Warning Im promoting my friends book

Warning Im promoting my friends book This is another post about a book. Two days in a row. But before you get all giddy and think you should send your book to me so Ill write about it, forget it. First of all, I get five to ten books every week. And I throw most of them away. Second, honestly, for the most part, you have to be my friend for me to write a whole post about your book. Sure, there are exceptions. For example, Tim Ferriss is not my friend but I wrote about his book anyway. But the exceptions are mostly for academic books with research that blew me away. So stop thinking that I am going to write about your book if you simply send it to me. But really, if you want to promote a book, the best thing to do is make a lot of friends before the book comes out. Just like you dont want to wait to build a job search network until you need a job, you dont want to build a book promotion network when you need press. So, Ramit has put up with a lot from me, including me being an hour late to have coffee with him. More than once. He has earned a post. Also, hes earned it because hes an incredibly hard worker when it comes to promotion. The other person I know who works this hard is Tim Ferriss, but Tim tells you that he doesnt. Ramit admits to hard work, so I like him better. And Ramit tells me all the stuff he is doing, like convincing people to listen to MP3s where he is selling stuff, which I told him I would never link to on my blog because Id feel like a used car salesman, but still I admire how many avenues Ramit will travel to sell stuff. I am not a great seller. Which you can tell on my blog, actually. I mean, I have a company and no one even knows what it does. I could be selling the shit out of it on this blog, but instead, I am writing about requiring my dates to bake cookies with me. Ramit does not have posts about having sex in his apartment. But he does have posts about his friends trying to get laid and I enjoy that. So I told Ramit that while I am sure that he is the direct-mail genius of Web 2.0, I cannot help without having to go to a mikvah afterward. And since I dont do mikvah, I cant do all his upsell, upsell, upsell stuff. He replied, How about a free plane ticket? But not for me. And that is why I love Ramit. So Ramit wants you to buy the book. Im pretty sure he wants you to buy it today. Because Ramit is a Svengali of Amazon ranking and somehow Ramits book was number one on Amazon yesterday. And if you buy the book, you can send him the receipt and you might win a plane ticket. Heres how: If you order the book and email your receipt to penelope@iwillteachyoutoberich.com within the next 48 hours, you will be entered to win a free plane ticket to anywhere in the US. If I write a crappy enough post about the booklike this one, where I manage to write about the book but never tell you one little thing about itthen maybe no one but you will send a receipt and then youll win. So before you leave a comment complaining that this is just about Ramit and me and Ramit making money, remember that the plane ticket is all about you. But I do want to say something about his book. I am very bad with finances. I have known this for a while but recently, two things have really bothered me. First, I read that ENTJs are very good with finances, so this makes me think that I am underperforming there. Second, I noticed that every guy I date is amazed at how much money I have coming in (a lot) and how much I have going out (more than a lot) and how crappy a car I drive. (Actually, its not just the car, its the consistently odd choices, like no living room furniture because it costs too much.) The first thing I tell those guys is to shut up. And then I tell them that they dont understand because my financial issues are different than everyone elses. But you know what? I dont believe that. I dont believe peoples problems are special. Still, I wasnt making much headway until Ramits book came. The book is geared toward people in their 20s who still have a lot to learn and Ramit is teaching them (hence the title: I Will Teach You to Be Rich), but I am not in my 20s and I learned a lot anyway. I always have a book in the kitchen that I read to distract myself from two young boys who are always turning harmless stuff into guns and killing each other. So for the past couple of months, while my kids have been shooting each other, I have been reading Ramits book, one or two pages at a time. And what it did was make me realize that there are tons of small things I can do to make big improvements. And also, knowing what to do feels empowering, even if I still have a financial mess on my hands. I actually think this is the way career advice works as well. First, you need to know your problems are not unique. Then you need to know what people do to solve those common problems. The action of actually making change is the last step, but the first two are harder.