- Sean Martyr
- Posts
- Digital Leverage: Why it Matters
Digital Leverage: Why it Matters
Everyone wants to live “The Good Life”.
Our parents taught us that this was the recipe:
Study well
Go to university/college
Get a good corporate job
Save for a mortgage
Have 2.5 kids
Retire
While this may have been true in the 20th century, times have changed.
Rising property prices and cost of living have made this impossible (without slaving away for 40 years first).
So now what?
We don’t want to spend 90% of our life as a slave only to enjoy the final 10%.
We don’t want to choose between money and freedom.
We want both:
This perspective has fascinated me for the large majority of my adult life:
I’ve been a student (some freedom but no money)
I’ve worked in retail (no freedom with some money)
I’ve worked in a career (no freedom with decent money)
And I can say now that none of these work. Not for me at least.
Freedom without money leads to lack of options.
Money without freedom leads to lack of options too.
Therefore, the only way to truly be free is to have both simultaneously.
And after years of studying the successful; here’s what I found:
The only way to do this is with digital leverage.
How to build digital leverage
The difference between then and now is the technology we’ve been given.
The power of the internet is not in its infinite information, but in its infinite connections.
Digital leverage allows one action to have thousands of consequences almost immediately. It’s the ability to do more with less.
This puts far more importance on good decision making instead of raw time invested.
So skills and education become the new apex predator:
The old way:
Save your money
Invest in property
Retire at 60
The new way:
Increase your income
Invest in your skills
Retire whenever
Principles of a high-leverage business
A high-leverage business takes full advantage of technological advancement:
Distribution
The internet is more than infinite information, it’s infinite connections too.
Email lists, social media, and websites make writing the most powerful skill on earth allowing you to reach almost anyone on earth within seconds.
Delivery
No-code tools, such as social media (and scheduling tools like HypeFury) have made software available to everyone.
Akin to the industrial revolution, these tools remove the need for labour, allowing one person to do the work of 10 or 100.
Feedback mechanisms
It used to be that you’d need to bind and publish a book (several years of prep) to get feedback on your ideas.
Now you can post it online and get feedback from hundreds of people in minutes. This allows you to iterate quicker and learn faster.
All my newsletter ideas come from vetted ideas on X.
What to do next?
The world has changed and the way to The Good Life along with it.
What worked for your parents might not work today.
If you want money and freedom, focus on building digital leverage.
Writing and distribution are the perfect palace to start.
If you’re a creator on X (or any social media) and you’re looking to save time on scheduling and posting, check out Hypefury.
I’ve been using it for 2 months now to schedule 20-30 posts at a time and I’ve found it far simpler than other alternatives.
It probably saves me several hours of having to manually post each day. Here I just write the post, add it to queue, and forget about it.
It’s an affiliate link, so if you use it, I’ll get a small cut.
No worries if that’s not your kind of thing.
Reply