Digital Leverage
Build your lever and move the earth
Leverage is a mechanism to amplify an input force to produce a greater output force.
More leverage allows you to exert more power with the same input energy.
It allows you to increase the rate at which work gets done.
“Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.”
-Archimedes
Let's move the earth, anon:
Types of Leverage
Physical Leverage
The classical example of physical leverage requires a rigid rod to be placed on a hinge point in order to move a heavy object by taking advantage of the difference in lengths between both sides of the fulcrum.
Physical levers are not the only way in which we can amplify input energy to produce greater output energy, but serve as a great metaphor to visualize more abstract forms of leverage.
Financial Leverage
A more abstract example of effective leverage is its use in finance.
Financial leverage allows individuals to borrow multiples of their existing capital in order to allocate it towards their desired impact. It extends their rod.
An iconic example of financial leverage being used to drive a monumental change is George Soros heavily borrowing capital to short the British Pound and break the bank of England.
Now that we've understood the concept of leverage let's move on to the good part:
Digital Leverage
Digital leverage is the use of digital tools to vastly amplify an input energy into a monumental output force.
The reason why digital leverage is so powerful is that things on the internet are infinitely scalable and can meet any conceivable demand.
Scalable Machines
Code running on machines allows you to automate repetitive tasks without it having to require your attention.
Stripe allows you to automate payments.
Shopify allows you to automate your e-commerce management.
OpenAI allows you to automate your customer service.
The cloud takes this to the next level by allowing for dynamic, 24/7 scalability.
You can write a software product once and it can provide value for paying users while you sleep.
"What a time to be alive!"
- Me
This is how Facebook became the first app to reach a billion users - a *Billion* users.
AI agents are going to take the ability to automate to a whole new level as they develop over the next decade. Scalable machine leverage is an exciting space to follow.
Examples of digital real estate that rely on machine scalability are both information products and software.
Scalable Content
Visualize all the work needed to convey all relevant information to a new employee during onboarding:
Introduction to the business, introduction to the technologies, introduction to management structure, etc.
Now, imagine onboarding 1,000 employees.
Without digital leverage your work will increase linearly to:
time to onboard an individual x 1,000 = a lot of time
With digital leverage you have to create an onboarding info kit once - and you're done.
Setting up a comprehensive onboarding course will take more time than a single onboarding process, but is going to be orders of magnitude less work than onboarding 1,000 employees without leveraging scalable content.
You can't scale yourself, but you can scale content.
Content is infinitely reproducible.
Information products are a great example of digital real estate leveraging the scalability of content.
Scalable Attention
First it was radio, then it was TV, now it is social media.
Internet platforms have removed the friction for communicating with audiences at scale.
Successful creators have millions of followers. That is hundreds of sports arenas worth of people that can be contacted with the click of a button.
This is an incredible amount of leverage. Once an audience is built you can present them with information you consider to be worthy of their attention as you please.
This could be a piece of entertainment, an offer or any meme that you think will be beneficial to the audience.
When you convince all of your friends of something you're influencing the awareness of your social circle.
When you convince an audience of millions of something you changed the collective awareness of the general public.
Attention is all you need.
Build your Lever
Digital leverage is infinitely scalable.
It might well be the most powerful tool of the 21st century.
Learn to master it and you'll move the earth.
Get started here.