How to build leverage in your life
The compounding effect is real.
Let me ask you an important question.
Are you building something right now?
If not, perhaps it is time to start. This post is to encourage you. Don’t let the days and years pass without building something that can scale over time. My below examples will help you get my point.
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I use “build” as a catch-all word. For example, if you stack Bitcoin on a regular basis by dollar-cost averaging, you are building a bag. Over time, this bag will scale into something meaningful because Bitcoin will always go up on average.
This is a simple example how you can build leverage in your life in a passive way that compounds over time. Buying Bitcoin is just one way to do that, but there is more.
Whatever you decide to build, make sure it can scale over time.
Working for a salary does not scale. You can get a raise, but that will hardly beat inflation in most cases. No matter how much time or effort you spend as an employee, your scale potential will always be limited. There’s a ceiling to any job.
This is not the case if you are an employer or own a company. That can scale and the ceiling is whatever the market decides it can be. The point is that you are not limited in the same way.
Social media is another example that can scale, fast. If you create an account on X or here on Substack and post on a regular basis you have a good shot to scale that content over time.
That initial effort will pay back dividends later. When I started my X account, I had zero followers and there was really no incentive to do it. It was “wasted” effort. However, I was building something that can scale. And it did!
Apart from building a great community around my content, I am now also being rewarded to do it. This was not the case when I started and it’s a nice bonus that was not available earlier.
Be in the biggest market available.
Social media is a great tool because its market is global. There is really no limits to your reach or scale. But let’s say you are not that type of person that likes to post on social media.
In that case, whatever you build, should be located in the biggest market. That can also mean being in the biggest city in your country. Without a big market, your scale is limited. You can easily fix that with a change of location.
Imagine this.
You have an amazing skill, whatever that may be. However, because you live in a remote region, your chances to scale that skill is limited. For example, before Jamie Oliver became famous, he was stuck in a restaurant kitchen where nobody saw him. This changed when BBC did a documentary in that restaurant and filmed him cook.
A day later, after the show was broadcast, people were calling him to do a cooking show. He had a lucky break to fame overnight thanks to being exposed to a huge market via BBC. This allowed him to quickly scale his cooking passion to millions via traditional media.
Start building early and be consistent over time.
You can’t get asymmetric rewards overnight, you need to build leverage. This takes time. One example is leveraging your audience. When you start a social media account you may only have a few people reading your posts.
However, a few years down the line, the same level of effort will have tens of thousands of readers, like with this newsletter.
This is asymmetric reward enabled by the leverage you built over time.
You can’t get it without putting in the effort. Moreover, once you have some leverage built in, you can scale easier across other mediums. This will open up more avenues to be rewarded for your efforts in an asymmetric way.
Another example of this are compounding effects in investments. The person that invested early for ten years and stopped will make more than the person that invested over 30 years but started a decade later, assuming steady returns.
Just build something!
Most don’t even start. Stop planning, and instead, build something. If that means writing your first tweet, do it now. Open an account and just do it. See if it is for you, if not, move on to the next thing until it clicks for you.
Once you found your niche, keep at it. As in the compounding graph above, the first few years can be slow and you may feel there’s not much reward or incentive to do it. Whatever you build, make sure you genuinely enjoy it and give it time!
It’s never too late to start. Anyone that bought Bitcoin in the past 15 years is in profit. Any profit is better than no profit. Therefore, start early, invest in yourself, and keep at it. There’s hardly any downsides just like there is no downside to join my community and become a Patron!
To summarize:
Just start to build something until it clicks for you, it’s never too late
Whatever you choose, make sure it can scale
Be consistent once you found what works for you
Put yourself in the biggest market, move to it if you have to
Give it time, building leverage takes time
Once you have enough mass, asymmetric rewards will emerge
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