When I was a dentist, I hated how my time was tied directly to my income.

It paid well, but the moment I stopped working, I stopped earning. This led to an unhealthy relationship with time, counting everything by the hour. I became obsessed with working hard, and found it impossible to relax without feeling guilty.

I thought the way ahead was to make my time worth more. So I began up-skilling. The complexity of the work increased, but the gains were marginal.

I had hit an unbreakable ceiling:

Me.

I could only drill one mouth at a time, unless I fancied appearing in court. The next obvious choice was to start a dental clinic. But I didn’t enjoy the work, and the practice owners I knew were incredibly stressed, trying to keep afloat.

…Not my idea of wealth.

But then a friend introduced me to Naval Ravikant’s ideas. Many of them changed my life, but none more than this:

I decided to write.

It was a slow start. I was an average writer with zero marketing skills. It took me a year to hit 1,000 followers and 18 months to make one dollar. But the grind was worth it. Because over 5 years, I attracted over 250,000 readers, and made over 7 figures.

My results are abnormal. Not because I am. But because I kept leverage as my top priority. I have focused almost all my effort into building:

• Skills
• Reputation
• Relationships
• Free and paid scalable assets
• Systems, frameworks, and ownable ideas

These things can work for you (and much harder than you) if you play the right game. The key is understanding the relationship between the live and leveraged world.

The Live vs Leveraged World

The live world is the work you are doing right now. Creating content, serving clients, building relationships. The leveraged world is where your work works for you. Content, automations, products.

The mistake many online entrepreneurs make is getting stuck in the live world. They are so busy trying to get results that they become blind to the long-term opportunities. 5 years down the line, they are in the same place: working hard but going nowhere.

But if you focus on building leverage, your business begins to take a life of its own—giving you the freedom to invest your time how you like.

Let me give you an example.

For my first three years online, I spent a ridiculous amount of time on social media content—mainly just Twitter. Writing is very dear to me, and I knew an audience was critical, so I thought it was important that I try hard.

My heart was in the right place, but my brain was not.

When Twitter’s algorithm began to tumble, I realised I had over-extended myself. I had spent years creating content without much to show for it.

So I built a new system. My lovely VA, Vim, began to repost my top performers every 4 months. We repurpose my newsletter, YouTube videos, products and other assets to create more content. And we began posting across 4 other platforms at once.

Today, it takes me 2 hours a month to create social media content. This is becoming even more efficient now that I have hooked Claude up to my Notion. When I need to, I can disappear from social media for months at a time—with Vim handling everything.

I glance over what she schedules, but otherwise, she is deploying my words to work hard for me.

That is leverage. And it only gets more powerful the more you build.

Let me show you what I mean.

The power of layering leverage

I could use my newfound time to take on more clients.

I recently launched a $10k 6 month package, and 5 slots were snapped up. It’s a call a month and asynchronous support, so I have the capacity to take on an extra 10-15 people.

But then what?

I am busy, but busy in the live world.

Instead, I have reinvested this time into writing my first book.

I’ve spent over 1,000 hours on Magnetic Writing now.

I plan on investing many more. Why?

Well, for one, I love the process—and no one can compete with you if you are having fun. But for two, a book, if done well, works for you for decades to come. It is the highest leverage asset for building a reputation. I will have 100,000 words, distilled and articulated as best I can. I will have, what I hope, to be the best asset in the world for someone who wants to become an entrepreneurial writer.

And then I get to play the game again.

Writing the book is live effort, but once produced, it enters my leveraged world.

Plus, the material becomes my products, coaching, social media content, Youtube scripts. One asset will produce endless of hours of output—and all I needed to do was build it once.

This buys back more time, so I can reinvest into another high-leverage asset, which I imagine will be another book. And hopefully, enjoy a little time off, too.

Can you see how this works?

Leverage is the intelligent person’s laziness. But it does not require you be a genius to build. Just discipline. You have to say no to many opportunities and work hard for a long time for little reward. This is easy to type, but trust me: it is hard to do. Watching your peers grow when you are building quietly in the background will challenge your monkey mind like no other activity.

But that is precisely why it is important:

You are playing a game that few people won’t.

It begins with shifting your perspective: don’t see the world through what it will give you today, but what you can produce to create results for years to come.

Look through the lens of leverage,

Kieran