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Productize Yourself: The MFM Guide to Building Wealth Through Leverage

10 min read

Productize Yourself: The MFM Guide to Building Wealth Through Leverage

Naval Ravikant got screwed at Epinions. The details are murky, but the outcome is clear: he walked away from a company that later sold to eBay, receiving far less than he believed he deserved. Most people would have moved on. Naval wrote a blog.

That blog, VentureHacks, became required reading for founders navigating term sheets and investor negotiations. It documented everything Naval had learned the hard way about how power actually works in Silicon Valley. And from that content emerged AngelList, a platform that has since facilitated billions of dollars in startup funding.

The sequence is worth sitting with. A grudge became a blog. The blog became a business. The business became a platform that changed how startups raise money. Naval did not just move up the corporate ladder. He built a new ladder entirely.

This is what it means to productize yourself.

What “Productize Yourself” Actually Means

The phrase comes from Naval Ravikant’s famous tweetstorm on wealth creation, which Sam Parr and Shaan Puri have dissected across multiple episodes of My First Million. The formula is deceptively simple: take your specific knowledge and apply leverage to it.

Specific knowledge is the part that cannot be taught. It is what you know that others do not, usually because you followed your genuine curiosity rather than a prescribed curriculum. Naval Ravikant describes it as the thing that feels like play to you but looks like work to everyone else.

Leverage is the multiplier. Without it, you trade time for money indefinitely. With it, your output becomes disconnected from your input. You can work eight hours and reach eight million people.

The product is you, packaged in a form that scales.

The Three Types of Leverage

On the podcast, the hosts return repeatedly to Naval’s framework for the three paths to equity ownership. Each represents a different way to stop renting your time and start building assets that work while you sleep.

Code

Software is the purest form of leverage. Write it once, deploy it infinitely. The marginal cost of serving an additional user approaches zero. Naval Ravikant was an early investor in Twitter, Uber, and dozens of other companies built on this principle. The common thread was not the specific product but the leverage embedded in the business model.

Content

Media scales similarly. A podcast episode reaches as many listeners as download it, whether that is one thousand or one million. The work is the same either way. Sam Parr built The Hustle into a newsletter business valued at tens of millions precisely because each article he wrote reached the entire subscriber base with no additional effort.

Nick Huber offers a more tactical example. He raised $40 million from 320 investors for his self-storage business, and 96 percent of that capital came from his Twitter following. The content was not separate from the business. It was the distribution mechanism for it.

Capital

Money itself is leverage. When you invest rather than labor, the returns compound while you do other things. This is the domain where Naval has spent much of his post-AngelList career, and it is the path that requires the most accumulated resources to begin.

The Four Money-Making Skills

Sam and Shaan frequently reference a related framework from their conversations: the four skills that generate wealth. Understanding which one fits you determines how you should productize yourself.

Selling. The ability to persuade, negotiate, and close deals. This is Sam’s natural domain. He has described himself as someone who cannot build anything technical but can sell almost anything.

Making. Building products, writing code, creating tangible things. This requires craft and patience but produces assets that exist independent of the creator.

Designing. Shaping user experience, aesthetics, and how things feel. The best products combine functionality with design that makes people want to use them.

Hunting. Finding opportunities, arbitrage, and deals before others see them. This is pattern recognition applied to markets rather than products.

Most people are strong in one or two of these. The productize yourself strategy suggests finding the intersection where your skills meet market demand, then applying leverage to the result.

Skill Stacking: The Trillion Dollar Venn Diagram

Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot, articulated a concept on the podcast that clarifies how specific knowledge actually works in practice.

Being in the top one percent of any skill is extraordinarily difficult. Millions of people compete for that position. But being in the top twenty percent of two complementary skills is achievable with focused effort. And the intersection of those two skills creates a combination that is genuinely rare.

Shah calls this the “Trillion Dollar Venn Diagram.” The insight is that skill is learnable while talent is merely the rate of acquisition. You do not need to be born exceptional. You need to find two skills you can master faster than average and position yourself at their intersection.

The combination creates something that cannot be easily replicated. A programmer who can also sell. A designer who understands data. A writer who knows finance. Each pairing is rarer than either skill alone.

The Five Levels of Wealth Building

The podcast has explored what it takes to move beyond trading time for money. The progression looks something like this:

Level 1: Logistics and Labor. You do tasks. Your output is directly proportional to your hours. This is where most careers begin and many remain.

Level 2: Optimization. You improve efficiency. You figure out how to do the same work faster or with fewer resources. Your hourly output increases but your hours remain the constraint.

Level 3: Performance. You achieve excellence in execution. You become known as someone who delivers exceptional results. This earns premium compensation but still ties income to effort.

Level 4: Creativity. You create new things. Products, systems, companies. The value you generate starts to compound beyond your direct involvement.

Level 5: Judgment. You make high-stakes decisions. At this level, your value comes from knowing which opportunities to pursue and which to avoid. The scarcest resource becomes your discernment rather than your labor.

Naval’s retirement definition operates at this uppermost level. You are retired, he argues, when you stop sacrificing today for some imagined tomorrow. When the act itself becomes the reward.

From Mercenary to Missionary to Artist

Elad Gil, one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific angel investors, appeared on the podcast to discuss a career framework he attributes to Naval. The progression has three stages.

Early in your career, you are a mercenary. You seek opportunity, build skills, and accumulate capital. The work is not necessarily meaningful in itself. It is preparation.

Mid-career, you become a missionary. You have resources and capabilities. Now you can direct them toward things you believe matter. The work becomes about impact rather than accumulation.

After success, you should become an artist. You do the work for the love of the craft itself. The outcome is secondary to the process. This is what Naval means when he says the day you start doing things where the act itself is the reward, that is when you are retired.

The sequence is not age-dependent. It is resource-dependent. Some people reach the artist stage in their thirties. Others never leave mercenary mode despite considerable wealth.

Practical Application: What MFM Suggests You Actually Do

The podcast offers tactical guidance that translates Naval’s philosophy into action.

Identify what feels like play. Your specific knowledge hides in the activities you would do even if no one paid you. The obsessions that others find tedious but you find fascinating. The skills you acquired accidentally while pursuing genuine interest.

Choose your leverage path. Code, content, or capital. Each requires different temperaments and starting resources. Content is the most accessible. Code requires technical skill but offers the highest ceiling. Capital requires accumulated resources but compounds most powerfully.

Stack complementary skills. Audit what you are already good at. Then deliberately develop a second skill that combines with the first to create something rare. The intersection is where specific knowledge lives.

Be impatient with action, patient with results. Take action immediately and frequently. Experiment constantly. But do not expect quick returns. Wealth building is a long game with compounding effects that become visible only over years.

Build equity, do not rent time. Every career decision should move you toward ownership. Toward building assets that work while you sleep. Toward outcomes that scale beyond your direct involvement.

FAQ

What does “productize yourself” actually mean?

It means packaging your specific knowledge and skills into a form that can scale beyond your direct time investment. Instead of selling hours, you create products, content, or systems that deliver value without your continuous presence. The “product” is your unique perspective and capabilities, distributed through leverage.

How do I find my specific knowledge?

Pay attention to what you do for free. The activities that feel like play to you but look like work to others. The topics you research without being asked. The skills you developed through genuine curiosity rather than formal instruction. Specific knowledge usually cannot be taught because it emerges from authentic obsession.

Which leverage path should I choose: code, content, or capital?

It depends on your skills and starting resources. Content requires only a platform and something to say. Code requires technical ability but creates the most scalable products. Capital requires accumulated wealth but compounds most powerfully. Many successful people combine multiple forms. Nick Huber used content leverage to raise capital for real estate leverage.

What is skill stacking and why does it matter?

Skill stacking means becoming competent in two complementary skills rather than exceptional in one. Being top twenty percent in two areas creates a combination rarer than being top one percent in one. The intersection of your skills becomes your specific knowledge. It is achievable with deliberate practice and creates positioning that is difficult to replicate.

How long does it take to productize yourself?

Naval advises being impatient with action but patient with results. Start immediately. Experiment constantly. But expect the compounding effects to take years to become visible. The entrepreneurs featured on My First Million typically describe trajectories measured in decades, not months. The overnight successes usually have ten years of preparation behind them.

Sources and Episodes

Related: Naval Ravikant | Specific Knowledge | Leverage | Skill Stacking | Sam Parr | Shaan Puri | The Hustle | AngelList | Boring Businesses | 1000 True Fans | High Agency

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