One thing I've been thinking a lot about the last few months is the concept of leverage.

The first time I really dove into the topic was when I saw this tweet thread from Naval Ravikant:

I knew that my leverage would come from content/media, rather than code, so I started thinking about that with regard to Craftsman Creative.

In the last two years, Craftsman Creative has now done over $80,000 in sales (as a side hustle...) and just crossed 2,000 email subscribers and over 1,000 students have enrolled in courses.

In today's post, I'll walk through four ways you can create more leverage in your creative business as well, so that you can reach more people, get more people to engage with your business, and grow both your sales and revenue.

1. Leverage through Content
2. Leverage through Products
3. Leverage through People
4. Leverage through Capital

Creating Leverage Through Content

The simplest and least cost-intensive way to start creating leverage in your business is through content.

You can start a blog, a newsletter, a YouTube channel, a podcast, all for free.

It's never been easier to create content, it's just about starting and then sticking with it.

Content creates leverage because that post you wrote two years ago hangs out on the internet, and when people search for it they can find it and discover you and your business.

Now imagine that sort of discovery times 100 blog posts, or videos, or podcast episodes!

The more content you create, the more it can start to compound and become this interconnected rabit hole that people can go down. The more they read and discover, the more trust and affinity they grow to have for you.

Creating Leverage Through Products

Once you've started to grow your audience from your content, you start hearing about their frustrations, questions, and desires.

(You can fast-track this by adding questions into your content, like "what are you struggling with right now?")

When you start to see patterns that's when you can create products that can help people get those desires, overcome their frustrations, and answer their questions.

Books, online courses, workshops, and more are options to create to help provide more value to people than they currently get through your content.

One framework to think of is that "information wants to be free, so charge for implementation".

Recently, I combined content + products to create leverage that supercharged the growth of my brand, my following, and my awareness.

I wrote the book Craftsman Creative in public, which was basically putting out free chapters as I wrote them. By the end of the process I had over 250 emails of interested people, and had pre-sold over $1,000 worth of books!

Combining these types of leverage is a great way to speed up the process of reaching your goals for your business.

Creating Leverage Through People

The more your audience grows, the more leverage you have.

With that bigger audience, you can now start reaching out to other people with large audiences, and leverage their platforms.

I restarted the Craftsman Creative Podcast for this very reason, to invite people with much larger audiences than mine to come on the show and talk about their creative work.

Then, they share their episodes with their audiences, which provides a free discovery channel for me and the Craftsman Creative brand, which helps grow my audience.

Start by creating genuine, transaction-free relationships with people that you follow online.

You never know what opportunities will come from connecting with people and finding ways to work together that benefit both of you, and create new leverage for both of your businesses.

Creating Leverage Through Capital

This one excites me more than all of the others because it's the one I've utilized the least so far, but I believe has the greatest impact.

Two ways that I've used capital for leverage so far:

1. Advertising on newsletters
2. Investing in the creation of online courses

The first is pretty straightforward - paying for attention.

It worked much less than I'd hoped, but I think at a greater scale could work better.

With the courses, I've helped produce 18 courses on Craftsman Creative. I've done it for no up-front cost to the creator, which means I was investing my time and resources to create these courses for other creators.

In return, they handle the initial marketing of the course to their audience, and we split the revenue 50/50.

To date, the site has done over $80,000 in sales and has reached 1,000+ students. That's a TON of leverage that I didn't have with my audience alone.

In the future, I have new ways of investing in creators through the Society of Independent Creators, which I'm very excited about, which will allow me to reach hundreds of thousands of people, invest in hundreds of creative projects, and have a massive impact on the world around me.

I would start with content and add these in the order I've laid out to grow your business using leverage.

The first step is to shift your mindset to start thinking about leverage in this way, and how you can create leverage in your own business.