Books about Leverage (even though they may not know it!)
Books about Personal Leverage
The most common question I get from readers of the Navalmanack is about Leverage — how to learn more about it, how to apply it, what to read next. Unfortunately, there is not a magnum opus about Leverage yet (though I may write one?)
However, there are a few books about leverage… subtly. These books don’t necessarily know they are about leverage or even mention it specifically. But they carry the spirit of leverage! You will learn something reading any or all of these, and start to build more of your intuition about how to get leverage. Bon Appetite!
If you want an introduction to Leverage, check out my leverage thread on Twitter. If you want to deep-dive, I’m building a course about applying leverage in your life, and used many of these books for research!
7 Books on Leverage
Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
The original book about ‘the art of accomplishing more’ (a simple way to describe the Leverage). I devoured this book in one day when I was 18, shaken by the idea that so much of the reality of work was negotiable, and that there were forms of entrepreneurship that weren’t tech companies or the average small business.
I’m often asked how big my company is — how many people I employ. The answer is one. Most people lose interest at that point. If someone were to ask me how many people run BrainQUICKEN on the other hand, the answer is different: between 200 and 300. I am the ghost in the machine. [...]
“The ghost in the machine” is a great way to imagine the highest forms of time leverage. This represents a great ideal — when components are communicating with each other, rather than adding forms of leverage which still rely on you to use them in coordination.
I am not a tollbooth through which anything needs to pass. I am more like a police officer on the side of the road who can step in if need be, and I use detailed reports from outsourcers to ensure the cogs are moving as intended. I check reports from fulfillment each Monday and monthly reports from the same the first of each month. The latter reports include orders received from the call center, which I can compare to the call center bills to gauge profit.
Otherwise, I just check bank accounts online on the first and fifteenth of each month to look for odd deductions. If I find something, one email will fix it. If not, it’s back to kendo, painting, hiking, or whatever I happen to be doing at the time.
Ultimately, the application of leverage not just to accomplish more, but to own your time and invest your life in the things that bring you joy.
One million-dollar, one-person businesses by Elaine Pofeldt
We each have a specific set of skills and approaches that make how we do what we do unique. This is what we need to leverage. I don’t think we need to overthink this.
This is a fun book where Elaine inventories and interviews successful businesses built by one person or one family. It’s full of interesting markets, backstories, and tips from entrepreneurs who built, by necessity, high-leverage organizations. Here is an example from Katherine Krug, founder of BetterBack:
She’s observed that “People spend too much time trying to chase down seemingly exciting opportunities as opposed to the highest leverage thing they can do for their business. By only doing a couple of things really well, we’ve been able to do really well.” When Krug has trouble resisting new opportunities, she asks herself these exploratory questions to clarify whether she should move forward:
- Is this one of the highest-impact things I could do for my business?
- Would waiting six months to do this negatively impact the business?
- Would I be missing out on the opportunity altogether if I waited six months to try this?
“If the answer to these questions is “no,” I’ll punt it for six months,” she says.
An excellent example of a book on how to get leverage.
Company of one by Paul Jarvis
Similar to Elaine’s book, Paul writes about the art of building big businesses with small numbers. This leverage book is more about the how and includes Paul’s own story, in addition to small bits like this one from Marshall Haas:
Need/Want uses scalable systems and channels to increase profits. They use prepackaged software, Shopify, to run their online store, which can handle anywhere from one order a day to over a million.
They stay out of big-box stores, so they don’t need a dedicated outside sales team. They don’t do trade shows, and all their marketing efforts stem from a team of three who focus entirely on online channels, like social media, paid ads, and a newsletter (all of which can increase reach without too many extra resources to manage).
I love the underlying idea behind this excerpt — adding constraints to the business, actually making hard strategic decisions to pass on opportunities in order to keep the company high-leverage.
High Output Management by Andy Grove
Andy Grove dedicates and entire chapter of his management classic to the concept of Managerial Leverage. What is managerial leverage? The focus on accomplishing more per team size. Increasing productivity, not just growing team size to grow output linearly.
In this example the high-leverage action helps dozens or hundreds of people make better decisions for years to come:
Robin will help to eliminate confusion and ambiguity for a large population of managers over an extended period of time. Consequently, her work contributes to the productivity of the entire organization and clearly has great leverage.
In another excerpt, Andy Grove shows leverage that comes from eliminating redundant tasks:
Setting up the simple mechanical aid is a one-time activity, yet it is likely to improve the productivity of the manager who uses it indefinitely. Thus, the leverage here is very, very high.
Principles by Ray Dalio
I think Ray Dalio and Naval are the only other people writing about leverage directly and specifically. So much so that I actually quote this book often in my Course about Leverage. Dalio mentions leverage often in Principles, precisely and with context:
Constantly think about how to produce leverage. Leverage in an organization is not unlike leverage in the markets; you’re looking for ways to achieve more with less.
He goes on (emphasis mine):
I am always eager to find people who can do things nearly as well as (and ideally better than) I can so that I can maximize my output per hour. Technology is another great tool for providing leverage. To make training as easy to leverage as possible, document the most common questions and answers through audio, video, or written guidelines, and then assign someone to organize them and incorporate them into a manual, which is updated on a regular basis. Principles themselves are a form of leverage—they’re a way to compound your understanding of situations so that you don’t need to exert the same effort each time you encounter a problem.
There are bunch more excerpts in the book, including how Ray hires “Leveragers” as an actual job, and how he measures Leverage at different rates at different levels within his organization.
The One Thing by Gary Keller
Founder of Keller Williams has built a billion-dollar real estate brokerage, entirely bootstrapped after paying back his initial $44,000 loan within one year. KW is now a behemoth, and Gary has reached cult-leader-like status among the agents in his firm.
Part of his otherworldly productivity is his “The One Thing” rule, which is the focus of this book. Here it is:
“What’s the ONE thing I can do, such that by doing it everything else will become easier or unnecessary?”
The foundation of leverage — what is the most effective next action I can take?
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
Obviously, I was going to sneak my book in there. There’s a whole chapter on Leverage!
You are waiting for your moment when something emerges in the world, they need a skill set, and you’re uniquely qualified. You build your brand in the meantime on Twitter, on YouTube, and by giving away free work. You make a name for yourself, and you take some risk in the process. When it is time to move on the opportunity, you can do so with leverage—the maximum leverage possible. [1]
There are three broad classes of leverage…