm worth, but now there's crickets and nobody's buying. What do I do? And it is very scary. Now I have charged anywhere from, the first product I ever created online was $4 and 95 cents. And I was petrified to sell it because I thought people would call me a sellout. I really did. I had been writing my site for free for years. Guess what a lot of people did. They were like, Oh, I will teach you to be rich. No, I will teach roommate to be fit. Also, it was all along scam a con. I'm like, go to hell, but it really hurt. It really hurt. Now at the same time, these comments were coming in. There were another group of people that was buying and they were reading it. Their open rates were quadruple the open rates of the non-buyers, and I started to see there's something going on here. So I've charged $4 and 95 cents. I charged over $20,000 for programs. So what happens at each step is something completely different. The way you sell has to be completely different and the psychology has to be completely different. And anyone listening knows this is true. Think about it. If you go out to buy, let's take a handbag, for example, your first handbag when you're, I don't even know how old, eight years old, 10 years old. You're getting something functional. How much does that typical handbag costs? What what ? What did you pay or what did your parents pay when you were that young?
Speaker 2Okay, well for me, well number one, I was a tomboy, so I was like, did it use a person till I was like 27 number two, my parents never bought us. We would get hand me downs, but I would guess that the hand me down we got was probably from pick and save or target. So maybe like eight bucks for the hand me down hand bag .
Speaker 3Okay. So you and I probably shopped at the exact same store. So I'm a master at Ross, TJ max . These are the stores I grew up in.
Speaker 2Oh, I have a honing. I mean, well , here's the thing. It was you bought , you bought your church Shelby , but your Easter outfit at Ross. Most of the time we're at thrift stores but still to this day I can walk into a TJ Maxx scan the store and like my honing radar goes into the one piece that you need. Cause you know this store ,
Speaker 3it never goes away. It never goes away. So as you get older, more successful, more savvy, you start to realize there are different reasons that people will pay for things. And at a certain point it may be for clothes, it may be for handbag and maybe for a computer you're suddenly paying more than you ever thought you would. When I was a teen it was like build a computer together cause you could [inaudible] all the time in the world. You've got nothing else to do and you can save some money. At a certain point I said you know what, I'm just going to buy a Mac because it works and I'm done. I just want it to work. I don't want to sit here and go through Pentium pro magazine. Okay. So same thing, whether it be clothes or whatever it is that you are buying. Now when it comes to pricing and charging, I believe in a couple of things. Number one, I believe your first three prices don't matter. So stop obsessing about it. If anything, charge a lower price just because you're not in the profit maximization game with your first three clients. So if I were selling, for example, a product , uh , like let's say a digital product, an ebook or something like that, 20 bucks, 50 bucks, get three clients, get them to pay you and suddenly you know, Oh the first one was my grandma, the second one was my mom. But the third one, I never heard of this person and their receipt just came in. This is a trend. Now you can start to move up the value chain and understand what's different at 105 hundred and even 5,000 but if you start at 5,000 and you don't get buyers, which you're not cause you don't know how to sell at that level yet, suddenly you're not going to know is it the price or is it my sales strategy? And the answer's probably both. So simplify, start simple. Don't worry about how much money you make. You can always move up the value chain later .
Speaker 2I love this. So can I infer that the pay certainty technique is just start at a price maybe lower than what you're comfortable with because then you could start seeing trends, maximize your selling efforts, and then move up from there.
Speaker 3Okay. The pay certainty technique works in conjunction with this. So the pay certainty technique makes sure, make certain that the people you're going after can actually pay. That's as simple as that. Pay certainty, make certain they will pay. So how do you do, I want to take an example and I want everyone listening to pretend for a moment that you are a personal stylist. I like this example because my wife is a personal stylist. And let's say that you're considering three different options, three different clients. Let's try the pay certainty technique with all of them. So the pay certainty technique goes like this. Do they have the ability to pay and do they have the willingness to pay? And we're just going to do this off the top of our head right now. We're going to see how fast we can do this. All right. I'm a personal stylist. My first client base is freshmen in college. Do they have the ability to pay me? Yeah. Hell no. I don't think so. They don't have any money. Okay. What do you think?
Speaker 2I mean when you, when you say that, no, when you say that that's true. I think in my mind I went to a private college and you know they were , everyone had daddy's credit card.
Speaker 3No . Listen, if you can get on that , let's actually plays out cause I'm so I love when we can disagree and kind of hash it out and we don't have to agree. It's possible there are some college students who have the ability to pay. It's possible. Certainly maybe you or maybe your friends in college had a credit card from their parents. Awesome. But on the whole, do they have the ability to pay? Probably not. Most of them college students in , we're making generalities here. Probably not. I think do they have the willingness to pay? Now again, we're making generalities for a lot of people, they're really uncomfortable. They're like, where's the data? I'm like, there's no data at this point. You're going to come up with assumption. Then you're going to test it and if you're wrong, the market will tell you college students don't have the ability to pay because in general they don't have any money. And do they have the willingness to pay? No. They're wearing a hoodie every day and sweatpants . They don't care. Now let's go to a 70 year old retiree. Does he or she have the ability to pay? Maybe, maybe more than the college kid. I would say they have money. Maybe they got a 401k and they have their savings. They followed the, I will teach you to be rich. They're all good. Yeah. They have the ability. Do they have the willingness to pay? Again, I'm making generalities here. Maybe not. Maybe not because they're, you know, they have a set routine. They're probably not going out as much as maybe they did in the, in their younger years. So let's cross them off the list. Okay. Now we have a 35 to 45 year old executive at a, at a finance company. Do they have the ability to pay? Yes. They have money. Do they have the willingness to pay? Yes. Because they know that their promotion is based in part on the perception of how professional they are. Suddenly the pay certainty technique has eliminated to futile , uh , customer groups that you could have spent years going after and now you can focus on the one that is most likely to pay. That is the pay certainty technique.
Speaker 2I like it. I like it. I like it. And I like how you laid the framework and I like how I was , uh, I liked how I was checked. I liked how it was checked and it is very kind of, you do like be like throw me a bone, but you're right. Like it helped me put myself in the position of a listener to be like, Oh, now I get where he's coming from. It is okay to make generalities when it comes to choosing an art , um , choosing an audience and then making sure that it's certain that they will pay us for us to start testing our sales methodology and see what's actually working. Okay, so slight little detour because the , when I hear you speak and I've heard hints of your parent's story and where you got started and how you moved from the West coast, the East coast, like , um, what is like, what's your origin story? Like how did you, how did remeet become the remeet of like New York city doing what you're doing? Was there like a, again , like what was the catalyst, the impetus? Like, did you ever like a lightning bolt moment? Like how did you get to where you are now?
Speaker 3Growing up, my parents said something pretty interesting to us and I don't know where they got this from, but we'd be sitting around dinner, we'd be talking about whatever. And they would say, why don't you just write that up? Why don't you write that up? And what they meant was, that's interesting. Why don't you send it to the Sacramento bee? And I think what they really meant was you have something valuable that the world needs to hear. And that really for a teenager makes a profound difference because so many of us grew up thinking, nobody's listening to us and why would anyone listen to me when there's other people out there? So I started writing these things and you know, I, I like to write, I'm a natural writer and I spend a lot of time on it. Others are great on video or speaking or whatever. I started writing and , um, that writing skill took me to different places I would have never expected. When it came time for college, they said, Hey, great, you're going to college. Of course you're going cause you're Indian but we don't have any money for you so you better find some scholarships. I said, great. So I like to build systems, I like to build systems where I can do the work once and then not do the work again. So I a system that let me apply to about 65 scholarships and I took that first check that came directly to me. A high school was I had junior or senior and I put it in the stock market and I thought I was a genius over meat . [inaudible] so cool. And I lost half my money right away. And that's when I realized not as smart as I thought I was. So, so here I am, I go to college and I'm studying human psychology, persuasion, social influence. But I'm also learning about money on my own. And at a certain point I got pretty good at personal finance and I looked around and I realized the emperor has no clothes. All the advice that we get, what does it tell us? Cut back on lattes. That doesn't change anything. Most of us listening are going to spend the next 40 years chasing after $3 questions when we really should be asking $30,000 questions. And then they tell us, don't go on vacation, don't buy jeans, don't do anything. Maybe when you're 80, we'll allow you to go out and go on a cruise. Why do I want to live that kind of life? That sucks. So I created my own philosophy, the philosophy that my friends and I wanted. We want to go out, I want to buy around a drinks for my friends. I want to go to a grocery store or even a clothing store and never look at the price. I also want my money to grow, to build assets and I want to do it in a way that feels good to me, not living someone else's dream. So that's how I started and ended up trying to teach my friends at Stanford about money. They all said sounds cool. Then they never came. People don't like to go like to go to events about money. Uh, so eventually started blog, wrote a New York times bestselling book, and now we have about 20 programs on money, business, career and psychology.
Speaker 2Ah , that's crazy. Amazing. And it shows how passionate you are and the fact that you're taking time to speak to us about this means a lot. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I totally appreciate that. Okay, so let's go back to where we left off and this is, I'm using our pace or Disney model. We've clearly identified who we think initially we will start selling to . And then you were also a big fan of finding clients who are happy to pay premium praises. So there's a big hint, like you're a very big fan of this hint is if you want for your clients, you need to have a experience like experience a premium client yourself. So talk to me a little bit more about premium clients and then also experiencing premium experiences.
Speaker 3I had a guy come to me and he said, remeet , uh, I created a course. Nobody's buying. I did my first launch and nobody's buying. What should I do? I said, how much is the course? He said, $2,000. I said, when was the last time you bought a $2,000 course? He goes, never. Why would I do that? And I just, I wanted to reach through my email and just rip his throat out. I said, if you have never gone through the purchase process of scrolling down, long copy of thinking, is this for real or is this just another one of those internet marketing jokes? Is the refund even policy good? What other people have done this? If you've never gone through that process, then how dare you just expect someone else to come and hand you money. We have , um, we have multiple products over the $2,000 price point. And like I told you earlier, from $4 and 95 cents to $20,000 or so, there are pivot points at each of those sales processes. And I want to talk about this because if you have never experienced paying more for something, then you don't know what it's like. And I understand this because growing up I thought anyone flying business class is stupid. Why? Why are they flying business class? We're all getting to the same place anyway. They're just paying four times more [inaudible] so stupid. What I should have done instead was to say, man , if someone can afford to fly up there, what do they know that I don't, what are they getting out of this that I don't, I should have said I should have done what I call the D to C model disparagement to curiosity instead of disparaging them. Oh, they're so stupid. I should have said, what did they get out of this? And maybe I can't afford it yet. Or maybe I just don't value that, but what do they get out of it? At least I could have understood it took me instead over 10 years to start to understand this. So for premium prices , uh, every one of us has something in our life that we pay a lot for. I'm actually really curious, what is something that you pay that you just don't care what it costs? What is it in your life?
Speaker 2It is what you just mentioned. It is an , it's an F it's business class . I told myself in 2018 that I would feel like I was a successful entrepreneur if I flew business class everywhere. I go on every flight. And I thought that it was an impossibility until I hardwired my mind to figure out how to make it a possibility. And hotels, I choose hotels, it gets a very, it's experiential for me. It is.
Speaker 3I love hotels too. We got to talk offline about our favorite homes .
Speaker 2Oh, I know. I've seen you and your wife and the hotels you guys stay at. I think it was recently , uh, was it in Japan or was it just like a Japanese architect? This place that you were seeing was just, I mean, cause there's like the Jasmine nice and those are the remeet nice. I had to get to, I have yet to hit that point, but I'm , I'm get there. I'm it's D to C baby. It's curiosity.
Speaker 3Well listen, I love, so it's interesting. When I was younger we never stayed at hotels. The old , I mean maybe twice in our life we stayed at a motel and it was inconceivable to me. So I'm so glad I've had the opportunity to do this because I realize there are certain things that are not simply based on cost . In fact, I actually consider it a tragedy when someone's entire worldview is only about cost. I think there's so many other things to think about. I think there are results. Maybe you hire a personal trainer if fitness is important, I think there are experiences you want to take your husband, wife, parents out for an amazing dinner. Forget about the price. Create an experience, a memory that you will never forget. There's security. I want , uh , let's say you have kids, you want your kids to be in a very safe car or have a , a teacher that you trust. There are other things to life besides cost. So I have a concept called money dials. And what I ask you, I'm going to abbreviate this, but if you want you can just search it out. Everybody has one thing in life that they will spend a lot on. They love to spend it. We already know yours is travel and hotels. I love your style. Uh , mine is convenience. So I have a personal assistant, like everything's perfectly organized like a ballet. Most people, the most common ones are eating out and uh, health and travel. Those are the three most common ones. So I ask people, why do you love them? And they get a smile on their face. They know. Then I ask him this, what would life look like if you could quadruple your spending on it ? And do you know what they say? Like if they're , if they tell me that their money dial is to eat out and I say, what if you could quadruple your spinning ? What would that look like? What would that feel like? Guess what they say? I have no idea. I'm completely beguiled. They go, well I probably gained a lot of weight cause I'd eat out four times a week. And I go, that's a very linear way to think that if you like to eat out once, that you're going to eat out four times. So I was in DC and I was on tour and I said to it , there's a young guy in the audience, I said, listen man, you could double, quadruple. You could 10 X you're spending, where are you going to eat out? And he looks down for a second. He goes, you know, I have a list I've collected of all the Michelin star restaurants in town. And I said, who are you taking with you? And he said, my family. I said, why? He said, because they've never been able to afford to eat at places like that. That's a money dial. So for everyone, as we come back to this point about premium experiences, if you want to sell premium products at premium prices, you need to understand what causes other premium clients to buy. And here's a hint, cost is never number one ever, not for premium clients, and certainly not for luxury clients. So this is something that you need to experience first. That and me experiencing it is why I've been able to sell premium products that customers keep coming.
Speaker 2Okay? So let me come in . Let me come in hot real quick because there's somebody listening and this question is for that somebody. But for me, I don't have $2,000 to spend on a course. I don't have $1,000 to go to a seven course meal at French laundry. I don't. And then how do you respond to the person who cannot pay to experience the thing that they ultimately want to sell?
Speaker 3Okay, I have two things to say. First, I have a phrase called spend extravagantly on the things you love but cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't. So if you have an area of life, that's why the money dial concept starts with what you love. Pick that thing you love and dream for a second about what it would look like to double or quadruple your spending. Suddenly you look at the other stuff you're spending money on. You see , is that really that important to me or would I rather cut on those things that are just likes for me and redirect that money to something I love? That's the first thing. The second thing is you don't have to start off at a luxury hotel or even a $2,000 program. There's so many things you could do. Think about getting your car , um, the brake pads fixed. You could go to the quick place that's cheap or you could go to the place that's maybe $30 more and just see why would someone pay $30 more? Oh wow. There's hot coffee in the waiting room. Oh wow. They use gloves when they hand you the clipboard, who knows? But suddenly you can get a taste of what that premium experience is like and then you can go as big or as small as you want.
Speaker 2I love that, that brake pad example, because I actually did do this years ago when I was starting my digital business and it wasn't cognizant that was making that decision, but I went out of my way, even money was tight. Um, when I started my business, and this is one place I would go and get an oil change and I paid extra because number one, they didn't make me get out of my car. They serviced the car. Number two, they offered me a bottle of water, which was so silly. It's pennies. And number three, and he offered me a newspaper, which was so archaic. And then like the oil technicians, they called them oil technicians would wear these newsboy caps and I paid extra to have it an experience. And I think that that is fully in line to what you just described. And I didn't even know then that I was making that decision. So now I will be cognizant making those decisions in the future. And anybody who's listening, if you don't have to go from zero to 2000, you can invest in a course that would be step-by-step , incrementally getting you to where you want to go. So thank you for that. Okay, so , um , when we talk about things like that, one of the things that I absolutely love is you come back, like you're just, you just have a silver tongue and it sounds so amazing. So yeah , like I feel like, you know, like if tongues were swords, you'd have like a samurai. Like each time I come out it's like, I got this, I got, I like this, this is great. We can do this all day. I was like, Hey, let's make it happen. Yes , we can't , I feel like I'm out here learning. I'm like, let me do as a favor for podcast listeners and I'm out here being like almost being four times on some hotels to get myself a private jet to , um, okay. You know, again, curiosity, curiosity. Okay. So when somebody says that's too expensive, like you , you and I have had offline conversations about, you're like Jasmine, I have a script for that. And I said, I don't want to know the script, I want to hear the script live so I can come out and like feel it and experience it and then come back with questions. So what is the script when somebody says that's too expensive, what do we tell somebody?
Speaker 3Okay, I'm going to tell you exactly what we say with one of our programs and then I'm going to break down the psychology of what's actually happening when somebody says that. Okay, we have a program that is called find your dream job and it helps you decide what your dream job even is. Then it shows you word for word what to say in interviews, how to make your resume stand out and even how to negotiate your salary. Like actual videos of people negotiating against me, and this product is $2,000 so it's an expensive product relative to a free blog post or a $50 resume course. And truthfully, I have no interest in competing in those markets. I would rather create something extraordinary or I would rather give it away for free. I really do not want to compete with $50 people for $50 clients. It's not interesting to me. So what I did was I spent an enormous amount of time and money building this program, made it better than anything else out there. And people will come and they'll say, I do want a dream job. I'm frustrated. I've tried to send out a hundred resumes. Nobody gets back to me, and they, they're like, yes, yes, yes. Then they get down to the price. That's a big price and some people say it's too expensive, so I'm going to tell you what we say in copy. This is what we say. We say you have a lot of options. In fact, you could go to a top tier business school that will cost you around a hundred thousand dollars but there's no guarantee of a job. You can get a career coach, a good one. I'll cost you about $25,000 and some of them are great, some of them are not, and it's hard to tell from the outside. Now you can do it yourself. You mentioned to me earlier in one of our calls that you've tried this for the last two years, but I know that you and I are talking right now because you want better results than what you've been getting alone. Or your last option is you can join this program now it's $2,000 but in light of paying $25,000 or $100,000 or spinning your wheels for another two years, I think this is one of the smartest decisions you can make. Oh, and by the way, it includes a 100% money back guarantee. So the decision is yours. What would you like to do?
Speaker 2I mean I have found my job, but if I didn't, I'd be handing over some cash right now. I was gonna say my credit card, but since I pay for everything in cash, I'd be like, do you accept ones? Yes . I think this is fantastic. I think that that script and the good thing about this podcast is that people can come back to this and listen to that script and make it their own. Because what remeet just did is he created a price anchor and not price anchor, dollar to dollar. He created a price anchor. By time you can waste time as you have people have done at this point or you can invest it that much more. He basically made his $2,000 course look like a bargain in comparison to what the other options are and a bargain when it comes to losing opportunity costs in your life. So thank you.
Speaker 3Yeah, you nailed that. I'm so glad you kind of pulled back the veil and you know what the key is? It actually is a bargain compared to the other options. That's the key to all of this. You cannot put lipstick on a pig if your product sucks and you're trying to charge two thousand four thousand five thousand the market is very smart. I want everyone to hear this again and again because sometimes people, especially people on the internet treat their customers like they're stupid, but the customers are actually really smart and we have rolled out products that people loved and guess what? They have generated millions of dollars for us. But we've also rolled out a couple of products that were not good. We made a mistake and guess what? Within 24 hours the market told us no, they refunded. They told us, I can't believe you rolled something out like this. And so we have very discerning customers, but we've been going after discerning customers from day one. If you want premium clients, premium clients are not stupid. They're very smart. They know the market. So you have to build a great product first and then second you have to tell them and the reason they're paying you is not just for your product. They're paying you to make sense of all the other options out there and show them which one they should consider for their situation.
Speaker 2Okay. So I want to tap here for a second, which is a little bit of a different direction. I'm so intrigued. What did you do with the products that weren't good? Like when people, when the market told you like where do you think, what made you, what got you to that point? And then how did you guys bounce back for like, what did you guys learn from that? Because there's people listening and I'm like, I've been there, but what did remeet do?
Speaker 3You've got to pull them off the market. You have to, yeah, we've pulled off, I've pulled off a product that was generated that generated millions of dollars in its lifetime. Okay. We pulled that off the market and that product was a subscription product that was amazing at the beginning, but we didn't nurture it enough and it had some strategic problems with it and it just became, I'm not as good as it used to be, still generating money. So we made the decision to pull that off. I actually wrote about that. Uh, I think you can search for remeet Satie why I killed $1 million product and it has all the data right there. The another product we created was , um , it just went through QA too fast. We did not really build out the quality that it needed to. Some of our products take years to build. So when somebody comes , uh , it's like going to a sushi master. All right? I was recently in Japan and we ate at some like just street food, which we love. We also aided these amazing sushi places. Both amazing, both different experiences. But when you go to one of these places, especially the higher end places, you're not necessarily paying for the , um, seat or the wood on the seat, although that's probably the best wood in Japan too. But you're paying for the experience of the chef who's made that piece of sushi thousands of times. So , um , when somebody comes to us and joins one of our programs, they know they're not just paying for the video in module 4.2. No, they're paying because they know, I speak to thousands of people. I get their stories, I get the data, I have the most current data, and they want that. At a certain point, if you're doing your job as a creator, price is a mere triviality. That is what your premium clients will get you if you've done your job right. But in order to do that, you've got to pull the bad products off the market or better yet, don't build them in the first place. So let me just synthesize real quick and hold him here until it happens. So you gave two examples, one of a product that started off extraordinarily well, and then over time you realized it wasn't what it used to be. And so you made the difficult decision or difficult, easy, whenever you made the decision period to pull a product that was no longer a representation of your business. Second was you didn't give the time and the energy that the course deserved and people felt it immediately and then you made the decision to pull it off. And I feel like that's so freeing to so many people listening, myself included, to have the courage to remove something when it was no longer a presentation. We've done that before too. I've pulled out an Instagram course that was a wild success, but I have like, I am not pouring back into that Instagram course the way that I need to and we just stopped it so, so hard. I be encouraging it. I find it personally difficult. I mean I've done it multiple times. Some of you know we've been building programs for over a decade now, so we have some that just, we kind of aged out of them. We pulled those, but the harder ones are the ones that are still successful and I have a internal psychology where I don't like to close doors. I like options, I like optionality, but sometimes as a business creator or even in your personal life, sometimes options are not good. Sometimes you have to have the courage to close the door knowing that the only way you can open up new ones are to look forward and not look backward . And I still find it very difficult personally. That's beautiful though. That's beautiful because it gives us the permission like it's okay the clothes because then when you close we changes our perspectives. Speaking of perspectives, there's a lot of people listening who are in the startup phase of their business. I have
Speaker 2been thankfully an entrepreneur over 10 years, the run 13 years, but I'm in the startup phase of a new iteration of my business. So I feel like I can self identify with so many listeners now, people who are listening like, okay remeet I got it. It doesn't really matter what I charge my first three to five clients and I know that I need to experience luxury and I know I need to understand my market. Okay, but let me tell me how do I price it? Like when somebody is just like, they can't get over that hurdle. What's like one, two pieces of advice? It was like, Whoa. When it comes to pricing, this is what you gotta do.
Speaker 3Just charge 20 bucks an hour. Just do it like it doesn't matter. She's 20 bucks an hour. Just do it. Prove that the market will pay you. And once you got, if you're doing your job right, 20 bucks an hour is well below what you're worth probably. Okay. So just do it 20 bucks an hour or remeet safety gives you permission. Okay. And then once you nail that and you're , so , you have so many clients at your door, Oh my God, my calendar is full for the next six months. I hate me . Now you start to raise your rates and now you're going to learn how to move up that value chain, which is a much more advanced concept.
Speaker 2Okay. Right ? What you freaking love this as a girl from the hood? $20 an hour. Heck yes. Like so often they get people and they're just so kind of in their head . It's just like my work, my creation might stop. Yo just stop . Like just getting somebody to pay. Exactly. Like take it .
Speaker 3You guys, ha . Everybody has to get out of the , um, this is not a hobby. If you want it to be a hobby, do it. If you want it to be your art, do it. But you also have to remember that if you want a business with clients, you need to have a business that means profits . So get serious. And you know photographers by the way. Well okay, this is, I've heard there's a ranking of how like out there in the universe they are. And I've heard photographers I know are very out there. They're like, Oh they don't respect my craft. But I've heard that the craziest are interior decorators. Can you confirm that for me?
Speaker 2Are they the craziest? I don't know. As a photographer among my breed of people, we be crazy. Like real crazy. We will precious. We real precious about our perspective. Yeah .
Speaker 3Can I tell you what happened with my uh , search for a wedding photographer?
Speaker 2Please do. You know, we can just, I mean pour some tea cause we were about to spill it.
Speaker 3Oh my God. Okay. I got to tell you. So if you follow the advice in my book, you've been saving for your wedding before you even meet your spouse or your partner, which I'd been doing. So I was ready, I had my budget, I had my money set aside since I was 25 I was ready to go. And I, you know, I'm Indian. So we knew we were going to have a huge wedding, et cetera . So I sat down with my fiance at the time and I said, you know, I'm a systems guy. Do you want me to build a system so that we can manage hiring a wedding coordinator, a photographer. Now my fiance looks at me like, I don't even know what this guy's talking about. She's like, all right . And I was like, okay. I was like, watch what happens. I put my headphones in. I'm like, don't come over here for the next three hours. Like smoke starts coming out of my keyboard. I build the most sophisticated system in the world and I go over to show it to her. I go, listen, no human can understand this system. Just look at, it's beautiful. She's like, this guy's nuts. So we start calling , um, wedding photographers and, and interviewing them. They asked these questions that I'm like, are you guys human beings? Is the question they listen to the way I'm talking. You can tell, you know , I want to get my business done. Let's get to the, we get on the phone, they go, tell me your love story. I'm like, is this a, is this a fairy tale right now I really am here to hire. I'm here to hire a vendor. I don't need to tell you, I've never met you. My love story, what? And then I'm looking at her and she's like, she's giving me that look like you better . You better. So this is so funny because we did four or five of these calls. We got 30 minutes per call and they're spending 18 minutes on a love story. I'm like, did you guys all read the same book? Because this book sucks. Whoever's telling you this marketing advice one day, I'm literally dying right now. These wedding photographers, you guys are so crazy. Stop taking this advice. It sucks. So, so then we get on a call and I was not feeling well. I go, Cass , can you, can you like take the lead on this call? She's like, yeah, yeah . She takes the lead, it goes so much better. It goes so much. I think it was meant those, those calls are meant to connect, at least in our case with my fiance, not with me. I come in, I'm like, let's talk logistics. Let's talk about this. I've got my feature comparison. No, they want to connect on an emotional level. So I started to understand DTC that these calls are actually not meant for somebody like me. They're meant for my fiance where they connected more deeply. Finally, we got on a call with the photographer with this last photographer, and immediately I liked her cast , liked her, we liked her because she read the room. She could hear when I was like, okay, so let's talk about this. Have you ever shot an Indian wedding? Dah, dah, dah, dah , dah. And then when Cass was speaking to her, they were talking about different topics that , you know, the best part of it. She was a little bit out of our budget, so we, we got off the call were like, we really like her, we love her photos. She's a little, you know what? Let's do it. She's worth it. And that is exactly what you should get from your clients. You should be at the top of their range. You should be the best person they talk to. Price should be a mere triviality. And she did an amazing job. Can I , I don't know if I can plug her or not. She's awesome. But suffice it to say, okay , Cassie Valenti in San Francisco, she shot our wedding. She did an amazing job and she did not know like what, you know, she had never heard of me. I don't think she didn't know all this sales stuff that I teach, but I was so impressed. She was authentic. Uh, her photos were amazing. Her price was high and that was good and we were happy to pay it because we wanted a vision for this. So for everyone listening, the key lessons for me were , uh , first of all, don't read that book that tells you to ask about the love story. At least not if you're talking to me. Okay ? I don't plan to get on these calls anymore, but that was horrible. Second, read the room. Read the room. Some people want logistics, some people want to talk about their feelings, read the room. And third, don't compromise on price. If your product is amazing, put it loud and loud and proud. Front and center on your website. Show your vision. Cassie has a certain look that she shoots in her photos. It's not for everybody, but we loved it. And that's why we chose to be , uh , to hire her.
Speaker 2Ah , that was just wrapped up with such an amazing boat. Thank you. And yeah, shout out, shout out to gassy. I mean, maybe we all take away the importance, the breeding room and knowing who the audience is. So , um, lastly in tying things up, I have to say thank you because I feel like I feel really selfish and I should always call it [inaudible] . I always feel like it's disingenuous for me to have these conversations and I'm like, I'm walk away like a bandit out here. So I acknowledge I'm on the winning side. Um , but if you could go back and tell roommate who is just starting out, they're me. It's sitting at Stanford university with friends who don't want to talk about money , um , whose parents are like, you got to do it this way. You got to figure out your own way. And to your parents who say you should write that up, what would you go back to him and what would you tell him as you were first starting out?
Speaker 3I would say dream wider and dream deeper. Dream wider means I was already good at writing and I knew how to get into Stanford so I knew how to, you know , study and stuff like that. But there's so many things that I didn't know, like the importance of social skills and really how to connect with people more emotionally. Even though my story about Cassie may show that I actually still have a lot to learn about that I really did not know that in my early twenties. Um, I would tell myself to dream bigger, to realize that there's more to life than merely succeeding at the things you are already good at. So that's number one. And then dream deeper would be take those couple of things that you're great at and become world class and , and really dream. What does it look like? That's why I talked about money dials. When I started, my friends told me I should put Google ads on my site and I told them, I don't care about ads unless I can cover my rent. That's how small my dreams were, just that this website should cover my rent. And now, you know, it employs dozens of people and we have 42,000 customers. So I think that if you're starting out or you're in your early days as an entrepreneur, absolutely it can seem , uh , hard to get new clients. It can seem uncertain, especially now. It's like, is anyone even going to take this stuff seriously? But I do think, I always believe I'm an eternal optimist. For thousands of years, all of us have wanted ways to improve ourselves, to develop ourselves or frankly just to entertain ourselves. That will never change. Human nature does not change like that. And so I would tell myself to dream bigger, dream wider, dream deeper. And if I did all those things, I think , um, I think it would have been great for a younger version of me to hear .
Speaker 2Well thank you for those of us who might not be younger versions but younger in her career, I want you to take a second to tell people number one where they can find you on social because they want to definitely continue in. Also talk about Erna BL . Like I, we watched him from a distance and for people who are interested in starting, you know , growing a business like talk to us, let's tap there before we close.
Speaker 3Okay. Thank you. So there's a lot of people who want to know exactly what steps to take when it comes to starting and growing a business. And one of the things I am obsessed with is giving people specifics. So you heard it today with the scripts and you know, one of the things that drives me crazy is you hear people talking about, you know, get better at sales and like be confident. And w what I did was I just said, let me just record me doing actual sales calls. And you can listen to them and then I'll break down why it worked or in some cases why it didn't work. Same thing we did a , we have a video there with details about how did we make $23,000 in one day on Instagram and how can you apply that to your business? Let's look at the exact campaign. So all of these things are designed to number one, help you find your profitable idea. And then once you do get clients, and also if you want to productize that, make it automatic, build a flexible schedule, just have some more security about your income. That's what we're doing. So [inaudible] is a new program. You can find it at iwt.com/earn iwt.com/earn and we're originally planning to go on tour as soon as we can do that. I'm back out on tour, but we've adapted and we're going to be doing tons of special online events for everybody in program.
Speaker 2Well, I hope that you definitely highlight a spot in Southern California and I'll be there wearing a tee shirt. It's like roommate's number one fan. Well maybe if your mom is there, I'll put like number two if your wife is there , number three anyway, obviously in front row like you just rooting you on cause they carry . Incredible. Thank you for sharing your genius with the world and thank you for taking time to speak to us. How can we find you on Instagram,
Speaker 3Instagram. I am at remeet Twitter. I am at remeet and my website is, I will teach you to be rich.com
Speaker 2I love it. Thank you for me . Have a good one.
Speaker 3Thank you so much.
Speaker 2Wasn't that an amazing interview? I learned so much from Amit and I hope you did too. I think that is pay certainty is brilliant and I loved his insights when it came to premium services. If you love this interview be sure to shout out Rameet and I on social media. We would both love to hear it from you. Now before I let you go, have you subscribed to the podcast yet? I have been creating tons of tactical mini trainings and having incredible interviews and yeah, we're adding surprise bonus episodes that you do not want to miss. So if you are interested in growing your business, and if you want to connect, and if you want to keep a party up in your ears, subscribe to the Jasmine star show today so you don't miss a single episode. Thank you again for listening and I look forward to chatting with you soon.
Speaker 1[inaudible] .