Find a Position of Leverage
Find a Position of Leverage
We live in an age of infinite leverage, and the economic rewards for genuine intellectual curiosity have never been higher. [11] Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now. [11]
Knowledge only you know or only a small set of people knows is going to come out of your passions and your hobbies, oddly enough. If you have hobbies around your intellectual curiosity, you’re more likely to develop these passions. [1]
If it entertains you now but will bore you someday, it’s a distraction. Keep looking.
I only really want to do things for their own sake. That is one definition of art. Whether it’s business, exercise, romance, friendship, whatever, I think the meaning of life is to do things for their own sake. Ironically, when you do things for their own sake, you create your best work. Even if you’re just trying to make money, you will actually be the most successful.
The year I generated the most wealth for myself was actually the year I worked the least hard and cared the least about the future. I was mostly doing things for the sheer fun of it. I was basically telling people, “I’m retired, I’m not working.” Then, I had the time for whatever was my highest valued project in front of me. By doing things for their own sake, I did them at their best. [74]
The less you want something, the less you’re thinking about it, the less you’re obsessing over it, the more you’re going to do it in a natural way. The more you’re going to do it for yourself. You’re going to do it in a way you’re good at, and you’re going to stick with it. The people around you will see the quality of your work is higher. [1]
Follow your intellectual curiosity more than whatever is “hot” right now. If your curiosity ever leads you to a place where society eventually wants to go, you’ll get paid extremely well. [3]
You’re more likely to have skills society does not yet know how to train other people to do. If someone can train other people how to do something, then they can replace you. If they can replace you, then they don’t have to pay you a lot. You want to know how to do something other people don’t know how to do at the time period when those skills are in demand. [1]
If they can train you to do it, then eventually they will train a computer to do it.
You get rewarded by society for giving it what it wants and doesn’t know how to get elsewhere. A lot of people think you can go to school and study for how to make money, but the reality is, there’s no skill called “business.” [1]
Think about what product or service society wants but does not yet know how to get. You want to become the person who delivers it and delivers it at scale. That is really the challenge of how to make money.
Now, the problem is becoming good at whatever “it” is. It moves around from generation to generation, but a lot of it happens to be in technology.
You are waiting for your moment when something emerges in the world, they need a skill set, and you’re uniquely qualified. You build your brand in the meantime on Twitter, on YouTube, and by giving away free work. You make a name for yourself, and you take some risk in the process. When it is time to move on the opportunity, you can do so with leverage—the maximum leverage possible. [1]
There are three broad classes of leverage:
One form of leverage is labor—other humans working for you. It is the oldest form of leverage, and actually not a great one in the modern world. [1] I would argue this is the worst form of leverage that you could possibly use. Managing other people is incredibly messy. It requires tremendous leadership skills. You’re one short hop from a mutiny or getting eaten or torn apart by the mob. [78]
Money is good as a form of leverage. It means every time you make a decision, you multiply it with money. [1] Capital is a trickier form of leverage to use. It’s more modern. It’s the one that people have used to get fabulously wealthy in the last century. It’s probably been the dominant form of leverage in the last century.
You can see this by looking for the richest people. It’s bankers, politicians in corrupt countries who print money, essentially people who move large amounts of money around. If you look at the top of very large companies, outside of technology companies, in many, many large old companies, the CEO job is really a financial job.
It scales very, very well. If you get good at managing capital, you can manage more and more capital much more easily than you can manage more and more people. [78]
The final form of leverage is brand new—the most democratic form. It is: “products with no marginal cost of replication.”
This includes books, media, movies, and code. Code is probably the most powerful form of permissionless leverage. All you need is a computer—you don’t need anyone’s permission. [1]
Forget rich versus poor, white-collar versus blue. It’s now leveraged versus un-leveraged.
The most interesting and the most important form of leverage is the idea of products that have no marginal cost of replication. This is the new form of leverage. This was only invented in the last few hundred years. It started with the printing press. It accelerated with broadcast media, and now it’s really blown up with the internet and with coding. Now, you can multiply your efforts without involving other humans and without needing money from other humans.
This book is a form of leverage. Long ago, I would have had to sit in a lecture hall and lecture each of you personally. I would have maybe reached a few hundred people, and that would have been that. [78]
This newest form of leverage is where all the new fortunes are made, all the new billionaires. For the last generation, fortunes were made by capital. The people who made fortunes were the Warren Buffetts of the world.
But the new generation’s fortunes are all made through code or media. Joe Rogan making $50 million to $100 million a year from his podcast. You’re going to have PewDiePie. I don’t know how much money he’s rolling in, but he’s bigger than the news. And of course, there’s Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. Their wealth is all code-based leverage. [78]
Probably the most interesting thing to keep in mind about new forms of leverage is they are permissionless. They don’t require somebody else’s permission for you to use them or succeed. For labor leverage, somebody has to decide to follow you. For capital leverage, somebody has to give you money to invest or to turn into a product.
Coding, writing books, recording podcasts, tweeting, YouTubing—these kinds of things are permissionless. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do them, and that’s why they are very egalitarian. They’re great equalizers of leverage. [78] Every great software developer, for example, now has an army of robots working for him at nighttime while he or she sleeps, after they’ve written the code, and it’s cranking away. [78]
You’re never going to get rich renting out your time.
Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence and you’re accountable on your output, as opposed to your input—that’s the dream. [10]
Humans evolved in societies where there was no leverage. If I was chopping wood or carrying water for you, you knew eight hours put in would be equal to about eight hours of output. Now we’ve invented leverage—through capital, cooperation, technology, productivity, all these means. We live in an age of leverage. As a worker, you want to be as leveraged as possible so you have a huge impact without as much time or physical effort.
A leveraged worker can out-produce a non-leveraged worker by a factor of one thousand or ten thousand. With a leveraged worker, judgment is far more important than how much time they put in or how hard they work.
Forget 10x programmers. 1,000x programmers really exist, we just don’t fully acknowledge it. See @ID_AA_Carmack, @notch, Satoshi Nakomoto, etc.
For example, a good software engineer, just by writing the right little piece of code and creating the right little application, can literally create half a billion dollars’ worth of value for a company. But ten engineers working ten times as hard, just because they choose the wrong model, the wrong product, wrote it the wrong way, or put in the wrong viral loop, have basically wasted their time. Inputs don’t match outputs, especially for leveraged workers.
What you want in life is to be in control of your time. You want to get into a leveraged job where you control your own time and you’re tracked on the outputs. If you do something incredible to move the needle on the business, they have to pay you. Especially if they don’t know how you did it because it’s innate to your obsession or your skill or your innate abilities, they’re going to have to keep paying you to do it.
If you have specific knowledge, you have accountability and you have leverage; they have to pay you what you’re worth. If they pay you what you’re worth, then you can get your time back—you can be hyper-efficient. You’re not doing meetings for meetings’ sake, you’re not trying to impress other people, you’re not writing things down to make it look like you did work. All you care about is the actual work itself.
When you do just the actual work itself, you’ll be far more productive, far more efficient. You’ll work when you feel like it—when you’re high-energy—and you won’t be trying to struggle through when you’re low energy. You’ll gain your time back.
Forty hour work weeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes—train and sprint, then rest and reassess.
Sales is an example—especially very high-end sales. If you’re a real estate agent out there selling houses, it’s not a great job, necessarily. It’s very crowded. But if you’re a top-tier real estate agent, you know how to market yourself and you know how to sell houses, it’s possible you could sell $5 million mansions in one tenth of the time while somebody else is struggling to sell $100,000 apartments or condos. Real estate agent is a job with input and output disconnected.
Building any product and selling any product fits this description. And fundamentally, what else is there? Where you don’t necessarily want to be is a support role, like customer service. In customer service, unfortunately, inputs and outputs relate relatively close to each other, and the hours you put in matter. [10]
Tools and leverage create this disconnection between inputs and outputs. The higher the creativity component of a profession, the more likely it is to have disconnected inputs and outputs. If you’re looking at professions where your inputs and your outputs are highly connected, it’s going to be very hard to create wealth and make wealth for yourself in that process. [78]
If you want to be part of a great tech company, then you need to be able to SELL or BUILD. If you don’t do either, learn.
Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
These are two very broad categories. One is building the product. This is hard, and it’s multivariate. It can include design; it can include development; it can include manufacturing, logistics, procurement; and it can even be designing and operating a service. It has many, many definitions.
But in every industry, there is a definition of the builder. In our tech industry, it’s the CTO, it’s the programmer, it’s the software engineer or hardware engineer. But even in the laundry business, it could be the person who’s building the laundry service, who is making the trains run on time, who’s making sure all the clothes end up in the right place at the right time, and so on.
The other side of it is sales. Again, selling has a very broad definition. Selling doesn’t necessarily just mean selling to individual customers, but it can mean marketing, it can mean communicating, it can mean recruiting, it can mean raising money, it can mean inspiring people, it could mean doing PR. It’s a broad umbrella category. [78]
Earn with your mind, not your time.
Let’s talk more about the real estate business. The worst kind of job is someone who’s doing labor to repair a house. Maybe you get paid ten dollars or twenty dollars an hour. You go to people’s houses, your boss demands you’re there at 8:00 a.m., and you repair your piece of the house. Here, you have zero leverage. You have some accountability, but not really, because your accountability is to your boss, not to the client. You don’t have any real specific knowledge, since what you’re doing is labor lots of people can do. You’re not going to get paid a lot. You’re getting paid minimum wage plus a little bit for your skill and your time.
The next level up might be the general contractor working on the house for the owner. They may be getting paid $50,000 to do the whole project, then they’re paying the labor fifteen dollars an hour and they’re keeping the difference.
A general contractor is obviously a better place to be. But how do we measure it? How do we know it’s better? Well, we know it’s better because this person has some accountability. They’re responsible for the outcome, they have to sweat at night if things aren’t working. Contractors have leverage through laborers working for them. They also have little bit more specific knowledge: how to organize a team, make them show up on time, and how to deal with city regulations.
The next level up might be a real estate developer. A developer is someone who’s going to buy a property, hire a bunch of contractors, and transform it into something higher value. They probably have to take out a loan to buy a house or go to investors to raise money. They buy the old house, tear it down, rebuild it, and sell it. Instead of $50,000 like the general contractor, or fifteen dollars an hour like the laborer, the developer might be able to make a million dollars or half a million dollars in profit when they sell the house for more than they bought it for, including the expenses of construction. But now, notice what is required from the developer: a very high level of accountability.
The developer takes on more risk, more accountability, has more leverage, and needs to have more specific knowledge. They need to understand fundraising, city regulations, where the real estate market is headed, and whether they should take the risk or not. It is more difficult.
The next level up might be someone who’s managing money in a real estate fund. They have an enormous amount of capital leverage. They’re dealing with lots and lots of developers, and they’re buying huge amounts of housing inventory. [74]
One level beyond that might be somebody who says, “Actually, I want to bring the maximum leverage to bear in this market and the maximum specific knowledge.” That person would say, “Well, I understand real estate, and I understand everything from basic housing construction, to building properties and selling them, to how real estate markets move and thrive, and I also understand the technology business. I understand how to recruit developers, how to write code, and how to build a good product, and I understand how to raise money from venture capitalists, how to return it, and how all of that works.”
Obviously, not a single person may know this. You may pull a team together to do it where each have different skill sets, but that combined entity would have specific knowledge in technology and in real estate. It would have massive accountability because that company’s name would be a very high-risk, high-reward effort attached to the whole thing, and people would devote their lives to it and take on significant risk. It would have leverage in code with lots of developers. It would have capital with investors putting money in and the founder’s own capital. It would have some of the highest-quality labor you can find, which is high-quality engineers, designers, and marketers who are working on the company.
Then, you may end up with a Trulia, Redfin, or Zillow company, and then the upside could potentially be in the billions of dollars, or the hundreds of millions of dollars. [78]
Each level has increasing leverage, increasing accountability, increasingly specific knowledge. You’re adding in money-based leverage on top of labor-based leverage. Adding in code-based leverage on top of money and labor allows you to actually create something bigger and bigger and get closer and closer to owning all the upside, not just being paid a salary.
You start as a salaried employee. But you want to work your way up to try and get higher leverage, more accountability, and specific knowledge. The combination of those over a long period of time with the magic of compound interest will make you wealthy. [74]
The one thing you have to avoid is the risk of ruin.
Avoiding ruin means stay out of jail. So, don’t do anything illegal. It’s never worth it to wear an orange jumpsuit. Stay out of total catastrophic loss. Avoiding ruin could also mean you stay out of things that could be physically dangerous or hurt your body. You have to watch your health.
Stay out of things that could cause you to lose all of your capital, all of your savings. Don’t gamble everything on one go. Instead, take rationally optimistic bets with big upsides. [78]
寻找杠杆的位置
我们生活在一个充满杠杆效应的时代，对于真正的知识好奇心，经济上的回报从未如此丰厚。 [11] 追随你真正的知识好奇心，是职业生涯的更好基础，而不是追随那些当下赚钱的潮流。 [11]
那些只有你自己或少数人知道的知识，往往会来自你的激情和爱好，颇为奇妙。如果你在知识好奇心上有爱好，你更有可能发展出这些激情。 [1]
如果现在让你感到有趣，但某天会让你感到厌烦，那它就是一种分心。继续寻找。
我真正想做的只是为了自身的意义去做事情。这是对艺术的一种定义。无论是商业、锻炼、浪漫、友情，不论是什么，我认为生命的意义就在于为了它本身去做事情。讽刺的是，当你为了事情本身而去做时，你创造出的是最好的作品。即使你只是为了赚钱，你也会取得最成功的结果。
我自己创造财富最多的那一年，其实是我工作最少、最不在意未来的一年。那时候我大部分时间只是在做有趣的事情。我基本上告诉别人：“我退休了，我不工作了。” 然后，我有时间做当下我最看重的项目。正因为是为了事情本身而做，所以做得最好。 [74]
你越不想要某样东西，你越少思考它，越少对它痴迷，你就越自然地去做它，越能为自己而做。你会以擅长的方式去做，并且会坚持下去。你周围的人会看到你工作的质量更高。 [1]
追随你的知识好奇心，而不是当下的“热门”领域。如果你的好奇心最终引导你到了一个社会想要去的地方，你将会得到极高的报酬。 [3]
你更有可能具备那些社会尚未学会如何培养出来的技能。如果有人能教其他人如何做某事，那么他们就可以取代你。如果他们可以取代你，那么他们就不需要支付你很多报酬。你需要掌握那些别人还不会做的技能，且在那些技能被需要的时候掌握它们。 [1]
如果他们可以训练你去做某件事，那么最终他们也可以训练一台电脑去做这件事。
你因社会给予它所需但无法从其他地方获得的东西而得到回报。许多人认为可以通过上学学习如何赚钱，但事实是，没有一种叫做“商业”的技能。 [1]
想想社会想要什么样的产品或服务，但尚不知如何获得。你要成为提供这些产品或服务的人，并且以规模化的方式提供。这才是真正的赚钱挑战。
现在的问题是如何在“它”上变得优秀。这种需求会代代不同，但很多时候它与技术相关。
你需要等待属于你的时刻，当某个东西在世界上出现时，他们需要一种技能，而你正好具备这种独特的技能。在此期间，你可以通过在 Twitter、YouTube 上发布内容、提供免费工作来建立自己的品牌。你让自己有名气，在过程中承担一定的风险。当机会来临时，你可以用杠杆去抓住它——尽可能大的杠杆。 [1]
杠杆大致可以分为三类：
一种杠杆是劳动——其他人为你工作。这是最古老的杠杆形式，在现代世界中实际上不是一个很好的选择。 [1] 我认为这是你可能使用的最糟糕的杠杆形式。管理他人是极其复杂的，它需要巨大的领导才能。你离暴动或被人吃掉、被群众撕裂只有一步之遥。 [78]
金钱是一种好的杠杆。 这意味着每当你做一个决策时，你都可以用金钱去放大它。 [1] 资本是一种更难使用的杠杆形式。它更现代，是人们在上个世纪用来变得极其富有的杠杆。它可能是上个世纪最主要的杠杆形式。
你可以通过观察最富有的人来发现这一点。最富有的是银行家、在腐败国家印钱的政客，基本上就是那些掌握大笔资金的人。如果你看那些大公司的顶层管理者，尤其是非技术类的老牌大公司，很多 CEO 的角色实际上都是在进行财务管理。
资本杠杆可以非常有效地扩大。如果你擅长管理资本，你可以更容易地管理越来越多的资金，而不像管理越来越多的人那么困难。 [78]
最后一种杠杆是全新的——最民主的形式。它是：“无复制边际成本的产品。”
包括书籍、媒体、电影和代码。代码可能是最强大的无需许可的杠杆形式。你只需要一台电脑，不需要别人的许可。 [1]
忘掉富人和穷人、白领和蓝领。现在是有杠杆和无杠杆的时代。
最有趣和最重要的杠杆形式是那些没有复制边际成本的产品。这是新的杠杆形式，它仅仅在最近几百年内发明。它始于印刷机，加速于广播媒体，而如今，它通过互联网和编程达到了顶峰。如今，你可以在不牵涉其他人类或不需要其他人类金钱的情况下扩大你的努力。
这本书本身就是一种杠杆。很久以前，我需要在课堂上对你们每个人逐一讲解，可能只能接触到几百人，仅此而已。 [78]
最新的杠杆形式是所有新财富的源头，所有的新亿万富翁的来源。在上一代，财富是通过资本积累起来的。那些致富的人是像沃伦·巴菲特那样的投资者。
但新一代的财富则来自代码或媒体。乔·罗根每年通过他的播客赚取五千万到一亿美元。PewDiePie 的收入我不清楚，但他比许多新闻媒体还要有影响力。当然，还有杰夫·贝佐斯、马克·扎克伯格、拉里·佩奇、谢尔盖·布林、比尔·盖茨和史蒂夫·乔布斯。他们的财富全都基于代码杠杆。 [78]
新杠杆形式最有趣的一点可能是它们无需许可。你不需要别人的许可就能使用或成功利用它们。劳动杠杆需要有人决定追随你，资本杠杆需要有人给你投资或资金转化为产品。
编码、写书、录制播客、发推文、制作 YouTube 视频——这些都是无需许可的形式。你不需要得到任何人的许可就可以去做，因此它们非常平等，是杠杆的巨大平衡器。例如，每一位伟大的软件开发者现在都有一支在夜晚工作的机器人军队，在他们写完代码后自动运作。 [78]
靠租赁时间是不会致富的。
无论何时，只要有机会，就要追求独立而非薪水。如果你有独立性，并且结果导向，而不是过程导向——那就是梦想状态。 [10]
人类是在没有杠杆的社会中进化的。如果我为你砍柴或提水，你知道我投入的八小时等于大约八小时的产出。而如今，我们发明了杠杆——通过资本、合作、技术、生产力等所有这些手段。我们生活在杠杆时代。作为一个工作者，你想尽可能地利用杠杆，以减少时间或体力消耗，产生巨大的影响。
一个利用杠杆的工人，可以比一个没有杠杆的工人多产出一千倍甚至一万倍。对于有杠杆的工人，判断力比他们投入的时间和努力程度更为重要。
忘掉10倍程序员吧。实际上存在1000倍的程序员，只是我们没有完全承认它们。看看@ID_AA_Carmack，@notch，或者中本聪等。
例如，一个好的软件工程师，只需写出一小段正确的代码，创建一个合适的小应用程序，就能为公司创造价值高达五亿美元。而十个工程师，即使他们努力十倍，只因选择了错误的模式、错误的产品，或错误地编写代码，或引入了错误的传播方式，就等于浪费了时间。投入与产出不成正比，特别是对有杠杆的工人而言。
你希望在生活中掌控自己的时间。你希望进入一个你能控制时间并以产出为评判标准的工作。如果你做了一件非常了不起的事，推动了业务的发展，他们就不得不支付你报酬。尤其是如果他们不知道你是怎么做到的，因为这是你痴迷或天赋技能的产物，那么他们就不得不持续付钱让你去做。
如果你有特定知识、有责任感、有杠杆，他们就得支付你相应的报酬。如果他们支付了你应得的报酬，那么你就能掌握自己的时间——你可以高效地工作。你不会为了开会而开会，不会为了取悦别人而努力，不会写些东西只是为了看起来你做了工作。你所关心的只是实际工作本身。
当你只关注实际工作本身时，你会更加高效，更加多产。当你精力充沛时工作，而当你精力低落时休息，你会真正地收回自己的时间。
四十小时的工作周是工业时代的遗留产物。知识工作者应该像运动员一样——训练并冲刺，然后休息和重新评估。
销售就是一个例子——尤其是非常高端的销售。如果你是一个房地产经纪人，负责卖房子，那可能不是一份好工作。竞争非常激烈。但是如果你是顶尖的房地产经纪人，知道如何营销自己，知道如何卖房子，那么你可能在别人费尽心思卖出十万美金公寓的时间里，售出五百万美金的豪宅。房地产经纪人就是一个投入与产出不直接挂钩的工作。
制造任何产品和销售任何产品都符合这个描述。而从根本上说，还有什么其他的呢？你不一定想处在客户服务等支持性角色中。不幸的是，在客户服务中，投入和产出是相对密切关联的，你投入的时间是有直接影响的。 [10]
工具和杠杆创造了这种投入和产出脱钩的现象。一个职业的创造性成分越高，投入和产出脱钩的可能性就越大。如果你从事的是投入与产出高度关联的职业，那么在这个过程中为自己创造财富将会非常困难。 [78]
如果你想成为一家伟大科技公司的一部分，那么你需要能够销售或建设。如果你两者都不会，就去学习。
学会销售，学会建设。如果你能做到这两者，你将无可阻挡。
这两个类别非常宽泛。一个是构建产品。这很难，并且多方面的。它可以包括设计、开发、制造、物流、采购，甚至包括设计和运营服务。它有很多很多的定义。
但在每个行业中，构建者都有一个定义。在我们的科技行业中，这是首席技术官，是程序员，是软件工程师或硬件工程师。但即使是在洗衣业务中，也可能是那个构建洗衣服务的人，确保火车准点运行，确保所有衣物按时送到正确地点的人，等等。
另一方面是销售。销售的定义也非常广泛。销售不仅仅意味着向个体客户销售，它还可以是市场营销、沟通、招聘、筹集资金、激励人们，甚至是公关。这是一个宽泛的范畴。 [78]
用你的头脑赚钱，而不是用时间。
让我们再谈谈房地产行业。最糟糕的工作是那些做房屋修理的劳动者。你可能每小时赚十美元或二十美元。你去别人的家里，你的老板要求你八点准时到，然后修理你负责的那一部分房屋。在这种情况下，你没有任何杠杆。你可能有一些责任感，但其实没有太多，因为你的责任是对老板的，而不是对客户的。你没有任何真正的特定知识，因为你做的事情是很多人都可以做的。你不会得到很多报酬，只能拿到最低工资，再加上一点技能和时间的补贴。
下一级可能是为房主工作的总承包商。他们可能获得五万美元来完成整个项目，然后他们支付工人每小时十五美元，自己留下差额。
总承包商显然是一个更好的位置。但是我们如何衡量呢？我们怎么知道它更好？我们知道它更好，因为这个人有一些责任。他们对结果负责，如果事情不顺利，他们会夜不能寐。承包商通过雇佣工人来获得杠杆。他们还具备一些特定知识：如何组织团队、如何让团队按时到场，以及如何应对城市法规。
再上一级可能是房地产开发商。开发商是那些购买房产、雇佣一群承包商，然后把房产改造成更有价值的东西的人。他们可能需要贷款购买房产，或者去找投资人筹集资金。他们买下旧房子，拆掉重建，然后出售。与总承包商的五万美元或工人的十五美元每小时不同，开发商在出售房屋后可能获得五十万到一百万美元的利润，这远远超过了购买和建筑成本。但现在注意，开发商需要承担非常高的责任。
开发商需要承担更多的风险，承担更多的责任，有更多的杠杆，还需要具备更多的特定知识。他们需要了解融资、城市法规、房地产市场的趋势，以及是否应该承担风险。这更困难。
再上一级可能是那些在房地产基金中管理资金的人。他们拥有巨大的资本杠杆，他们与许多开发商打交道，购买大量的住房库存。 [74]
再往上一层，可能是某个人说：“事实上，我想在这个市场中最大限度地利用杠杆和特定知识。” 这个人会说：“我懂房地产，从基础的房屋建设到物业开发与销售，了解房地产市场的运作与兴衰，同时我也懂技术行业。我懂得如何招聘开发人员，如何写代码，如何构建好产品，还懂得如何从风险投资那里筹钱，如何回报投资，如何运作这些事。”
显然，没有单一的人可能知道这些所有知识。你可以组成一个团队，每个人具备不同的技能，但这样组合的实体将拥有房地产和技术的特定知识。它会有巨大的责任，因为这家公司有一个高度的风险回报，所有参与的人将为此倾尽全力，承担重大风险。它有开发人员的代码杠杆，有投资者投入的资本杠杆，也有创始人的资本杠杆，还有最高质量的劳动资源，即高质量的工程师、设计师和市场人员在为公司工作。
接下来，你可能会打造出像 Trulia、Redfin 或 Zillow 这样的公司，其潜在的收益可以是数亿美元甚至数十亿美元。 [78]
每一层都有更多的杠杆、更大的责任、更具特定的知识。在劳动力杠杆之上加入资本杠杆，在资金和劳动力之上再加上代码杠杆，你可以不断地创造更大、更有价值的东西，离完全拥有所有的利益越来越近，而不仅仅是领一份薪水。
你可以从一名受薪员工做起。但你需要努力逐步获得更高的杠杆、更多的责任以及更具特定的知识。这些要素长期结合，再加上复利的魔力，会让你变得富有。 [74]
唯一需要避免的就是灭亡的风险。
避免灭亡的风险意味着不要进监狱。所以不要做任何违法的事情，穿上橙色连体服永远不值得。远离彻底的毁灭。避免灭亡还意味着远离任何可能对身体造成危险或伤害的事。你必须关心自己的健康。
远离那些可能导致你失去所有资本和积蓄的事情。不要孤注一掷。而是要做理性乐观的赌注，拥有巨大的上升空间。 [78]