#14 The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Part 1)

Throughout his career, Naval has generously shared his wisdom and millions of people around the world follow his advice on building wealth and living happily. Naval Ravikant is an icon in Silicon Valley and startup culture around the world. He founded multiple successful companies opinions during the 2000.com crash angel list in 2010. Naval is also an angel investor, betting early on companies like Uber, Twitter, which is now X, Postmates, and hundreds more. More than a financial success, Naval has been sharing his own philosophy of life and happiness, attracting readers and listeners throughout the world. Naval is broadly followed because he is a rare combination of successful and happy, and after a lifetime of study and application of philosophies, economics and wealth creation, he has proven the impact of his principles. Today, Naval continues to build and invest in companies almost casually, in his own artistic way, while maintaining in a healthy, peaceful and balanced life. This book collects and organizes the pieces of wisdom he has shared and shows you how to achieve the same for yourself.

This is an intro I read for.

The Almanac of Naval Ravicant by Eric Gorgenson or Georgenson, and it is a guide to wealth and happiness. It also has a forward by Tim Ferriss and it is a really good book.

So before we get into this episode, I was looking at this book and.

Thinking, man, this is going to be.

A privilege to read it. And so far I'm right.

It is one of the best books.

I've read for this podcast and probably one of the best books I've ever read. That's saying a lot, but I think it truly is one of the best books. Best books I've ever read.

That that's a little bit of an overstatement. It's probably one of the best business philosophy books I've ever read.

Besides that though, this is one of the Naval is a revolutionary thinker. I mean, besides starting Uber all this.

His way of thinking is incredible.

And before we go into into naval, I'm actually trying something new instead of I always write notes for all my podcast episodes and I actually do have notes, but I'm just going to be reading from the book.

I put so many highlights into these books.

Like I if you could see the book, I have probably a hundred sticky.

Notes and I'm only halfway through the book. Less than halfway through the book.

I have a hundred sticky notes that sometimes I never get to. I always read through them and put them into like a note, a Google Doc and then read off of that. But I actually just want to go.

Unscripted today because I I truly believe that every idea in this book needs.

To be touched and needs to be heard by you guys because this is a revolutionary book.

And you know, I'm looking at the back right. Shane Parrish, founder of Farnham Street Tucker Max, four time New York best selling author.

Multiple people.

Tim Ferriss did the forward.

Chris Williamson just had him on Joe Rogan's had him on his podcast. He's very secretive and he doesn't talk to a lot of people but he's one of the smartest guys ever I've ever come across and I think you.

Definitely need to get this book.

But before me just giving you all the reasons why you should get the book, let's actually go through this and like document. I could do 10 episodes on this book and just on naval I could, I could spend, you know, a lot of time just studying him because he's amazing. He's, he's truly phenomenal. So let's, let's go through his timeline.

So he was born in Delhi, India in 1974 and then by the time he was age nine he moved from New Delhi to Queens, New York. So a huge life change. He attended some high school that I can't say he graduated Dartmouth. He actually studied computer science and economics by the time he was 25 in 1999 he was the founder and CEO of Epinions. He founded vast.com. he launched AngelList in eight in 2010. He invested in Uber in 2010 as well. And he's also named. But in 2018 at age 43, he was named the angel investor of the year. So that's a brief timeline of kind.

Of who he is or what, what he, you know, how he grew up.

But what I really love is there's this paragraph of him kind of talking about reading books, right? And so let me just read this to you. He says we moved to the US when we were very young. I didn't have many friends so I wasn't very confident. I spent a lot of time reading. My only real friends were books. Books make for great friends because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you their nuggets of wisdom.

And just a thought on this little quote.

He is not wrong.

I've been reading these books. I think I'm at 11 or 12 books now on the year and I keep seeing all these.

I listen to the founders podcast a lot.

I'm obsessed about that podcast almost to.

A, not an unhealthy degree, but I was obsessed. Last year I, I listened to, I want to say 160 hours last year, I think I'm at almost 170, 180 total lifetime. Listen to that podcast.

I always keep track of it, but it is one of the best podcasts I've ever listened to. But he does the same exact thing where he reads these books of founders of biographies. And so he has these biography photos or. Sorry, biography. He reads these biographies of founders of companies or just anyone revolutionary, basically entrepreneurs. And so that's Michael Jordan, George Lucas, all these. But naval is one of them. But he looks through all these different.

People, and one of the most fascinating things is after reading 400 different biographies, he says the same exact thing. And let me just repeat it. Books make for great friends because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you their nuggets of wisdom. That truly, that's my journey as well. I want to learn from the best thinkers, and I don't want to do.

It in a way that, you know, I. I want to learn from their ideas. So I want to get the ideas, obtain the ideas, learn the knowledge, but then apply them to my own life. And I think what naval is saying is revolutionary because I think this is a key thing that could get you rich or could get you successful in life is just learning from history, right? Find what you love to do. Become obsessive about that. Obsessive in scare quotes. You know, don't reject your family, don't reject any of that, but get to the point where you love what you. So if you find what you love.

To do, you learn so much about.

That that at that point, you almost become not consumed with the idea, but you start learning about it more and more and more. And that's the point where you get. You get to that point where you love. You love learning about it. So you find what you love to do. Learn as much as possible, because like David Ogilvy says, once you learn all that, you're going to be a hundred times better than the person that wants.

To enter that space.

You see this in a lot of founders or biographies of people like George Lucas. Francis Ford Coppola broke into an office or, sorry, not an office. He dropped out of high school and. Or college, and he was going to. He broke into a college campus to use and borrow their film equipment so he could film and learn how to use that. And I think that's crazy commitment. But it's almost like if you want to learn how to do something really well, just read a bunch of books, find everything there is to know about your field or what you're doing or your career and do that to. To a hundred percent.

And so that.

I love that quote by Naval because it really shows you that, you know, it. It. It's specific knowledge pertaining towards what? Like, actually, I'm looking at a quote right now by Naval. He says specific knowledge cannot be taught, but it can be learned. What's really interesting about that is this, is that specific knowledge, right? You're looking to a field. Let's say it's marketing or content. Let's say I'm a marketer, right? So I would want to go to David Ogilvy because he's the best marketer and he was the, he founded one of the best marketing companies in the whole world. I want to learn every. I want to read every book of his. I want to go to Claude Hopkins, who made Scientific Advertising. I want to read his book, I want to go to his other books about advertising. I want to learn from every person in the field of marketing.

And that is the best of the best.

And after I do that, then I will learn that skill. Because he says that Naval says it cannot be taught, but it can be learned. So if you're actively, actively learning, that's going to be amazing for you because you're pursuing those ideas and then if you're more likely to apply those ideas to your own lives. And that's what Naval is trying to point out.

That. Now we get to the section where he talks about building wealth and he says that making money is not a thing you do, it's a skill you learn.

Just a great quote from Naval really emphasizes the idea. I love this. I don't know if I wrote it in my notes or not, but something.

That'S really interesting is he brings up that.

What is it? The quote is, money is not the currency of, of time. Attention is. What I love about that is when he says money is not the currency of time. He's not saying, he's saying that you can't. You know, these rich and successful people, they get to a point where they have everything in life.

What is the one thing they cannot buy back?

They can't buy back their time. That's what's really interesting about this, right? You, you look at it. So therefore, money must not be the currency of time because you can't buy time back. And that means what is, what is the currency of time? What really matters with your time? Because many of these successful people, they get to a point where they have all the wealth in the world, but once they get that wealth, it's like, what do I do? This is all worthless. I could just keep getting more of this. They missed out on their family. Chris Williamson said it best. They sacrifice. They sacrifice their time for, you know, they. They sacrifice other parts of their life for success or money. So they sacrifice their family, their children, growing up, their wife. That's why you have divorces with all these successful people. You. You have all these things where you have little things like that, where they sacrifice in this area or sacrifice in this area. They're all in on work. And that's the big thing that Naval is pointing out, where he's saying that money is not the currency of time. Because all these successful people get to that point and they're like, this is worthless. What do I do? And so therefore, money must not be the currency of time. But what he says is attention is so attention towards your company, right? Having that attention, what you put your attention towards is ultimately the thing that you. You're cultivating, right? So if you put your attention towards your family, you're going to cultivate that. If you put your attention towards your wife, you're to cultivate her. If you want to cultivate a love of learning, you're going to read books and learn, watch YouTube videos, all that podcast, all that stuff. If you want to cultivate or put your attention towards business, your business is.

Going to succeed because you actually care about it.

So money is not the currency of time, because if it was, then most of these people would feel successful or they, they get to that success and they would feel that and they'd be like, I've completed life. But once you get to that point, you actually haven't.

And that's what I love about his quote and that the attention is not the currency of time. And something that's really interesting is I'm just going to read through all these.

And give you my notes. But Naval has this long thread on X or Twitter where it's how to.

Get rich without getting lucky. And so I'm just going to read off of these and also tell you.

My notes about them. And because they're really. They're really awesome and really great.

And so he says, seek wealth, not money or status. 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 there's a lot of different things here, right? Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. So this is passive income.

Um, Robert Kiyosaki talks about this in his book rich dad, Poor dad, and he talks about the idea of having like real estate assets or just assets in general, making money overnight while you sleep. And that Naval would argue that's the definition of wealth or freedom. Once you have that and you can't work that hourly rate or that salary and you have something working for you, almost like AI or it's just doing something for you or real estate, all that.

That's what they're talking about. And what's really interesting is he say. He says money is how we transfer time and wealth.

It is really true. You get paid hourly. In some jobs, you get paid yearly. That's still time.

Status is your place in the social hierarchy. His next tweet or thread is understand ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you. What's really interesting about this is I actually don't really have a lot of notes about this.

I was confused by ethical wealth.

But what I think is really interesting is that if you. He has this last part. He says if you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

That is interesting because one of the.

Key things is if you despise wealth.

It will elude you.

And it is a really interesting concept or idea. One of his next quotes is ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games. One of the interesting things is that you want to. Yeah, you want to ignore the people.

Playing the status games.

They're only in it for the status. They want to keep their status above everything else, but they, they do attack those people.

I'm thinking about this guy, Gary Economics, who was just on Diary of a CEO podcast.

He's attacking these rich people and saying.

He'S trying to play that status game where it's like, hey, I have really high status and so I'm going to use this status to play this game against the rich people. They don't deserve it. All that.

That's kind of what that reminds me of.

The.

His next quote is, you're not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity, a piece of a business to gain your financial freedom.

So there's many different ideas here.

I would say one is hourly work. You're not going to get rich renting out your time.

So you're not going to get rich renting out your time every hour. So every hour you get paid for this amount.

I like what Naval said.

He said something about it's almost like you're paying them out of pocket. You're saying, hey, here's $20 of my time every time. And you're paying them that because they're taking your time.

So every time they take your time.

You'Re almost like you're saying, hey, I'll give you $20. I'll give you $20. Here's another $20. So you know, if you work 10 hours a week, you're giving them $200.

And what's really interesting is he says you must own equity.

A piece of a business. He's saying that he would love to see 7 billion people because at this point this is how many people there were, but he would love to see 7 billion people have 7 billion businesses or he would love to see each.

Person have a business. And I think it is true. It's that idea of passive income, right?

When you have that passive income, it, it generates wealth for you and so does a piece of a company. It's when you get that piece of a company and it goes, you know, crazy or it, it does really, really well, you just like 10x, 100x your share of the company.

His next thread is you will get rich by giving society what it wants, but but does not know yet how to get at scale. So what's interesting about this is if.

I say it a little bit slower.

Slower, you will get rich by giving society what it wants, but does not know yet how to get it.

And then he says at scale. So let's say you bring a new.

Product onto the market, you want to.

Bring that product onto the market and.

The society is like, wow, we didn't.

Know we want this, but we actually, you know, we don't know how to get this, but we know we want it. And if you bring that to him and you say, hey, you know, like an online product, you give it to 100,000 people or 100 or a million people and it doesn't really do anything cost wise for you. It's just the same cost, but 100 million people could access it. That's what you want. That is how you become rich.

One of his next quotes is pick an industry where you can play long term games with long term people.

That's the idea of focusing on one thing. Just like I was saying earlier, you want to find one thing, pick it, focus on something you love to do. So pick one thing, focus on what you love to do. Do that to your, you know, your best ability.

But you also want to make sure.

That you're thinking about it long term. And also you want to be surrounded with People that also want to do it long term. So you don't want to jump into something where no one wants to do it or like you don't really want to do it or you're not going to do it for a long time. So pick a job that you love to do and you know that you would want to do it for the rest of your life until you die doing it. That, that's really. You know, David Sinner said this, and I don't necessarily agree with him on this, but David Sinner, the founders podcast.

Guy, he said that I want to.

Do podcasting until I die. Like until the point where they have to pry the microphone out of my dead, cold hands. That's what he said. And I, I thought that was really interesting. Like, you don't want to make an idol out of what you're doing, but if you love what you're doing, do it to the point where you would want to do that for the rest of your life. And do it well. And think about it long term. Because most people do not think about things long term. They think about it short term, to the point where they're like, oh, I could be in this job for six months to a year or to five years. But they don't think about it like, could I do this for like 20, 30, 40, 50 years, like the rest of my life? They don't think about it like that. And great businesses and great leaders think about it long term. They will do it until they die. There's the idea of not being retired because when you quote, unquote, retire, you're doing nothing. And I actually don't believe in retirement. I don't believe that most of these other people, like naval, believe in retirement as well. They want to pick what they love to do to the point where you find work that feels like play. That's one of his quotes, I believe, or it came from him, or he uses it a lot. Find work that feels like play. Because you want to do something that other people think is work to you, but you feel like it's play. So you could just pick it up any moment of any day, do it. And other people are like, wait, you're working? But you're like, no, I'm doing this for fun. I love doing this.

I.

But you get money for it. And David, I watched his podcast with Chris Williamson, something that David said was that if you find what you love to do and you are actually making money at that, you're in the top. A couple hundred thousand people out of 8 billion people in the whole world that does that.

You're in the top 10, couple hundred.

Thousand people of the whole 8 billion people in the world that does that. So if you love what you're doing and you're getting paid for that, then you're. You're golden. Like you could. If that's something you could do for the rest of your life, you're golden. And it's amazing.

And another quote by Naval is, he says the Internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven't figured this out yet.

So, as you know, people can get AI or they can use AI to create. I saw this thing the other day on, I think, Instagram where this guy was creating, having AI make. What was it like, AI books. Like, you know, books that he sold online. And he made like a million dollars a year doing that. No one knew he could have that job. He just found that. And I think that's what Naval is saying. The Internet, Internet's so vastly changing. It's this broad space that you could literally have any job. That's why you don't need to go to college to get a job anymore, because people don't require a degree. You can literally just pick up your phone, get a computer, start learning, buying books, renting out books, whatever, getting books, watching videos or all this stuff that we didn't have access 20, 30 years ago, even, you know, 50 years ago, or even sooner than that. Like, with AI coming in now, there's a lot of different things that you can do without going to college to have a dream job.

And I love that about Naval.

I love that he's noticing that. And he is, again, really, really smart. He says in this next one, play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest. This is one of the best ideas because he has this thing that you iterate or you integrate something so you make something better, and then you productize that via repetition. So if I make a product that the world doesn't see or they don't know that they need it, but they love it when I introduce it to them. He says that once you integrate that product to the point where it's like amazing, people buy it and you can easily scale it without with a high profit margin, that's what you want to. That's what you want to have. And he also says something about compound interest, right? And he says this about life, wealth, relationships, and knowledge. And when you think about this knowledge or this idea of compound Interest is very interesting because in everything you do, right? Whether that's reading books, so that's knowledge, whether you're investing time into a person for a relationship, like a partner or a spouse or just in wealth into your business, all that, it all comes from compound interest, right? Once. And David Sinner is a great example of this. He read 400. He's reading. He's read 400 biographies. And, and when you look at the guy, he has all this compound interest and he can productize that, and it's amazing and remarkable. Most of these other people, though, do the same thing. Charlie Munger, you go to his house, he has 10,000 biographies or just books sitting in his house that he's all read. He knows, like the founder of every company. He knows all the people and all the books. He's really smart. He actually, he did pass away, though, which is sad. But he, when he was alive, he was this genius guy and really smart. And so it all comes from compound interest, though. And that's what, that's a key, important highlight that you need to understand if you want to have success and you want to become rich. And not just rich in terms of money, rich in wealth, rich in knowledge, rich in your relationships. And it all trickles down the line if you can get these ideas, you know, successfully and apply them to your life. Another thing that he says is pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and above all, integrity. Well, if we go through this list, right, if they don't have high intelligence, then they're dumb and you can't work with them. If they don't have energy, then it's like having a Steve Jobs without the Steve Jobs charisma or energy. And that doesn't work either. And then above all, like, if they don't have motivation for your company, then why are they in your company? That's another thing, right? And then above all, it says integrity. If you can't have a business partner that has honesty, then they shouldn't be in the business. Because if they continue to lie to you, that's building a house on sand. It's a terrible house. And I love that Naval says this because business partners, I don't know who says this, but having a business partner is like entering into a marriage. You're saying, hey, like, you know, we get 50, 50. And this is not like a marriage. But I've read a quote that says it's like a marriage. So it's not 100%, you know, on both sides, but it is like a marriage. And the fact that you're going into a relationship really seriously and saying, hey, we're going to scale this, we're going to make this bigger, make this fruitful, all this. And you need to make sure that both people in the founder, both founders know that when they get into it. And that's why I love that Naval says this. They have to have high intelligence, energy and integrity. Another thing that he says is don't partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self fulfilling. You don't, you shouldn't partner with people that are deprivating. Self deprivating or just pessimists most of the time. We saw this in Shackleton, right? Shackleton was his crew, his 27, 28 guys was like, were some of the most optimistic people on the planet. And I'm not joking. They went through, they went through like stormy seas, frostbite. One guy had his toes, toe, toes cut off. I mean they, but they were still optimistic. And I think if you partner with someone that is pessimistic, you're not going to have that same effect because their beliefs are not going to be the beliefs of the company. They're, they're setting a lower standard for everyone. They're saying, oh, we can't make it, we can't do this. And once they reach that level, oh, oh, we did it. Oh, that's the standard for them. But you want to excel and excel and the quality and all that, the standards, everything. Another thing that Naval says is, he says, learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable. It is interesting. You look at most of these people, most of these social media guys are like, they are amazing sailor sailors. Sellers. I don't know the word for it. Salesman. Yeah, salesman. They're great salesmen. Steve Jobs, amazing. But most of these people are visionaries too. So not only can they sell you on something, but they can also paint a roadmap in your brain and in everyone's brains really, really well. And they're effective communicators. That's what is really interesting. But the thing is you can't have a product or you can't have the vision without the product. So you need to learn how to sell, but you also need to learn how to build the product. So you need to have a 10 out of 10 product and then learn how to market that and sell that to the point where you will be unstoppable. I believe that if you can do that, if any person successfully can do that, you could have a 10 to $100 million company, maybe even $1 billion company, if you're great at that.

Another quote by Naval. He says that arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.

And he says that specific knowledge cannot be taught, but can be learned. And this is what we were talking about with in terms of reading, right?

And it is really interesting when you look at this. Arm yourselves with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage. You need to be accountable to that, and specific knowledge helps you get leverage.

When you start learning from history's greatest founders, entrepreneurs, just these ideas that people, these thought leaders have left in the.

Past for you, then that's when you.

Start arming yourself with this knowledge, specific knowledge.

He also says that specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you.

The greatest example of this would be a factory worker, right? You go into a factory, they tell you how to do stuff. Hey, you got to do this, got to do this, got to do this. You make it this way, you hammer it this way, you screw the nail in this way. That can all be trained for. You want to have specific knowledge that.

Cannot be trained for. And like he says, if society can.

Train you, it can train someone else as well. So most laborious labor jobs, let's just go with that. Jobs of labor can be trained. Specific knowledge would be reading books. I. I believe that truly what I'm doing, I think that cannot be taught or trained. And the only way you can do that is by going out and actually reading those books or listening to them or just being obsessed with learning or just starting to get into the habit of actually learning, because it truly is. It's not something that people normally do, actually. I really want to look up the percentages and the stats of, like, what a person. Like, all right, how many people. How many. What's the percentage of population that actually read? All right, now, how many people read biographies now? How many people read business books? All right, now how many people have a podcast on those business books? Like, I would love to see what percentage of the world I'm in in terms of that. But the thing is, you can easily do the same thing, too. You can become obsessed with learning or just love to learn. And it doesn't have to be about business or, you know, anything that it can. It can be anything that you love to learn about, whether that's marketing, content, real estate. I mean, you go down the list, man. There's a ton of different things that you can be learning about, but it all starts with you. It all starts with you. And that's the point of this podcast, right? I can be reading you all these notes and highlights of every book I've ever read, but it all starts with you applying those to your life. I can be reading this amazing book to you by Naval Ravikant, one of the world's. He's probably a billionaire, one of the richest man probably in the world by what he's done. And you could take all that and it could just go in one ear and out the other. I mean, it really takes accountability, like he said, accountability to really take and absorb the information and apply it to your own life. And, you know, we're all guilty of that. I mean, I. There's times where I could be applying this stuff as well. But I think, first of all, just get yourself to the point where you love to learn. Once you're learning, how do you apply that to your life? And also, you're not going to remember everything. Take everything, you know, with a grain of salt at some points. You're not going to learn every single little detail and remember it and then be 100% on that. You. You want to know that. All right, find a couple maxims or a couple things in the books. David Sinro says this. Find a couple maxims. Or I, I always find a couple maxims where it's like, all right, you know, money is not the currency of time. Attention is. That's one thing that stood out to me from either Naval's book or Naval's podcast, where it's like, think about reading as in that sense, where you're trying to get these memorable quotes in your mind that stays with you for a long time.

Let's go on to the next quote. Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.

So what I love about this is.

It'S just like books and podcasts, right?

For me, I love reading and I want to, you know, I want to share that with the world. So I do that through my podcast. For you, it might be different. You might love learning, but you might, you know, share that in an email, letter or newsletter or different ways. Right? But the thing is, I love his last part of what he said.

He said, rather than whatever is hot right now.

What's interesting is that that is almost 100% accurate. You see all these people online, like on Instagram, like, oh, I made a million dollars doing, you know, AI social media accounts. Or you have all these things where it's random things like that. But what you realize is, actually, I like, I love the idea of making money. I wouldn't do that, though, for, like, five, ten years of my life. Like, I would love to make a million dollars, but I wouldn't love to do that. And I think the thing is, when you find what you love to do, do that, do it well. And then once you do it well, do it better. And then once you do it better, realize that it might take five to 10 years before you actually get noticed for that. You know, most of these experts are people with PhDs or, you know, people that love learning. They don't get noticed until, like, they do the same thing over and over again. They put out the podcast episode every week, or they do the same thing over and over again, and they put in the hard work. But what they realize at the very end is that they're like, wait, you know, I'm not getting noticed yet. And it's like, most people struggle with that because they quit after a month or two or a year. But what they didn't realize was success was, like, right around the corner. You know, for Chris Williamson on his Modern Wisdom podcast, he was doing things every, you know, he was putting out a podcast episode every, you know, week. He started back in, like, 20. Let's see, seven years ago. Yeah, seven years ago. So 20, 25. Seven years ago. So 2018. He started in 2018. You see him go episode after episode, like, every week. Then, you know, something takes a turn, and he's having all these people. I love what Sam Walton says. He says that just like every overnight success, and Sam Walton is the founder of Walmart. He says, like. And he was saying, like, just like everyone says he. He says just like everyone says. Or no, no, that's not the quote. He says, just like every. Every overnight success, it only took 20 years. And that's because when you see these quote, unquote, overnight successes, you realize, wait, oh, if I look at this company, there's actually a history here. Like, you actually see a history. It's like, no, this company didn't show up last night.

No, this.

This company was here for, like, 10, 15 years, but because they were dedicated, now they are showing up as an overnight success. And I think that's what you need to understand about what you love to do.

And that's what the whole idea behind specific knowledge, right? Where it's like, you're building this specific.

Knowledge, but it might not be hot right now, but it might be hot in the future, and people might want to Know that in the future, and you might be reaching a new audience in the future, you're going to grow. You know, the, the, if you're looking at a graph and you have that line, it's going to go, you know, straight for a little bit and then it will shoot up eventually. You just gotta believe and you gotta keep going.

Another thing that Naval says is building specific knowledge will feel like play to you, but will feel like work to others.

And we've already talked about this. I mean, find work that feels like play to you, but, you know, feels like work to others. People look at you, at what you're doing and you're like, oh, like, why would you be doing that?

That's work.

And you're like, no, I love what I'm doing. And this, I would do this any time of the day, you know, any day of the week, right?

Except Sunday, when specific knowledge is taught, it's through apprenticeships. Apprenticeships saying that wrong, not schools. Now what I love about this is.

It reminds me of Daniel Priestley. Daniel Priestley says that you want to go take a two to three year apprenticeship with entrepreneur or whoever you want to look like, right? You want to learn from them, take their traits and then do what you love to do. I actually agree with this idea because you should.

He says it's taught through apprenticeships, not schools.

And what I love about that is, you know, I, I believe that you can't learn. You can easily learn what you want to learn by just going and working for someone you admire. You know, you don't have to just go to college or go to school because you want to learn more about a subject. I actually bought a book that I found out they teach at like sophomore or junior year of college and they read like the whole book for like business college at some, like, prestigious colleges. And I have the book. I bought it because I wanted to read it. And I'm only in high school. It's like, it's really interesting. You can learn all this stuff without having to go to the colleges. You can easily learn all this, almost like building your own curriculum. It's actually really fun. And the one thing, and this is not, you know, this isn't an idea I've found from other people, but something that I've noticed is that when a school forces you to almost read a book or you, you have to do something, you're less likely to want to do it. And it almost like kills that level of learning in the sense of like, I love reading, but when school assigns me something to read. I don't want to read it as much as if I were to just go want to read it. And you know, the accountability is great, but just taking responsibility and going out and actually wanting to read and wanting to learn, that's something anyone can cultivate and it doesn't have to be through school. You know, I love what you know.

Naval says he continues on with this specific knowledge. He says specific knowledge is oftenly, often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated. I love this. I think he's talking about, he's talking.

About like learning, right? He you learn about something like you're reading books about business or a certain area.

You know, it's highly technical or creative.

You have to like really study it and it can't be outsourced. You can't have AI tell you all this information. You have to go pursue it. And I found that really interesting and it makes a lot of sense when you look into it. Another thing that Naval says is he says embrace accountability and take business risks on under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity and leverage. I really love this quote because he talks about that accountability and he says take business risks. Most people are scared of taking business risks. And the thing is sometimes you have to give up that 10,000 to get that a hundred thousand or sometimes you have to give up that hundred thousand to get that one million. I mean you have to take business risks. And some people live in fear most of the time. In most of their lives they're too anxious or they're too fearful about what's going to happen to them. And the reality is if you don't take those risks then you society won't reward you. Right, Elon? I read Elon Musk book. Great book, definitely recommend reading it.

It's like a 615 page book.

Crazy. Really long. I think it has like 94 chapters or 96 chapters. Really really long. But what's crazy about that book is so he starts zip two in like 19, 1990s he sells it for like 20, 30 million. Then he works at paper. He co owns or Co founds PayPal sells that makes like 100 to 300 million. Then with Tesla and SpaceX he starts both companies. For both companies he's like overnight working and sleeping. He brings a sleeping bag, sleeps under his desk for Tesla, SpaceX and then eventually he did it for X or for Twitter now or other way around. But he does that for, you know, Twitter and X and it really shows his commitment. But I think what we look at, we look at Elon Musk the man, and we think, oh, you're just this rich guy that has 2 to $300 billion. And what you don't realize is that, you know, he took business risks and we're rewarding him now with, you know, here's leverage, equity, responsibility. But what you don't realize is how much he actually sacrificed to get there. And that is that business risk. He risked Tesla's life, or life as in, you know, it could have gone bankrupt. So, you know, with SpaceX, after SpaceX failed after their third space launch, it truly devastated Elon or, well, he, it didn't devastate him. He was still optimistic, just like Shackleton. But literally they sent out the first rocket failed, blew up, second rocket failed, blew up, third rocket blew up, or something happened. They all failed, all of them. And he said, you know what, this next rocket, instead of creating a two or like a year to two to make this, we're going to create this in six weeks, build it and launch it. This will be our fourth rocket. And this is my, like literally my last chance before I go bankrupt. They launch, it succeeds, amazing works. And now you know who Elon Musk is, right? And most people thought he was just this kid, you know, coming out of PayPal, like, oh, you don't know anything about rockets, you can't do this. But he showed him. No, I'm embracing that accountability and I'm taking that business risk. Another thing that Naval says is he actually quotes Archimedes. Archimedes says, give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth. Same thing with Elon.

Right.

Another thing he says, fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people and products with no marginal cost of replication. Rep. Yeah, replication, he says, for examples, code and media. I can see that because, you know, when you create a digital product, it's really interesting. When you create a digital product, it's the same product. A million, 100 million, 1 billion people could sign up. It's still the same. And you didn't have to create anything else extra for it. You know, a, a million people could sign up for like $5 a month for a premium feature of uncommon excellence. No, I'm joking. But they could sign up for a feature like that and they could, you know, have, have it to the point where you could have a, like, you could scale it as much for the same amount of content and 10 x 100 x,000 x 10,000 x your profit and your margin Ability. I think that's what I'm saying that right. But you could easily get that higher without any additional cost to you. Another thing that is really interesting, Naval says capital means money. To raise money, apply your specific knowledge and accountability and show resulting good judgment. This is really good because he also.

Talks about specific knowledge. And what he says is to raise money, apply your specific knowledge with accountability, showing result and show resulting good judgment. And what I love about this is he's talking about this specific knowledge.

Something that you're going to notice about Naval is he talks about this a lot. He talks about specific knowledge. What is specific knowledge?

He brings this up later in the book. And what I really like about it.

Is he says that specific knowledge cannot be taught, but it can be learned.

Like what we've been talking about.

But he says that. And this is what specific knowledge looks like.

He says when I talk about specific.

Knowledge, I mean figure out what you.

Were doing as a kid or a teenager almost effortlessly something you didn't even consider a skill, but people around you noticed your mother or your best friend.

Growing up would know.

And he goes on to say examples of these.

He says examples of what your specific knowledge could be.

Sales skills, music talents with the ability to pick up any instrument, an obsessive personality. You dive into things and remember them quickly. Your love for science fiction, playing a lot of games you understand, you understand.

Game theory pretty well.

And he says, gossiping, digging in your friend network.

That one's a little bit weird.

But hey, he said that might make you into a very interesting journalist.

And something that I'm going to end this episode on is the idea of.

What he says is no one can.

Compete with you on being you.

Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most.

Let me just repeat this because this is a profound statement that it that could change your life. No one can compete with you on being you.

Most of life is a search for.

Who and what needs you the most. The whole idea behind that is being authentic to yourself. And what he means by that is the way you're going to gain this specific knowledge or to productize yourself or to make iterations or integrations and scale a product or make a business or all that is by being authentic to yourself. And no, this is not follow your heart or any of that stuff. This is purely just do not follow. So look at your role models, right? For me, like, or just, you know, in my area of people that I should look up to or people I look up to, like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, all these different people, those would be people in the business industry. You know, you look up to those people and you take ideas from them, but you make yourself into authentic version of you. You're not gonna. You're going to, you know, you're gonna be the best version. What people are going to pay for is you. They're going to pay for your authentic version. And if you're trying to copy someone else, that's when you have competent competition. Yeah, going to have competition because you're copying someone else. If you're unique and different and being authentic to yourself, then that's when that eliminates the whole idea of competition. And Naval hit the nail on the head with this. With what he said. No one can beat you, but, you know, but you, you know, you can. You can be you. So be authentic to who you are and who you are called to be and go do that to your best ability.

And no one else can do that.

Same thing but you. And you just perfect that. And just going to end it with probably a quote that I think is, you know, one of the. A quote that is amazing by Naval. Right? And I just want to hone this in again. I've already repeated it multiple times on this episode. But money is not the currency of time. Attention is by you. You know, I love this idea of voting with your time. You know, you vote with your dollar. Every time you go to a business, you vote with your dollar to keep that business in business or you keep that. You know, whether you're going to a coffee shop, you're saying, hey, I love this coffee shop. I want you to stay in business. Right? Every time. You also do that with your time. So by voting with your time to listen to this podcast episode, you are volunteering to become a better version of yourself. A version that loves to learn, a version that loves just everything about, you know, uncommon people. What I think is really interesting about Naval is he really takes this idea.

And the thing is, money is not.

The currency of time. Attention is so what you put your attention towards, towards your family, towards. Towards, you know, your wife or your spouse or whoever that is or, you know, the ones you love or reading or learning or your job or businesses. You can do this anywhere. You know, everyone has the same amount of time in. In a sense, right? You know, everyone has the same amount of time. That's not something rich people get privileged with more of or poor people get privileged with more of is everyone has the same amount of time. How are you going to use it? How are you going to become the best version of yourself? Well, you know, you voted with your time to listen to this podcast episode, and I would say that that's pretty good. And of course, I'm not biased, right? No, I am. But I'm like, by listening to this and reading this, this is one of the most profound books I read, probably for this podcast. And it's just revolutionary ideas straight to your fingertips. You have to read this. I'm not joking. I. I'm looking at a book that I've only read halfway with probably a hundred sticky notes. So what I do is I take sticky notes and I like, rip them up and I put them in the book and I write notes on the sticky notes and I'll flip through and I'll be like, oh, that's really interesting. This is a Daniel. This, this idea reminds me of Daniel Priestley, or this idea reminds me of Robert Kiyosaki, or this reminds me of Davidson or Chris Wilmot Williamson or Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger. You go down the list or just really influential ideas. And I think everyone should read this if they, you know, of course there are things to take with a grain of salt, right? But this is a really good book and I think it is a must read. And I'm going to be doing other parts on this. So this is just part one, hopefully out of many different parts, because this is a phenomenal book. But again, thank you for listening to this episode. I hope that you love this and that this was a good use of your time and you, thank you for voting with your time to become a better version of yourself. And I hope you can't wait for part two. I can't wait for part two. And I will see you guys again next week. Thank you guys for listening to this podcast episode.