One thing that I have personally been fascinated with over the past 2 years is the power of leverage. I’d like to start this post out with a quote for you.
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.”-Bill Gates
So what is leverage? Well according to dictionary.com
lev·er·age [lev-er-ij, lee-ver-] Show IPA noun, verb, -aged, -ag·ing.
–noun
1.the action of a lever.
2.the mechanical advantage or power gained by using a lever.
3.power or ability to act or to influence people, events, decisions, etc.; sway: Being the only industry in town gave the company considerable leverage in its union negotiations.
4.the use of a small initial investment, credit, or borrowed funds to gain a very high return in relation to one’s investment, to control a much larger investment, or to reduce one’s own liability for any loss.
I’m going to focus on the fourth definition of this and how it affects your business! I know, you have to contain your excitement.
There are a few different things that you can focus on with your business. You can focus on leveraging money, leveraging technology, leveraging people, and leveraging time. I’m going to provide you with a few ways that you can do each of these and help you think a little outside the box on how this can be incorporated into your business.
Leveraging Money
One of the best ways to leverage your money is to invest in paid advertising such as Google Adwords and other paid traffic networks like using Facebook Ads. You can leverage your money by turning your money into traffic to your website. The way that this will work to leverage your money is that it allows you to find qualified prospects for your business and put them into your sales funnel. This is a great way to grow your business quickly if you already have the money that’s necessary to buy traffic. This really allows you to leverage your existing content and make more money from it (if you have proper call-to-actions)
Leveraging Technology
Leveraging technology is one of my favorite things to do. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown up using computers and playing around with technology my whole life. In your small business one of the greatest things you can possibly do is start to leverage technology. You can start off doing this by setting up a blog (I give away free blogs at http://whoschrishughes.com/freeblog). You then need to take the time to create a social media presence on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
These three networks are where the majority of people are and the main area’s of concentration for companies that I work with. The reason that I focus on these three networks is simple. They are what is hot right now and what the majority of the people who you will be selling to are currently using weekly if not daily. In my opinion, it’s smart to spend time where your customers/prospects are. The reason for this? Well, you get more people seeing the phenomenal content you create and the value you provide. This builds up trust and leads to more money for your business. I know you like making more money.
You can use Facebook to keep in contact with your customers, use Twitter as a tool for Customer Service and to find out who’s talking about your brand. You can also use YouTube to broadcast videos that educate your customers and share customer testimonial videos to build up social proof for your business. (Social proof will help re-enforce the question of whether a prospect should do business with you. The more social proof you have, the more people respect your company/brand/business.)
If you’d like to learn how your business can start using these tools to grow your business, you should contact me here and let me know what you are trying to accomplish and how I can help you.
Leveraging People
This is something that sounds kind of mean, doesn’t it? I personally thought so when I first saw it written like this. The thing is, leveraging people is not about manipulating or conning people. It’s actually all about finding people who love doing what you have no interest in. It’s pretty cool to me that people love doing the things I dislike. I personally am great at implementing social media strategies for businesses, but I suck at designing websites, graphic design, science stuff, and some random other things.
In my opinion, if I suck at doing something and really don’t enjoy doing it…is there a point in doing it? Psshhh NO! I’d much rather have someone else do it who actually enjoys doing it!
Leveraging Time
“Learn to value yourself, which means; to fight for your happiness.” -Ayn Rand: author of Atlas Shrugged, great book 
One of the most common ways that you as a business owner leverage your time is by hiring an employee. This allows you to have someone handle tasks that can be done for less financial value. Your time may be worth $250 an hour and you may be stuck filing papers that you could have done by a college kid for $10 an hour. You could then choose to work that extra hour that you would be filing papers in order to make another $250 during that hour, this still yields you a profit of $240 per hour. You’d have the work that pays you the most done(making you more money), and you’d also have that menial task done. More money while getting more done??? Sign me up!
These are a few possible ways that you can start to incorporate leverage into your business and if you are curious as to where you can find someone to do certain tasks for you for less money. There’s something called outsourcing that I highly recommend you look into. You can head to places like Elance or Craigslist and struggle trying to find someone who can do these tasks, or you can choose to use an established team to handle certain business tasks.
If you’re interested in hiring a team to handle this for you, you can check out the team over at Webanatics.com
What kind of questions do you have on leverage? Is there anything that you are curious or scared about? Is something preventing you from taking the steps to bringing this into your business? If so, I’d love for you to comment below with any questions that you have and I’d be glad to help answer them for you and help you grow your business!
PS- If you have a business but aren’t leveraging the power of blogging yet, you are really missing out. Search engines love blogs more than they like static web pages and you absolutely need to incorporate a blog into your marketing. You can get a free blog at http://whoschrishughes.com/FreeBlog
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