Why You Need To Scale Your Passion Online
READING TIME: 2 MINUTES
I love to share thoughts from great doers, and Naval Ravikant is one of them. Chief Executive Officer and Founder of AngelList.com, Naval is a must-follow on Twitter (@Naval) and often shares insights into the tech and start-up spaces. Recently, Naval commented on an aspect of the internet that most people have yet to truly internalize - its potential to transform your career.
Naval tells us that the internet “has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven’t figured this out yet.” With the ability of the internet to connect almost everyone in the world, Naval argues that you can find an audience for your service or product no matter where they are. This is true even if your market is extremely niche, like selling plastic wrestling figures or trading Pogs. Sites like Etsy, eBay, and even Amazon to some extent allow you to find buyers of your niche products at scale. In 2018, Etsy did nearly $4 billion in merchandize sales volume. That’s a lot of handmade items and craft supplies on the move.
But the internet isn’t only useful for finding scale to sell your products. You can also scale your ideas to build a following. Twitter is an obvious tool to find like-minded people who are interested in the same niche as you are, and to share your thoughts with those who want to hear what you have to say.
What’s the secret to finding your niche market? Naval tells us that we need to “escape competition through authenticity….each person on Earth has different interests and obsessions, and it’s that diversity that becomes a creative superpower.” The key is to do your own thing, and then scale it out to find other people who enjoy that thing you do. Once you’ve found your audience, you can utilize that to build wealth.
The transition from consuming to creating is critical. Most ambitious people never make the leap. They end up reading a lot about how other people make money, but they never build the infrastructure to scale their own obsession and leverage it to build wealth. We get caught up building the infrastructure for other people.
Wealest itself is an example of the power to scale an obsession specifically with the idea of wealth creation and the mental models people use to get rich. Before the internet, someone in a village could have this obsession, but unless another person in that village was interested in this topic, it would have no audience. As Naval tells us, the internet has changed the game, giving every single person on earth (with internet access) the opportunity to scale their passion, find an audience, and build wealth.
Start now.