[patio11]

This is the 2nd part of the interview mini-series with Ramit Sethi on starting a consulting business, though we both talk products in this interview as well.

I'm happy to answer questions, as always.

P.S. I normally try to space out publishing things, to avoid a) reader fatigue on my favorite topics and b) imposing on HN goodwill by showing up on the front page too often. That said, the next two weeks are going to see a few more posts on the blog than usual. Several independently managed processes, with varying numbers of steps, people in the loop, and pipelines, all decided to terminate roughly simultaneously. I apologize in advance if it's mildly irksome -- believe it or not, it is the exact opposite of a planned media blitz.

[malandrew]

I think it's awesome how aware you are of your own impact of appearing on the front page more than normal and how considerate your attitude is towards the impact of that on the experience of other HNers. Total. model. citizen.

[csallen]

It's also a self-serving attitude -- in a practical way, not a bad way. Part of maintaining a successful relationship with people is to understand what might piss them off, and avoid it. 99 times out of 100, being considerate is the smart choice.

[danielweber]

"Be nice to the people you meet on the way up; you will meet them again on the way down."

[zackzackzack]

Fun observation: Ramit is fond of using the word "gamut" to describe his experience. In both this post and the first one, he uses the word at roughly the same point in the meeting to describe roughly the same idea: going from $x/(unit of work) to $x0000/(unit of work).

Some google-fu and http://bit.ly/OJALPO It seems to be a word he likes and uses well.

[patio11]

You'll find that many authors have words, analogies, literary devices, etc that they go back to. It's part of having a voice.

I'm occasionally downright embarrassed by HNSearch. Easy example searches to demonstrate include [ROFLstomp], [pathological customer], [patio11 "charge more"], etc. Or, if you want things that take a little effort to spot, you can see that I really, really like parenthetical statements (one English teacher of mine estimated that I used them 20x more than her reference sets... oh, there I go again) and extended surprise expectation inversion as a device, particularly in introductions.

A related issue is that these two interviews were recorded with a 30 second break in between and, since the topics are spiritually adjacent and our memories were fresh, we both recycled good turns of phrase and ideas from the previous interview.

[edanm]

My favorite patio11 word is "motivational", although it's possibly a really new one.

Pet example: "They paid me motivational sums of money".

(Oh, and yes Patrick, you're starting to develop a serious cult following).

[Natsu]

> Or, if you want things that take a little effort to spot, you can see that I really, really like parenthetical statements (one English teacher of mine estimated that I used them 20x more than her reference sets... oh, there I go again)

And I thought I was the only one (I have the same habit). It does make Lisp seem more familiar, though (rather than "ack, too many parentheses!").

P.S. Was surprised you didn't give out your summoner name on the last article. You probably could've gotten enough free RP for Midnight Ahri or whatever.

[tomjen3]

I believe that (ab)using parantesis are a side effect of having the engineer mind -- we have to quantify exactly what we mean, otherwise the mean compiler growl at us and so it becomes a habbit of our work.

[majormajor]

I'm curious, what do you mean by "extended surprise expectation inversion"? Google didn't turn up much.

[patio11]

Explanation by way of example:

Teen pregnancy. School stabbings. Teacher abuse scandals. Classroom mayhem. Flat test scores. Declining graduation rates. It's enough to make Japanese parents wish their kids went to school in America.

(That is pretty much verbatim from an essay I wrote in college. I use this trick a lot.)

[grueful]

It's also functional, in the "tell me three times" sense. Effective teaching tends to involve lots of repetition.

[smoyer]

Hideho Patrick ... the first one was great and having read through your blog a couple times already, I don't think fatigue is an issue.

I hadn't really thought about it but it's interesting to me that I find myself more or less fatigued based on the writing style.

In any case ... thanks for sharing! (and yes, I'm an old BoSer)

[edanm]

The only problem is that this is all coming out when I'm on vacation :)

By the way, I'm subscribed to your new mailing list. I don't think it includes updates about new articles that appear on your blog. Is there a separate (non RSS) way to subscribe to your blog? If it is I'm missing it (admittedly, didn't have much time to look since I'm on vacation).

[istari]

You are being needlessly modest. Your posts are always insightful and often valuable. I personally would not mind if you built a bot to spam the front page with your old articles.

[itmag]

In part 1, Ramit mentioned an e-book about customer retention. Do you know the name of it?