Summary of "How to Get Rich" by Naval Ravikant - Part 2

Hello Everyone today I will be sharing the insights and strategies I've learned from listening to Naval Ravikant's podcast, "How to Get Rich." In this series, Naval shares his journey and the principles he's used to achieving financial success. Today, I will be diving into 2 titles. Find a way to eventually work for yourself and Be authentic, work hard, decide where to spend your time, and you’ll get what you deserve You can access Part 1 here

Work on your internal state

When you become wealthy, you'll realize that you were not really looking for it in the first place. You're still the same person. If you're happy, you're happy. If you're unhappy, you will still be low. Most importantly, you can't buy a fit body, a calm mind, and a house filled with love. You have to earn it. Many external battles happen because the internal state is out of control. But when you're naturally internally peaceful, you'll be more loving without expecting anything in return, which will take care of the external relationships.

Get rich quick schemes

If there was a quick way to get rich, it's already been exploited. If someone is selling you a get-rich-quick scheme such as crypto or an online business or seminar, that's often their scheme to get rich by making money off you. If anyone is giving advice on how to get rich and they're also making money off it, it's suspect. It's like learning how to become fit from a fat person. You can't take advice from an economist on Bitcoin or a business journalist on the latest company that's IPOing. They're critics and don't know enough about making money.

Productize yourself

Find out what is unique to you that you're good at and apply leverage. Ask if what you do is authentic to you. And then, ask if you are productising it. Are you scaling it with labor or capital or code or media? So, making money is not a skill. It is who you are, done a million times.

How to get rich: Common failures

• People often don't understand specific knowledge or how to get it.

• People don't understand what accountability consists of. It means you have to be willing to fail publicly. You have to let people criticize you.

• Don't refuse to do things just because others can't. Work with the hand you're dealt with. Then use it to fix the world.

Working for yourself

Anybody who wants to be entrepreneurial and wants to improve their ability to create wealth reliably is patient and looking at it from a long-term view. Pay attention to who is getting leverage off of the work you're doing. Look who's above you and above them and see how they're taking advantage of your time and work and how they're applying leverage. People naturally do this when they move up the corporate ladder. You want to manage capital, products, media, and community.

Discover what you're good at

You generally will do better in a smaller organization as you will have more accountability and your work will be more visible. You're likely to try different things, which can help you discover what you're uniquely good at. The long-term goal is to work for ourselves. People working under us are essentially robots. People working above you are someone to learn from and improve upon. If someone is below you, it's because you're teaching them. If you're not teaching them, then you don't need a human, but a robot.

Ethics is something you do

Everyone has a personal moral code. When you are in business long enough, you'll realize that much of it is about trust. You don't want to reevaluate every discussion or continually look over your shoulder. When you are ethical, you'll attract other long-term players and force people that live on lies out of your network. In the short run, being unethical pays, but in the long run, you will get paid. Everyone will want to deal with you. You will have trust and a reputation.

Envy cuts both ways

Envy can motivate you to find the right thing. If you're doing work that you don't like, envy can motivate you to find something better. But it can also eat you if you let it follow you your entire life.

Principal-Agent Problem

A principal is an owner. An agent is an employee. The principal's incentives differ from the agent's incentives. The business owner wants what's best for the business and what will make the business successful. The agent wants what will look good to the principal or make them personally the most money. If you're an employee, your most important task is to think like a principal. Train yourself to think like a principal. Ask "What would the founder do?" If you think like a principal, it's a matter of time until you become that.

Work as hard as you can have two meanings

1. If you're an employee or in a lifestyle business, your aim is not to get wealthy but to have a job, family, and life.

2. However, the founder, who works very hard, aims for something different. They are working towards the gold medal and trying to build a multi-billion dollar company. They have to get everything right, have great judgment, and find the right team.

But working hard is only one of three parts. The other parts are what you work on, and who you work with. Shortchanging on any of these three will lead to difficulties.

Work with purpose

Ensure that you work with the best people possible. Pick the people with the highest intelligence, energy, and integrity. When you've set your bar, raise it. People don't consistently work 80 to 120 hours a week. They sprint for that long when they feel inspired, then take long breaks, reassess, and try again. That is because inspiration is short-lived. When inspiration strikes, use it.

Impatience with actions, patience with results

When you have to do something, get it done. Do them as quickly as you can and with full focus. Then, be patient with the results. You likely dealing with complex systems and a number of people. It takes time for people to get comfortable working together. When there is a problem, don't rest until a resolution has started.

Don't do meetings without an agenda

Networking is important early in your career. You'll desire to "do coffee" and build relationships. But later in your career, you have more things coming at you than what you have time for. This makes it vital to ruthlessly cut meetings. First, see if a simple text would suffice. If a meeting is necessary, then keep it short. People will want to meet with you if you have something important or valuable to offer. When you meet people, it will be because you developed a reputation and a unique point of view.

Working for the long-term

If you want to get paid, you want to be the best at whatever you do. It can be niche. For example, Oprah gets paid for being Oprah. Keep changing what you do until you can use your specific knowledge, skillset, position, capabilities, and interests to be number one. Don't compete because you will compete over things that are not worth it. Instead, be authentic. Specialise in being you. Nobody can compete with you when you build or market things that are an extension of who you are and where you can find a product-market fit.

It takes time

When you've applied your specific knowledge, judgment, accountability, and reading, you'll eventually get what you deserve. Everyone wants to make money quickly. But it doesn't work. You have to put in the time. You have to put yourself in that position with your specific knowledge, accountability, beverage, and skillset and enjoy it and keep on doing it. The outcome will be how much leverage you can apply to your specific knowledge, how you can improve, h many times your judgment is right, and how accountable you are for the outcome.

Make up your own mind

Most advice is what other people find helpful for them, but it may not apply to you. There is something you can learn, but you can't take their exact circumstance and apply it to yourself. If you get advice, decide if it is true in your context and figure out how you can apply it. The most dangerous part of receiving advice is that the person won't be around when the advice doesn't apply to you anymore.