Leveraging Specific Knowledge for Sustainable Success

This podcast consists of a conversation between Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi going over Naval’s famous How to Get Rich tweetstorm.

Key Takeaways

* 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

Get the FULL NOTES at Podcastnotes.org.