How do you protect yourself after a market crash:

I was talking to my barber recently about how the stock market is going to collapse because of AMC and Gamestop, and he asked me an interesting question.

‘How do you prepare and protect yourself after a market crash?’

Here’s my answer:

You have to become antifragile.

Nicolas Nassim Taleb pioneered this concept in his book, Anti-Fragile (highly recommend it).

Antifragility happens when systems thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, or failures. 

‘Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilience resists shocks and stays the same, the antifragile gets better.’

This concept can be applied to many things, but also people.

How do you improve in situations of highest risk, highest downturns, and highest stress?

The only way to do it is by investing in yourself.

Doing things you enjoy over again for long periods of time that make you happy.

Let’s use the example of a barber.

I told him now that you’ve been a barber for years, teach people how to cut hair. Make videos online, with step by step instructions on how to cut people’s hair. Do it for young kids. Do it for white people. Do it for black people. Do it for Asian people. Do it for whoever you want.

Teach people on the Internet what you’re doing, and do it for free.

The Internet is the answer today because it’s so big. People don’t understand how massive the Internet is right now, but also how massive it’s going to become. A billion people are coming online this next decade in Africa and India. That is massive.

The Internet is still extremely underrated because the market is so big.

Once you create tons of content around cutting hair, then figure out distribution. This is easy because you can do it through Tik Tok, Youtube, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.

If you do something and continue to produce content for years, people will find and follow you.

When you give all your best ideas for free, you can productize yourself.

In the barber example, you can sell a course on how to cut hair for 20 bucks that includes special tips and tricks for example.

Be prepared though because there will be lots of failures along the way. You’ll make videos that suck. You’ll produce content that you don’t love. Doesn’t matter, keep doing it. Do it again and again for long periods of time and eventually through all that failure, you’ll become better at it.

Once you do it long enough, you’ll become an expert and people will start reaching out to you.

In the barber example, say you’re in Toronto and give your information, people will start wanting to reach out to you for haircuts. By giving everything away for free, you’ll make more because people will reach out to you organically.

You have to find what you enjoy and do it because you love it. Covid has shown a lot of people from all walks of life that going to a job they hate to cash a paycheck by staring at their screen being in meetings that don’t matter ain’t it. Life has to be more than that. Lots of people have picked up hobbies or even gotten back to ones they neglected for so long.

In today’s world, if you give your gift to the world, the world will reward you in more ways than you can imagine.

Let me tell you my plan.

Once the market crashes, I’ll have made enough money that I can comfortably quit my job and live off what I’ve made. I’ll re-invest some of that money into a new company to create a media empire.

Media outlets will start covering me and once they do, I can use that to go on podcasts and talk to people around the world. Every time I do that, more people discover my work. My distribution is sorted for me.

Because of all the writing I’ve done in the last year, I’m going to turn it around and create a podcast. A lot of that will be garbage that people won’t listen to, but some of it might be good.

Once I’ve created all the podcasts, I’ll launch a Youtube channel and animate what I’ve been talking about.

I’ll then start a newsletter and have people sign up to hear what I’m doing on a weekly/monthly basis.

I also want to sell my writing as NFTs to let people make bets on me in the future.

While I’m doing all of this, I’ll continue to write for free so everyone can read what I’m thinking about. Most of the stuff I talk about won’t be good but it doesn’t matter. 

‘Quality is subjective, quantity is not.’

This is my playbook for how I’m going to create a media empire, very similar to what Tim Ferris and Joe Rogan have done.

I’m going to be the best investor of this generation and I’m going to give as many of my best ideas as possible for free. 

By doing this, I’m hopeful the Internet will reward me in more ways than I know how.

***

Market crashes are part of life. They happen every decade.

With the Internet, you can protect yourself against it better than any other time in history.

The choice is yours. What are you going to do about it?

I’m ready to change the world and I’m only getting started.