How everyone can be wealthy if they choose and are you tattoo worthy?
We're two weeks away from the election. If you are like me, you hope to breathe a collective sigh of relief when it's over. I am sure we all know the cacophony of political noise and fear mongering won't vaporize. It'll morph into a new phase. It's probably safe to say we're all tired of 2020. Yet there is no finish line as Nike encouraged us with sport.
Which is why, to do your best work, you need to manage news consumption. Remember that fear sells. Happy doesn't.
To help keep you focused on what you can control, this week I cover keys to wealth as eloquently outlined by Naval Ravikant, founder of Angellist. He's someone who's legitimately achieved this goal. He willingly teaches others for free in a three-hour podcast based on a tweet storm he wrote awhile back. You can listen or read the transcript.
All of us can be wealthy
Here's a summary of what I found to be his most valuable points. None of this is rocket science. It's practical. Much of it is obvious. What I liked most was how all the concepts were woven together.
Wealth is not only about money. Money is important, but it's not the full story. Achieving wealth means the achieving the freedom to get up when you want, work on what you want and when you want. It is very hard to get wealthy solely with a traditional job. You need to own equity in something that produces while you sleep. If you don't, then you are limited by what you can rent your time out for. Time is finite. Unless you are in a career where you aren't easily replaceable and what you produce is worth much more than what you put into it. Think software engineer as an example. Most jobs are unfortunately replaceable.
It's hard to get wealthy by sitting around waiting.
Time is both your friend and enemy. Lazy people don't get wealthy. The younger you are, the easier it is to build wealth through the compounding of money. I missed part of the boat in my youth but it doesn't mean I can't. Or you can't. You have to do the work of building and creating wealth. Remember how to get great by being good? That's part of the 'secret'. You have to want to do this too. It has to be a priority in your life so that you design how you live and how you consume to maximize savings and growth. Sounds like obvious, common sense but that's exactly why it can elude us.
Like time slipping away before our eyes. Our brains are designed to reward the present and delay the future. Thus, we need to create habits that are long term. Always look at what you do today with a long term perspective. How will that shape your life in one year or three years? If you only plan for today, then you need to do the same for tomorrow and you'll never get to financial freedom. You'll wear out your hamster wheel. And that's the wrong wheel to work on. Go back to building your flywheel. While the hamster wheel stops when you stop, the flywheel doesn't. Once it gets going, it's hard to stop.
Besides making decisions with a long-term perspective, you should surround yourself with long term people. Those who have integrity and smarts. Those looking to make a quick buck will sacrifice you for their own gain. Avoid those people. You become who you spend time with.
A way to create equity is to productize your time. Build something that increases with value that someone will pay for. And that you can pass on or sell.
I now help start up businesses with their marketing as a coach and consultant. It will be hard for me - as long as it's just me - to build true wealth unless I create a product with my expertise. While I have more flexibility in how I price the value I offer, I'm ultimately limited. This is not a bad thing. It's an observation of reality. I enjoy what I do. You'll see later this fall a brand I'm building to address this side of the equation.
Therefore you need intellectual property:
"Give society what it wants, but doesn't know how to get at scale" - Naval Ravikant.
The ways to productize time are often in the form of systems and education content that people pay for. To do this well, you need specific knowledge that is hard to copy. Specific knowledge you've acquired and tested over your career that a market values. This is the knowledge that only you possess because you are curious and passionate.
Think about what areas in your life that you consider play but others consider work? That's where to look. Think of the type of knowledge that can only be acquired through years of practice.
Those later in their career can do an assessment of what possibilities they have to productize their knowledge. Those just starting out can keep this framework in mind as they pursue what excites them the most.
You have to be motivated to build this asset. There's always someone likely willing to work harder than you and they'll reap the rewards instead.
Quality content is hard. It takes time. The tools to share and market it are plentiful and often free. Yet all this software is equity that someone owns because they saw a market need and solved it.
Since there's so much information available on the internet for free, think about what's better than that. Kevin Kelly's piece on the 8 things that are better than free is worth a bookmark. The one I want to highlight is findability. If you can help people find the answers to their problems faster, or what show to watch, that's worth paying for. Because anyone can publish anything for free, you need to sort through a lot of crap to find the good stuff. And you need to develop the skills to identify what's good and true and what's not. That's not always easy. Or fast.
To sell your knowledge, you need credibility. You earn that by being accountable. I'll go back to a saying from a former COO: "Say/Do". What's your ratio of what you say you're going to do and what you actually do. Be the doer. Be the one people can count on. It becomes part of your brand. It becomes part of your inherent value.
Credibility and trust can't be easily copied. But it can be easily lost. Accountability means you have something at stake. You're taking a risk that maybe others don't want to take. That can be valuable. Just try to avoid betting the farm.
You need leverage.
There are three kinds: labor, capital and product and media. The first are limited in terms of who holds them. You can tap into product and media leverage. Tools exist to produce and launch products easier than ever. No longer do you need the huge factories and armies of people. A single person with an idea can turn that into a product.
The internet allows anyone to be a media company. Everyone has permission to create. Most choose not to. Or most flit from thing to thing because they lack focus and purpose. While such people keep busy creating and trying many ideas in many industries, they won't build real wealth because such work doesn't compound. Stick to your natural superpowers and go deep.
Different business models have different levels of leverage. The perfect model is one with a network effect in that the more people who use it the more valuable it gets and the harder it is to switch. Think Google and Facebook as two obvious examples. You how people say, "everyone else is using it so we should too"? That's a great place to play. And it's hard, too.
Finally, get good at judgment.
This takes experience. An ability to remain cool as a cucumber under pressure. It's hard. You can read yourself to good judgment. You have to practice it. Understand when you've succeeded and when you fail. When your judgment ratio of successes exceeds your failures, you build credibility. People will look to you for answers. That's where specific knowledge can be infinitely useful in your domain of expertise. Think about the people that you look to for answers. Why is that? Because they have a good sense of what might work? That's someone who's trusted for their judgment. Since we humans are notoriously bad decision makers with our cognitive biases and emotions clouding our judgment, this is valuable.
There's so much more in the three hours by Naval. Listen to this and you'll likely never need another wealth building course again.
The upside, is most all of us have the ability to get wealthy. The downside is that there is no magic pill we can take to get there. There's no substitute for the work. It's now time for a healthy dose of Steven Pressfield.
Are you Tattoo worthy?
One of the best ways to create enduring value, which translates into wealth, is by building a brand that is tattoo worthy. That is, a brand people are so fanatical about that they'll get it tattooed on their body. The obvious brand is Harley Davidson. People do get tattoos.
I would say because it's a product that is all about freedom and rebellion. But yet, few may have Suzuki tattooed on them. Or Honda. Harley Davidson stands for something people aspire to. The rebel. You can argue that many brands deliver wealth but don't inspire tattoos. And you're right.
While we're talking transport, Toyota is amazingly successful yet I'm not sure many Prius drivers are rushing out for a tattoo. What about personal brands? How can someone build a personal brand that's so revered it earns a tattoo?
The takeaway, is are you building a brand that sets the bar for your niche? This is a high bar. It's worth pursuing because whether you're an employee or entrepreneur, it's how you can make yourself indispensable. Hard to replace. Hard to quit. Spend some time musing over what you can do. Where are the gaps? The opportunities?
Where can you be so relevant, so authentic, that your competition becomes irrelevant? Where can you create such wow and delight that while they might not get your name tattooed, they'd miss you if you were gone?
From Fear to Love.
In his book Together which is about loneliness and the power of human connection, Vivek Murthy talks about the need to move the world from fear to love. Given the perpetual news cycle in this most trying of years, I want to leave you with Life is Wonderful from Jason Mraz. It's sure to turn the surliest mood upside down.