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“If you don't have leverage, you're never going to make real wealth.” - Naval Ravikant
As per Naval Ravikant, we live in the age of infinite leverage – an era where anyone with a laptop can choose to build and scale without permission.
Follow your intellectual curiosity more than whatever is the current shiny flashy thing.
WHAT IS LEVERAGE?
We used to study ‘Leverage’ in physics class, the concept of Lever and Fulcrum to manage a load with less effort, where Lever was actually working as a force multiplier.
We continuously use a lever in daily life like a screwdriver to open or tighten the screw.
Leverage is popularly used in Finance for getting debt, and it has the same meaning as someone who does not have enough money to borrow funds to perform tasks that required significant investment upfront as explained below from the Finance industry.
Accounting and Finance
Leverage Ratio = Total Debt / Total Equity.
Forex, Stock & Crypto Trading Leverage = Get a loan to hold the price.
Mental Model
Leverage is “use (something) to get maximum advantage” which derived from the word Lever and whole mechanism of combining Lever and Fulcrum called Leverage.“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” – Archimedes.
This is a very powerful quote and explains the workings of the whole society.
We human beings are actually using others or using some form of material possessions (tangible/intangible) as leverage to get an advantage or benefit of some kind.
Since the beginning of humanity there have been only two leverages:
• Labour (Time)
• Capital (Asset/Skill)
In the last 500 years, a third leverage emerged:
• Media (Paper Printing) in around 1400 BC in Italy.
Last 50 years, the third evolved and the fourth leverage has emerged which is revolutionary in nature.
• Media (Video/Audio)
• Code (Software)
The fourth ‘code’ has the ability to replicate the third ‘media’ without further effort and that’s why Naval Ravikant said “In an age of infinite leverage, judgment is the most important skill.”
It means, Leverage allows you to accomplish 100x what others can – it is a force multiplier for your effort, skill, and judgement.
A leveraged worker can out-produce a non-leveraged worker by a factor of one thousand or ten thousand. With a leveraged worker, judgment is far more important than how much time they put in or how hard they work.
EXAMPLE OF LEVERAGE
At an earlier age, if a writer wanted to write and publish something, he need:
• Writing a book (Labour Leverage example = Time)
• Writing a book (Capital Leverage example = Paper)
• Publishing a book (Capital Leverage example = Printing machine or Publisher Co)
• Broadcasting a book (Capital Leverage example = Putting on Shelves and Marketing by News Media or word of mouth)
• Getting paid for the royalty of a book (Capital Leverage example = Cash or Check from Publisher Co)
Replication is possible with the same amount of Capital required.
But now in the age of infinite leverage,
• Writing a book (Labour Leverage example = Time)
• Writing a book (Media/Code Leverage example = Blog or Writing Platform)
• Publishing a book (Media Leverage example = Blog)
• Broadcasting a book (Media Leverage example = Blog, Twitter and Facebook)
• Getting paid for the royalty of a book (Code Leverage example = Blog Monetization, Subscribers, Affiliates, Ads or Fintech)
Replication is possible without the same amount of Capital through Digital blogs / Fintech apps / YouTube Videos and can be replicated again at a fraction of the cost.
Mental Model
Due to this; metrics of success are also changed. No one is sure about their current education credentials and that’s why continuous learning and doing /trying as effort is required to be the most important meta - skill which ultimately improves Judgement.THREE TOP QUOTES RELATED TO LEVERAGE
1. Real-life example of using humans as Leverage when identifying arbitrage (gap).
“The one who leverages the markets is an entrepreneur. The one who leverages the mobs is a politician.” - Venkat
2. Finding insights of the world
“When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.” - Warren Buffet
3. Leverage is the ultimate power
“Forget rich versus poor, white collar versus blue. It’s now leveraged versus unleveraged.” - Naval Ravikant
So, to improve the OUTPUT: increase the Leverage (input-to-output ratio) and keep finding multiple leverages in the life to use in your favour.
5 BEST EXAMPLES OF USING LEVERAGE
You can leverage opportunities in many different ways. ALWAYS be on the lookout.
Audience - Use someone else’s network like it is yours. Branch out.
Systems - You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Look at what works (then do it better).
Knowledge - Ask questions / Listen. Other people’s experiences can become your direction.
Time - You don’t need to waste time doing mundane tasks. Other people can easily accomplish them.
Financial - This can often be high risk but if you are disciplined you can leverage other people’s money.
CONCLUSION
The following separates the top 1% and the 99%: We all work 24 hours a day the same… To increase our income, 99% focus on:
1. Improving their skills, or
2. Working harder
Result?
Skills x Time = Income This equation has no LEVERAGE!
The 1% on the other hand, focus their energy on having LEVERAGE over the value that other people need which is called 10,000/- per hour work.
$10,000 per hour work is the process of identifying your highest leverage activities and committing a small amount of time to them each day. It’s the fast tortoise strategy on steroids (and it’s how Jeff Bezos became the richest man in the world).
Providing access to the value of your products and services is scalable, but selling the value of skills is not. Wealth is measured by leverage. 1% people have leverage on the value real estate provides and know the value their company provides about the value that media, patents, intellectual property, or trade secrets supply - that is wealth! Note this is CONTROL, not necessarily ownership. So, Having the ability to create and control assets that can be sold to many people... leads to wealth!
So, create value for others instead of selling the value of your skills and focus on controlling your assets.
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