THE ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET #3. LEVERAGE
Wednesday, November 02, 2016“Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world”. -Archimedes
Leverage means profiting maximally from your resources and other people’s resources. It is the medium of spotting and maximizing other people’s underutilized resources by utilizing it to both parties advantage. – It is simply a way of standing on the shoulders of the giants. (“nanos gigantum humeris insidentes”) i.e discovering truth by building on previous discoveries.
Initially I see this as a funny advise when somebody who complains not having money is told to go and start a business. What will he or she use to set up such business?
Money of course, whose money? Definitely not his, he must devise a means of leveraging on other people’s money if not he’s going to die penniless.
That’s why leverage is necessary for an entrepreneur . Its not obligatory to start any business with your own money, rather you must be resourceful so that people can commit their resources with you.
For instance to get your start-up capital you’ll leverage on the financial institution, on venture capitalist, friends and family, cooperative society, and other available medium.
Leverage is not restricted to financial issues alone, there are many other areas of life you need leverage. Don’t be inundated with the burden of doing everything all by yourself, life is not design that way. You need others to be successful.
AREAS WHERE LEVERAGE IS IMPORTANT
- Leverage on other people’s influence
- Leverage on other people’s ideas
- Leverage on other people’s customers
- Leverage on other people’s Network
- Leverage on other people’s underutilized infrastructure
- Leverage on other people’s intellectual property.
- Leverage on existing wealth of knowledge
- Leverage on other peoples underutilized resources etc.
Leverage on existing wealth of knowledge
You need to familiarize yourself with the existing practice in any field before launching into it. This will save your time and give you additional advantage of learning from the experience of others rather than making your experience solely the only medium of learning.
There is virtually any discipline that doesn’t have some rich existing body of knowledge you can profit from. Why try to figure out everything by yourself when you can profit from others.
Seek those who are successful in your field and learn from them, they’ve made a lot of mistakes that will save you decades if you were to make similar ones in your business.
Meet them one-on-one, study their books, go to their seminars, ask about them from people that knows them. Do all you can to ensure that you are not starting any business from an obscure position.
Leverage on other peoples underutilized resources
Figure out what other people aren’t doing that can bring additional profit to their business and fill in that Gap.
There was a time I decided to leverage on an internet café center where I do a monthly subscription of Eight Thousand Naira due to the nature of the program I was running online.
How do I go about this? I added a mass printing service as an additional profit centre to the business through the money I raised from friends who later got a share of the benefit of the partnership. Doing that gave me free access to browsing freely. The business brought additional customer and maximize the existing space and employees.
There are a lot you can do through leverage. You’ll share the part of the risk and profit from such relationship. It is your duty to figure out how to do it.
There are many business owners outside there who are looking for people who can help them to make the best use of their resources. There are many things you can do to maximize and make profit out of other people’s existing business.
Finally nurse great ideas that can bring great benefit to others. Rich people don’t love to meddle around with little project. And always remember that the Ultimate leverage is to leverage on your strength.
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