#15 Lessons from a Trillion Dollar Investor (Part 2)

Welcome to another podcast episode of Uncommon Excellence. And today we are going to be going through Naval Revicant's maxims and these are kind of maxims I put together while looking in the book. And Naval is truly one of the most inspiring just people to learn about. He really speaks the language of most founders and entrepreneurs when you're reading about him. But I think the most interesting thing about him is he, he is a investor and he's invested in Tesla, Uber, Pocketmates, which is like the little sticky notes, right? And this guy is truly and I mean he's even co founded Angel List Investors, I'm pretty sure that's what they're called. And like this guy is involved with billions and trillions of dollars. He's probably a billion if not trillion dollar investor. Really smart, really interesting. But I've put together a list of about 12 maxims that I would love to read through today in this podcast epis and really just highlight what the book the Almanac of Naval Ravikant Guide to Wealth and Happiness. What I've really noticed within the first half of the book and I think this is going to change your life if you really apply certain aspects of this and it's really changed my life. I've learned a lot from Naval already and really he's one of the most influential and just amazing thinkers there is. He's really remarkable in that way. And so I love to just go through these 12 maximums. But before we get into that, I would like to announce that I have an official sponsor of the podcast which is read Wise. Readwise is amazing. It is this thing that I use, I'm on a 241 day streak of it in. A streak is just they give you five highlights every day or you can customize how many highlights you get but you put in your favorite book. Let's say it's the Almanac of Naval Ravikant or Poor Charlie's Almanac or Michael Dell's autobiography. Right. You put in those books and they give you highlights, the most popular highlights and they put it in this app where you can read those highlights every day. You can chat with an AI chatbot and if you use my link in the description below, you will actually get two months free. So go check it out. One of the most inexpensive and easy tools there is to really ingrain these ideas that you're learning from the podcast and from the books I'm reading straight to you. Right. And one of the best things. So I will leave that in the link. The description below And I would really recommend checking that out as it is one of the most helpful tools for me and it has been over the last year. I use it almost, I use it every day. Pretty much one of the best tools. Again, it just gives you highlights from your books. Is a really easy way of getting into books that you want to get into and learning like, all right, these are the key ideas, but also into books and retaining the information that you've already been blessed with and given to in these books that you've already been reading. So I really recommend it. Go check out the link below. You'll get 2 months for free using my link and really would recommend it. So let's get into this podcast episode. So we get into this podcast episode where we're talking about Naval Ravikant, right? So Naval is this very, you know, like I said, influential thinker. But I put together these, this list of 12 different maxims. And again, these are, these are maxims from, I would argue, a trillion dollar investor. This guy knows what he's talking about. It's been proven, tested. You look at Uber, Tesla, just the companies he's invested in. One of the most amazing, probably the best investor of all time, probably besides Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. He's actually still alive to this day. He was just on Chris Williamson's podcast, Modern Wisdom, had like a three hour podcast episode which I listened to. Amazing podcast episode. You should go check it out if you want to like hear him speak and talk. There's obviously things that, you know, I disagree with him on, but a lot of the things that he says you can definitely take as grains of salt or just take it and really apply it to your life. So let's, let's go through these maxims or this list of maxims. So my first one that I wrote down was optimistic. Contrarians are the rarest breed. And this is a really interesting concept because he talks about this idea of being optimistic. And what he meant by optimistic contrarians is this idea. So you look back at Shackleton, right? We went, we went through a whole book, I think it was like a three or four part series on the Uncommon Excellence podcast that we did here. One of the things that you notice is that there's this idea of being optimistic, right? Shackleton was optimistic even on a piece of floating ice. And he was there for like, you know, six months to a year, right? Or even more. I think it was like 16 months. But being optimistic is one of the main things that you can be doing even now that will really help you, your company and whoever you are. Being optimistic about who you are, the life you live, and just everything else that you're doing, having that mindset is really going to help you. But that is only one key part of being part of this rare breed that Naval talks about. The other part of this is contrarian. Being a contrarian. What he means by this is not following modern, modern wisdom or convention in the sense of, you know, I don't just go to college to go to college, or I don't just go to school to go to school. Like, I'm actually intentional about what I'm learning. I'm optimistic about what I'm learning. I'm optimistic for the future. And I'm not. I'm going to question every single thing because in that questioning that will lead to my, like, optimizing myself, being successful in all this. So again, the maxim is optimistic. Contrarians are the rarest breed. My next maxim that I've really taken away, and I think this is straight from the book, he says the thing you need to be able to do is unlearn a habit. Question it until you can justify it being there. What he means by unlearning, right, Unlearning is something that many people talk about, right? You can learn all these certain things, all these models, as Naval puts it, all these certain models of thinking and learning all this. But what he says is that you really want to unlearn, right? You can learn all these things, but really unlearning something bad or something like a song, a song gets stuck in your head. So are the ideas that you're going to be learning about. And so you need to be. Be able to unlearn a habit. And so he says, question it. He says question it until you can justify it being there. So really, like, question your beliefs in, in the sense of, like, you know, like, what are your beliefs on, like, college or what are your beliefs in going to school or starting a business? Like, who. How did I learn these? Who did I learn it from? Was it my parents? Was it, like, why do I not want to take that risk? Is it from my parents? Is it because I'm, you know, I developed a fear or an anxiety, right? He really says question it until you can justify it being there. And I love this because Naval is really questioning our. Our beliefs or our habits, right? You can always, like, learn a bad habit, but the real, like, strength of habits is being able to unlearn a habit that, you know, you're constantly changing in your life. So you could always change for the better or change for the worse. But being able to unlearn that habit or change or like shift that your focus or your goal and going back, that's really important. The next maxim that I have from Naval Number three is create maxims when reading. It helps you retain info a lot better. And this also goes in with read wise, right? Read wise. They really give you those maximums every day, right? That's. I read five, five highlights a day. And so what it does is it creates those maxims when you're reading. So you read a book and then you reinforce those ideas over and over again throughout the course of multiple years using Readwise, because it helps you retain the info a lot better. That's ultimately why I created this list of maxims. Because I read that, I was like, oh, that's a really good idea. Instead of just like re rereading the book for, you know, my podcast, why don't I just create highlights that really give you guys as listeners, Like, I can bless you guys with the main takeaways. Instead of just what I'll do is like, I'll flip through the book and read it or take notes or highlights. But how do I optimize for that? Right? So I love that, right? And it helps you. It's like a mental trick, right? You're not gonna remember every single little detail in a book, but if you can create a maxim or a quote or a mantra in a way where when you're reading, it really helps you retain that info a lot better than if you were to just read it and then forget most of the concepts, or you have the basic concept, but you can't really formula or formulate that into an idea that you can easily convey to other people that you're talking with. Another one is compound interest applies to the intellectual domain as well. So the reason why this is interesting is this is ultimately why. The reason why is like the reason why I'm doing my podcast, because I realized that when you're learning, it ultimately builds upon itself, just like money. Or like, if you put, let's say you start with the basics and you put $10 into a bank account, it will ultimately keep growing if you have that compound interest. Well, it's the same with your intellectual mind, right? Every time you read a new book or you're reading the same types of books, you're reinforcing that idea. And it is just like compound interest. You're getting a little bit wiser every time. And that's why I love Reading these books ultimately, because you, you know, whether it's Naval, like, you can either challenge their ideas because what have you like, what you've learned from, or you can accept their ideas and say, all right, this is really interesting. I actually really like this. And it. It's really interesting. Another thing that Naval said is when he. He always reads one to two hours a day, and he said that it puts you in the top 0.0001% if you read an hour or two a day. And he says, making this a habit. When you make this a habit, you should make this a habit, because an average person in the world reads a minute a day. So if you read anything above a minute a day, you're above average already. And he reads one to two hours a day, which puts him in the top, you know, 0.0001% of the world. Of the world. Think about that. That is ultimately the reason why he. And why he has this whole capacity and he can easily, you know, put all these ideas into a book. Right? Charlie Munger has this great quote that Naval mentioned. He said, as long as I have a book in my hand, I don't feel like I'm wasting time. And again, it goes back to the compound interest. Right? Compound interest applies to the intellectual domain as well. I love that Naval said this because ultimately, I believe just as much as Naval does, that books are the key to success. If someone tells you not to read a book, ultimately that is the problem, right? If someone tells you not to read a book, they're worthless or wasting your time. That is the problem. Most people, I was talking to, some people I know and they said, man, I don't remember the last time I actually sat down and read a book that I like. And I'm thinking, man, I'm already on my 12th or 13th book that I love to read this year. This year. And they don't even remember the last time they actually sat down and read a book. And that just goes to show that if you love what you're learning, I mean, I, I'm trying to think of what Naval says. Oh, yeah, this is my eighth maxim, which we'll get to. But read what you love until you love to read. So find a book that you love to read. Find a genre, a niche that you love to read about. Read what you love until you learn to love how to read. Because once you learn, all right, like, I want to read this book. I want to read business books. I love business. I want to read that. I start reading those business Books. All of a sudden I will learn how to love to read and then I'll read any books because that's just a thing I do. And I love to do that. That's what I love about what Naval is saying. Because it all goes back to compound interest. Compound interest applies to your. Your mind intellectually, right? And ultimately this is why businesses nowadays are taking off. They David Sinner read over just under 400 biographies of these founders, entrepreneurs, everything. But he created a product and said, hey, you can get my 20,000 plus highlights from the all these books that I personally take and you can get access to a chat bot that's just like me. I am, you know, talking with it every day and you can get access to that. The interesting thing about that is because he can productize himself because he has that compound interest. He's constantly reading from those books, allowing him to productize himself. So ultimately, if you are doing something that people are interested in in terms of reading, or you're blogging, or you're making videos, or you're doing something that you love to do, then you'll learn how to. You'll learn to love to do that thing to the point where you'll just do it. And then people will think, why are you working? And then you think it's just play. And again, compound interest. I cannot overemphasize that enough. Compound interest applies to the intellectual domain as well. Next maxim from Naval. If you can't decide, the answer is no. Easiest thing I can think of in terms of this maxim, funny enough, is marriage, right? If you can't decide whether or not you want to marry that person, the obvious answer is no, Right. I was reading this book about, I think, yeah, something about marriage, but it was a quote or it was like, if you have any doubts whatsoever, the answer is no. The, the thing is, the ult. The ultimate thing is if you cannot decide whether that's in business, like, should I go into business with this one person or should I go into business with this person? Oh man, I don't know. It's like 50, 50. Always pick no. Because the, the amount of times you can go into something and then regret it is a lot. That's a lot worse than just saying no and being embarrassed for that little short amount of time. But ultimately that's a lot better because you didn't dig yourself into a hole. It's like, it's like saying, hey, do you want to dig this hole with me? And then, uh, and then right before, like you get all the Everything set up all like the funds to dig the hole, everything. You put the shovel down and walk away. That's a lot better than digging yourself into the hole and saying, man, I shouldn't have done this in the first place. And then trying to get out of it when it's like 12, 20ft deep. Right? And I love that. That's a great, you know, maxim from Naval, this like amazing investor. I mean, think about it. He's investing into companies and he has to be able to say no. Because if it's something he doesn't like, that could be ultimately 10, 20, $100 million, potentially even a billion dollars that he's lost right now. Again, this is about reading. But my 6 maxim from naval is read a lot. This will develop mental models and reading one hour a day, one hour a day will put you at the upper top of human success within seven years. He uses this word at the upper echelon in the original. But I really like what he says here where it's like, if you read an hour a day, within seven years, you will be put at the top of human, the human pyramid in a way and you will actually be successful. And I love that because for most people that actually read, like I think about David Sinra, he actually has been reading these books for seven years and he's successful. I mean, he, he just now, he hit the seven year mark and he's just now becoming successful. Most of these people that read these books don't become successful overnight. They actually become successful over time. But the key thing, Elon Musk, David Sinner, Michael Dell, most of these guys, Michael Dell's the, you know, the Dell company, the computer company. David Sinner Founders podcast. You look at most of these guys, but. And you see, all right, what is common between them? Well, one, they have the same mentality, but two, they, they read a lot. Elon Musk read biographies of Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, all right, they had the same mentality as Elon Musk did. They read about, you know, Isaac Newton and the people before them. But the really interesting thing about them is it's all about reading, right? So I do believe that if you do read an hour a day, if you read about the right types of books, like money, books or business, you will be successful. And within those seven years or within a certain amount of time, you will reach that. I ultimately believe that. And I mean, Naval is talking about this. He, he said that he had to take a break from, break from books eventually, but then he got back into it because he had. One thing he talks about is this constriction on books, right? You get through a book and you're like 300 pages in and you're almost done, but, like, you don't really want to finish it, or you get through the book and you're like, I want to finish this, but I can't. Or, you know, like, I don't feel motivated enough to finish it, or you just started it. Right. He says that what he does is he just frees himself of the burden of having to finish it. He'll read like 20 pages of a book or skip through parts, or he'll skim read some of it or go back to the parts that he really wanted to read, and he'll say he read the book when he didn't actually, like, read through all of it. But really being able to free yourself. For me, it's a little bit different, right? Because I read the whole books for my podcast, and I love doing that. I actually sit down, read the book all the way through, and even if I don't get motivated, I'll start a different book, go halfway through that, then come back, finish that, and then finish that book. Right? So there's different ways to do it. But don't feel burdened by the pressure of having to finish a book right away. You can always go to a different book, even have a third book on, you know, retainer, and go back. Right? But I think the moral of this maxim is just read a lot and mental models will begin to develop where it's like a certain philosophy or a way of thinking, right? My philosophy is that you don't need to go to college in order to, like, for community and for connecting with people. It's great. But in terms of the actual, you know, the way that college teaches you, college is just a big business, right? They make a lot of money. They don't really update most of their stuff. But the interesting thing about college is I don't believe you have to go to college in order to really. What's the word for it? Like, you don't need to go to college in order to become successful. You don't need to go to college to get a job. Most of these people, especially if you're a founder and you want to start a business. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard six months through Steve Jobs, dropped out two weeks through Harvard. Bill Gates dropped out two months out of, like, out of Harvard. These are supposedly the top schools in these billionaires dropped out, Right? So I don't Like, I have a book, the Essays of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger or something about investors, right? Like, I've heard that in the junior year of college, which I'm still a junior in high school, the junior year of college, they read that book, and I have that book, and I wanted to read it. I'm probably going to read it sometime within the next year or two. But the really interesting thing is you can easily learn the same ideas, probably learn even better by yourself. So you don't need to have. Unless you're, like, not accountable or anything. You can have that, you know, forcing you to read and, like, study business. But if you actually have the desire to learn, that is really gonna set you apart. And this actually goes into the next Maxim where he says, the desire of learning is scarce. Knowledge and books are abundant. You can easily look up anything on YouTube. Anything. You look up free stuff from college courses, right? You can look up all these free Kindle books or just anything, right? And it's abundant, it's overflowing. You could have a whole college degree just by going on YouTube or just by doing most of that stuff. But the thing is, it's the desire of learning that is scarce and what people mostly don't have. And it's really the curiosity, right? The curiosity to ask questions, to figure out what people are doing, to kind of put yourself out there and say, hey, I'm a curious person. I love being curious. What do you do? You know? And then also showering people with, like, you know, free information, right? If you have something that you can provide to the world, I believe that you should provide that, right? If you're a major history genius or you love studying business, I believe that you should be bringing that to people and saying, you know, if I can help you with your business, I'd love to, or I think it's totally possible. But again, it's the desire of learning that people don't have. And there's all this knowledge and books and it's all abundant, but it's the desire of learning that is scarce. And I think that is one of the key things that most people don't have when in this modern day and age, right? It's either one, go get a job, stay there for a while, or get another job that you love. It's not about, like, you should be doing what you love to do, right? Even if you have to take the pay cut, or you, you know, ultimately money will come in if you're doing a good job with that. And I think I just love that, right? The desire of learning is scarce. And again, we've already talked about this, but the next maxim is read what you love until you love to read, right? It's that whole idea of learning to love to read. And if you can't get into reading books, just listen to books. If you love listening to podcasts, listen to podcasts. If you love listening to Audible, listen to Audible books, right? They're, they're pretty cheap and easy to get to. And just like Naval said, it's pretty cheap and easy. Like, you could have a site like, you could have a main job and still be learning on the side and then start a side business and then have that overtake, leave your job and then run that business full, full time. Like, this isn't, this isn't. In our modern day and age, we can easily be doing this, but most people don't want to. And I think that's the thing where the learning is scarce. It is really easy to do a lot of things, but people just don't want to know how to do it. They don't want to learn about it. Next maxim from Naval is explain what you learn to some someone else. Teaching forces learning. This helps you when you learn new concepts. And this is just what I was saying, right? Explain what you learn to someone else. I could easily do this podcast, read a ton of books and not explain it to anyone else. And the thing is, the reason why I do it is because I, it forces me to learn, really dig deep into the book, but then it also helps me learn new concepts. It helps you guys learn new concepts, really get into the books. But then also, like, it helps me learn about what I'm teaching and how to formulate those thoughts and really go into it, right? I can teach you. Oh, this is how Naval thinks. Or, and I can easily, like, I would love to be able to go on stage, on a stage one day and be able to explain these ideas, but I can't really do that if I'm not already speaking. And the podcast really gives me that where I can really speak to you guys, but also speak to, like, I get to speak it, like, to millions of millions of people around the world if they wanted to listen. Billions of people around the world if they wanted to listen. You know, ultimately I could go speak in front of a hundred, two hundred people, but the podcast reaches millions of millions of people. And this is what I love about, I love about just my podcast. And I really love, and I really align with what Naval is saying. Where it's like teaching forces learning. This helps you when you learn new concepts, his nets, his next maxim. My tenth maxim is don't fear any book. When you're reading a book and you're confused, that confusion is similar to the pain you get in the gym when you're working out. He talks a lot about mental muscles, right? You shouldn't fear any book. You should be able to pick up a calculus book or you should pick up any book that you want, whether that's business or just anything, pick up that book. And if you're confused, that's actually good because that's like working out in the gym. Your muscles, you know, your muscles are confused in a way where. When you're lifting weights and getting in shape. But it's the same with your mind, right? Your mind is getting in shape. It's really being, becoming sharp. You're sharpening your mind. And I think that's really interesting where it's like, all right, again, don't fear any book. Scarcity learning is scarce. So key takeaways, just from what we've gone through is don't fear any book. You should be able to pick any book up that you want. You should be able to two, explain any concept in that book to anyone else. Three, you should have a desire to learn. You will outperform almost everyone else if you have that desire to learn. Because if you have that desire, that already beats like 99% of the population on Earth, I'm not joking. 99% of the population on Earth by just asking the question, why, what and how? Like, why do you do what you do? What do you do? How do you do that? Just by asking those three questions. It's all Simon Sinek, right? Start with why. You always start with the why question for building your business, but also asking other people things. By asking those three questions, you will be put ahead of everyone else. And again, Naval talks about. This is. This is my 11th maxim from Naval. If you are a professional learning machine, you will never be out of options for how to make money. I'm not joking. I feel like Naval is preaching right now. I'm. I'm not joking. He says that if you are a perpetual learning machine, you will never be out of options for how to make money or just ways of making money, right? If you learn from, like, rich dad, poor dad, there's ways of making money just by, like, renting out books or having a library or real estate or business or having an online business or just having an online personal brand that makes Money. The crazy thing is that this is one of the most amazing and easy. Like you can pick up this book for I think 16, $15. And ultimately it's giving you ideas worth billions, millions, you know, at minimum, probably, I don't know, billions. These are billion dollar ideas in a $15 book. Charlie Munger talks about this where it's like you could go pick up a $30 history book and there could be ideas worth billions in that history book that people have not capitalized on yet. So I think if you really take this in and become that perpetual learning machine, you really fight against the, the curve of people that you know, don't want to learn and you become that perpetual learning machine, then you are one of those rare contrarian optimistic breeds. My last maxim from naval is when solving problems, the older the problem, the older the solution. This goes back to, as this one guy once put it, you know, when you look back at a history book or you look back at something in time, normally when you, when you see a problem arise, it's already been solved. But the thing is, we forget that in time. And so most likely the thing that you're going through has already been a problem for someone else that they've already solved. And so the problems that you're going through have most likely been solved if you know where to look for it. And so again, he says when solving problems, the older the problem, the older the solution. Now he says on like modern things, like a plane, we didn't have a plane like 300 years ago, so it's not going to be that old. But he says that when you're looking at, you know, problems you want to look at. All right, if is, if it's a per, like a people problem like HR or something, right? In business, if it's a people problem, have people already dealt with this in the past like a thousand years ago or 100 years ago or 500 years ago? Like, what did that look like back then and how did they deal with it? And how would that look like in my circumstance? So ultimately, this book so far is amazing. I would definitely recommend it for anyone that is a perpetual learner and wants to become that scarce, rare breed of just people, right? You will be, I believe, if you read this book and you really take away those ideas, you will be in that 1%, that top 1% or even top point 0001% of the whole world. I mean, that, that's a really small number. I mean, 1% of 8 billion is like, I don't know 8 million or 800 million. I don't know what it is, but it's pretty crazy when you think about it. So again, the whole idea, or 80 million, the whole idea behind this is especially my podcast, is to enforce the perpetual learning. And that's what I really want people to take away when they're learning from this. And again, this is a great book. I don't agree with Naval and everything, but I think what he's saying in this literally I cannot say better. So thank you for listening to this. And I also want to mention that I do have a sponsor. Another sponsor, unofficial sponsor for this podcast, is the Life Network. The Life Network is this free app that you can use. It will also be in the link below. It's a free app that you can use to optimize your health and life. So business is great, right? All this is great. But if you cannot keep together your family or if you're, you know, if you're feeling lonely and you really want to optimize your health. This features people like Gary breca, Ben Greenfield, Dr. Amy Hornman, and they are some experts on this platform. It's a social media type FL platform with a great community. You can sign up for free right now and you can get the app actually on your phone, on Google or the Apple App Store. And I really recommend go getting it because it is one of the best and only apps out there that has this. And so it's a great, great, great platform. I really love it and really will help you alongside this journey of excellence. Right, because you'll be making all this money, you'll be successful, but ultimately, if you can't take care of your health or take care of your family or have that community, then you won't be able to succeed in life, in your personal life. So I really go recommend checking that out. And thank you again so much for listening to this podcast. Please go share it with others if you loved it and really want to change other people's lives. Again, thank you for listening to this. I'm honored that you would spend your time listening to this. And I cannot wait for our next episode on Naval. And I'm actually going to be doing an AMA episode where you can ask me anything. So if you have any questions, drop it down in the link below or wherever your podcast player is, just in the question box or go and send me an email. And again, thank you so much for listening to this and I'll talk to you again soon.