Earn With Your Mind, Not With Your Time (Naval)

You won't get wealthy, renting out your time...

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• The Rate of Return is Always Smallest When You Follow the Crowd

• Not Ready? Do It Anyway!

• They Don’t Teach You THIS In School

This is a much deeper topic than the title implies, which is essentially a quote from one of my favorite multidisciplinary thinkers, Naval.

First, if you haven’t read the book, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth & Happiness, I highly suggest you do so.

Second, let me introduce to you two concepts that Naval shared on his blog titled, “How to Get Rich”, which by the way, should not trigger you given that money is sometimes a sensitive topic, but more importantly an energy that can be used for good.

I must also note, this isn’t about getting rich to solve all your problems… that’s an inside job. This is about understanding how wealth, abundance and happiness works at the sovereign (or individual) level.

As for the two concepts?

1. Wealth is about freedom, not consuming more.

2. Our relationship with time is powerfully important. We are either a slave to it or it works for us.

From Naval: on wealth as a form of freedom

You want wealth because it buys you freedom—so you don’t have to wear a tie like a collar around your neck; so you don’t have to wake up at 7:00 a.m. to rush to work and sit in commute traffic; so you don’t have to waste your life grinding productive hours away into a soulless job that doesn’t fulfill you.

The purpose of wealth is freedom; it’s nothing more than that. It’s not to buy fur coats, or to drive Ferraris, or to sail yachts, or to jet around the world in a Gulf Stream. That stuff gets really boring and stupid, really fast. It’s about being your own sovereign individual.

From Naval: on ‘renting out your time’

This is probably one of the most absolute important points. People seem to think that you can create wealth and make money through work. And it’s probably not going to work. There are many reasons for that.

But the most basic is that your inputs are very closely tied to your outputs. In almost any salaried job, even at one that’s paying a lot per hour like a lawyer, or a doctor, you’re still putting in the hours, and every hour you get paid.

So, what that means is when you’re sleeping, you’re not earning. When you’re retired, you’re not earning. When you’re on vacation, you’re not earning. And you can’t earn non-linearly….

…renting out your time means you’re essentially replaceable

Why is this an important topic, and probably part of a much larger conversation to which I will probably podcast about it?

Well, because when you switch the words “wealth creation” with “life creation”, you begin to understand that this is all about the relationship we have with ourselves… our sovereign selves.

a.) if we become more self-reliant, it will put us more at an advantage for the moments we cannot see coming… and they do come.

b.) if we value time, then we respect ourselves more and everyone else around us. Respect for ourselves and others is also how we make better choices, which includes how we position ourselves, how we become more irreplaceable and how we use our time.

c.) if we take a moment we’ll see that our minds can solve complex problems with simple solutions, which can in turn be automated and replicated with technology. This will not only give us the ability to contribute to society, but earn vast amounts from doing so.

d.) if we understand humans to be humans, and that they’ll inherently do what is best for them at any given moment, we will not be a "victim” of their decisions, but independent of them.

With this being said, I thought I would incorporate more of Naval’s blog post into this week’s letter.

Read this week’s Simplify, Multiply, Diversify below…👇🏼

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SIMPLIFY…

Live below your means for freedom. People busy upgrading their lifestyles just can’t fathom this freedom. - Naval

Interpretation (by Naval)

People who are living far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles just can’t fathom.

And I think that’s very important, to not just upgrade your lifestyle all the time…to maintain your freedom. And it just gives you freedom of operation. You basically, once you make a little bit of money, still want to be living like your old self, so that just the worry goes away. So, don’t run out to upgrade that house, and lifestyle, and all that stuff.

Take care of your basic needs so you know you’ve got less to worry about. Then you can focus even more time on creating, building and compounding.

Simplify your lifestyle, maximize your freedom.

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MULTIPLY…

Give society what it doesn’t know how to get. Society will pay you for creating what it wants and delivering it at scale. - Naval

Interpretation (by Naval)

And if you want to be wealthy… figure out which one of those things you can provide for society that does not yet know how to get but innately needs it… and that what you provide is natural to you within your skillset and within your capabilities.

And then you have to figure out how to scale it. Because if you just build one of it, that’s not enough. You’ve got to build thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions, or billions of them. So, everybody can have one…

…First it starts as an act of creativity. First you create it just because you want it, you know how to build it and you need it. And so you build it for yourself. Then you figure out how to get it to other people.

As someone who’s been building for a long time (20+ years), I can accurately tell you that the best ideas don’t do everything and aren’t usually sexy, but solve a very simple need that’s easy to understand and implement.

When I created my boutique growth marketing agency, we solely focused on creating minimalistic systems for sales and marketing automation. Why?

1. Because people hate doing it

2. We love doing it

3. Every entrepreneur in the age of digital needs it

4. Automation for us and automation for others generates more abundant wealth across the spectrum

5. It “un-complicates” their business and reduces their overwhelm

6. It’s something they need ongoing for their own freedom as well

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DIVERSIFY…

Product and media are new leverage. Create software and media that works for you while you sleep. - Naval

Interpretation (by Naval)

Products and media leverage are permissionless.

Probably the most interesting thing to keep in mind about the new forms of leverage is they are permissionless. They don’t require somebody else’s permission for you to use them or succeed.

For labor leverage, somebody has to decide to follow you. For capital leverage, somebody has to give you money to invest or to turn into a product.

Coding, writing books, recording podcasts, tweeting, YouTubing, these kinds of things are permissionless. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do them, and that’s why they are very egalitarian. They’re great equalizers of leverage.

I have stated since 2014 that leverage and wealth would come from media, building your own distribution online and finding a way to help the masses without giving away more of one’s time… It is now 2021 and it couldn’t be closer to the truth.

We’ve never had more power to diversify how we do things than right now.

Productization, coding and media bring us an insane amount of leverage… which in turn brings us more time, energy and money to do what we really want to do… which ultimately brings us back to the main objective… creating our individual sovereignty (freedom).

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