
September 17, 2020
Lessons from Naval Ravikant | Eric Jorgenson on The North Star
Check out The North Star Episode Page & Show Notes
Key Takeaways
- Be aware of the multiplying by zero effect: One bad variable that can ruin the whole experience
- E.g: You might own a beautiful restaurant with amazing food, but if the bathrooms are filthy and overflowing, you’ll have no customer
- E.g: You have your dream job and dream company, but if your manager is a jerk and hates you for no reason, you’ll hate working there
- “Impatience with action, patience with results” – Naval Ravikant
- Do that workout or write that blog post today, but don’t expect huge results right away
- “Hard work matters but it’s not the most important thing” – Eric Jorgenson
- You need to work smart and build some sort of leverage. Otherwise, you’re just working hard and going in a circle.
- Naval is a fan of the iron prescription: Follow the most rigorous piece of advice and if you do it, you’ll be a level above everyone else
- E.g: Read the foundational books in your field, such as Darwin’s Origin of Species if you’re studying evolution
- E.g: Read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham if you’re studying finance
- “I’m going to make it through this thing and it’s going to be hard but once I do, I’ll be much more capable of kind of whatever comes next” – Eric Jorgenson
Intro
- Eric Jorgenson, a Product Strategist at Zaarly and the author of the Almanack of Naval Ravikant: a guide to wealth and happiness.
- Host: David Perell (@david_perell)
Books Mentioned
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness complied by Eric Jorgenson
- Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
- The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
Important Mental Models From Naval
- Be aware of the multiplying by zero effect: One bad variable that can ruin the whole experience
- E.g: You might own a beautiful restaurant with amazing food, but if the bathrooms are filthy and overflowing, you’ll have no customer
- E.g: You have your dream job and dream company, but if your manager is a jerk and hates you for no reason, you’ll hate working there
- “Impatience with action, patience with results” – Naval Ravikant
- Do that workout or write that blog post today, but don’t expect huge results right away
- If you want to get rich: Productize yourself
- Figure out what you’re uniquely good at, and apply as much leverage as possible
Do The Hardest Thing First
- Naval is a fan of the iron prescription: Follow the most rigorous piece of advice and if you do it, you’ll be a level above everyone else
- E.g: Read the foundational books in your field, such as Darwin’s Origin of Species if you’re studying evolution
- E.g: Read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham if you’re studying finance
- “I’m going to make it through this thing and it’s going to be hard but once I do, I’ll be much more capable of kind of whatever comes next” – Eric Jorgenson
Naval’s Advantage
- Naval’s specific knowledge advantage is his knowledge around deal structures
- Naval had a falling out with a former business partner that led to a lawsuit and since then, Naval has been very careful about how he structures deals
- Naval played a role in helping create the JOBS Act (Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act) which let investors publicly solicit investments
Naval’s Twitter Strategy
- Naval sees Twitter as a way to take notes and share ideas
- Twitter also provides instant feedback and helps show Naval where he might be wrong
- Since Twitter has a character limit on each tweet, it forces Naval to distill his ideas to its absolute core
- Twitter is a great way of broadcasting a signal into the world and connecting with people
Creating The Book
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness was complied by Eric Jorgenson
- Eric went through over a million words of Naval to distill the book down to about 200 pages
- You can download a free online copy of the book here
- Eric went through over a million words of Naval to distill the book down to about 200 pages
- The foreword was written by Tim Ferriss
- The whole project started because he tweeted asking if anyone would be interested in a book that was a collection of the best advice from Naval
- Creating this book has given Eric more clarity, confidence, and peace
- “You can’t really spend this much time with these ideas and not kind of take them in” – Eric Jorgenson
Working Smart > Working Hard
- Working hard is important, but just working hard won’t make you successful
- The person who gets paid to dig trenches works hard, but they’re going to have to do the same thing tomorrow and the day after
- “Hard work matters but it’s not the most important thing” – Eric Jorgenson
- You need to work smart and build some sort of leverage. Otherwise, you’re just working hard and going in a circle.
- “Hard work matters but it’s not the most important thing” – Eric Jorgenson
- The person who gets paid to dig trenches works hard, but they’re going to have to do the same thing tomorrow and the day after
Additional Notes
- There are multiple ways to become wealthy:
- Charlie Munger prefers to not lose money and invest in companies that don’t change much
- Naval prefers to invest in lots of startups that are trying to change the world because he knows he only needs one or two to hit a home run and earn a great return
- Naval is a big fan of the cartoon show Rick and Morty
- Startups are where quality and scale meet
- If you have high-scale but low quality, you get McDonald’s
- If you have low-scale but high quality, you get Ritz-Carlton
- If you have high-scale and high quality, you get an Amazon or Google
- We often see ourselves as fixed and the world as malleable, but mostly the world is fixed and we are malleable