How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky

Business brain, episode 459 for Wednesday, June 21, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we get together and tune our business brains together by taking a topic, any topic. Could be something about our businesses, could be something in our personal lives, and running it through the Business Brain filter, seeing what we find, analyzing it, making sure we extract those bits of wisdom so we can lead our charmed lives together. Sponsors for this episode include Checker, C-E-C-K-R.com BusinessBrain, where you go to save 40 bucks off your first background check, and Notion.com Business Brain, where you can go to try out notion projects for free. We'll talk more about those in a minute. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton here on planet Earth.

I'm Shannon Jean.

How are you, man? I'm good. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be a. That'll be the day when. When one of us says, by the.

Way, FYI, by the way, today I'm coming to you from.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, man.

It's inevitable. It's inevitable.

It is. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So you pointed out this Twitter thread that has some nuggets of wisdom. We won't be able to go through every single one of them. We've pulled out some of our favorites. It's from someone named Naval that I'd never heard of on Twitter, but you say is someone to follow. And the thread is how to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky.

This Naval is the guy. Naval Ravikant is his name. R A V I K A N T. It's at Naval N A V A L on Twitter. And he just has, you know, he's an entrepreneur like we are, but he's. He's just very good at breaking down concepts and putting things together. And this was one of these tweets. This Tweet is from 2018, but it.

Is five years old. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, he has over almost a quarter of a million likes. It's been retweeted almost 70,000 times. It's. It's just terrific. And I. That's why I wanted to pick a few of these. And I think it's really worth spending an episode on this today because some of these are just. They're just gems.

I'm going to take the first one because you're better at this than me. And so I need to internalize this first one. Seek wealth, not money or status. I'm okay at that part of this. The building of the wealth that I need to get better at. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy. So again, seek wealth, not money or status. And then he goes on to define these three things. And so seeking wealth, which is having assets that earn while you sleep.

Yeah, it's huge because we talk about flexibility here in your time. And I heard a phrase recently, somebody said, oh, I'm a time billionaire. And I thought, oh, that's really good because, you know, you're so wealthy in time, you know, whatever, despite what your bank account says.

Yeah.

And I think this is part of that is, is building wealth ultimately. And it, you know, it doesn't start in the beginning, it's that you got to grind it out. But ultimately it should be building. Yeah. As you transfer your time, you're building that wealth. But there should be some equilibrium and then at some point, a tipping point where your time becomes yours again.

Right.

And it's huge, hugely rewarding.

I can speak that won't happen if to again borrow another one of his phrases, that won't happen if you are renting out your time constantly. Yes, you need to own equity.

Correct.

And again, I'm not saying I'm making myself sound smart by paraphrasing naval here, but yeah, you gotta have equity, a piece of a business to gain that financial freedom. It makes. It's true. Like it is the way that it works and it does. You don't have to own, you don't have to run the business for that. Like you can. I mean there's plenty of people who have built wealth using, you know, something like the stock market or investing in companies in other ways. Like you don't have to start your own company to have equity in a company. But that is one way of doing it. And yeah, but it's not the only way.

Yeah, that's right. For me, he's got a couple here I'm going to combine that I think are so important and we've talked about them before, but one is pick business partners with high intelligence, energy and above all integrity. Don't partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self fulfilling, man.

That's.

And yes, and the first one is like I've, I've done business when I was younger with people that you wanted to stretch things and kind of bend the rules a bit. And I'm a huge fan of rule bending and trying to go diagonally. But, but I learned early on that you just do have to kind of grind it out. There is no shortcut. And one of the most important things is to be around people that are positive and supportive, not cynics about things. And selling to other humans, which I've done my whole life, can easily turn you into a cynic.

Yeah, I think you can find yourself being cynical without being a cynic, you know, and I think it's just a function of how often are you finding yourself cynical. I mean, there are moments where it's going to happen. Don't freak out about those.

Like, yeah, and the pessimism, like you and I and this, the whole concept for the show, you know, we're optimist to a fault. And sometimes it is a fault to be overly optimistic, thinking you can create your reality all the time.

But I would argue that pessimism is self fulfilling. So is optimism. And again, it's not universally true, but it is generally true. And that's what we're going with here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Yes.

Yeah, I love it.

Go ahead, go ahead. No, no, no. Take one. Go.

Yeah, I just did two. So you grab one.

All right, so the, the, the, the. Another one that jumped out to me was arm yourself with specific knowledge. Accountability and leverage. All of these things are super important. His definition of specific knowledge, though, really resonated with me. He says it's knowledge that you can't be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you. Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. And building specific knowledge will feel like play to you, but it will look like work to others. And if like this feeds into the whole, if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life, maximum. That's also patently false. You can do what you love and still work plenty because there will be parts of it that feel like work. But of course, of course. But you know, these, like heading down again. All of these things are great little sound bites, but there, there is, is truth to them. And I like, this is why I love threads like this, because you'll find them. All right, look, we know getting work done can feel impossible some days, especially if you're tracking tasks, writing docs, and setting goals in different places. Right. You're all over the place. You're spending your time jumping from tool to tool. If this sounds like you, then listen up. Our sponsor notion is an incredible tool that makes all of this so much easier and it helps us tune our business brains to make progress. On our projects. And today I'm excited to share that they just launched Notion Projects, which includes new, powerful ways to manage projects and leverage the power of Notion's built in AI features too. Notion Projects combines project management with all your docs, your knowledge base and AI so you can stop jumping between tools and stop paying too much for them too. Notion allows you to do all of this in just one workspace. You've got the brainstorming, drafting your launch plans, organizing sprints and keeping everyone on deadline. And it's super customizable in Notion, you can view projects any which way. On top of that, Notion AI is there to help you automate all that tedious overhead like summarizing meetings, notes, or finding next steps. Do your most efficient work with Notion Projects. You can try it for free today@notion.com businessbrain that's all lowercase letters notion.com businessbrain and when you use our link you're supporting our show. So go right now to notion.com businessbrain and our thanks to Notion Projects for sponsoring this episode. Look, we talk all the time here on Business Brain about how one of the most stressful transitions you will ever make is from solopreneur to to employer. You finally started making some money and now you're going to give it to someone else and somebody else is going to do some of the things that you used to do for your business. These are all good things, but it's stressful. There's all these variables to consider and are you getting the right person? This is why we are happy to have our sponsor Checkr here. They provide fast and fair background checks taking the stress out of hiring. With Checker, you can access your online dashboard anytime to place an order, review results and make a decision. Checkr makes it fast and easy to get comprehensive results. Plus, Checkr is commitment free with pay as you go pricing. I love this. Perfect for us small business owners, right? And Checker's advanced tech and proprietary data network deliver 98% of nationwide criminal checks within one hour. And they have built in tools to help you stay compliant with the FCRA and local laws. So don't stress over the hiring process. So sign up for Checkr today. Right now Checker is offering you, our listeners here at business brain, $40 off your first background check. Visit our special URL today and save that $40. Checkr.com businessbrain that's the word check. Then the letter r.com businessbrain checkr.com businessbrain and our thanks to Checker for sponsoring this episode. All right, what's. What's next on your list with. With Naval thread?

Yeah, this is good because I think in. In society, probably not our listeners, because they're much smarter and more sophisticated, but in, in society as a whole right now, you know, sometimes there's, there's a lot of negativity attached to wealth. And Naval says, understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

Oh, man. And the, the pride of poverty is something. And I don't mean to, to, to like, denigrate the impoverished, but like, there, there are people, I know we've all encountered them who take pride in not having wealth. Right. And it's like, oh, and. And then also complaining about not having wealth and it's like.

Well, yeah, a lot of that, I think, is rationalization.

It's rationalization. Yeah. I mean, I think you're. I think you're probably again, generalizing. I think you're right. I'm sure we just alienated, you know, some people here that probably. Yeah. Wouldn't have normally been listeners anyway.

And, you know, related. He says, you know, ignore playing status games because when you're talking about poverty that, you know, what you were just describing, it's a status thing, right? Oh, I'm better because I don't worry about money or you're whatever. But he says, you know, ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games. And, you know, it's interesting. And that's what I think a lot.

Or some, Some say that again. I want to. I want to. Yeah, I think that's important.

Yeah. Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.

Oh, right. Yeah.

So there, there's a whole class of people that have gained status in our society by denigrating people that have created wealth.

Yeah.

And. And yeah, you just.

Oh, it's.

I mean, yeah, it drives me crazy now, you know. Yes. You could talk about, well, so and so inherited this or that, but I always, when I hear people talking about this, well, that guy, he's a billionaire. That guy, whatever. I always step in and make the comment. I go, hey, you know, just remember that Jeff Bezos was a small business owner.

Yes.

And he worked on a door as a desk. So all of us, you know, all of our opportunities and you want to call it privilege or whatever in our experiences are all very different. But many of the people that have become wildly successful and built incredible amounts of wealth, you know, started just like we are, you know, talking today and I would argue those, I mean, those anyway, you know, go down that road, but those people that employ, you know, tens of thousands of people and all that kind of stuff, I think they should be celebrated, not denigrated, not beat up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At least not for that. Like if they're, I mean, if somebody's doing something bad, fine, like beat them up for that. But just because they, they make money and, and hire and employ other people. I got a problem with that too. I'm with you.

Yeah.

Yes, the, the idea of leverage is interesting to me. He quotes Archimedes who said, give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth. And of course, like that is true with physics. Like I don't know where you would stand or what the lever would be. But if you could make the first two things true, the third one would be fine. Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people and products with no marginal cost of replication. Capital means money to raise money, apply your specific knowledge. Remember we talked about what that was with accountability and show resulting good judgment. Labor means people working for you. It's the oldest and most fought over form of leverage labor. Leverage will impress your parents, but don't waste your life chasing it. That's really interesting.

Yeah, it is interesting. I'm not sure, I mean, at some point you have to leverage labor, right? I mean you're building businesses and I mean, and not in a negative way, but actually hiring people and giving them job, helping them make careers. We talk about it all the time on, on the show about creating a great place for them to work. But it is that concept that it'll impress your parents, but don't waste your life chasing it. I guess you have to get beyond.

Just doing that, just doing the work. But I, but I have run into people who, who have trouble getting past that where it's like, oh my, my, my self worth is tied up in me doing the labor to get things done. Like, it's like if I put in X number of hours, I know that I am, you know, more valuable. And that, that's like not necessarily true. It is if you're working dollars per hour for sure. But there are other ways of being valuable and being far more valuable. And that I would say is also true for people who are employees working for someone else. And again, it depends on the scenario. But like all the people that work for me, I'm far less concerned with the number of hours they work than I am with what they get done. Make yourself valuable. Yeah. Yep.

All right, here's one that I really like. It's two part. Naval says an army of robots is freely available. It's just packed in data centers for heat and space efficiency. Use it. And then he follows up with, says, if you can't code, which I can't code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts. And I would say this applies to every business, every business owner that's listening. That concept of creating content around your business. Look at some of the most successful companies that are selling it could be the most mundane thing. I mean, look at like tech defenders that are doing repairs for, you know, electronics. And we've had their CEO on the show where they've got all kinds of content, whether it's using it on LinkedIn to attract really great talent or, or, you know, creating it on their website to attract their customers. It doesn't matter what business you're in if using the. This army of robots, like Naval says, is just a huge competitive advantage because most of your competitors are not doing it.

Yes, correct. Correct. Yeah, no, it's great. My favorite one, and it might be the one we wrap with here, is there is no skill called business. Avoid business magazines and business classes. And this is why we changed the name of this show. Yes, we saw business in the title, but it's Business Brain. We're using our business brains to enhance our lives. We're analyzing things with and we define what that is. You know, it's looking at things with a keen eye towards efficiency and maximizing your value and hopefully building some wealth. So yeah, absolutely.

And tuning our business brains here each week. It works for Dave and I just as much as it works for you. And it's a two way street. So feedback@businessbrain.show. share your thoughts on what Naval has to say or share other Twitter threads that you think we should be talking about.

Absolutely, yeah. Keep us posted. We'll keep you posted. It all works. It's a nice, nice little circle we got going on here. Make sure to check out our sponsors, checker.com businessbrain notion.com businessbrain and keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next time.