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The Leverage Equation: How to Work Less, Make More, and Cut 30 Years Off Your
Retirement Plan, and this downloadable bonus resource, are excerpted from the
complete Expectancy Wealth Planning course. If you are happy with the book and
these companion resources, then you’ll love the full course. Check it out here:
https://financialmentor.com/educational-products/expectancy-wealth-plan

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101+ Leverage Hacks: A Cheat Sheet for Quickly Implementing

Leverage in Your Wealth Plan
Thank you for purchasing The Leverage Equation: How to Work Less, Make More, and Cut
30 Years Off Your Retirement Plan.

This quick action guide is one of several bonuses you receive absolutely free as a book
owner to help you implement the principles taught in the book more effectively.

If you stumbled onto these bonuses through other channels and have not yet
purchased your copy of the book, I would encourage you to purchase the book first. It’s
necessary because this bonus doesn’t develop the depth of understanding required for
safe and effective implementation. You’ll be shortchanging yourself to work from this
action guide alone without the knowledge contained in the book.

Alternatively, if you’re serious about your financial growth, then consider levelling up to
the comprehensive Expectancy Wealth Planning course delivering the advanced
wealth strategy education that The Leverage Equation (and this bonus) was excerpted
from. You might be surprised to realize the entire Leverage Equation book was created
from just 3 lessons taken from just one module out of the entire 8 module course!! So
if you received good value from the book and bonuses, then you’ll absolutely love the
full course that it’s excerpted from.

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Practical Applications of Leverage You Can Implement NOW

The purpose of these 101+ Leverage Hacks is to turbo-charge your creative thinking
about leverage. They’re intended to inspire you by showing the many different ways
you can apply leverage in your wealth plan quickly, and should be used as a tool to
jump-start your creativity.

You might be tempted to look at the examples provided on a superficial, literal level to
decide what’s applicable to your situation, and what isn’t. For example, you like
strategy 7, 21, 48, and 96.

That would be a mistake.

The key to getting the greatest value from this exercise is adapting and applying the
principles behind the specific strategy to find innovative ways to increase leverage in
your wealth plan. It’s about inspiring you to come up with ways to apply leverage in
your wealth plan that work for you.

For example, the first list item on the list is “hire a mentor.” The questions that strategy
should prompt in your mind are:

• How can I apply knowledge leverage in my wealth plan?

• What are the ways I could use mentors and other people’s experience to
strategize and accelerate my results?

• How could I apply the accountability of a mentor to keep me on track?

Notice how each question gets behind the idea of hiring a mentor to identify the value
streams resulting from the strategy, and then rephrases them to prompt your thinking.
Each question cuts one layer deeper to the principles embodied in the strategy to see
how you can creatively apply those ideas in your plans.

Also, it’s important to note that none of these ideas are actual recommendations for
specific strategies. In fact, some of them are outright crazy and should never be

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implemented because they introduce too much risk or deliver unfavorable risk versus
reward.

Just to be irritatingly clear, the goal is not to copy the ideas directly in your wealth plan,
but to use them as creative fodder to figure out leverage strategies that might work for
your situation.

Okay, now that you have the instructions, let’s look at the list.

1. Hire a mentor. Yeah, I’m a little biased since that’s my business. Captain
Obvious. But it’s a great way to access a depth of accumulated wisdom and
experience.

a. Retired executives serve as mentors to support entrepreneurs in many

local communities – free of charge. Leverage their knowledge and time.

2. Hire specialty knowledge. Doctors and lawyers are great examples of hiring
specialized expertise. You shouldn’t do your own brain surgery or master the
intricacies of law for a single lawsuit. Instead, you hire experts who live and
breathe those specialized needs every day.

a. Now think of where else can you hire specialized experts: video
production, book editing, computer programming, accounting, tax
preparation…?

i. For example, interview several accountants by asking each how he

could save you money on taxes. Each will review your past returns
and provide tax strategies. Hire the one that can legitimately save
you the most. He should put more money in your pocket than he
costs you, plus you won’t be spending your time doing taxes any
more.

3. Hire an intern. Without compensation where (initially) they’re paid with

experience and education. Increase pay as they increase value to the business.

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4. Hire an assistant. Outsource the mundane tasks in your business that you don’t
enjoy to free up your time and mental space to focus on the projects that need
you the most.

5. Hire an employee. Then delegate tasks to them.

6. Hire a freelancer. Don’t need a part-time or full-time employee? Delegate a task

through Upwork or any other international online freelancing process.

7. Hire yourself out. (at a ridiculously low rate if necessary) to work under and be
mentored by a proven successful expert. Learn everything you can about all
their business systems and how they achieve results.

8. Hire a commission-only sales person. It’s risk free and leverages other people’s
time and money because you only pay for results.

9. Enroll volunteers. Value gets delivered in many forms, not just financial
compensation. People volunteer because they want to be part of your vision
and serve something bigger.

a. Where could people volunteer for your organization? Examples: book

launch team, editing a book to get first access and participate in the
creation, manage a membership community as the community leader…

10. Enroll your community in your cause.

a. For example, my kid’s school enrolls parents to donate their time in the
classrooms, for fundraisers, and for community events to support their
children’s education.

11. Create an advisory board at the executive level. This surrounds you with
knowledgeable mentors at the peer level, or above, so you can leverage their
experience.

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12. Improve training for your employees so they have greater skill and can work
more efficiently.

13. Join (or create) a mastermind group. Leverage the knowledge, experience,
contacts, and resources of others, plus gain accountability.

14. Use “clipping” services on the internet to distill the mass of daily publications
into just the few news items relevant to your wealth plan and what you need to
know.

15. Listen to educational recordings and podcasts while driving so that you turn
your commute/travel time into a university on wheels.

16. Negotiate employee stock options as part of your employment contract. If the
company is privately held then negotiate for income participation.

17. Pick a job that’s congruent with your goals so that you’re paid to learn what you
need to know to get where you want to go.

a. For example, I wanted to master investing as part of my financial

freedom goals, so I worked for a hedge fund investment management
firm.

18. Develop a new skill… each week. When you concentrate this strategy in a single
field of expertise you’ll become the authoritative, go-to expert that can
command higher fees than competitors. If you apply this strategy wide across
many fields of expertise then your creativity will increase due to cross-
pollination of skills and experience.

19. Attend a speed-reading class so you can increase the amount of learning and
growth you can accomplish per unit of time.

20. Take a negotiation and communication skills class so you can become a more
effective deal maker.

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21. Earn a certification or advanced degree that qualifies you for increased pay.

22. Use a smart phone to get work done during what was previously dead-time.

23. Hire a personal trainer to help you figure out the optimal workout routine for
your body.

24. Exercise. Yes, seriously. It’s a highly leveraged activity delivering lower health
costs, greater longevity, higher energy, greater focus, and much more. Exercise.

25. Meditate. Staying busy 24/7 isn’t sustainable. Allow yourself room for reflection
and growth.

26. Hire a housecleaner and gardener to perform routine maintenance tasks so you
can focus your scarce time on higher-earning activities.

27. Share babysitting with a group of Mom’s by organizing play dates. The kids
entertain themselves making it easier for one Mom to manage the group than to
watch one child, plus the other Moms get a few hours off to get stuff done.

28. Borrow a million dollars and invest the money in assets that generate enough
cash flow to pay back the debt. For a complete explanation of this strategy see
the “Financial Leverage” chapter in the book.

29. Refinance the equity out of your home so you can reinvest that equity in
additional income producing real estate. Aim to control more real estate for the
same amount of equity.

30. Refinance your home so you can redeploy the equity for investment in another
project. (Warning – this increases your risk profile dramatically so this is not a
recommendation. It’s just an idea to consider.)

31. Buy an investment property using mortgage financing, or find a private lender.

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32. Find someone with more real estate deal flow than they can use for themselves
so you can access to those deals for a fee.

33. Build a network of money partners to finance future real estate purchases.

34. Lend money to other real estate investors who have more time and skill to
negotiate and manage the deals than you do.

35. Hire contractors, handymen, and property managers so you aren’t distracted by
the minutiae required to operate your current real estate, thus allowing you to
focus on growing your real estate empire through acquiring more real estate.

36. Lend money, but get a percent of equity in return, not just interest.

37. Buy instead of rent. Rather than rent office space for your business, buy the
office space yourself. Use mortgage financing, and have the business pay
enough rent to cover the mortgage.

38. Buy stock on margin.

39. Sell naked put options. (Yikes!! This is one of several very risky strategies listed
in this quick action guide that should never be attempted without deep
expertise developed first.)

40. Trade commodity futures. (Another example of an investment strategy requiring

specialized expertise. Not for beginners.)

41. Buy commodity mining companies instead of the underlying commodity to

capture the operating leverage.

42. Create a business that leverages an existing business.

a. For example, you could offer pickup and delivery on dry cleaning. You
simply market the service, hire drivers to deliver, and have the dry-
cleaning provided by an existing vendor at a volume discount. Your profit

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is the markup on the dry cleaning and delivery charges, and your capital
outlay is low because your only fixed cost is marketing. All other costs
are marginal.

b. Find 4 pizza shops downtown, each operating their own home delivery,
and setup a single delivery system that operates more efficiently
because of the increased volume.

43. Sell website designs and have a website designer do the actual designing.

44. Create an all-in-one package service based upon affiliate programs.

a. For example, offer to set up websites for free as long as customers

purchase hosting, an email service provider, and a theme through your
affiliate program. These are all services the customer has to buy anyway,
but it costs no more through you and converts a one-time fee into
residual income payments through the affiliate programs. Have a foreign
virtual assistant do the website setup at a cost lower than the hosting
affiliate payment so the residual income is pure profit.

45. Find companies with underutilized assets or equipment and figure out how to
leverage the excess capacity through increased utilization.

46. Rather than buy equipment that you need only occasionally, rent it or create a
shared purchase with someone else having similar part-time needs.

47. License a product to other manufacturers.

48. Sell a product before you have it then use the sales revenue to produce the
product to fulfill the order.

49. Sell for immediate payment, but pay vendors 60 days net.

50. Sell your product or service by speaking to a large group rather than selling one-
to-one.

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51. Multi-level marketing leverages the time, contacts, and marketing of the people
down line in the compensation structure, and the people below leverage the
knowledge, experience, and vision of the people above.

52. Create upsells, cross-sells, and back-end sales into your marketing/sales
system to leverage your existing marketing efforts for greater lifetime customer
value.

53. Create a minimum viable product then use customer feedback to perfect it.

54. Create a “research & development” team of loyal customers that you grant
discounts and early access to new products in exchange for feedback.

55. Use CRM systems to manage and optimize customer data.

56. Solicit testimonials from your clients/customers.

57. Sell your product through joint venture and affiliate relationships.

58. Build an investment management business where your income is a percent of

profits earned or a percent of assets under management, not an hourly fee.

59. Design continuity revenue into your business model so that you sell it once and
it continues to pay you month after month.

60. Look at your entire business, front to back, and identify all repeatable processes
that you can convert into systems.

61. Convert your profitable business model into a duplicable system, brand that
system, and franchise it.

62. Identify each constraint to your business and equity growth, and then leverage a
solution to break through that constraint.

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63. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Instead, find a business model that’s already
succeeding and “adapt” it to fit your needs.

64. Become a franchisee where you pay a fee for the right to leverage an existing,
proven business.

65. Create an operating manual for your business that details all your business
processes.

66. Create an employee standard operating procedure (SOP) to improve efficiency.

67. Make the first task of each new employee to create/improve the operating
manual for his/her position. That way you train them once and then you can re-
use the operating manual over and over again to replace your training time.

68. Increase employee productivity with improved technology/equipment.

69. Leverage technology to tighten up inventory management.

70. Use drop shipping for product delivery so you can leverage someone else’s
inventory resources.

71. Automate everything. Only use humans where human interaction, creativity, and
reasoning are required – never for mundane, repetitive tasks that software can
handle.

72. Use Quickbooks to automate your bookkeeping and check writing.

73. Create standardized responses in electronic files to frequently asked questions

and routine procedures so you can copy and paste the response in seconds,
rather than manually writing an original each time.

74. Record your voice as you sell or manage customer service issues and use those
recordings as training aids for staff.

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75. Create standardized scripts for sales and marketing communications.

Experiment with different scripts, track results, and turn the best into the
benchmark that all salespeople use.

76. Build a website to use as a content marketing machine to attract targeted traffic
to your business.

77. Test advertising headlines and subheads using Google Adwords to see what
converts best before committing the cost to producing a final sales letter.

78. Brand your product or service in a way that cuts through information clutter
with front-of-the-mind awareness.

79. Build a community to serve in a subject you’re passionate about. As the hub of
that community you leverage all members time and knowledge through their
input into a centralized asset that you own.

80. Attend professional or trade association events so you can network to expand
your resources and contacts.

81. Share referrals between the members of your network.

82. Create strategic alliances in your business that leverages other people’s
contacts, marketing, skills, time, and credibility.

83. Provide a brochure online that can be downloaded rather than printed and
mailed.

84. Create autoresponders to build relationships with new subscribers by delivering

value through an educational course.

85. Use automated order placement and credit card processing instead of having a
call center with a person on the phone.

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86. Automate accounting to integrate sales functions seamlessly with the

accounting function to reduce overhead costs.

87. Digitally sign and attach files to emails to deliver documents instantly at zero
cost compared to the expense and delay of printing and overnight shipping a
physical document.

88. Automate file backups to the cloud using a service such as Dropbox or Amazon
Web Services.

a. My entire business has redundant digital backups in Dropbox, AWS, and

multiple locations for almost no cost and no labor because it’s
automated at varying intervals for multiple layers of protection.

b. In addition, my entire computer system has multiple hard drive backups,

both in the cloud and physically, for a low fixed cost and almost no labor
cost. Compare these efficient digital solutions to the old physical
solution of storing and fireproofing documents boxes of documents, then
having to physically shred old documents when no longer needed.

89. Use an online calendar and scheduling system so clients can book their own
appointments and manage their schedule independently without any time or
effort from you.

a. For example, my assistant can book media interviews without any

involvement from me. This online appointment system automatically
syncs to my calendar at zero cost, and the only thing I do is update
availability once every three months. The time savings of not having to
coordinate calendars through multiple emails to schedule each
appointment is extraordinary.

90. Host meetings online. Skype and virtual conference rooms are almost free
compared to the huge cost and time required to fly out and meet someone in
person.

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91. Use webinar software to deliver a presentation to thousands on auto-pilot for

much less than it would cost you to attend live.

92. Create free online newsletters to communicate the same message to hundreds
of thousands of people for a low fixed cost compared to the old per unit cost of
physical printing, stuffing envelopes, postage, and snail-mail.

93. Use spell check and grammar check in your word processing software to
improve the quality of your communications.

94. Get publicity/media exposure for your business.

95. Write an article for a major trade magazine in your industry and get it published.

96. Become a podcast guest.

97. Borrow celebrity fame through an endorsement.

98. Win an industry award to increase the credibility of your offering.

99. Create a “press room” or “media kit” for your business that increases implied
authority by showing all the press your business has received and publications
you’ve appeared in.

100. Repurpose an article you wrote as a speech that you can use to deliver
presentations at professional gatherings.

101. Repurpose the presentation by recording it and offer the video from your
site.

102. Put your knowledge-in-a-box in the form of an information product like a

book.

103. Repackage that same knowledge into a live seminar.

104. Repackage the seminar into a DVD series or course.

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105. Create downloadable ebooks instead of printing and mailing physical

books.

106. Use print-on-demand services for physical books so that you have no
inventory costs (rather than printing a stockpile that must be warehoused).

107. Establish an online membership site that delivers 24/7 access to a

course from anywhere in the world instead of having the expense and
inconvenience of manufacturing binders, CD’s, videos, warehousing, boxing, and
shipping all the material.

108. Increase the amount of time you dedicate to your most leveraged goals
by 15 minutes every week – minimum!

Whew! You made it to the bottom of the list! Are those ideas flowing yet?

Now to be annoyingly, crystal clear – not all of these examples are viable strategies for
everyone. They are not recommendations, endorsements, suggestions, or anything
other than an example to illustrate some aspect of leverage. In fact, some of these
strategies I wouldn’t use in my own personal portfolio (ahem, #39). These examples
are for illustrative purposes only; to show the range of possibilities available to help
you increase your leverage.

I hope they stimulate your thinking so you come up with a few innovative ideas that
may be appropriate for you.

Also, it’s important to note that not all types of leverage work at all times. You must
match the characteristics of each leverage strategy to the market environment you’re
operating in to find low risk opportunities. This is explained fully in the book and
developed in a variety of ways in the full course that the book was excerpted from. I
call it “opportunistic investing” and it’s an important concept for both reducing risk and
improving return.

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For example, I employed knowledge and financial leverage when I ran the hedge fund
from 1984-1998 and then sold the business before the final market top in 2000. Then I
switched to financial leverage from 1998-2006 in real estate, but sold all the real estate
before the 2007 top and switched to technology and knowledge leverage in Financial
Mentor beginning in 2008.

None of it was by chance, and your leverage choices shouldn’t be without research and
careful analysis as well. There is a strategic way to apply the principles as fully taught
in this course here (https://financialmentor.com/educational-products/expectancy-
wealth-plan).

Take the Next Step

All of this knowledge is useless until you convert it into action that produces results,
so look at your wealth plan and carefully consider each leverage example. Remember,
don’t accept or reject the specific examples, but instead look behind the details to
reveal the principle that may have some applicability for your own wealth plan.

You can also approach the process from the other direction by looking at every aspect
of your wealth plan to identify areas lacking leverage. How can you add leverage safely
to an existing low-leverage situation? Which ideas from this list might apply?

I hope these resources help you achieve financial freedom earlier than old and lead a
more fulfilling life.

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