PN Deep Dive: Naval Ravikant's Guide to Wealth - Episodes 1-5
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Show Notes
This podcast consists of a conversation between Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi going over Naval’s famous How to Get Rich tweetstorm.
* Wealth buys you freedom
* EVERYONE can be rich
* Aim to become so good at something, that luck eventually finds you
* Over time, it isn’t luck – it’s destiny
* You’re not going to get rich renting out your time
* Aim to have a job, career, or profession where your inputs don’t match your outputs
* People who are living far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyle just can’t fathom
* Get rich by giving society what it doesn’t yet know how to get – at scale
* The internet has massively broadened the space of possible careers
* Whatever nice obsession you have, the internet allows you to scale it
* Escape competition through authenticity
* All the benefits in life come from compound interest
* Whether it’s in relationships, life, your career, health, or learning
* Pick people to work with who have high intelligence, high energy, and high integrity – you CANNOT compromise on this
* Really successful people have an action bias
* Arm yourself with specific knowledge
* Specific knowledge is the stuff that feels like play to you but looks like work to others. It’s found by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion.
* Learning to build AND sell products is a superpower
* Read what you love until you love to read
* The 5 most important skills are reading, writing, arithmetic, persuasion, and computer programming
* The number of iterations drives the learning curve
* Get comfortable with frequent, small failures
* If you’re willing to bleed a little bit every day, but in exchange, you win big later, you’ll be better off
* Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage
* Product leverage is how fortunes will be made in the digital age – using things like code or media
* Product and media leverage are permisionless – they don’t require someone else’s permission for you to use them or succeed
* Wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions
* Judgment is wisdom on a personal domain (wisdom applied to external problems)
* The people with the best judgment are actually among the least emotional
* Set and enforce an aspirational hourly rate
* If you can outsource something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it
* The hierarchy of importance:
* What you work on
* Picking the right people to work with
* How hard you work
* A busy calendar and a busy mind will destroy your ability to do great things in this world
* Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.
* Reject most advice, but remember you have to listen to/read enough of it to know what to reject and what to accept
* Your physical health, your mental health, and your relationships will most likely bring you more peace and happiness than any amount of money ever will
* Productize yourself
* Create a product out of whatever it is you do naturally and uniquely well
* Being honest leaves you with a clear mind
* “A lot of wisdom is just realizing the long-term consequences of your actions. The longer-term you’re willing to look, the wiser you’re going to seem to everybody around you.” – Naval Ravikant
* Negotiations are won by whoever cares less
Books Mentioned
* Warren Buffet once went to Benjamin Graham, author of The Intelligent Investor, and offered to work for him for free so he could learn about investing
* It’s important that you read foundational things (the original books in a given field which are scientific in nature)
* Instead of reading a random business book, read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
* Instead of reading a recent book on biology or evolution, read Darwin’s On The Origin of Species
* Instead of reading a recent biotech book, read The Eighth Day of Creation
* Another recommendation – Richard Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces
* Naval highly recommends Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb
* When Naval was younger, one of his favorite books was How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis
* To learn more about randomness, check out the highly recommended book – Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Taleb
* The Almanac of Naval Ravikant
Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status (Listen) | Episode 1
* Having wealth means having assets that earn while you sleep
* “The reason you want wealth is because it buys you freedom, so you don’t have to wear a tie like a collar around your neck, so you don’t have to wake up at 7 AM and rush to work in traffic, so you don’t have to waste away your entire life grinding all your productive hours away to a soulless job that doesn’t fulfill you.” – Naval Ravikant
* Money is how we transfer wealth
* “Money won’t solve all your problems, but it will solve all your money problems” – Naval Ravikant
* Wealth is a positive-sum game and status is a zero-sum game
Ethical Wealth Creation Makes Abundance for the World (Listen) | Episode 2
* “What I am basically focused on is true wealth creation. It’s not about taking money. It’s not about taking something from somebody else. But it’s from creating abundance.” – Naval Ravikant
* Basically all of the wealth society has today was created – we’re not still sitting around in caves figuring out how to divide pieces of firewood
* “Everyone can be rich” – Naval Ravikant
* In the First World, everyone is basically richer than almost anyone who was alive 200 years ago
* Furthermore, it’s better to be poor today than it was to be the richest man 200 years ago
* Here’s a thought experiment…
* Imagine if every human had the knowledge of a good software engineer – just think what society would look like 20 years from now
* We’d ALL be living in massive abundance
Free Markets Are Intrinsic to the Human Species (Listen) | Episode 3
* Capitalism is innate to the human species in every exchange we have
* When two people are talking – there’s an information exchange
* “The notion of exchange and keeping track of credits and debits – this is built into us as flexible social animals” – Naval Ravikant
* Humans are the only animals in the animal kingdom that cooperate across genetic boundaries
* Most animals don’t even cooperate – those that do cooperate only in packs or when they have some shared interest
* What lets humans cooperate?
* Keeping track of credits and debts – that’s free-market capitalism
* “Everybody can be wealthy, everybody can be retired, everybody can be successful” – Naval Ravikant
* It just comes down to education and desire
* “If you get too many takers and not enough makers, society falls apart” – Naval Ravikant
* This results in a communist country
* Ex. – Venezuela
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