This Simple Idea Will Make You Rich
Productize Yourself
I became a full-time creator last year because of a simple idea that not a lot of people know about. I read about it in the book of Naval Ravikant.
In case you don’t know Naval, you can think of him as the business Buddha.
He has a great perspective on both business and life.
In this newsletter, I’ll share the 4-part framework I learned from him that helped me to become a full-time creator. If you use this idea, you will be able to get rich online.
But before I share it, let’s briefly talk about the biggest misconception people have about wealth and getting rich.
Wealth ≠ Money
Money itself isn’t wealth. This sounds strange, but let me explain what I mean.
Money is how we transfer wealth.
It’s the credits you get for providing value to society.
You did something good in the past so society rewards you with credits you can use in the future.
That’s what money is.
Most people earn it by selling their time.
But you won’t get rich by renting out your time.
No matter how much you make per hour, your income is still capped because you have a limited amount of time.
That’s why we need to find a way to disconnect your time from your income.
That’s how you build wealth.
Wealth is having assets that earn for you.
This allows you to earn with your mind, not your time.
And this is where the 4-part framework comes into play.
It contains 4 parts:
Leverage
Judgment
Accountability
Specific knowledge
Naval summarizes it as ‘Productize Yourself’.
It will allow you to disconnect your time from your income so that you can earn with your mind, not your time.
So let’s break it down so you can get complete freedom and control over your time.
1. Specific Knowledge
When Warren Buffett was young he admired Benjamin Graham, the author of the book The Intelligent Investor.
After Buffett graduated, he wanted to learn from Graham, so he offered to work for free. Graham’s response was “you’re overpriced”.
This sounds weird. But both Buffett and Graham understood the value of an internship.
Buffett may not have gotten any money, but he would’ve gotten something much more valuable: specific knowledge.
This is knowledge that you can’t be trained for, but it can be learned.
It is at the edge of knowledge and it’s found through observation and experience.
In the case of Buffett, it were things like the investing strategies and decision-making process of Graham.
Specific knowledge is something that society wants but doesn’t know how to get.
That’s why you can’t be trained for it.
If it were easy to teach, it wouldn’t be 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. When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools. It cannot be outsourced or automated.
– Naval
You get rich by giving specific knowledge to society at scale.
Specific knowledge is found by pursuing:
Your talents
You passions
Your curiosity
You find it by doing what you naturally love to do.
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. It’s found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.
– Naval
Double down on your unique strengths.
This gives you the best chance to get specific knowledge.
When you have this knowledge, you need the next part of the framework: leverage.
2. Leverage
If I would ask you to open this door with one finger, where would you push?
Unless you have superhuman strength, you would push at number 2.
The reason for this is that it gives you leverage.
Leverage is about getting a bigger outcome from the same input.
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.
– Archimedes
Levers are force multipliers.
It helps you to get more without doing more.
This is how some people can accomplish 10x, 100x, or 1,000,000x what others can.
Take Joe Rogan for an example. His first podcast didn’t make him any money. It may even have costed him money. But his latest podcast made him millions. Even though both podcasts probably took about the same amount of time to create. His leverage (audience) helped him get a much better outcome from the same actions.
There are 4 types of leverage:
People (people that work for you)
Money (money that works for you)
Content (articles, podcasts, books)
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.
You simply need to learn to write, build and sell.
Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
– Naval
And this is also how it works for making money.
You need leverage to disconnect your time from your income.
As a creator, writing is the most important skill.
It’s the foundation of all content.
Books
Videos
Tweets
Articles
Images
Threads
Podcasts
Carousels
Newsletters
And it’s also the foundation of selling:
VSL’s
DM scripts
Sales pages
Sales emails
Sales calls scripts
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 learn how to write world-class content that grows your audience and gets you more customers, check out Aesthetic Writing.
But leverage and specific knowledge aren’t enough yet, you need two more things.
3. Take Accountability
Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.
– Naval
Accountability is about taking risks under your own name.
It gives you skin in the game.
Accountability is a double-edged sword.
If you fail under you own name, you get the critique.
But if you win under your own name, you get the credits.
However, it’s alright 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, you’ll eventually get rewarded.
There’s one more thing you need though, and according to Naval, it’s the most valuable skill in the world.
4. Judgment
In an age of infinite leverage, judgment becomes the most important skill.
Warren Buffett is so wealthy now because of his judgment. Even if you were to take away all of Warren’s money, tomorrow, investors would come out of the woodwork and hand him a $100 billion because they know his judgment is so good, and they would give him a big chunk of that $100 billion to invest.
– Naval
Once you have leverage, judgment becomes the most important.
So what is judgment actually?
Naval calls it wisdom applied to external problems.
In simpler terms, it’s about knowing the long-term consequences of your actions and acting accordingly.
Most people worry about how fast they go. But your direction is much more important. Your judgment helps you to do this.
Leverage is about how hard you can push.
Judgment is about where you push.
If you combine a lot of leverage with great judgment, you’ll be unstoppable.
Here are some ways to improve your judgment:
Keep your life simple
Collect mental models
Design your diet and info diet
Control your interpretations of events
Focus on the long-term consequences
Prioritize understanding, not memorization
Make hard decisions instead of easy decisions
Focus on first-principles, always question everything else
Control your emotions, a calm mind makes better decisions
This should improve your judgment. Which will drastically improve your outcomes.
Judgment is an amplifier of everything we talked about so far.
In an age of nearly unlimited leverage, judgment is the most important skill.
It amplifies every decision you make and this compounds over time.
So in short, this model shows you how to productize yourself.
“Productize” and “yourself.”
“Productize” has leverage.
“Yourself ” has judgment and accountability.
Both have specific knowledge.
This simple idea will help you to get rich.
So use it to productize yourself so you can control your time and earn with your mind.
That’s it for this newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did, please like, restack, share, and subscribe to my free newsletter for more.
This helps me (so I can spend more time to help you).
Thanks for your support!
Stijn Noorman
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Thanks for the read! For someone who is looking to start monetizing on Substack, what do you recommend?
A great listen