37. Productize Yourself

Figure out what you’re uniquely good at and apply as much leverage as possible.

Figure out what you’re uniquely good at and apply as much leverage as possible

Nivi: You summarized this entire tweetstorm with two words. “Productize yourself.”

Naval: Productize and yourself. Yourself has uniqueness. Productize has leverage. Yourself has accountability. Productize has specific knowledge. Yourself also has specific knowledge in there. So all of these pieces, you can combine them into these two words.

Whenever you’re doing anything in business, if you’re looking towards the long-term of getting wealthy you should ask yourself, “Is this authentic to me? Is it myself that I am projecting?” And then, “Am I productizing it? Am I scaling it? Am I scaling with labor or with capital or with code or with media?” So it’s a very handy, simple mnemonic.

What is this podcast? This is a podcast called Naval. I’m literally productizing myself with a podcast.

Nivi: You want to figure out what you’re uniquely good at, or what you uniquely are, and apply as much leverage as possible. So making money isn’t even something you do, it’s not a skill. It’s who you are, stamped out a million times.

Find hobbies that make you rich, fit and creative

Naval: Making money should be a function of your identity and what you like to do. Another tweet that I really liked was... this was not mine, somebody else put this up. They said “Find three hobbies. One that makes you money, one that keeps you fit, and one that makes you creative.”

I would change that slightly. I would say one that makes you money, one that makes you fit, and one that makes you smarter. In my case, my hobbies would be reading, making money as I love working with startups. Either investing in them, brainstorming them, starting them. I just love that ideation and initial creation phase around startups.

Then on the hobby that keeps you fit, I don’t really have one. Closest thing I have is yoga, but that’s where I sort of fell apart. I think people who, early in life, discover something like surfing or swimming or tennis or some kind of a sport that they continue doing throughout most of their life are very luck because they found a hobby that will make them fit.

 


This transcript has been edited for clarity.



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