The “new rich” sounds like American white boy privilege.
It’s not. The word rich often is mistaken for “has lots of cash and drives a Lambo.” That’s not what we’re talking about in this article, because it won’t make you happy or fulfilled. Trust me, I’ve been there.
The new rich is a life made up of multiple components that leads to personal freedom.
The sort of freedom where you follow your curiosity, rather than obey orders to prevent your food and shelter being taken away by a middle manager with hellish KPIs to meet.
Let’s run through how you can join the new rich and get personal freedom.
Get addicted to leverage
Leverage is the idea that you can get far greater outcomes over time for the same amount of effort.
The greatest form of leverage is the internet. Leverage is built in even if you’re average at what you do and not that smart (like me). How?
Well, every year more and more people join the internet. So whatever it is you do will naturally be seen by more people if you remain consistent.
Traditional leverage comes in two forms:
- Labor leverage — you hire people to do some of the work so you can get more done.
- Money leverage — you use your money to invest and get more money to achieve more results in life, without extra effort.
The two new forms of leverage (a.k.a. digital leverage) are:
- Code leverage — writing code that is used in software.
- Media leverage — using social media to build an audience that grows at a compound rate over time with the same effort.
If you can get more out for the same amount of effort then, naturally, life will get easier over time and personal freedom will be automatic.
Here’s what leverage looks like visualized:
Image Credit: Jack Butcher via this tweet (follow him, his work is amazing)
It feels like nothing to begin with, then it feels like everything is incredible later on.
Action: build something on the internet to access leverage.
Be free from calendar handcuffs
To join the new rich you need to reframe what productivity is.
That means you have to reject the idea busyness is cool, and forget about the entrepreneur bros and their hustle culture cult.
Too many people don’t realize being busy destroys creativity, and creativity is what makes you rich.
The new rich optimize their day for creativity. That means energy is a high priority and empty chunks of time are crucial. Silly activities like walks help to enhance the creativity further.
After a few months of free thinking, the level of ideas you’ll have will explode. One of those will make you rich. It’s counter-intuitive.
Action: fewer meetings, less hustling, more deep thinking done away from distractions.
Work from anywhere
The new rich don’t commute to offices or value in-person catch-ups.
They work from anywhere. How? The value they create over time becomes so high, people will do anything to work with them. So the requirement to meet in person is put aside in return for access to their unique skills.
Another perk of location freedom is this: you can earn an income online in USD, and spend it in a weaker currency. This requires you to eventually live in non-US countries. The strategy acts as a kind of arbitrage.
Unfair on some countries, yes. Should be avoided, no.
Action: pivot your career toward location-independent work.
Work on a specialty you give a damn about
The new rich don’t do labor-intensive donkey work they hate.
No. They pivot toward a specialty. A niche, if you will. An area of work they’d happily do for free on the weekend.
How do you find your specialty?
Easy. Look at your google search history. What do you spend an ungodly amount of time searching?
Action: Pick 1–2 niches to focus your time on.
Become a self-learning polymath
My friend Danny called me a polymath.
The traditional definition is a person whose knowledge goes deep across multiple categories. In my case, my friend Danny used the word polymath to mean:
Addicted to learning.
Learners are the highest earners.
Why? You’re paid based on your skills. Specifically, you’re paid based on your skill stack. Comic creator Scott Adams who created Dilbert is the most famous example I know.
He took the areas of comedy, illustrations and workplace culture, and fused them together into a unique skill stack.
By themselves, none of these areas are unique. But when put together it gave him an unfair advantage no one could compete with. Up until this day Dilbert comics still have zero competitors.
Action: fuse together several niches from the previous step into a unique skill stack. Practice self-learning after hours in these fields.
See the underrated opportunity of artificial intelligence
AI has become wildly popular.
Many critics think it’s terrible. Doomsdayers are calling it the end of human jobs. The sky is falling in, they say. Don’t fall for it, it’s a trap.
Just like the internet didn’t kill humanity in a Skynet war neither will AI.
AI augments humans and makes us more powerful. The smartphone did the same thing. The original flip phone was a dumb phone. You had to type in a phone number and it would call it. That’s all the dumbass did.
Then smartphones came along and started to do all of the thinking for you. Now you don’t have to store notes or appointments in your head.
Your second brain, the smartphone, does the dumb thinking so you can focus on the smart thinking. Makes sense.
AI will do the same.
It’ll become your personal assistant. In the early days it looks like it can be your research assistant.
Later on, it’ll likely help to superglue together all the different people, systems, software, and touchpoints one encounters day-to-day into a seamless flow.
Action: experiment with ChatGPT.
Uses social media rather than gets used by it
Sooky adult babies cry about the tweets they read.
They get triggered and go down a rabbit hole that leads them to become consumed by mindless politics. Yuck.
But social media can be a powerful tool if “used” right. That’s why it’s important to curate your content diet and follow smart people on the platforms you choose to be on.
I don’t read dumb tweets because I don’t follow dumb people.
Makes sense. This opportunity isn’t limited to me. All of us can be smarter about what programs our minds.
Most important: don’t take content recommendations from algorithms. Get your recommendations from people you follow who’ve earned your trust.
Action: make who you follow feel like a decision to sacrifice your firstborn child.
Don’t be afraid to speak your mind (respectfully)
Many people wear a muzzle out of the house.
They’re petrified to speak their mind as a result of cancel culture. But this places huge limitations on your life and enslaves rather than frees you.
Sharing ideas is how you recruit people to your vision.
That means you have to get comfortable with either writing, recording audio, or shooting videos. You’ll notice I said speak your mind respectfully. It’s because it helps you recruit the right people.
If all you do is spew hate and spread toxic ideas, you’ll likely experience a personal prison rather than personal freedom.
Action: find one place online to share an idea every day. Start with publishing tweets if you want the lowest friction.
Invest in obvious future trends
The money part of “new rich” — that buys back your time — doesn’t just come from the work you do.
The new rich are investors at heart.
They deploy the money they earn into investments, rather than mindlessly consume more products like previous generations did.
Those investments are in obvious trends even ya grandmother can spot — electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, crypto/web3, space exploration.
Action: ensure part of your weekly research is focused on what assets to buy each month.
This article is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered financial, tax or legal advice. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.
The #1 driver of growth for the new rich who experience personal freedom
All of the previous steps sound like hard work, don’t they?
They are if you don’t have this one component: obsession.
- Obsession provides the motivation.
- Obsession is a form of energy.
- Obsession automates the decisions.
- Obsession makes the work a form of play rather than slave labor.
- Obsession feels easy.
The new rich have figured out what they’re obsessed with. They realize that it might take 5+ years for the obsession to deliver on their aspirations, but they’re okay with that.
Action: If you want to be free then find a way to get obsessed. Or take what you’re obsessed with and double down on it.
Final Thought
Amongst the current economic turmoil — likely to last for the next few years — this is the best time ever to join the new rich (just like the 2008 recession was).
When hard times hit, your potential competition gets distracted.
If you can find a way to use the above ideas, you’ll get a disproportionate unfair advantage. You’ll unlock the magic of compounding and exponentiality much faster than you realize.
Find a way to build digital leverage and get obsessed.
