38 Weeks to Get Rich

Welcome to the “38 Weeks to Get Rich”, where each week we’ll break down a section from Naval’s iconic tweetstorm and interviews on the topics of wealth, freedom, money, status, and happiness.

The full PDF is available here.

What follows is my summary & key takeaways to help you digest the 127 page document.

Week 5: Make Luck Your Destiny

Build your character so opportunity finds you.
If you want to make money it’s important to have the kind of reputation that makes people want to do deals with/through you. This is true of people and of companies.

Would you rather buy from Amazon, who has a reputation for quick shipping and easy returns? Or a shady knock-off company called Amazun that leaves you wondering if you’ll actually receive what you paid for?

Do you want to hire the contractor that has great references, answers your calls, and shows up on time? Or someone who has a track record of getting paid and never finishing work?

Which one is going to attract more business? Are they luckier? Not at all. But they’ve made good-fortune their destiny by crafting their character and their skillset.

“We make our fortunes and we call them fate.” -Benjamin Disraeli

We want to work with people and companies that have good reputations. And reputations are fragile because there is accountability attached.

It helps to be a little eccentric. 
If you do exactly what conventional wisdom says, you’ll be doing what everyone else is doing. Sometimes in order to stand-out, you have to get a little unconventional.

The world is a very efficient place, so, everyone has dug through all the obvious places to dig and so to find something that’s new and novel and uncovered, it helps to be operating differently.

“You can’t be normal and expect abnormal returns.” – Jeffrey Pfeffer

A lot of people spend a lot of their time playing social games on Twitter or Instagram where they’re trying to improve their social standing.  There’s a good quote for that, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,“.

At the end of all that posting and scrolling you don’t have much beyond what you started with. The exception being if you’re actively building an audience to leverage a product or service, but few people do that.