Growing Up: How to Get Rich (without getting lucky)

Dear readers, my favourite people in the world

This week I'm reading: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson

You know that envy thing I always talk about?

Envy is an illusion.

The part of the person that we envy doesn’t exist without the rest of that person.

If we aren’t willing to trade places with them completely - their life, their body, their thoughts - then there is nothing to be envious about.

That's one of his tweets.

This is who he is according to his website:

Entrepreneur and Investor. Naval is founder of Angellist, Epinions, and Vast.com He is an Angel investor in Twitter, Uber, Yammer, and 100+ more. Naval has become widely followed for his thoughts on startups, investing, crypto, wealth, and happiness.

He is also one of those people who is widely recognised by only their first name. Like Jesus. or Kylie (before Kylie Jenner came along).

What's an almanack?

Apparently it's usually spelt almanac...

an annual calendar containing important dates and statistical information such as astronomical data and tide tables. / a handbook, typically published annually, containing information of general interest or on a sport or pastime.

Interesting.

So I bought my copy of this so called almanac at the airport in Delhi (coincidentally where Naval was born), but if you want to read it it's free online:

This book has been created as a public service. It is available for free download in pdf and e-reader versions on Navalmanack.com. Naval is not earning any money on this book. Naval has essays, podcasts and more at Nav.al and is on Twitter @Naval.

^ Having a massive audience (he has 1.9m twitter followers, and maybe a few more if some of you guys now follow him) gives you a lot more power than the money from selling that many books could.. but also. Cynical people love accusing authors who write about how to get rich, as charlatans who are just getting rich by selling books about how to get rich. BUT that argument doesn't work in this case. Naval wants everyone to have this information for free (but he also probably wants you to follow him... although not if you're miserable as his twitter bio is "I block miserable people.")

Will you please tell us how to get rich already?

Yes, but first... who's this Eric Jorgensen guy?

Oh yeah also this is interesting (Eric explaining how he created the book):

I built the Navalmanack entirely out of transcripts, Tweets, and talks Naval has shared. Every attempt is made to present Naval in his own words.

Pretty lazy hey. Not like the purely original content over here at the Growing Up newsletter. 2,000 words each week, entirely my own. Oh wait.

Why he made the book:

I’ve learned an enormous amount from Naval. Reading, listening, and applying his principles of wealth and happiness has given me calm confidence on my path and taught me to enjoy every moment of this journey. Closely studying his career has shown me how great things are accomplished through small, persistent steps, and how large an impact one individual can have.

I refer to his work often and recommend it to friends. Those conversations inspired me to create this book, so people can learn from his perspective whether they’re new to Naval’s ideas or have followed him the past ten years.

...

I created this book as a public service. Tweets, podcasts, and interviews quickly get buried and lost. Knowledge this valuable deserves a more permanent, accessible format. That is my mission with this book.

Great! More about Eric another time, let's just get into it.

How to Get Rich (without getting lucky)

Ohhh wait sorry, sorry one last thing. Tim Ferriss (the 4-Hour Workweek / famous for lots of other stuff that we won't go into now guy...) wrote the foreword for this book and said:

So, pay attention…but don’t simply parrot his words. Follow his advice…but only if it holds up after scrutiny and stresstesting in your own life. Consider everything…but take nothing as gospel. Naval would want you to challenge him, as long as you bring your A-game.

That should probably be the general rule for everything in life right? At least everything I share with you here. Don't take it as gospel. Challenge things and test them in your own life. Come to your own conclusions. Think for yourself! (The tagline Gideon Rozner (Ep. 15 of the pod) gave me for what I'm trying to do with my work... only to be told by a friend that that's what's written on the signs of the anti-vax conspiracy theorists outside parliament... tough crowd out there.)

Okay the How to Get Rich thing comes from a twitter thread Naval wrote back in 2018 (apparently they were called tweetstorms back then?).

Read the whole thing here. It's long so I'm just including some of my favourite bits (and adding boldface to the parts that I underlined profusely):

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.
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Understand ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.
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Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.
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You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity—a piece of a business—to gain your financial freedom.
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You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.
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Pick an industry where you can play long-term games with long-term people.
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The internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven’t figured this out yet.
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Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
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Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and, above all, integrity.
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Don’t partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling.
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Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
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Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.
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Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you.
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Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.
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Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.
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When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools.
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Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.
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Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.
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..... [skipping a few]
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There are no get-rich-quick schemes. Those are just someone else getting rich off you.
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... [the last one is]

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When you’re finally wealthy, you’ll realize it wasn’t what you were seeking in the first place. But that is for another day.

The last one reminds me of an idea I read in Jay Shetty's Think Like a Monk (that coincidentally I also bought in that airport in Delhi... another guy who knows how to build an audience):

If a person went up to my teacher [a monk] and said, “I just want to be rich,” my teacher would ask, “Are you doing it out of service?” His reason for asking would be to get to the root of the desire.
If the man said, “No, I want to live in a nice house, travel, and buy whatever I want.” His intention would be to have the financial freedom to indulge himself.
My teacher would say, “Okay, it’s good that you’re honest with yourself. Go ahead, make your fortune. You’ll come to service anyway. It may take you five or ten years, but you’ll get to the same answer.” Monks believe that the man won’t be fulfilled when he finds his fortune, and that if he continues his search for meaning, the answer will always, eventually, be found in service.

Right.

I have lotssss more wisdom I want to share with you guys from this book but I am going to leave it there as that's a lot to absorb for now no?

This week on the Growing Up with Delia Burgess podcast:

Back last (Australian) summer when I was making YouTube videos (since taken private... apologies to all the fans) about "why investment bankers work so much" and "is Russia about to invade Ukraine" from 101 Collins St, Melb I would sometimes run into Peter Costello. One day in the corridor I asked him if he would come on my podcast that didn't yet exist. For some reason he agreed. As you guys know it took me another 9 months to work up the courage to get the podcast started. It took another month after launching to work up the courage to ask him again and here we are, 11 months later, with the connection dropping at the end and Peter left asking "what's your podcast called Delia???" ...and me not cutting that bit out because that's my sense of humour for you.

And that kids is how you follow your dreams. At a medium-slow pace.

Someone who gets stuff done a little quicker than me is Jack Anderson, who at 19 wrote a new Year 12 chemistry textbook from scratch and cold called schools to get it on the curriculum and then did a TedX talk about it.

Enjoy!

If you want to send a subtle hint to the people playing status games in your life, feel free to forward this onto them. Actually they are probably not a good fit for the newsletter... forward it someone with a growth mindset instead :)

xx Delia

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Listen to Growing Up with Delia Burgess on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts

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Hi! I'm Delia Burgess

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