A story of not giving a damn

Today I’ll tell a short story of a person you’d often find me quoting — Naval Ravikant. An entrepreneur and angel investor, Naval is famous for sharing his philosophy in the form of tweets, writeups, and interviews. His words have largely shaped my worldview, along with many others I’m sure.

One of his conversations I vividly remember is where he vented out not being able to write a book. His tweets have reached millions, so everyone suggested him to write a book. It’s the next natural step to leverage the following. So he tried to write one, many many times. But every time he’d write something, it would seem “fake”. To him, authenticity was more important than leverage.

So he dropped it altogether. Didn’t give a damn if his name never appears on the cover of a book. To quote what he said, “If the universe wants a book from me, it will have to write it itself.” Seriously, how many of us have the judgement and courage to quit when it’s time to quit?

At that time, anyone could criticize his decision. People might have tried to remind him how good of a writer he was, and that he just wasn’t trying enough. But he stood firmly on his principles:

So where did the chips fall? Well, the universe did write a book for him after all.

Eric Jorgensen asked Naval if he could compile his tweets, podcasts, interviews, etc. in a book format and publish it on his behalf. Naval agreed on one condition — the book should be made freely available.

So Eric spent 500+ hours scraping the internet, collecting everything Naval has ever said or written, and compiling it all within a book. He collaborated with Jack Butcher to add some nice illustrations and give the book a facelift.

Together they published The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Freely available on navalmanack.com. Or you can buy a physical copy online.

Now here’s the fun part — despite being freely available, the book sold over one million physical copies! People paid for something they could literally get for free. No marketing, no publishers, nothing. Just plain old word-of-mouth.

In total the almanack distributed over six million copies. Naval became a best selling author without writing the book himself. Without asking anyone to do it for him and without asking people to buy it.

That, my friends, was a story of grit in its true sense. Not compromising on your principles even when it seems like you’re losing something, even when you know that you’re not doing what you should be doing. It’s a story of listening to your heart.

This was also a story that proves that if your work is truly high quality and valuable, you don’t need to go out and sell. Opportunities will seek you out.

Did you like this one? Let me know by replying to this email or commenting on the website.

Night night!
Aachman