How to get rich (without getting lucky)
Naval's 10 best ideas
Naval Ravikant taught me more about wealth and life than almost anyone.
He wrote a famous Twitter thread called “How to Get Rich” and thousands of creators used those ideas to build digital freedom.
I’m one of them.
So in this newsletter, I’ll share Naval’s 10 best ideas on getting rich (without luck).
1. Play Compounding Games
All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
– Naval
Most people play short-term games. They chase shiny objects and measure progress in days instead of decades. But real growth takes times. Compounding only works over time. At the start, it’s slow. But it gets increasingly better.
The key is to pick a game worth playing long-term. This is how you reap the benefits of compounding. Choose an industry you love, a craft you want to master, and people you want to grow with.
Pick an industry where you can play long-term games with long-term people.
– Naval
Every time you change your direction, you interrupt the compounding. So it’s best to pick a game that you want to keep playing. You can still change if you have to, but it’s best not to interrupt the compounding process. So get clear on what game you want to play and who you want to play it with. Then play and let compounding do its job.
2. Specific Knowledge
Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you. It’s often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.
– Naval
You need specific knowledge to get rich. Specific knowledge is something that society wants but doesn’t know how to get. That’s why you can’t be trained for it yet. If you could easily be trained for it, it wouldn’t be specific knowledge. You get rich by giving specific knowledge to society on scale.
Specific knowledge is found by pursuing:
Your talents
You passions
Your curiosity
You find it by doing what you naturally love to do.
Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.
– Naval
Observe what you spend your time on and what you’re naturally good at. It will feel effortless to you but it will look effortful to others.
To develop specific knowledge:
Analyze your skills
Combine your skills
Follow your curiosity
Observe your actions
Double down on your strengths
Once you have specific knowledge you can sell it on scale.
Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.
– Naval
Double down on your unique strengths. This gives you the best chance to get specific knowledge.
3. Build Leverage
To sell on scale, you need leverage. Leverage is about getting a bigger outcome from the same input. It’s a force multiplier.
Leverage helps you to get more without doing more. It’s how some people can accomplish 10x, 100x, or 1,000,000x what others can.
“Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.
– Archimedes
There are 4 types of leverage:
People (people that work for you)
Money (money that works for you)
Content (media that works for you)
Code (software that works for you)
Code and content are best because they’re permissionless.
You don’t need others for it.
So how do you build leverage? Create things that scale.
If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.
– Naval
I can’t code. So let me explain how you can build leverage with content:
Pick a niche
Solve problems
Post daily content
Give a lot of free value
Create a valuable lead magnet
Turn your knowledge into products
Build up your email list to sell on scale
There’s more to it, but this is basically the 80/20 of it.
If you’re unsure where to start, find your Ikigai.
It’s your “reason for being”. It’s why you exist (your purpose).
I created a new version specifically for creators: The Brand Ikigai
It’s your “reason for brand”. It’s why your brand exists (its purpose).
Here’s how to find both:
It’s also important to get better at writing because writing is the foundation of all content.
Books
Notes
Videos
Tweets
Articles
Images
Threads
Podcasts
Carousels
Newsletters
The better you can write, the more leverage you’ll build. And the more leverage you build, the bigger your outcomes will be. If you want to master digital writing, check out Aesthetic Writing.
But writing and leverage aren’t enough, you also need good judgment.
4. Judgment
Once you have leverage, judgment becomes the most important. So what is judgment actually? Naval calls it wisdom applied to external problems. It’s about knowing the long-term consequences of your actions and acting accordingly.
Judgment is making decisions. Leverage magnifies the consequences of those decisions. In an age of infinite leverage, judgment becomes the most important skill.
– Naval
Most people worry about how fast they go. But your direction is much more important.
Judgment is about getting the direction right. It’s deciding where to push.
Leverage is about how hard you can push.
Here are some ways to improve your judgment:
Keep your life simple
Collect mental models
Control your interpretations of events
Focus on the long-term consequences
Prioritize understanding, not memorization
Make hard decisions instead of easy decisions
Focus on the first-principle, always question everything
Control your emotions, a calm mind makes better decisions
This should improve your judgment. Which will drastically improve your outcomes.
5. Take Accountability
Accountability is about taking risks under your own name. It gives you skin in the game. And it’s how you build up your reputation. This is what you do when you build a personal brand on social media.
Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.
– Naval
The biggest personal brands constantly take risks under their own name. Elon, Trump, Kanye, Oprah, etc. Accountability is a double-edged sword. If you fail under your own name, you get the critique. But if you win under your own name, you get the credits.
That’s why most people are afraid of this. But this is also why it’s a great opportunity. It’s ok if you fail as long as you try your best and act with high integrity. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about trying your best and acting with high integrity. When you do this, people will forgive your failures, and you’ll eventually get rewarded when you win.
6. Find Work That Feels Like Play
The goal is not to retire. It’s to find work that feels like play to you but looks like work to others.
– Naval
The secret to consistency is alignment. When your work feels like play, you can keep going forever. As a kid, I could play pokémon on my gameboy for hours. It felt like play to me. It was effortless. The goal is to find work that feels like this as well.
You want to find work that looks like work to others but feels like play to you. It will look effortful to others. But it will feel effortless to you. This is the type of work you can do forever.
Think of the activity that you like to do the most. Maybe it’s a sport. Maybe it’s gaming. Maybe it’s writing. Whatever it is, it’s effortless to you. You don’t need a vacation from it. You could do it forever. This is what works should also feel like. And when it does, it stops being work and it starts being play.
Most people chase motivation. But the best creators chase alignment. When you’re aligned, you do what you actually want to do. When you do what you actually want to do, the work energizes you. The barrier between work and play fades. Works stops being work and starts feeling like play. This is the ultimate unfair advantage.
Do what energizes you. Build around your natural curiosities.
That’s how you stay consistent long enough to win.
7. Authentic Creation
Escape competition through authenticity.
– Naval
Competition is an illusion. We all have our own unique strengths and weaknesses. So it’s impossible to make a fair comparison. The only fair comparison is with yourself.
So compete with yourself. Outperform your past self. Optimize your current self. And compete with your potential self. Funny enough, this is how you maximize your chances of beating others as well. It’s useless to try to beat them. But it’s useful to try to beat your past self. And when you do, you’ll start to beat most others as well.
Authenticity is the only way to win. Especially with AI. Nobody is like you. So nobody can compete with you at being you. They will only become a watered-down version of you. Just like when you try to become more like someone else.
You don’t need to become the best in the world at everything. You need to become the become version of your authentic self. When you’re doing what you love to do in a way that’s true to who you are, you stop competing and start creating.
If you do what you authentically want to do, you also won’t be jealous of others. Because you’re already doing what you are meant to do. So you don’t want to change a thing. You won’t get distracted by shiny objects. You’ll do what actually matters.
Stop competing with others. Start optimizing yourself.
Nobody can compete with you at being you.
8. Develop The Right Skillset
Outcomes come from inputs. Inputs are your daily actions. If you do the right actions well for long enough, you’ll get what you want. So you need clarity, skill, and consistency.
If getting rich is the outcome you want, you need the right inputs for that. Getting a business degree won’t help you with that. You need the right skillset instead.
There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes. Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.
The ultimate foundations are reading, writing, arithmetic, and persuasion (talking).
Then add computer programming — it’s the closest thing we have to magic.– Naval
According to Naval, five skills matter most:
Writing
Reading
Arithmetic
Persuasion (talking)
Computer programming
These are the high leverage skills. They compound across every field, scale with technology, and never go out of style. If you master these skills, you will get rich.
9. Pick The Right Business Partners
Relationships can either ruin or change your life. Both in real life and business.
That’s why it’s important that you select the right people.
Naval looks at three things to determine if someone is the right fit:
Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and, above all, integrity.
– Naval
You need all three for a successful business relationship.
If any of these things is lacking, it won’t work.
Low energy → laziness
Low integrity → betrayal
Low intelligence → incompetence
Find people with high energy, integrity, and intelligence.
They make the best business (and life) partners.
10. Stay Off The Hedonic Treadmill
People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom.
– Naval
Most people never enjoy freedom because they upgrade their lifestyle as their income increases. This is something I never understood.
To me, freedom is the most valuable thing that money can buy. It doesn’t matter how expensive your watch is if you don’t control your time. And it doesn’t matter how expensive your car is if you have to drive it to a job you hate.
The goal of money isn’t to buy stuff. It’s to not have people buy your time.
That’s why it’s important to live below your means. You can still get nice stuff. But prioritize freedom first. When you’re free, you can get the nice stuff while still keeping full control over your time.
It’s not about living like a monk (unless you want to) but it’s about priorititizing what matters. Because you don’t want money. Money is just a tool. You want the most valuable thing that money can give you. Which is freedom.
Freedom to control your time
Freedom to control your work
Freedom to control your lifestyle
Freedom to control your location
Freedom to control your schedule
Ensure that your life feels good internally first.
Then worry about how it looks externally.
Focus on what matters.
In Short:
Naval summarizes how to get rich with ‘productize yourself’.
Productize has specific knowledge and leverage. Yourself has uniqueness and accountability. Yourself also has specific knowledge. So you can combine all of these pieces into these two words.
– Naval
It contains the 4 most important parts to get rich: specific knowledge, leverage,, accountability, and judgment.
People can’t compete with you if:
You learn how to write great content
In Naval’s words:
Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
– Naval
In short, here’s how to get rich (without getting lucky):
Build leverage
Improve your judgment
Develop the right skillset
Attain specific knowledge
Play compounding games
Find work that feels like play
Stay off the hedonic treadmill
Pick the right business partners
Take risks under your own name
Escape competition by being authentic
That’s it for this newsletter. Let me know your thoughts below.
Talk to you in the next one!
Stijn
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Naval's insights are a game-changer for anyone looking to create wealth without relying on luck. He's right that building wealth is more of a marathon than a sprint. It’s all about playing the long game and nurturing our unique skills, which can feel daunting at times, but that's where our success lies.
Naval Ravikant is one of my biggest inspirations! His advice is always so simple and to the point. Thank you for conveying his ideas in a nice format, I will be referring to this piece when I start mapping out my gameplan for January and beyond 🙌