MBA2315 Must Read: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, powerful business insights on a silver platter. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenhom. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is a must-read episode. On our must-read episodes, I share with you a book that I've read that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights, and why you should read it too. Today's must-read is The Almanac of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgensen. If you're not familiar with Naval, he's very popular on Twitter and has a very popular podcast.

0:41and it's because of his insightful way of looking at business and life. He's a co-founder and chairman of AngelList. He's invested in over 200 companies, probably many of them you've heard of before, like Twitter and Wish.com, Notion, and more. And in this book, The Almanac of Naval Ravikant, it gathers all the insights that he's shared along the way on how to create wealth and be happy. In my opinion, this book is one of those books you just have to read. This is why it's a must-read. It's going to rewire your mindset, the way you think about money, wealth, and happiness in life. I'm going to share with you why.

1:15Why does Naval do this in this book? Why does his concepts, his thoughts, his insights make such an impact on you when you read it? I'll share with you some of my favorite takeaways, some of my favorite thoughts, and why you should pick it up and read it immediately. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. This episode of the$100 MBA show is brought to you by This Is Small Business, an original podcast from Amazon. It's all about what it takes to be a successful small business owner today. I've been listening to the show and what I love about it is that it's so practical. The show explores the journey to success for small business owners.

1:49It dives deep into pivotal moments they had to face along the journey. You'll learn about topics like how to attract investors, how to manufacture your own product, and the pros and cons of business partnership. Season two of This Is Small Business is out now, So go ahead and listen to This Is Small Business wherever you get your podcasts. Again, right after this show, search This Is Small Business on your favorite podcast app and subscribe and listen. A little bit about this book, The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. This is a collection of different insights, different tweets, different things that Naval has shared along the way over the years.

2:29Some bits are from his Twitter feed and Twitter storms that he has published. Some bits are from his podcast. Some bits are from interviews. And it's kind of collected in one volume. This is why the book is so great. I'm a big fan of it also. I've listened to everything. I've read everything. So even though a lot of the stuff is not new to me, I still love the book. It's all in one place. I'd also recommend buying this book in physical form. I have it on Kindle, but I'm ordering it on physical form because when I read it in Kindle, it's not easy just to flip through chapters and easily just grab a piece or insight or look for something that you read before.

3:04So I'm getting the actual physical copy because I want it in front of me on my coffee table so I can pick it up and wherever I want an insight or two. So what is this book all about? Well, it's mostly about how to become wealthy and not in an infomarkety way. It's not a hype or cheesy. He actually talks about wealth as a concept, where wealth comes from in the first place and how do you create wealth? And that wealth is more than just cash in the bank. It's more than just money. Wealth is more about ownership of time and leverage. Naval says, seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn you money while you sleep.

3:43One of the early concepts that he shares is that you'll never get wealthy by trading your time for money. Even the most successful doctors in the world, lawyers in the world, highly paid professions, they're never going to get really wealthy or be independent or be financially free because they always have to do the work, meaning they have to trade their time to earn their money. There's obviously exceptions here, but generally you're not gonna be rich by just having a job. You need leverage and he lists all kinds of leverage. There's leverage of labor, meaning that you have other people doing work for you to produce a product that can earn you money even if you're not involved.

4:22He talks about leverage of money or finance. This is like an investor, somebody who invests money and the money makes money. It talks about you need leverage of computers or technology. This is like code. You create a piece of software. You can sell that software over and over, and it's doing its job for you while you sleep. That's how people get wealthy. If you look at the richest people in the world, this is what they've done. And the ones that are really successful are the ones that combine them all in one. One of the other leverage points is the leverage of media. And today with the internet, you can create one piece of content and it gets spread across the world like a podcast like this one.

5:01So if you look at, let's say, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, he leverages all these things. He leverages labor with people in the factories creating cars for Tesla. He's ever leveraged technology. All his companies are technology companies, whether it's Tesla or SpaceX or SolarCity or PayPal back in the day or X.com. And now being the owner of Twitter and being prolific on Twitter, he leverages media. So you can get wealthy by just leveraging one of these, but you become more likely and more wealthy by leveraging a multitude of these things. This is why some companies like ProfitWell that just recently sold for$200 million had such a high valuation.

5:40It's because they've leveraged the technology of software and computers, but they also were a media company. They were producing a crazy amount of shows on YouTube and podcasts and really leveraging their brand through media. This is a bootstrapped, self-funded company, but they understood the power of leverage. This is a concept that's very strong in the book, how to use these forms of leverage to help increase your chances and your velocity to become wealthy. One of the other concepts he drives home in this book is don't play status games. Status games are zero-sum games. There will only be one winner or there's a ranking of winners.

6:18Politics is a classic status game. There only can be one president or vice president or a certain number of congressmen or women. The point here is that there's a limit to how many people can be successful. You don't play those games. You want to play games where you can win and it doesn't matter if somebody else is successful, they can win too. Wealth is a positive sum game. The more wealthy you become, the more likely other people can be wealthy because you can invest in their progression. Status, on the other hand, is a zero sum game. It's a very old game. We've been playing it since the beginning of time, and it doesn't really work in our favor because we're always trying to find out who's number one, who's number two, who's number three.

6:57So don't play zero-sum games. Play non-zero-sum games. And that leads to a lot of people thinking, well, what about competition? There's only a certain amount of money or wealth out there. We all have to go get it. And Naval debunks this idea by proving the point that we're all a lot more wealthy no matter where we are in the world. Even if we're on minimum wage, we are wealthier than somebody who's living 300 years ago, where they didn't have all the amenities or all the knowledge on their fingertips or healthcare or vaccines. And that leads to the next point about what about competition? Isn't there a certain amount of money that we all have to go and grab?

7:32Well, Naval debunks this. He says that no, wealth is infinite. And to prove this point, wealth increases over time, meaning if you look at 300 years ago, we're all living a lot better than even the kings and queens 300, 400, 500 years ago. We live longer. We have all the world's information in our pocket. We live in safer environments. We're not threatened by death every five seconds. We live in cleaner spaces. Even if you're on minimum wage, your quality of life is a whole lot wealthier than somebody living 500 years ago who was considered wealthy, like a king. That means wealth begets wealth.

8:08It means that wealth grows. That means there's no finite amount of dollars in the world. we make more wealth in the world. So this kind of leads down the path of people thinking, well, okay, I still have competitors in my marketplace. How do I stand out? Well, he talks about how to be competition by being authentic. You gotta be different. You gotta be yourself. You gotta add your personal brand. And he talks a lot about putting your name on the line, taking responsibility and leveraging your own personal brand for gain and loss. You see, if when you lose and you own up to it, it's okay. Because when you do win, the benefit is immense because you trade it on your own name, your own reputation.

8:47That's why most big companies have big personal brands, whether it's Oprah or Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson or whatever it might be. They trade on their own name. And at the end of the day, what he discusses in this book is that the reason why we want wealth is because wealth gets us freedom. Freedom of time, freedom of mind space, being able to think clearly, make the right decisions in our life without the pressure of finances, and allows us to make a bigger impact in our lives and the lives of others. This episode of The$100 MBA Show is brought to you by This Is Small Business, an original podcast from Amazon.

9:22It's all about what it takes to be a successful business owner today. I listen to episode 15 of season two, where Deidre Williams, co-founder of Darling & Co., talks about her personal relationship with money and some real helpful tips on bootstrapping, loans, and her personal favorite and current funding method, pitching for grants. If you're looking for more practical advice that you can use in the real world of business, then go ahead and search This Is Small Business on your favorite podcast app and subscribe to the podcast. Again, listen to This Is Small Business. Season two is out now. Go ahead and check it out on your favorite podcast app.

10:01What makes this book different, The Almanac of Naval Ravikant, is it's not a how-to book. It's not a step-by-step. This is how you build wealth. It's better than that. It's rules. It's fundamentals. It's things to govern your way of thinking about money, about life, about happiness. This is much more useful because you can apply it to your own life and circumstances by seeing it as a set of fundamentals. I highly recommend you pick up this book. It's incredible. And once you do, a great piece of sentimental material is a podcast episode on Naval's podcast that's called How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky.

10:37It's about a three-hour episode, but it's a good resource that I've listened to several times, not just once. That wraps up today's episode. I hope you loved it. If you love this podcast, the best way to say thank you is to share with other people. Just send them over to 100mba.net so they can listen to the podcast themselves. They can go ahead and add it to their favorite podcast app there. Thank you in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Naval did not come from money. He came from India as a young kid with his family. They moved to Canada, and they were very, very poor.

11:12In fact, one of his first jobs was at Burger King where he had to do the night shift. It was rough, and let's just say he had to clean up a lot of people who were not feeling well after 2 a.m. drinks. In that moment, he realized, this is not for me. I can't work at Burger King for the most of my life. There's got to be a better way to earn a living, to make money. And that's when he started his journey on studying wealth. Slowly but surely, he became wealthy. And this is why this book is so impactful, because it's rooted in practice. It's rooted in his own experience. It's not theory. It's advice you can count on.

11:44Thanks so much for listening. I'll check you in Wednesday's episode, Q &A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

11:56Thank you.