Naval Ravikant Was Wrong: People Are The Most Important Part Of Your Business
Who wants to work alone anyway?
Today, I will tell you why the people you work with are the most important aspect in business.
This will make or break your success.
LFG. 🔥
Naval Ravikant Was Wrong
I’ve been heavily influenced by How to Get Rich, a podcast series by Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi. I still listen to it once in a while to remind myself of the lessons.
One of the most impactful episodes was about leverage and its importance. Naval argues there are four kinds of leverage:
Media
Code
Capital
People
Naval claims that labor, or people, is the worst kind of leverage. This is where he gets it wrong.
Understanding Leverage
To see why he is wrong, we first need to look at the other three forms of leverage for context.
Code: Naval argues that code is the most powerful form of leverage. It is a hard point to argue. We use software, AI agents, and programs to do work for us. The leverage code applies is almost infinite, limited only by electricity and data costs.
Media: A thousand years ago, if you wanted to spread your message, you had to stand on a soapbox and yell. In 1440, the printing press enabled you to spread your message through print. Now, I can create a LinkedIn post or publish a newsletter and reach hundreds of thousands of people a day. Media is powerful.
Capital: Money is the easiest form of leverage to conceptualize. If you invest $100 into a company, you can apply code, media, and people to grow that $100 into $200. Capital moves mountains.
People / Labor: Getting people to work for you has the lowest return on a ratio of resources spent to resources gained. People require rest, encouragement, and a sense of purpose. People are emotional, which brings a degree of natural inefficiency to an operation.
Looking at it strictly through this economic lens, it is easy to see why Naval argues that labor is the worst form of leverage. Why bother hiring an employee when you could just make YouTube videos and use an army of AI agents to do the work for you?
Here is why.
You Can’t Be Great Without The Greatness Of Others
It sounds nice to be a lone wolf, to avoid dealing with anyone, to be a solopreneur, or to exist in a world where media, money, and robots do all the heavy lifting.
But business never actually works out that way. No matter how smart you are, there are massive gaps in your skill, insight, and perspective.
If you want to build something great, the most important decisions you make will always be who you bring onto your team and who you choose to work with.
The AI revolution has actually made this concept even more true. If code is now a cheap commodity, then the ultimate differentiating factors become your network, your soft skills, your ability to build a team, and your reputation in the industry.
Who wants to work alone with AI robots anyway?
My Team Is A Joy
When I look back at my career, the moments that make me smile are never the abstract milestones.
Sure, I can celebrate a big contract signing or the day I bought Copyblogger. But in the end, what I actually remember are the laughs I have shared with Charles and the memories I built with Bryan and Tricia.
It is the feeling I get when Ermy tells me how much I have helped her family, or when Vinness sends me pictures of her son at graduation and tells me that working for me was the best thing that happened to her.
People fill the pragmatic gaps in your organization because you cannot scale alone, especially if you want to build wealth without working 80 hours a week.
But even if you could do it alone, would you really want to?
You are going to die one day, sooner than you realize. So why not surround yourself with people you love and enjoy?
In the end, that is the only thing you will remember.
Love you guys. Have a great weekend.
Tim
P.S. - Lesson 3 on the 7 Figure Google Business Agency course gets published on Monday.
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you got me at “naval ravikant was wrong”
but I really enjoyed the rest of it too!