Playing the Long Game

I was recently introduced to the writings of Naval Ravikant (thank you Graham). So much of what he says resonates with me, I wanted to share some of his writing here.

Play long term games with long term people.

All returns in life come from compound interest in long-term games. Whether it’s goodwill, or love, or relationships, or money.

If you want to be successful, you have to work with other people. And you have to figure out who can you trust, and who can you trust over a long, long period of time, that you can just keep playing the game with them, so that compound interest, and high trust will make it easier to play the game, and will let you collect the major rewards, which are usually at the end of the cycle.

Thank you to all of my long term people- You know who you are. Thank you everyone at Sutro Li for carrying the torch of the long term iterated game.

Naval emphasizes the importance of remaining consistent in your efforts over a long period of time. It has not always been easy to remain on the same path. There were times when I considered going back to school for another skill or changing trades entirely. These crossroads were almost a decade ago, and I’m so thankful I have remained on a simple, iterated path of service to nonprofits. I had my first nonprofit bookkeeping client before I could legally buy alcohol and before I owned my first car. It is consistent effort and learning over time that has created the specific knowledge and practice I leverage now.

Returns come from compounded interest in integrated games

When you switch industries, you’re starting over from scratch.

Every time you reset, every time you wander out of where you built your network, you’re going to be starting from scratch. You’re not going to know who to trust. They’re not going to know to trust you.

When you have been doing business with somebody, you’ve been friends with somebody for ten years, twenty years, thirty years, it just gets better and better because you trust them so easily.

Get some traction. Get purchase, and don’t lose it. Gain some initial traction, and never fall back, just keep ratcheting up, and up.

To Navals point here about trust- this applies just as much internally in how we receive and greet our colleagues and how we work with our clients. More than half of the clients we served ten years ago are still clients today, and the value of our collaboration with them just increases with time.

I’ll share more insights from Naval in other posts.