Origin Story
How a Saturday morning AI chat accidentally created a philosophy
The Saturday Ritual
Every Saturday, I have this thing I do. I sit down with AI and just... talk. About business, about goals, about what I'm saving, what's working, what's not working, where I'm stuck, where I'm winning.
It's like having a weekly board meeting with yourself, except the other board member has read every book, never judges, and asks the exact right questions at the exact right time.
I encourage everyone to build this habit. It's genuinely powerful for clarity on your mindset.
And then one Saturday, during one of these chats, the AI responded and called me the Wealth Goblin.
I laughed out loud. It was perfect. Chaotic, a bit feral, obsessed with hoarding shiny things (dividends, bonds, cashflow), definitely not trying to be some polished guru.
The name stuck. Because it felt true.
The Power of the Alter Ego
There's real psychology behind this. Having an alter ego—a separate identity you step into—can be incredibly powerful.
There's a book called The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman that dives deep into this. Top athletes, business leaders, performers—many of them use this approach. They create a version of themselves that embodies the traits they need to succeed, and they step into that identity when it's time to perform.
For me, the Wealth Goblin is the part of me that doesn't get distracted by shiny objects (unless those objects pay dividends). It's the part that says "no" to lifestyle creep, "yes" to feeding the hoard, and "absolutely not" to touching the investments.
Separating it from my everyday identity makes it easier to make hard decisions. It's not me being cheap—it's the Wealth Goblin protecting the hoard. It's not me obsessing over £100 in monthly dividends—it's the goblin doing its job.
When Work Doesn't Feel Like Work
The other thing that happened during those Saturday chats: I realized AI actually got my philosophy on all of this.
I'm not one of those entrepreneurs who idolizes people for no reason. I speak my mind. But I did see a quote popup on X one time from Naval Ravikant's account that genuinely resonated:
"When you truly work for yourself, you won't have hobbies, you won't have weekends, and you won't have vacations, but you won't have work either."
— Naval Ravikant
That's it. That's the whole thing.
I don't see my work as work. I'm fortunate enough to say I'm already "retired" in the traditional sense—because I've built something where I'm only doing what I actually want to do.
And even when I hit my freedom number? I'll still be tinkering. Still trying new things. Still learning, still playing with new technologies, still building.
Because when you truly work for yourself, it doesn't feel like work.
The Full Context (Worth Reading)
Nivi: From April 2nd: "When you truly work for yourself, you won't have hobbies, you won't have weekends, and you won't have vacations, but you won't have work either."
Naval: This is the paradox of working for yourself, which every entrepreneur or every self-employed person is familiar with, which is that when you start working for yourself, you basically sacrifice this work-life balance thing.
You sacrifice this work-life distinction. There's no more nine-to-five. There's no more office. There's no one who's telling you what to do. There's no playbook to follow. At the same time, there's nothing to turn off. You can't turn it off. You are the business. You are the product. You are the work. You are the entity, and you care.
If you're doing something that's truly yours, you care very deeply, so you can't turn it off. And that's the curse of the entrepreneur. But the benefit of the entrepreneur is that if you're doing it right, if you're doing it for the right reasons or the right people in the right way, and if you can set aside the stress of not hitting your goals, which is real and hard to set aside, then it doesn't feel like work.
And that's when you're most productive. You are basically only measured on your output. And you're only held up to the bar that you raised for yourself. So it can be extremely exhilarating and freeing. And this is why I said a long time ago that a taste of freedom can make you unemployable.
And so this is exactly that taste of freedom. It makes you unemployable in the classic sense of nine-to-five and following the playbook and having a boss. But once you have broken out of that, once you've walked the tight rope without a net, without a boss, without a job—and by the way, this can even happen in startups in a small team where you're just very self-motivated. You get what look like huge negatives to the average person that you don't have weekends, you don't have vacations, and you don't have time off, you don't have work-life balance. But, at the same time, when you are working, it doesn't feel like work. It's something that you're highly motivated to do and that's the reward.
And net-net, I do think this is a one-way door. I think once people experience working on something that they care about with people that they really like in a way they're self-motivated, they're unemployable. They can't go back to a normal job with a manager and a boss and check-ins and nine-to-five and "Show up this day, this week, sit in this desk, commute at this time."
Nivi: I think there's a hidden meaning in the tweet too, which I'm guessing is intentional. It starts off with "When you truly work for yourself," which I'm guessing most people are going to take that to mean "You're your own boss." But the other way that I read it is that you are working for yourself.
So your labor is an expression of who and what you are. It's self-expression. And that's not an easy thing to figure out.
So that's the origin story.
A Saturday AI chat. A perfectly ridiculous name. An alter ego that makes the hard decisions easier. And a philosophy that says if you've built something you actually care about, work stops feeling like work.
The Wealth Goblin isn't a brand. It's just the name for the part of me that knows what matters: Feed the pile. Don't touch the hoard. Buy back time.