Leverage is an extremely powerful concept that expands opportunities and helps in achieving more with less. It is the law of least efforts – less of your personal effort. Leverage helps you gain more time, financial control, business success and relationship satisfaction. I find that without leverage you run the risk of burning out and being stressed simply because of the overwhelming feeling of the mammoth task you have to do.
Stop, think and ask; who can I get to do this task? Build a team, leverage the team to do tasks for you, delegate or outsource low level operational tasks to the team and this will free up time for you to invest and focus on more important strategic, visionary and high value tasks. In doing this, you will get a lot more achieved with less of your personal time.
The immense opportunity provided by leverage helps create an ideal lifestyle, giving the prospect of simultaneously merging work/business related events with family related commitments - something a mentor of mine refers to as “merging you passion with your profession and your vocation with your vacation” – Amazing right?
Here are 4 areas where I leverage to achieve more with less.
1. Time
Time is the most valuable yet limited resource we all have and to get maximum achievement with your time, you need to invest it rather than spend or waste it. Investing your time requires you to delegate operational tasks and create time for you to focus on strategic or visionary tasks. To leverage on time, you need to delegate. Time invested yields returns; it’s the opportunity cost of time.
2. Money
To leverage money, I investing in assets – property; then rent the property to a tenant who pays rent and I outsource the collection of rent to a letting agent. In this instance, I leverage the bank’s money using a mortgage to investing in the property, I then leverage the tenant who pays down the mortgage with the rent collected and finally leverage the letting agency who collects the rent – although for a fee.
The initial capital grows in form of equity in the property, I get a constant cashflow in form of the rent and the property is managed by the letting agent further increasing leverage. Here I let my money do all the hard work.
3. Systems
Leveraging systems makes life easier, reduces cost and complex processes while staying connected round the clock. For instance, I regularly leverage the use systems to help focus on my strategic, visionary and high level task. I use a system to connect all my social media platforms broadcast to one source, systems for networking meetings, CRM systems for connecting with investors, clients and vendors and ecommerce systems for payments. The use of all of these systems once set up, helps run my business on auto pilot.
Systems are an effective way of getting a desired outcome in a predictable manner. Using systems ensures you follow a process to replicate a result, remove errors, duplication, inefficiency and wastage.
4. People
Leveraging people involves building and nurturing relationships. Such relationships are cantered on collaborations, alliances and affiliations where everyone is seen as a potential partner. In my case, I build a team to deal with my operational tasks so I can deal with strategic, visionary and high value tasks. I leverage on the team of people I work with and they include solicitors, accountants, tax experts, professional builders, estate agents, letting agents, VA’s and PA’s. This is what makes it possible for me to deliver great investment returns to private investors.
Leverage now before you need it. Invest your time rather than spent it or waste it. Outsource and get people to do things for you so you can concentrate on strategic, visionary and high value task.
I realize that leveraging is a powerful concept which helps you buy your time back and lets you focus on high value, visionary and strategic tasks so that you can compound returns in your business. Leverage helps sustain a consistent long term property investment portfolio.
If you find something interesting, have any questions or would like to know how you can sustain growth through leverage, I will be more than happy to share my experience or knowledge in order to help.
Regards,
Emmanuel Adedipe | achieving more together
