How to Build Digital Leverage (aka work smarter)

Want to build a lean, profitable one-person business?

One of the most powerful concepts you should know about is something I call “Digital Leverage.”

It means using the internet to achieve more - with less time, effort, and resources.

You’ve only got 24 hours in a day, and it’s especially important to be efficient when you’re a team of one.

It’s the difference between you becoming a master of your work, or your work becoming the master of you.

Too many people fall victim to the “Hustle 24/7” nonsense instead of building digital leverage.

And that’s a recipe for working yourself to death — when it can be so much easier.

So today, I want you to understand the three components of digital leverage that can supercharge your output and your revenue.

Let’s dive in.

3 Components of Digital Leverage

There are 3 simple parts to this formula.

• Content: Think 1x, Publish 10x
• Selling: Publish 10x, Sell 100x
• Compounding: Sell 100x, Compound 1,000x
  

Part 1: Think 1x, Publish 10x

My best content always starts with a single idea.

With my audience in mind, I research trending topics, read industry insights, and engage on social media for an hour every day. And these activities help me identify interesting ideas to write about.

After I choose a topic to write about, I create one robust, long-form piece of content— sometimes it’s a newsletter issue (like this), an article, or a Twitter thread.

My goal is to make sure the content is packed with value for my target audience.

Then, I leverage social media to publish this content 10x.

Here’s what I mean.

I break up my big, long-form content piece into smaller, more digestible pieces of content — like tweets, LinkedIn posts, Twitter threads, and Instagram posts.

Phase 2: Publish 10x, Sell 100x

After I create 10 small pieces of content from one big idea, it’s time for publishing.

So I publish my smaller snippets in all the different places that make sense for each piece of content (Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc)

Effectively distributing your content on social media is a simple and powerful strategy for generating sales.

The more high-value touch points you create across various platforms, the more likely you are to engage your audience, build trust, and position yourself as someone of expertise and authority.

This is crucial when promoting your products or services.

Because the more your audience values your free content, the more likely they are to invest in your paid offerings.

Every time you repurpose one strong piece of content into bite-sized posts for different platforms, you reach a wider audience with minimal effort.

Use these bite-sized social media posts as a “trojan horse” to promote your products and services.

Simple ways to do this include linking back to your website, promoting a testimonial, or encouraging people to read an article or blog post which links to your products or services.

This is what I call “passive selling” and it works much better, IMO, than aggressively promoting yourself all the time.

Phase 3: Sell 100x, Compound 1,000x

Selling 100 units of your product may just seem like a milestone. But it's also an opportunity to compound those sales with effective incentives.

Learning to incentivize your happy customers to spread the good word about your products or services can mean thousands of extra happy customers and revenue.

With 100 sales under your belt, you can build a small army of customers who can send more customers your way.

Offer an enticing affiliate program, where your customers earn a commission for every new customer they refer to you. I made the decision to pay 35% rather than the standard 20% simply because I want people to feel empowered to earn.

And this is a powerful strategy because potential customers tend to trust recommendations from someone they know more than any landing page or website.

If each of your 100 original customers brings in 10 new customers, that's an additional 1,000 sales.

That’s the power of leveraging an affiliate network.

But remember, you need 3 things for a win-win-win affiliate program:

1. A high-quality product or service: People will only refer their friends if they truly got value from your offering.
2. A good enough incentive: You can’t pay out pennies if you expect people to keep your affiliate program top-of-mind.
3. Transparency: How does the program work? When do people get paid? What are some helpful tips for promoting or talking about your products?

In Summary

Digital leverage is all about working smarter, not harder.

It’s about using internet tools in a strategic way to keep your business moving forward without constant brute force.

• Content: Think 1x, Publish 10x
• Selling: Publish 10x, Sell 100x
• Compound: Sell 100x, Compound 1,000x

Get all three of these things right, and you’ll see more happy customers, more revenue, and better efficiency.

→ This week’s action step: Take a look at your online presence or business. Where is one spot in your process where you can use digital leverage to your advantage? Commit to trying it for 30 days and see if it makes an improvement in your business.

Well, that’s all for today.

See you next week.