Today’s San Francisco Chronicle did a great profile of my good friend and superstar in the making Ramit Sethi. Money graf:
Sethi’s style is part frat boy and part Silicon Valley geek, with a little bit of San Francisco hipster thrown in. At times, he can be downright juvenile, as when he titled a blog anthology "Ramit’s 2007 Guide to Kicking Ass."
It’s about Ramit’s popular blog I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
A few years ago I made a conscious effort to meet more young people involved in business, writing, or politics. I wanted to have more friends closer to my age who were on a similar professional trajectory.
Ramit has been one of the people I’ve gotten to know well. We have a lot of overlap: we’re close in age (25 and 19), we’ve both founded tech companies, we’ve both written books and endured the publishing industry, we both write blogs, we both do paid speaking, and we both are social, have fun and think about "life stuff" like relationships. Our exchanges are almost 100% bi-directional in value — we help each other in all sorts of ways. This is a rare thing in a friendship but almost certainly the most rewarding state. Peer mentoring, of sorts.
Starting out in the professional world, I spent time almost exclusively with more experienced adult entrepreneurs. Their mentoring and guidance proved invaluable. But now I find myself growing more by spitballing with guys like Ramit and other age-similar peers who don’t have the "wise answers" of a conventional mentor, but at least are wrestling with the same questions in real time.
Congrats, Ramit, on the well-deserved coverage.
Congrats! Second-favorite blog post ever.
Thanks so much for the post. I really agree with your “peer mentoring” comment — every time we hang out, I walk away with 50 new ideas. Thanks again, Ben.
Ben, I just finished watching Ramit’s series on Netflix (my attention span for video content is very poor so it says a lot about the story telling in the series but I digress) and remembered it was on your blog I first learnt about him (in the days when we all read one another’s blogs and responded in long thoughtful posts!). So I came to leave this comment here to thank you!
Now I am busy buying copies of his book to the younger ones in my orbit and nudging them to watch his series. Even as the FT reports a good 25-40% of young persons in the UK in their 20s and 30s are borrowing to make ends meet.
Ha! Love it.