🟢 Unleash your freedom-first business using The 6 Points of Leverage

More output with less effort

(4 min read)

Even though my career began at a top hedge fund, where I helped teach our clients about the power of leverage in their investments…

I failed to understand it in my personal life until I heard Naval Ravikant promise:

You’ll never get wealthy until you separate earning income from providing extra effort.

Leverage is how you accomplish more with less effort.

What you work on is much more important than how hard you work.

My partner Katie and I had been running business that had some leverage but was never going to make us wealthy.

It had a bottleneck.

We enrolled clients 1 phone call at a time.

Sure, much of our business embraced automation, and our fulfillment was decently scalable since we hosted group coaching calls (rather than individual ones).

A lot was working well.

But wow.

Those sales calls took their toll.

I did NOT like seeing my calendar full of those appointments.

Let’s look at the 6 Points of Leverage¹ that I consider when building my next business:

1. Profession

2. Prestige

3. Product

4. Process

5. People

6. Portfolio

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Profession

The rewards for being excellent at something scale faster than you’d think.

You get far more recognition (and money) for being the best than you do for being 10th-best or even 2nd best.

It can be 10x or 100x.

Consider Michael Phelps. Do you know who came in 2nd in each of his races?

I don’t.

Phelps is now a household name and has earned a gazillion dollars in sponsorships because he was fractions of a second faster than someone else.

Bad news: it’s harder than ever to commit to one craft and become world-class at it.

Because there are so many opportunities and distractions.

Good news: becoming the top 1% in the world at something is still simple.

Continually reframe what you do to be so specific and narrowly-defined that you are the world’s best.

Get clear about who you serve, what problem you solve, and how you solve it.

❌ Don’t say “I’m a marketer”.

✅ Say “I’m the #1 Facebook marketer helping aesthetic dentists in the UK expand their practice.”

And don’t quit.

The extra mile may be a lonely and tiresome journey, but it's never crowded.

Give 3-5 years of focused attention to a skill, and you can become the best in your niche.

Few people will stick it out that long.

Focus + Patience = Outsized rewards

By the way, the concept of alignment is crucial here.

You’ll only stick with something for a long enough time if it feels aligned with your values and your natural proclivities.

Intrinsic motivation (inspiration) is a requirement.

Prestige

Prioritize learning how to write.

“Writing is the most important form of communication.”

- Jeff Bezos

(Hint: ⭐ WealthFromWords.com is coming up soon, which will teach you how to make an impact with your writing, so I recommend signing up for free there.)

Reach × Reputation + Patience = Prestige

Anyone can get attention for themselves if they’re sensationalist, shallow, or immoral.

Don’t sacrifice your reputation for a fleeting moment in the spotlight.

Step 1 was to master your Profession.

Along the way, tell stories about your results.

You don’t need to brag, but you need people to notice.

As you share your journey, if you keep at it for years even when you’re not getting positive external reinforcement, there will be a snowball effect.

You will be on people’s minds.

Bonus tip: Make friends with people who are well-connected, influential, or challenge your thinking.

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Product

If you value freedom more than revenue, lean towards selling products instead of services.

Prefer ways of earning money that require little to no cost of marginal replication.

Carefully design your product so that:

• The right people know when it’s a fit for them (offers the specific transformation they want)

• It wows them

• It’s easy to use multiple times

When people enjoy your product and use it repeatedly, it stays on their mind, and they’ll shout from the rooftops about it.

You get massive word-of-mouth referral marketing just because you nailed the design.

Process

Don’t worry about this as much in your early days, but eventually you’ll want to block off time weekly to reassess how you can make your business hum.

You’ll reflect on everywhere you spent your time.

These are the main 4 questions you’ll ask.

• Elimination

  • Can I avoid it?

  • “Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.” – Peter Drucker

• Systemization

  • Can I simplify, smooth, and safeguard the process?

  • Create checklists and standard operating procedures / workflows so that you and your team can execute tasks efficiently and without error.

• Automation

  • Can I automate it?

  • Don’t automate too soon while workflows are still in flux. But once those are stable, paying for automations is often an excellent investment.

• Delegation

  • Can I delegate?

  • Some tasks that can’t be fully automated could be systematized and then passed off to a different team member to free you up.

People

Delegation

Delegate whatever is not your highest potential impact.

Most people do this too late. I’m probably doing this too late.

Partnerships

If you come together with someone who masters the first 4 Points of Leverage (and you have too), it’s powerful.

Feedback

Stop shooting in the dark.

Your automations should solicit feedback from your audience continually.

They’ll tell you what their problems are.

Support

If you give, give, give, give, then occasionally you can ask others to help you (such as to spread the word about your new product).

Masterminds

Team up with smart people who can give you outside perspective about your challenges and help you improve your life and business.

Mentors

Paying for coaching can be a game-changer.

Often we waffle for too long about certain decisions that people with more expertise can confidently offer guidance on.

Portfolio

As your business earns money, you can invest back into your business.

You should take some of the profits, though, and invest them outside your business.

Buy a set of index funds (as I described in What I learned managing $210 billion).

Diversification reduces risk.

Even if I had a business I loved and made lots of money from it, I wouldn’t want all of my income to come from that one source.

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Leverage is one of my favorite concepts.

And the internet makes all 6 Points of Leverage so much easier!

Stay tuned for more stories about my attempt to use leverage to design the life I want. 😁

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🕙 What we learned in recent posts:

🟢 9,824 subscribers in 281 days

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🟢 $28,600 per hour from his porch

🟢 From life-altering injury to business opportunity

🟢 [See all posts]

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Click the ❤️ button if you like that they’re free.

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1. Inspired by Kieran Drew’s LinkedIn post