Hacking Wealth
STAY TUNED FOR A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW
The word "hacker" originated in the 1960s among tech enthusiasts.
At first it referred to someone who enjoyed exploring and pushing the limits of computer systems and programming. These early hackers were not malicious; they were curious individuals who loved solving complex problems and improving systems.
The term evolved from the broader use of "hack" which in the 1950s meant a creative or clever solution to a technical problem, often in a way that was unorthodox but effective.
Over time, "hacker" took on a more negative connotation, especially in the media, to describe individuals who break into computer systems.
That being said... in many tech communities the original meaning of "hacker" as a skilled programmer or tinkerer persists.
That's the definition I practice -- clever, effective and often unexpected engineering.
What is Wealth Hacking?
You can hack anything under this construct.
Wealth is a prime example: approach wealth building like a hacker.
At its core, hacking is about finding creative solutions to challenges. Reframe the problem. How do we optimize our wealth building outcomes so we have more energy? Hackers often approach problems from unique angles, thinking outside the box to achieve their goals.
Hackers are driven by a desire to understand how things work. They take systems apart, whether they are digital or physical, to explore and understand their inner workings.
The way “wealth works” is well-known, you need to do two things to build wealth:
increase energy — expanding perspective, connecting with people, gaining assets, activating income streams, increasing value of existing assets
decrease entropy — reducing business risk, minimizing unnecessary expenses, avoiding impulsive purchases, reducing debt, making informed financial decisions
Think of energy as the potential for future wealth. The more energy you accumulate, the greater your opportunities for growth.
View entropy as a leakage of your financial energy. The more you can plug these leaks, the more energy you retain to fuel your wealth-building journey.
The key lies in striking a balance between increasing energy and decreasing entropy. It's not just about accumulating more, but also about preserving what you've gained. Cultivating a mindset that embraces both energy accumulation and entropy reduction is crucial. This involves delayed gratification, disciplined spending, and a long-term perspective.
This framework can be applied to various aspects of wealth building:
Investing: Diversifying your investment portfolio increases energy, while minimizing fees and taxes decreases entropy.
Career: Developing your skills and knowledge base increases energy, while avoiding career stagnation decreases entropy.
Business: Expanding your customer base and improving your product offerings increase energy, while streamlining operations and minimizing waste decrease entropy.
Personal Finance: Creating a budget, automating savings, and paying off debt decrease entropy, while increasing income and investing wisely increase energy.
With this framework firmly in our minds, let’s discuss the different ways to hack wealth. This won’t be remotely exhaustive but it will set the table for future posts about these and my surprise announcement below.
How to Hack Wealth
As indicated, there are two sides to this equation — increasing our wealth energy and decreasing our wealth entropy. There are systems we can build and strategies we can use to hack both our energy (up) and our entropy (down).
Let’s look a few of them.
1. Skill Stacking & Upskilling
Energy Increase: Continuously learning and acquiring new skills increases your value in the marketplace. This allows you to command higher income, open doors to new things, and potentially start lucrative side hustles. It's like adding more fuel to your wealth engine.
Entropy Decrease: Staying relevant and adaptable in a changing job market reduces the risk of unemployment or income stagnation.
What you know drives what you can do. It determines what risks you face, how great those risks really are and so much else. Targeted skill building gives you a much larger surface area for opportunity and less surface area for risk.
Offense and defense at the same time.
That’s the asymmetry we’re looking for. I spend most of my “time budget” on learning, and networking... but we’ll get to networking in a moment.
2. Leveraging Technology for Passive Income Streams
Energy Increase: Utilize technology to create passive income streams. This could be through creating and selling digital products, affiliate marketing, or building an online business that generates revenue even while you sleep.
Entropy Decrease: Passive income streams are less susceptible to fluctuations in your primary income source, providing more stability and reducing financial risk.
We live in an age of AI and automation.
The era of robotics is just beginning in earnest as well.
This means we can use tools to increase our productive leverage, save time and give ourselves superhuman capabilities.
Having an AI agent travel down a spreadsheet of 1,000 subscribers and write something truly unique about their engagement pattern + notes I’ve added to the database is an example of both AI and automation adding power. As I’ve noted before automation already was a major hack, but with AI this has gone to the next level.
Use your tools to help you achieve the rest of your goals — network building, network engaging, opportunity sourcing, due diligence, product development, research and development… Everything you want gets just a little bit closer when you activate systems that optimize your return-on-time.
3. Smart Investing in High-Growth Assets
Energy Increase: Invest in assets with high growth potential, such as technology stocks, real estate in emerging markets, or promising startups. This allows your money to work for you and generate significant returns over time.
Entropy Decrease: Diversifying your investments across different asset classes can help mitigate risks and protect your wealth from market downturns.
This has been discussed here at length.
Short version: build a multi-engine wealth system.
Why fly a single engine aircraft? That’s slow AND unsafe.
4. Building a Strong Network & Community
Energy Increase: Cultivating relationships with successful individuals, mentors, and potential collaborators can open doors to new opportunities, partnerships, and valuable insights. It's like tapping into a collective source of energy and knowledge.
Entropy Decrease: A strong network can provide support and guidance during challenging times, reducing the impact of setbacks and helping you navigate obstacles more effectively.
If this list was in order of importance, this would be first. Instead I am optimizing for the finish… but in either event — your network is your net worth.
It really is that simple.
5. Optimizing Your Time & Productivity:
Energy Increase: By managing your time effectively and focusing on high-impact activities, you can accomplish more in less time, freeing up resources to pursue additional income-generating opportunities.
Entropy Decrease: Avoiding procrastination and time-wasting activities reduces the "leakage" of your productive energy, ensuring that your efforts are directed towards building wealth.
You must use systems.
You can earn valuable relationships. You can gain assets. You can gain cash flow.
You can’t do anything to gain more time.
Optimizing your productivity is essentially the art of turning yourself into a high-power action engine. Your moves must layer atop each other — don’t just write an article…
write an article
use AI to process it into 20 tweet teasers w/ a hook
schedule those tweets with link back
use AI to email your inner circle the article with one tone, then your next outward circle with more polished tone, keep going until you get to prospects and people you are warming up
reach out to authors and media in the area(s) you are learning and communicating about including link to article as a sample, etc..
Once you figure out a good workflow, automate it. Build these automations together into systems. You can’t ever gain a minute back, but you can add more impact to each minute with leverage from AI x automation x robotics.
I have automation working in all my communications channels except X direct messages.
Does the AI email occasionally mess up?
Yep and I OWN it. I email them back “whoops my little robot went renegade - apologies and I owe you a glass of wine for the e-litter”. That right there is an example of offense and defense by the way. Seek that out as much as you can in life.
And now for the announcement:
We have launched a video channel called Hacking Wealth.
Our first few episodes are recorded and now we are learning about the movie business. Eventually the plan calls for interviews with academics, business leaders, technologists, money managers and I hope a world leader or two.
Each episode will be different but they will all feature actionable strategies, tools, and tactics for building wealth. Sometimes we’ll look at historical examples of wealth building including the Medici, Rothschild, Rockefeller and other families, focusing on how things evolved as new technologies, markets and forces emerged. In other instances we will look far into the future at emerging tech and their likely implications.
The mission is mapping and efficiently navigating wealth building using technology such as machine learning, blockchain, bitcoin, robotics, vertical farming, quantum computing, magnonics and so much more.
We’re looking at their potential for creating massive wealth in the coming years alongside practical applications we can implement now.
Early versions of these technologies are “already here” and can be applied to add power, resilience, efficiency and consistency to the different wealth engines we have diagrammed already.
Here’s the intro video - please follow our Rumble channel where you will find all the videos posted for free:
Really appreciate you supporting this journey.
Let’s build wealth systems and use them for hacking wealth!
👋 Thank you for reading Wealth Systems. I started this in November 2023 to share the systems, technology, and mindsets that I encountered on Wall Street.
💡The BIG IDEA is share practical knowledge that can be applied toward the development and refinement of wealth building systems.
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