Source: Red and Green Author: Eric Jorgensen

In the United States, there are two widely circulated books on wealth: one is "The Tao of Charlie Munger", which includes Charlie Munger's classic speeches, and the other is "The Naval Ravikant Collection", originated from Silicon Valley venture capitalist Naval Ravikant.

Naval Ravikant comes from a poor Indian immigrant family. With his own efforts, he not only founded multiple successful companies, as an angel investor, invested in hundreds of excellent enterprises such as Uber and Twitter, and also has a special identity: KOL (key opinion leader). For more than ten years, he has been sharing his thoughts on wealth, health, happiness and philosophy on the Internet, influencing countless readers and listeners worldwide. His thoughts were compiled by Eric Jorgenson into "The Naval Ravikant Collection".

1. Understanding the principles of wealth creation. 2. If one day I fail in business and become broke, I believe I can become wealthy again in 5 or 10 years if I'm thrown into the streets of any English-speaking country, because I have mastered the skill of making money, a skill that anyone can learn. There is no necessary correlation between making money and working hard. Even if you work 80 hours a week in a restaurant, you cannot become rich. To get wealthy, you must know what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. Understanding and thinking is more important than burying yourself. Of course, effort is very important, and you should not skimp on your effort, but you must choose the right way. 3. If you don't know what you should do, you need to figure it out first. 4. Don't blindly work hard before that. When I was thirteen or fourteen years old, I listed a series of principles for myself, detailed in the following Tweetstorm. I have kept these principles in mind for thirty years and have practiced them in life and work. Over time, I found myself becoming more adept at observing companies and finding the most leveraged pivot points that could create wealth, and then capturing that wealth (this talent is not necessarily pitiful or lucky). 5. The following are the contents of the Tweetstorm, and each one can generate an hour of conversation. This Tweetstorm is a good starting point. I have written down all my ideas and principles in it, with the aim of being information-dense, concise, impactful, and evergreen. If you can absorb these ideas and principles, and use them as a guide, and strive for ten years, you will definitely succeed. 6. How to get rich (without relying on luck): 7. Pursue wealth, not money or status. Wealth refers to assets that can still earn money for you while you are sleeping. Money is the way we convert time and wealth. Status refers to your position in the social ranking system. 8. Creating wealth and adhering to ethical standards are not mutually exclusive. If you despise wealth in your heart, wealth will stay away from you. 9. Ignore people who blindly pursue social status. They gain status by attacking those who create wealth. 10. It is impossible to become wealthy by renting time. You must have equity (partial ownership of the enterprise) to achieve financial freedom. 11. One way to get wealthy is to provide something that society needs but cannot obtain, and to achieve scale. 12. Choose an industry with long-term development prospects and find people you can work with for a long time. 13. The Internet has greatly expanded the space for careers, but most people have not yet realized this. 14. Cultivate iterative thinking. All returns in life, whether they are wealth, interpersonal relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest. 15. Choose smart, energetic business partners, but more importantly, they must be upright and trustworthy. 16. Don't work with cynical and pessimistic people. Their prophecies will come true. 17. Learn sales and learn to build. With two skills, you will be invincible. Use your expertise, sense of responsibility, and the leverage effect to arm yourself.

There is no necessary correlation between making money and working hard. Even if you work 80 hours a week in a restaurant, you cannot become rich. To get wealthy, you must know what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. Understanding and thinking is more important than burying yourself. Of course, effort is very important, and you should not skimp on your effort, but you must choose the right way.

If you don't know what you should do, you need to figure it out first.

When I was thirteen or fourteen years old, I listed a series of principles for myself, detailed in the following Tweetstorm. I have kept these principles in mind for thirty years and have practiced them in life and work. Over time, I found myself becoming more adept at observing companies and finding the most leveraged pivot points that could create wealth, and then capturing that wealth (this talent is not necessarily pitiful or lucky).

The following are the contents of the Tweetstorm, and each one can generate an hour of conversation. This Tweetstorm is a good starting point. I have written down all my ideas and principles in it, with the aim of being information-dense, concise, impactful, and evergreen. If you can absorb these ideas and principles, and use them as a guide, and strive for ten years, you will definitely succeed.

How to get rich (without relying on luck):

1. Pursue wealth, not money or status. Wealth refers to assets that can still earn money for you while you are sleeping. Money is the way we convert time and wealth. Status refers to your position in the social ranking system.

2. Creating wealth and adhering to ethical standards are not mutually exclusive. If you despise wealth in your heart, wealth will stay away from you.

3. Ignore people who blindly pursue social status. They gain status by attacking those who create wealth.

4. It is impossible to become wealthy by renting time. You must have equity (partial ownership of the enterprise) to achieve financial freedom.

5. One way to get wealthy is to provide something that society needs but cannot obtain, and to achieve scale.

6. Choose an industry with long-term development prospects and find people you can work with for a long time.

7. The Internet has greatly expanded the space for careers, but most people have not yet realized this.

8. Cultivate iterative thinking. All returns in life, whether they are wealth, interpersonal relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.

9. Choose smart, energetic business partners, but more importantly, they must be upright and trustworthy.

10. Don't work with cynical and pessimistic people. Their prophecies will come true.

11. Learn sales and learn to build. With two skills, you will be invincible. Use your expertise, sense of responsibility, and the leverage effect to arm yourself.

Expertise refers to knowledge that cannot be obtained through training. If society can train you, then society can train others to replace you.

To have expertise, one must pursue true interests and passions, rather than blindly chasing hot spots.

The process of accumulating expertise is like play for you, but very difficult for others.

The dissemination of expertise needs to be completed through a master-apprentice approach and cannot be achieved through school education.

Expertise often has high technical or creative requirements and cannot be outsourced or automated.

Cultivate a sense of responsibility and be brave enough to take on commercial risks in one's own name. Society will reward you based on the size of your responsibility, shareholding, and leverage.

To obtain wealth, one must fully utilize leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, labor, and products with zero marginal cost (such as code and media).

Capital refers to money. To obtain financing, one needs to apply their expertise and sense of responsibility and demonstrate good judgment.

Labor leverage is to have others work for you. This is the oldest and most fiercely competed lever. Having labor leverage will make your parents feel that you are very impressive, but do not excessively pursue labor leverage.

Capital and labor leverage require permission to use. Everyone is chasing after capital, but someone needs to be willing to invest. Everyone wants to lead others, but someone needs to be willing to follow.

Code and media are levers that can be used without permission. These two levers are the levers behind the new rich. You can create software and media, and let them work for you while you sleep.

There are a large number of robots available for us to use for free. In order to improve energy efficiency and save space, these robots are centralized in datacenters. Use them.

If you don't know how to code, write books, blogs, make videos, and record podcasts.

Leverage is a multiplier of judgment.

Judgment comes from experience, but can be quickly established through learning basic skills.

There is no such thing as a "business" skill. Don't waste time on business magazines and business courses.

Learn microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computer science.

Reading is faster than listening, doing is faster than watching.

You should be too busy to socialize, but still arrange your schedule in an orderly manner.

Set a bold personal hourly rate and strictly enforce it. Ignore any problem whose cost savings are lower than the hourly rate, and outsource any task whose cost is lower than the hourly rate.

When working, you should give it your all without reservation. However, the people you work with and the content of your work are more important than the effort you put in. In terms of product structure, operating income for products worth 10-30 billion yuan were 401/1288/60 million yuan each, respectively.

Be the world's best in your chosen field. Continuously redefine your career until your ideal becomes a reality.

There is no quick way to get rich. Even if there is, it is only a means for those who provide the tutorials to make money off you.

Use your expertise to leverage your assets and eventually you will receive what you deserve. When you finally become wealthy, you will realize that it wasn't your original pursuit. But let's leave that for later discussion.

In summary: make yourself a product.

II. Make yourself a product.

What does "make yourself a product" mean?

This sentence highlights two key points: "yourself" and "productization". "Yourself" is unique, and "productization" leverages that uniqueness. "Yourself" also has a sense of responsibility, while "productization" demands expertise. "Yourself" actually holds expertise as well. Therefore, the two key points above summarize all the aforementioned ideas.

If you want to achieve your long-term goal of getting rich, you should ask yourself, "Is this really what I want? Are my planned goals what I truly want?" After you get an affirmative answer, ask yourself, "Have I productized myself? Have I expanded my scale? Did I choose to expand through labor, capital, code, or media?" So, the explanation of "making yourself a product" is concise and easy to remember.

"Making yourself a product" is difficult. That is why I say that it takes decades to do so. This does not mean that it takes decades to execute, but that most of your time should be spent contemplating what unique value you can provide.

III. What is the difference between wealth and money?

Money is the way we transfer wealth. Money is a social credit symbol with the ability to call upon other people's time.

If I do my job well and create value for society, society will say to me: "Thank you. Because of the work you have done in the past, we owe you something in the future. This is an IOU, which we can call money." What you really want is wealth.

Wealth is an asset that can make money for you even when you are asleep. Wealth is a factory or robot that can be put into production. Wealth is a computer program that can serve customers around the clock. Wealth can also be money invested in other assets or businesses in a bank.

Even a house can become a form of wealth, as it can be rented out to bring in rental income. But compared to engaging in business activities, the production efficiency of this type of land use is lower.

Therefore, my definition of wealth is an enterprise or asset that can bring in income even when you are asleep.

Technology has made consumption more accessible and production more concentrated. Someone who is at the top globally in a certain field can now offer their products or services to anyone in the world.

To make money in society, you must provide something that is in demand but not available. If society has already created the products and services that are needed, then you are no longer needed.

Almost everything in your home, workplace, and on the street was once a technological product. Over a century ago, oil made Rockefeller wealthy, while cars made Henry Ford accumulate his wealth.

Therefore, as Daniel Hilles said, technology is something that has yet to be fully utilized. Once it is widely used, it is no longer technology. Society always needs new things. To become wealthy, you must figure out what you can provide to society that is needed but not available, and provide it easily and naturally within your technical and ability ranges.

The next step is to consider how to scale up, because it is not enough to offer just one product or service. You must provide thousands, even millions or billions of them, preferably one for each person.

Steve Jobs (and of course his team) discovered that the society needs smartphones. They envisioned a small computer that could fit in a pocket and be carried anywhere, with all the functions of a telephone and even more powerful than a phone by 100 times, and very easy to use. Then they figured out how to make such a smart phone and how to achieve mass production.

Fourth, investing in friendship with a long-term perspective.

All returns in life, whether it be wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest. How can you determine whether you have gained compound interest or not?

The connotation of the concept of compound interest is very rich. The concept of compound interest comes from capital, but it is not limited to it. The compound interest effect is not limited to the field of capital.

The compound interest effect is also very important in business relationships. Take a look at the top roles in society, why some people can serve as CEOs of listed companies or manage several billion dollars of funds.

This is because others trust them. The reason they can gain trust is that they have created a networking and career that have produced a compound interest effect. They have put their career in a very intuitive and responsible way, proving to the world that they have integrity and high honesty.

Personal reputation also has a compound interest effect. If a person has a good reputation and has been building and accumulating his or her reputation for decades, that person is sure to receive attention and respect. And if a person is talented but does not utilize the compound interest effect of reputation, compared to those who value their reputation, their value will be thousands of times lower.

Working with others is the same. If you have worked with a person for 5 or 10 years and still enjoy working with him, then obviously you trust him. Even if he has some flaws, they are outweighed by his merits. In business relationships, once there is trust, all regular negotiations can be simplified, because you know that cooperation will succeed.

For example, there is an angel investor in Silicon Valley named Erard Gil with whom I like to work very much.

The reason is that I know that during the transaction process, he will do everything he can to provide me with additional benefits. If there are any additional benefits to the transaction, he will definitely give them to me. If there are any extra costs, he will pay for them himself and not even mention them to me.

Because he treats me so well without any reservation, I try to involve him in almost every transaction and treat him well regardless of the cost. This kind of relationship of mutual trust fully embodies the value of compound interest.

The starting point is not important, but the behavior itself is important. Therefore, following moral standards is not easy.

Once you find the right career and people to journey with, you should devote yourself fully. Then, after decades of continuous improvement, you can reap huge rewards in terms of personal relationships and economic benefits. Therefore, the compounding effect is very important.

Editor/Lambor