Leverage Book Quotes

Politeness is the first thing people lose once they get the power.

Money is not equal for all people. A strong personal brand adds more lift and leverage. One dollar from me may buy a soda from a car dealership, but one dollar from Justin Bieber may get him a Ferrari. And they'd pay him to drive away.

The Qur’an does not hesitate to retell biblical incidents with modifications—or to introduce entirely new vignettes around iconic biblical figures. As a book purposely not constructed around a formal narrative, the Qur’an leverages these allusions primarily to emphasize a moral value rather than re- veal an origin story. Every time the Qur’an presents a story, it always follows with terse analyses synthesizing key takeaways.

Reading a book is among the most high-leverage activities on earth.

From this irritating reality comes The First Law of Corporate Survival for ambitious CEOs who pile on leverage and run large and unfathomable derivatives books: Modest incompetence simply won’t do; it’s mindboggling screw-ups that are required.

Reading a book is among the most high-leverage activities on earth. For an investment more or less equivalent to the length of a single workday (and a few dollars), you can gain access to what the smartest people have already figured out. Reading, that is, reading to really understand, delivers residual results by any estimate. Unfortunately, very few people take advantage of this. The typical American reads (or partially reads) only four books a year. More than a quarter of Americans don’t read books at all. And this trend is worsening.

The final form of leverage is brand new—the most democratic form. It is: “products with no marginal cost of replication.” This includes books, media, movies, and code. Code is probably the most powerful form of permissionless leverage. All you need is a computer—you don’t need anyone’s permission. [1]

What are the benefits of a Stoic life?” I would probably say, “It is an ancient and honorable package of advice on how to stay out of the clutches of those who are trying to get you on the hook, trying to give you a feeling of obligation, trying to get moral leverage on you, to force you to bend to their will.

High EQ decision makers can leverage multifaceted thought processes in making sound judgments and improving the overall decision-making maturity.

But we all know that positional authority alone does not equate to effective leadership. If a leader does not inspire confidence, he or she will be unable to effect change without resorting to brute force. Influence has always been, and will always be, the currency of leadership. This book is about how to cultivate the influence needed to lead when you’re not in charge.

The five rules we have identified to describe this framework are the heart of this book:            1.    Look Forward, Reason Back            2.    Make Big Bets, Without Betting the Company            3.    Build Platforms and Ecosystems—Not Just Products            4.    Exploit Leverage and Power—Play Judo and Sumo            5.    Shape the Organization Around Your Personal Anchor By

Books. Sure. But mostly I build interest. Attention. Allure. A book is just packaging, just a container. This is what I’ve realized. The mistake people in the book business make is they think their job is to build good containers. Saying you’re in the book business is like a winemaker saying he’s in the bottle business. What we’re actually building is interest. A book is simply one shape that interest can take when we scale and leverage it.

Neofeudalism: Much as warlords seized land in the Norman Conquest and levied rent on subject populations (starting with the Domesday Book, the great land census of England and Wales ordered by William the Conqueror), so today’s financialized mode of warfare uses debt leverage and foreclosure to pry away land, natural resources and economic infrastructure. The commons are privatized by bondholders and bankers, gaining control of government and shifting taxes onto labor and small-scale industry. Household accounts, corporate balance sheets and public budgets are earmarked increasingly to pay real estate rent, monopoly rent, interest and financial fees, and to bear the taxes shifted off rentier wealth. The rentier oligarchy makes itself into a hereditary aristocracy lording it over the population at large from gated communities that are the modern counterpart to medieval castles with their moats and parapets.

When Nixon resigned over Watergate, it provided all the leverage Hayden and his activists needed. The Democrats won the midterm elections, bringing to Washington a new group of legislators who were determined to undermine the settlement that Nixon and Kissinger had achieved. The aid was cut, the Saigon regime fell, and the Khmer Rouge marched into the Cambodian capital. In the two years that followed, the victorious Communists killed more Indochinese than had been killed on both sides in all 13 years of the anti-Communist war.

In his book Software Abstractions, MIT Professor Daniel Jackson explains just how important it is to choose the right abstractions. "Pick the right ones, and programming will flow naturally from design; modules will have small and simple interfaces; and new functionality will more likely fit in without extensive reorganization, " Jackson writes. "Pick the wrong ones, and programming will be a series of nasty surprises: interfaces will become baroque and clumsy as they are forced to accommodate unanticipated interactions, and even the simplest of changes will be hard to make.

COACHING TIP: How can triads solve your problems? The central theme of this book is that you are only as smart and capable as your tribe, and that by upgrading your tribe, you multiply the results of your efforts. We have yet to see problems that couldn’t be fixed by a few good triads, such as the fact we couldn’t get an interview with Hoffman. A great question for coaches to ask is this: “What triads, if built, will fix this problem?” The “black belt” version of the question (most useful in stable Stage Four cultures) is “What triads will help us spot and fix problems so big we can’t even think of them?

I dream of Morocco and Paris, and a koi pond in the backyard. Making art, supporting art, learning art. Late-night talks with soul sisters who make me feel crazy blessed and motivated. Stage presence. Books and more books. Film. Belly laughs. I dream about communion. My man. Our son. Always. I dream of sitting around a fire with leaders and lovers of progress. Being able to give yeses that open doors and new dimensions for people. I dream of tenderness and innovation. I dream of invitations that humble me, and magical connections with people I recognize on a cellular level. I dream that we band together to leverage change. I dream of feeling more electric and sweet every single day. Mostly, I dream of being amazed. How ’bout you?

No one is perfect, and I see ways in which each of the companies I’ve profiled could adjust and improve their social media initiatives. Then again, I’m well aware that there are things I could do to improve my own efforts. Sustaining relationships and leveraging social networks is challenging work. Yet the thing that strikes me about the individuals who are leading the companies and brands profiled in this book is their excitement. They work like animals, and the economy is still wobbly, but when they talk about their work, you get the definite sense that all they see are doors of opportunity flying open every day. It’s as though social media has given all its users an equal platform on which they can build not just their careers, but their dreams.

Stupid Screenwriter Tricks - However clever we think we are, sometimes we go too far in our enthusiasm. We are creative people and think everyone will get it - well, they don't. Stunts don't work. Lame attempts to get attention don't work. Here are some other don'ts: Don't package yourself in a big crate and mail yourself to William Morris. Don't take out a full-page advertisement in Variety with your picture and phone number with the slogan: Will Write for Food. Don't have your picture taken with a cut-out photo of your favorite movie star and send to him autographed with the phrase: We should be in business together! And whatever you do, don't threaten to leap off the Hollywood sign as leverage to get someone to read your screenplay. It's been done, babe, it's been done.

The same thing, notes Brynjolfsson, happened 120 years ago, in the Second Industrial Revolution, when electrification—the supernova of its day—was introduced. Old factories did not just have to be electrified to achieve the productivity boosts; they had to be redesigned, along with all business processes. It took thirty years for one generation of managers and workers to retire and for a new generation to emerge to get the full productivity benefits of that new power source. A December 2015 study by the McKinsey Global Institute on American industry found a “considerable gap between the most digitized sectors and the rest of the economy over time and [found] that despite a massive rush of adoption, most sectors have barely closed that gap over the past decade … Because the less digitized sectors are some of the largest in terms of GDP contribution and employment, we [found] that the US economy as a whole is only reaching 18 percent of its digital potential … The United States will need to adapt its institutions and training pathways to help workers acquire relevant skills and navigate this period of transition and churn.” The supernova is a new power source, and it will take some time for society to reconfigure itself to absorb its full potential. As that happens, I believe that Brynjolfsson will be proved right and we will start to see the benefits—a broad range of new discoveries around health, learning, urban planning, transportation, innovation, and commerce—that will drive growth. That debate is for economists, though, and beyond the scope of this book, but I will be eager to see how it plays out. What is absolutely clear right now is that while the supernova may not have made our economies measurably more productive yet, it is clearly making all forms of technology, and therefore individuals, companies, ideas, machines, and groups, more powerful—more able to shape the world around them in unprecedented ways with less effort than ever before. If you want to be a maker, a starter-upper, an inventor, or an innovator, this is your time. By leveraging the supernova you can do so much more now with so little. As Tom Goodwin, senior vice president of strategy and innovation at Havas Media, observed in a March 3, 2015, essay on TechCrunch.com: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.

The emphasis here will be on strength, not pathology; on challenge, not comfort; on self-differentiation, not herding for togetherness. This is a difficult perspective to maintain in a “seatbelt society” more oriented toward safety than adventure. This book is not, therefore, for those who prefer peace to progress. It is not for those who mistake another’s well-defined stand for coercion. It is not for those who fail to see how in any family or institution a perpetual concern for consensus leverages power to the extremists. And it is not for those who lack the nerve to venture out of the calm eye of good feelings and togetherness and weather the storm of protest that inevitably surrounds a leader’s self-definition. For, whether we are considering a family, a work system, or an entire nation, the resistance that sabotages a leader’s initiative usually has less to do with the “issue” that ensues than with the fact that the leader took initiative.

Expiring knowledge catches more attention than it should for two reasons: one, there's a lot it. Eager to keep our short attention spans occupied. Two, we chase it down. Anxious to squeeze insight out of it before it loses relevance. Permanent information is harder to notice because it's buried in books rather than blasted in headlines. But it's benefit is huge. It's not just hat permanent information never expires, letting you accumulate it, it also compounds over it, leveraging off what you've already learned. Expiring information tells you what happened. Permanent information tells you WHY something happened and is likely to happen again. That WHY can translate into stuff you know about other topics, which is where the compounding comes in. I read newspapers and books everyday. I cannot recall one damn thing I read in a newspaper from say 2011, but I can tell you in great detail about books I read in 2011 and how they changed the way I think.

There are two types of information: permanent and expiring. Permanent information is: “How do people behave when they encounter a risk they hadn’t fathomed?” Expiring information is: “How much profit did Microsoft earn in the second quarter of 2005?” Expiring knowledge catches more attention than it should, for two reasons. One, there’s a lot of it, eager to keep our short attention spans occupied. Two, we chase it down, anxious to squeeze insight out of it before it loses relevance. Permanent information is harder to notice because it’s buried in books rather than blasted in headlines. But its benefit is huge. It’s not just that permanent information never expires, letting you accumulate it. It also compounds over time, leveraging off what you’ve already learned. Expiring information tells you what happened; permanent information tells you why something happened and is likely to happen again. That “why” can translate and interact with stuff you know about other topics, which is where the compounding comes in.

Hybrid warfare particularly appeals to China and Russia, since they are much more able to control the information their populaces receive than are their Western adversaries. A 1999 book, Unrestricted Warfare, written by two People’s Liberation Army colonels suggests that militarily, technologically and economically weaker states can use unorthodox forms of warfare to defeat a materially superior enemy – and clearly they had the United States and NATO in mind. Rather than focusing on direct military confrontation, the weaker state might succeed against the dominant opponent by shifting the arena of conflict into economic, terrorist and even legal avenues as leverage to be used to undercut more traditional means of warfare. The subtitle of their book, Two Air Force Senior Colonels on Scenarios for War and the Operational Art in an Era of Globalization, notes a core truth of the early twenty-first century: an increasingly globalized world deepens reliance upon, and the interdependence of, nations, which in turn can be used as leverage to exploit, undermine and sabotage a dominant power. The two colonels might not be happy with the lesson their book teaches Westerners, which is that no superpower can afford to be isolationist. One way to keep America great, therefore, is to stay firmly plugged into – and leading – the international system, as it has generally done impressively in leading the Western world’s response to the invasion of Ukraine. The siren voices of American isolationism inevitably lead to a weaker United States.

Pontifex Maximus, from which the future Catholic Church would derive its own title of “Pontiff” was a special position of leadership over the state-run religion, a centralized role that gave him plenty of leverage for future political ambition. This first seat in political office would then open up further doors to him, first the seat of praetor in 62 BCE and then the appointment as governor of Hispania Ulterior in southeastern Spain.

This book is called Superhuman by Habit because the results can seem truly superhuman when willpower is leveraged in this manner.

You are the creative force of your life.

Craig Newmark simply started e-mailing his friends about local events in 1995; almost twenty-two years later, network effects have kept Craigslist a dominant player in online classifieds despite operating with a skeleton crew and making seemingly no changes to the website design during that entire period! This is where an emphasis on speed also plays an important role. Because Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs focus on designing business models that can get big fast, they are more likely to incorporate network effects. And because the fierce local competition forces start-ups to grow so aggressively (i.e., blitzscale), Silicon Valley start-ups are more likely to reach the tipping point of network effects before start-ups from less aggressive geographies. One of the motivations for this book is to help entrepreneurs from around the world emulate these successes by teaching them how to systematically design their businesses for blitzscaling. When you design your business model to leverage network effects, you can succeed anywhere.

Să nu-ți pese înseamnă să privești în fața celei mai terifiante și mai dificile provocări ale vieții și totuși să treci la acțiune.

When most people envision giving no fucks whatsoever, they imagine a kind of serene indifference to everything, a calm that weathers all storms. They imagine and aspire to be a person who is shaken by nothing and caves in to no one. There's a name for a person who finds no emotion or meaning in anything: a psychopath.

Signs of Stage Three. People engage in anything that’s going on, with energy and commitment, but when you listen closely, they talk mostly about themselves and focus on appearing smarter and better than others. They think they’re focused on team concerns, but their actions show their interest is personal. People tend to form two-person relationships, so if they manage a group of ten, they have ten relationships. They rarely bring people together, they resist sharing information except when it’s necessary, and they pride themselves on being better informed than others. Winning is all that matters, and winning is personal. People at this stage complain that they don’t have enough time or support and that the people around them aren’t as competent or as committed as they are. Stage Three has a symbiotic relationship with Stage Two, so it’s important to start there. Go to Chapter 5 and continue reading to the end of the book.

Signs of Stage Four. Teams are the norm, focused around shared values and a common purpose. Information moves freely throughout the group. People’s relationships are built on shared values. They tend to ask, “what’s the next right thing to do?” and to build ad hoc partnerships to accomplish what’s important at the moment. Their language focuses on “we,” not “me.” If two people get in a squabble, a third will step in and repair the relationship rather than create a personal following for himself. Unlike Stage Two, the group is composed of people who have played the Stage Three game and won—and are ready for genuine partnerships. Your first job is to make sure each person is stable at Stage Four, as most groups at this level crash down to Stage Three when under stress. Go to Chapter 7 and read to the end of the book.

Signs of Stage Five. Your tribes hardly ever refer to the competition, except to note how remarkable their own culture is by comparison, and how far their results outstrip industry norms. The theme of communication is limitless potential, bounded only by imagination and group commitment. People in this culture can find a way to work with almost anyone, provided their commitment to values is at the same intensity as their own. (Unlike Stage Four, the focus isn’t on “our values” but on resonant values.) There is almost no fear, stress, or workplace conflict. People talk as though the world is watching them, which may well be the case, as their results are making history. Your job is to make sure the infrastructure to maintain these leaps to Stage Five is in place. Go to Chapter 9 and read to the end of the book.

Signs of Stage Two. People talk as though they are disconnected from organizational concerns, seeming to not care about what’s going on. They do the minimum to get by, showing almost no initiative or passion. They cluster together in groups that encourage passive-aggressive behavior (talking about how to get out of work, or how to shine the boss on) while telling people in charge that they are on board with organizational initiatives. The theme of their communication is that no amount of trying or effort will change their circumstances, and giving up is the only enlightened thing to do. From a managerial perspective, nothing seems to work—team building, training, even selective terminations appear to do nothing to change the prevailing mood. The culture is an endless well of unmet needs, gripes, disappointments, and repressed anger. Go to Chapter 5 and continue reading to the end of the book.

that people wanted the lies because it allowed them to gain power, leverage, or self-delusion of some kind which they found advantageous.

They wanted the benefits of direct response copy in their business: they wanted to leverage their time, energy and money, while marketing one-to-many and automating their sales and marketing to free up their time and allow them to reach more people than they could without it… But they hated how it made them feel. Inauthentic. Hype-y. Sales-y. Slime-y. Like a used car salesman.

In the end, you’ll want the power and leverage to quit a bad situation. And it’s okay to quit. Sometimes it’s the only way to save your health or find out what you truly want to be and do in this life. Maybe you don’t want to do anything except take long walks, hang out with your dog, be artistic or musical and putter in the garden. And you know what? That’s just fine. Take a hard look at that dashboard you created at the beginning of this book and see what you really value. I bet somewhere on there is happiness — and you deserve it. So go out there and… don’t work so hard.

Who did what again?” The amused voice of Connor Prescott, one of his business partners, only spiked Wes’s displeasure. So much for being alone and being able to vent his frustration. Instead, he lowered his hands and glared at his good friend, who was also directly related to the person Wes was currently annoyed with. He watched as Connor casually sauntered into the office, the dust on his jeans and boots a good indication that he’d just come in from working on a jobsite. “The who is your sister. The what is stealing yet another million-dollar listing right out from under me,” Wes snapped, even more perturbed that Natalie Prescott could push his buttons more than any other woman ever had, and make him rock hard at the same time. Not that she knew what kind of effect she had on his dick, and she never would. Because one, she was his best friend’s little sister and he’d known her most of his life. And two, he’d never give her that kind of leverage or smug satisfaction when they were business adversaries in an indust

Miracle Mornings are like paying yourself first—in wisdom, productivity, and clarity. When you leverage mornings, it’s like you’re skimming the cream off the top of the day and giving it to yourself so you can invest it for huge returns.

When you sell a product to a client, you are not selling them a product that you just want to bring into the world: you sell a product that you believe will make their lives easier. You can’t sell a customer a product unless it improves their life – it’s impractical, yet many business owners put themselves into this situation.

The ego believes that in your resistance lies your strength. Whereas in truth, resistance cute you off from being - the only place of true power. Resistance is weakness and fear masquerading as strength. What the ego sees as weakness is your Being in its purity, innocence, and power. What it sees as strength is weakness.

Stage Four, people assume trust; they don’t earn it. At Stage Three, trust is earned. When lost, it has to be re-earned. At Stage Four, we observed a different phenomenon: people granted trust from the beginning. In fact, when we tried to set up meetings with people at Stage Three, many rebuffed us because they didn’t know who we were. By contrast, many of the remarkable people interviewed for this book—those at Stages Four and Five—assumed we were who we said we were and granted us an interview because they said the project sounded important. The principle is this: where trust is an issue, there is no trust. Stage Four assumes trust. Stage Three says trust must be earned.

According to Crystal Evan’s book, Legal Choppa Based on the provided context and intended meaning, the term "legal choppa" could be creatively interpreted to describe someone who is shrewd, resourceful, and innovative in the realm of business and entrepreneurship. It conveys an individual who navigates the legal and regulatory landscape adeptly, utilizing their intellect and cunning to achieve success. This term implies a person who possesses sharp business acumen, strategic thinking, and the ability to seize opportunities within the confines of the law. They demonstrate intelligence and adaptability, consistently finding inventive ways to overcome obstacles and achieve their goals. Just as a helicopter soars above obstacles, a "legal choppa" in the business world rises above challenges, leveraging their knowledge and skills to reach new heights. They embody qualities such as astuteness, ingenuity, and the ability to think outside the box. Note that this interpretation is a creative adaptation of the term "legal choppa" and is not a widely recognized or established definition.

The effect of the leverage is that a small loss would be compounded and would wipe him out.

The dip in the market was not very large. It was just that his leverage was enormous.

Once you have disidentified with yourself whether you are right or wrong makes no difference to your sense of self at all

The secret of life is "to die before you die" and find that there is no death

Worry pretends to be necessary, but serves no useful purpose.

If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your here an now, and you can't remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longer survive. This is called surrender. Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free.

Are you worried? Do you have many "what if" thoughts? You are identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary future situation and creating fear. [...] All that you ever have to deal with, cope with, in real life — as opposed to imaginary mind projections — is this moment. Ask yourself what "problem" you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment? You can always cope with the Now, but you can never cope with the future — nor do you have to. The answer, the strength, the right action or the resource will be there when you need it, not before, not after.

If there is no joy, ease, or lightness in what you are doing, it does not necessarily mean that you need to change what you are doing. It may be sufficient to change the how. "How" is always more important than "what". See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result you want to achieve through it. Give your fullest attention to whatever the moment presents. This implies that you also completely accept what is, because you cannot give your full attention to something and at the same time resist it.

That’s the genius of the 64/4 rule! Applying the 80/20 rule to the top 20% yields 4% (20% × 20% = 4%). In other words, 4% of inputs produce 64% of results (80% × 80% = 64%). This is the 64/4 rule. The 64/4 rule is exciting, because it means that you can leverage a mere 4% of your time, team, or budget to produce massive results—more than half, or 64%. The million-dollar question is—what’s in that top 4%?

She was professionally attired in a tailored blue dress suit and skirt. A

DARWIN’S “SACRED CAUSE”? Much ink has been dedicated to determining Charles Darwin’s role in “scientific racism.” The only way to empirically and scientifically determine his role is to organize the events as a timeline, and thus placing them into context of historical events. Political analysis without historical context is all sail and no rudder. In America we are constantly made aware that both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day, in the same year, February 12, 1809. Adrian Desmond and James Moore famous 2009 book, “Darwin’s Sacred Cause,” leverages this factoid in an effort to place Charles Darwin at par with Abraham Lincoln in the abolition of slavery. This fraudulently steals away credit from Abraham Lincoln, who took a bullet to the head for the cause, and transfers it by inference to an aristocrat whom remained in his plush abode throughout the conflict and never lifted a finger for the cause.

2. Leverage This word is the poster child of words that began life as nouns and (perplexingly) find themselves now used as verbs.

Whether they win or lose their fight with the Euro institutions, Syriza have demonstrated the power of theory. Varoufakis predicted the catastrophic end of the Greek bonanza, the unsustainability of leveraged finance and the fragmentation of the eurozone – even while the theories acceptable to the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times said the opposite. He also told his advisers, from the very beginning, that they could expect a deal with Europe only at ‘one minute past midnight’. That is, he theorized the potential accidental outcomes of the crisis too. That’s what gives this book both its power and its poignancy. We don’t know how the fight between Syriza and the eurozone will end – but we can be certain it will involve compromise. Politicians live in the world of compromise; theorists do not. But by the end of it, the radical left will know what it means to fight for a new, fairer kind of capitalism, in the teeth of resistance from the old kind. Paul Mason, 28 March 2015

Isn’t it strange then that the focus in our profession is on teaching techniques and classroom activities, not learning techniques, motivation and self-study activities? The focus in course books, training courses, workshops, articles and websites tends to be on supporting teachers in creating effective classroom events (teacher goals) rather than supporting students in achieving their ambitions with the language (learner goals). Good lessons will always help students, of course, and can contribute to student commitment to learning the language, but if we focus exclusively on lessons, we will miss the opportunity to leverage the potential every student has to practise more and make quicker progress.

The door to my father’s study swung open silently, thanks to new hinges. The entire office had been decimated, but Galen had painstakingly restored it, carefully putting the few things that had survived back in their rightful places. Papa’s desk had been destroyed, but it had been replaced with an almost identical one; other than the fact that the scent of my father--and the feel of years of joy--could never be returned, all was as it should be. Except for one bookcase. I hadn’t noticed because no one entered this room anymore, but Galen would have known where the replacement case belonged--on the inside wall, adjacent to the door. Now it was on an outside wall. My heart thudding, I curiously approached it. Setting the lantern on the floor, I took hold of the bookcase and pulled, but it would not shift. Odd-it had always been freestanding, but was now anchored to the wall. My excitement mounting, I grabbed armfuls of books, haphazardly strewing them on the floor. The back of the case was solid wood, but I pushed between the shelves, trying to make something budge. Nothing yielded. I paused, listening for movement from upstairs, then stuck my head and shoulders into each and every section to knock softly on the backing. With a tiny, exhilarated laugh, I realized the bottom section was hollow. Determination revived, I shoved with all my weight against the wood, kicking over some of the volumes piled behind me as I grappled for leverage. My hands slipped, and my shoulder hit the left side, earning a groan--not from me, but from the bookcase. The right edge shifted toward me, just enough for me to fit my fingers behind and force it open. The gap I had created was large enough for me to squirm through, and I found myself sitting on the dirt floor of a small room behind the wall. It was partially below ground, cool, but not drafty; in fact, it was difficult to breathe in the small, dark, dusty space. I leaned back through the opening in the bookcase and grabbed the lantern. When I could at last see what the room contained, I grinned. Before me were stacked weapons of every sort--daggers, long-knives, swords, bows and arrows, lances, whips--legions and legions of glorious weapons.

1. The conglomerate movement, “with all its fancy rhetoric about synergism and leverage.” 2. Accountants who played footsie with stock-promoting managements by certifying earnings that weren’t earnings at all. 3. “Modern” corporate treasurers who looked upon their company pension funds as new-found profit centers and pressured their investment advisers into speculating with them. 4. Investment advisers who massacred clients’ portfolios because they were trying to make good on the over-promises that they had made to attract the business. 5. The new breed of investment managers who bought and churned the worst collection of new issues and other junk in history, and the underwriters who made fortunes bringing them out. 6. Elements of the financial press which promoted into new investment geniuses a group of neophytes who didn’t even have the first requisite for managing other people’s money—namely, a sense of responsibility. 7. The securities salesmen who peddle the items with the best stories—or the biggest markups—even though such issues were totally unsuited to the customers’ needs. 8. The sanctimonious partners of major investment houses who wrung their hands over all these shameless happenings while they deployed an army of untrained salesmen to forage among even less trained investors. 9. Mutual fund managers who tried to become millionaires overnight by using every gimmick imaginable to manufacture their own paper performance. 10. Portfolio managers who collected bonanza incentives of the “heads I win, tails you lose” kind, which made them fortunes in the bull market but turned the portfolios they managed into disasters in the bear market. 11. Security analysts who forgot about their professional ethics to become storytellers and let their institutions be taken in by a whole parade of confidence men. This was the “list of horrors that people in our field did to set the stage for the greatest blood bath in forty years,

FOR MY SPIRITUAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help others... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with God... ? FOR MY PHYSICAL HEALTH... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to achieve my diet goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I exercise... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to relieve my stress... ? FOR MY PERSONAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skill at ________... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to find time for myself... ? FOR MY KEY RELATIONSHIPS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with my spouse/partner... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my children’s school performance... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to show my appreciation to my parents... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make my family stronger... ? FOR MY JOB... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I hit my goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skills... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help my team succeed... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to further my career... ? FOR MY BUSINESS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more competitive... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make our product the best... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more profitable... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve our customer experience... ? FOR MY FINANCES... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to increase my net worth... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my investment cash flow... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to eliminate my credit card debt... ? BIG IDEAS So how do you make The ONE Thing part of your daily routine? How do you make it strong enough to get extraordinary results at work and in the other areas of your life? Here’s a starter list drawn from our experience and our work with others. Understand and believe it. The first step is to understand the concept of the ONE Thing, then to believe that it can make a difference in your life. If you don’t understand and believe, you won’t take action. Use it. Ask yourself the Focusing Question. Start each day by asking, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do today for [whatever you want] such that by doing it everything else will be easier or even unnecessary?” When you do this, your direction will become clear. Your work will be more productive and your personal life more rewarding. Make it a habit. When you make asking the Focusing Question a habit, you fully engage its power to get the extraordinary results you want. It’s a difference maker. Research says this will take about 66 days. Whether it takes you a few weeks or a few months, stick with it until it becomes your routine. If you’re not serious about learning the Success Habit, you’re not serious about getting extraordinary results. Leverage reminders. Set up ways to remind yourself to use the Focusing Question. One of the best ways to do this is to put up a sign at work that says, “Until my ONE Thing is done—everything else is a distraction.” We designed the back cover of this book to be a trigger —set it on the corner of your desk so that it’s the first thing you see when you get to work. Use notes, screen savers, and calendar cues to keep making the connection between the Success Habit and the results you seek. Put up reminders like, “The ONE Thing = Extraordinary Results” or “The Success Habit Will Get Me to My Goal.” Recruit support. Research shows that those around you can influence you tremendously. Starting a success support group with some of your work colleagues can help inspire all of you to practice the Success Habit every day. Get your family involved. Share your ONE Thing. Get them on board. Use the Focusing Question around them to show them how the Success Habit can make a difference in their school work, their personal achievements, or any other part of their lives.

dear readers, is that there is no one but you who can choose

you’ll see each fetus wizen up inside its fertile womb. Yet drip it into the veins of Congress or a Corporation, just watch those Mountain Men outwrestle steers, gulping their liquid god go wildly enthusiastic so they can write laws in stone with one hand while joysticking lovers with the other, sacking Montana and out-dunking Jordan, out-leveraging—who was it, Archimedes, popped the world’s blue eyeball into a Swiss snowbank? See, ghettoites, how sociable our masters are, these Bacchanalians, never alcoholic, immune in suburbs where bad sex has died and gone to heaven, no AIDS, no illegitimate children, all the schools have classic curricula and every personal fetus will be delivered right on time, uncorked like Chateauneuf du Pape, unscrewed like Southern Comfort to gurgle on its snowy tablecloth, caress with rosy fingers its parents’ egos and become a tax loophole. Classic, ah Classic these Metamorphoses

Everything you ever need to know about anything is contained in a book. Everything! If you want to learn something or become an expert at anything, all you need to do is read. Yet,

In 2011, the NASSCOM team introduced me to Aloke Bajpai, who, like others on his young team, cut his teeth working for Western technology companies but returned to India on a bet that he could start something—he just didn’t know what. The result was Ixigo.com, a travel search service that can run on the cheapest cell phones and helps Indians book the lowest-cost fares, whether it is a farmer who wants to go by bus or train for a few rupees from Chennai to Bangalore or a millionaire who wants to go by plane to Paris. Ixigo is today the biggest travel search platform in India, with millions of users. To build it, Bajpai leveraged the supernova, using free open-source software, Skype, and cloud-based office tools such as Google Apps and social media marketing on Facebook. They “enabled us to grow so much faster with no money,” he told me. It

As a Shark, I’ve been in the tank with these entrepreneurs and I can tell you Rachel gets right to the heart of how they succeeded,” said Barbara Corcoran in her endorsement of the book. “‘Shark Tank MOMpreneurs’ is a must read for anyone looking to learn the inside secrets of getting on ‘Shark Tank’ and landing a deal, or getting the publicity that’s essential for any successful business.

Nir elaborates in this post: TriggerThe trigger is the actuator of a behavior — the spark plug in the engine. Triggers come in two types: external and internal. Habit-forming technologies start by alerting users with external triggers like an email, a link on a web site, or the app icon on a phone. ActionAfter the trigger comes the intended action. Here, companies leverage two pulleys of human behavior – motivation and ability. This phase of the Hook draws upon the art and science of usability design to ensure that the user acts the way the designer intends. Variable RewardVariable schedules of reward are one of the most powerful tools that companies use to hook users. Research shows that levels of dopamine surge when the brain is expecting a reward. Introducing variability multiplies the effect, creating a frenzied hunting state, activating the parts associated with wanting and desire. Although classic examples include slot machines and lotteries, variable rewards are prevalent in habit-forming technologies as well. InvestmentThe last phase of the Hook is where the user is asked to do bit of work. The investment implies an action that improves the service for the next go-around. Inviting friends, stating preferences, building virtual assets, and learning to use new features are all commitments that improve the service for the user. These investments can be leveraged to make the trigger more engaging, the action easier, and the reward more exciting with every pass through the Hook. We’ve found this model (and the accompanying book) to be a great starting point for a customer acquisition and retention strategy.

CIOs must shift focus from internal customers to external customers. IT must shift focus from providing service to providing value. Everything is moving to the cloud; CIOs must assume a “cloud first” mentality. Innovation is more than new technology—it's also about change management, enabling new processes, and hiring the best talent. CIOs need to work closely with the business to create innovation that drives real value. CEOs expect more from their CIOs than ever before. CIOs must deliver on a higher set of expectations, or they will be replaced. CIOs must shift from a measurement mentality to a value creation mentality. CIOs must shift focus from historical data to real-time information. Today, IT is all about creating real business value. All business is digital. All business. When IT has a bad day, the business has a bad day. IT still matters. It matters to the top line and to the bottom line. IT matters more than ever because IT is everywhere in the business. Without IT, you're out of business. CIOs need to step up, raise the bar, and elevate their game to meet the challenges of the big shift. I hope you enjoy reading this book and find it a useful addition to your library. It's the fourth book I've authored on the topic of

There’s no better way to inform and expand your mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature. That’s another high leverage Quadrant II activity. You can get into the best minds that are now or that have ever been in the world. I highly recommend starting with a goal of a book a month, then a book every two weeks, then a book a week. “The person who doesn’t read is no better off than the person who can’t read.

WHY HABITS ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS If our programmed behaviors are so influential in guiding our everyday actions, surely harnessing the same power of habits can be a boon for industry. Indeed, for those able to shape them in an effective way, habits can be very good for the bottom line. Habit-forming products change user behavior and create unprompted user engagement. The aim is to influence customers to use your product on their own, again and again, without relying on overt calls to action such as ads or promotions. Once a habit is formed, the user is automatically triggered to use the product during routine events such as wanting to kill time while waiting in line. However, the framework and practices explored in this book are not “one size fits all” and do not apply to every business or industry. Entrepreneurs should evaluate how user habits impact their particular business model and goals. While the viability of some products depends on habit-formation to thrive, that is not always the case. For example, companies selling infrequently bought or used products or services do not require habitual users—at least, not in the sense of everyday engagement. Life insurance companies, for instance, leverage salespeople, advertising, and word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations to prompt consumers to buy policies. Once the policy is bought, there is nothing more the customer needs to do. In this book I refer to products in the context of businesses that require ongoing, unprompted user engagement and therefore need to build user habits. I exclude companies that compel customers to take action through

Uncomfortable with Permission When you started reading this book, did it make you squirm a bit when I called you a genius? A lot of people are uncomfortable with that sort of permission, authority, or leverage. If you're a genius, after all, then you need to deliver genius-quality results. You've almost certainly been brainwashed to believe that you aren't a genius, that you're working at the appropriate level, earning what you're supposed to earn, and doing what you're supposed to do. And some of that brainwashing has been consensual, because your resistance sort of likes low expectations. Once you've given a name to the resistance and you know what its voice sounds like, it's a lot easier to embrace the fact that you actually are a genius. The part of you that wants to deny this is the resistance. The rest of you understands that you're as capable as the next guy of an insight, invention, or connection that makes a difference

When it comes to building wealth, the most powerful force you have on your side is time. As the days and years pass, the opportunity to build wealth by leveraging time slowly dwindles. The idea for this book came from the realization that often times kids start working their first job at sixteen, likely just a minimum wage, or near-minimum wage, job, but they haven’t been taught how to accumulate wealth.

Imagine that you knew Greece was still Greece and Italy was still Italy and that the prices quoted in the markets represented the bond-buying activities of banks pushing down yields rather than an estimate of the risk of the bond itself. Why would you buy such securities if the yield did not reflect the risk? You might realize that if you bought enough of them—if you became really big—and those assets lost value, you would become a danger to your national banking system and would have to be bailed out by your sovereign. If you were not bailed out, given your exposures, cross-border linkages to other banks, and high leverage, you would pose a systemic risk to the whole European financial sector. As such, the more risk that you took onto your books, especially in the form of periphery sovereign debt, the more likely it was that your risk would be covered by the ECB, your national government, or both. This would be a moral hazard trade on a continental scale. The euro may have been a political project that provided the economic incentive for this kind of trade to take place. But it was private-sector actors who quite deliberately and voluntarily jumped at the opportunity.

Of course, he’s not actually a Billionaire. He’s a Billionaire’s Heir, which is wholly different from a Billionaire. A Billionaire can’t get cut off. A Billionaire’s Heir, on the other hand, can. And at the moment my Billionheir’s money spigot is in the off position. At this point, Kanish is down to his last $120,000, and I shouldn’t have to say it, but $120,000, a significant sum of money for most of us, does not a Billionaire make. Not even close. Suppose you were paid $120,000 in cash every single day of your life starting today. It would take you just shy of twenty-three years to accumulate your first billion, and that’s assuming you’re not spending any of it. You’d also need a mattress the size of a two-meter-square room, and that’s assuming you’re stuffing it with neat stacks of $100 denominations. Now, if you decided to invest your daily $120,000 payments, and you did so shrewdly, then the pace at which you acquired wealth would quicken considerably. With that kind of guaranteed daily income, banks would beg you to borrow money from them, and it wouldn’t be long before that daily $120K installment would be enough leverage for billions in secured loans. With billions in real assets on the books, you would be a Billionaire, despite a paltry income of only $120,000 per day. You see, wealth is judged not by what you have, but rather by what you owe. As usual, I digress.

the principles of power branding aren’t mysteries; in fact, they reflect the principles of any healthy relationship. To paraphrase the title of a famous book, just about all you need to know about branding you learned in kindergarten.

This Book Is About Leverage

I want to know I can pick up and go if I feel the need. If I’m feeling all done with what I’m doing, I want to be able to go do something else, somewhere else, soak in new scents, new scenery, new people, new challenges.” She smiled. She realized something else. “I miss the restlessness. The pull to head somewhere new, find something I’ve never seen, learn something I didn’t know.” “It’s comfortable, I would imagine,” he said. “And comforting. It’s what you know, what you understand. Makes you feel like you.” She nodded. “That’s exactly it.” It was a little overwhelming at times, how well he seemed to understand her, to get what she meant. But in the best possible way. “There’s one more part,” she said, finding the courage, knowing she needed to tell him the rest of it. “Of the all I want to have.” “Which is?” She lifted her head then, propped her chin on his chest, and looked into his beautiful blue eyes. “You.” The light that leaped into those eyes was almost startling in its fierceness. His hand stilled in her hair, his body seemed to vibrate a little, as if injected with a sudden shot of life. But he otherwise said nothing, didn’t move, didn’t roll her to her back and kiss her senseless. He just held her gaze and let her see everything her declaration made him feel. That emboldened her to go on, to give voice to the rest of it. “I want to go back to Cameroo, see everyone again, see if it feels the same, if it still calls to me like it did before.” She clung to his gaze. “Feel what it would be like to be there and be with you. Really with you.” She expected him to say something like he’d book her the next flight back, but instead he regarded her for a long moment, and she realized she was trembling by the time he spoke. “That’s a lot of all,” he said. She nodded, unable to say anything more. Then he surprised a gasp out of her by reaching for her and pulling her up on top of him, slowing rolling to his other side and tucking her under the shelter of his body. He slid his leg between hers, leveraged his weight on one forearm, and cupped her cheek in his free hand. He stared down so intently, so deeply into her eyes, she thought she might drown in all that deep, dark, bottomless blue. “Cooper,” she whispered, for once not having any idea what he was thinking. “Maybe there is a way to have it all,” he said, lowering his head to hers. “If you want me, Starfish, we’ll find that way.” “I do,” she said, the sudden prickle of tears surprising her, but it was such a huge rush finally to admit it, to tell him. To tell herself. “But--” “No buts,” he said, kissing the damp from the corner of one eye, then the other. “We’ll sort it out,” he said. “It’s what we do for the people we love.

• Your kid is untrustworthy at this point. You cannot just ask him if he has to go. He’ll say “no,” ’cause it’s his favorite word, and then you are screwed. • Don’t ask, period. Never ask if he has to go. Tell and bring. If you see or know he’s got to go—he’s dancing around, looking uncomfortable—you say, “Come. Time to pee.” • Use your own leverage as Dad. Your kid loves you in a really special way that is different than how he loves Mom. Use that power for good. Enjoy whatever special time you two have together, but make him pee first. • Video games, wrestling, TV watching . . . pee first. Say that. “You pee first, and then we’ll . . .” • Don’t act helpless. You know your kid just as well as your partner, but in a different way. • Keep your eyes open looking for your kid’s pee-pee dance. • Don’t hover, and don’t prompt him every two seconds. Can you imagine anything worse than someone on you like white on rice, asking you to pee when you don’t have to? • Be casual and cool. You probably already have that role anyway. You can be casual and nonchalant and good cop and still watch out for pee.

Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction.

Be alert as you practice this so that you do not unwittingly transform clock time into psychological time. For example, if you made a mistake in the past and learn from it now, you are using clock time. On the other hand, if you dwell on it mentally, and self-criticism, remorse, or guilt come up, then you are making the mistake into "me" and "mine": you make it part of your sense of self, and it has become psychological time, which is always linked to a false sense of identity.

Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react. Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future. Don't judge or analyze what you observe.

Find the "narrow gate that leads to life". It is called the Now. Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems — most life situations are — but find out if you have any problem at this moment. Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now. Do you have a problem now? When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution. So whenever you can, make some room, create some space, so that you find the life underneath your life situation.

But you will not have illusory expectations that anything or anybody in the future will save you or make you happy. [...] Yet on a deeper level you are already complete, and when you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do. [...] You no longer pursue your goals with grim determination, driven by fear, anger, discontent, or the need to become someone. Nor will you remain inactive through fear of failure, which to the ego is loss of self. When your deeper sense of self is derived from Being, when you are free of "becoming" as a psychological need, neither your happiness nor your sense of self depends on the outcome, and so there is freedom from fear. You don't seek permanency where it cannot be found: in the world of form, of gain and loss, birth and death. You don't demand that situations, conditions, places, or people should make you happy, and then suffer when they don't live up to your expectations. Everything is honored, but nothing matters.

I felt a tug on my sleeve and glanced back at Camilla. She was using me for a bit of leverage as she struggled to stand. When she finally managed to get to her feet, her legs were wobbly, and she pressed one hand against the nearest tree. “She cares about you. You will need to remember that to make it through what Kaden has planned.” I didn’t really understand what she was trying to tell me, but I nodded. “I think you might have ruined that.” “No.” She shook her head with a small, blood-filled smile. “I only made her see.

Keep investing in things that help you surpass your expectations. Keep leveraging the time you have. Keep learning, and growing.

It is also important at the outset of this book to note that I do not consider this infestation to be neutral or benign. This is not merely a felt emotion that eventually morphs into words such as “I’m bad.” As I will suggest, this phenomenon is the primary tool that evil leverages, out of which emerges everything that we would call sin. As such, it is actively, intentionally, at work both within and between individuals. Its goal is to disintegrate any and every system it targets, be that one’s personal story, a family, marriage, friendship, church, school, community, business or political system. Its power lies in its subtlety and its silence, and it will not be satisfied until all hell breaks loose. Literally.

Hello! I'm Khadija, a seasoned author at emperiortech.com, where I leverage my expertise and experience to craft captivating content. With a passion for storytelling, I weave words into insightful and engaging narratives that resonate with readers. My diverse portfolio showcases my mastery of various genres, demonstrating my versatility and dedication to delivering high-quality content. Join me on a literary adventure where knowledge and creativity converge, and let's explore new ideas and perspectives together!

...to know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain.

Note that if KHC had been a multi-business company, we would have estimated a weighted average of the betas of the businesses it operated in, with the weights based on the values of these businesses. Adjusting this beta for the debt in KHC, since financial leverage magnifies business risk, results in a beta of 0.92 for the equity in KHC: The resulting cost of equity is 9.00 percent: While equity investors receive residual cash flows and bear the risk in those cash flows, lenders to the firm face the risk that they will not receive their promised payments—

Expiring knowledge catches more attention than it should, for two reasons. One, there’s a lot of it, eager to keep our short attention spans occupied. Two, we chase it down, anxious to squeeze insight out of it before it loses relevance. Permanent information is harder to notice because it’s buried in books rather than blasted in headlines. But its benefit is huge. It’s not just that permanent information never expires, letting you accumulate it. It also compounds over time, leveraging off what you’ve already learned.

Keep investing in things that help you surpass your expectations. Keep leveraging the time you have. Keep learning and growing.

It is as it is. Observe how the mind labels it and how this labelling process, this continuous sitting in judgement, creates pain and unhappiness. By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER I’ve explained a lot of concepts in this chapter, so I want to recap it all into something a little more tangible. Step #1: The first step is to figure out what type of show you want to have. If you’re a writer, then you should start a blog. If you like video, then you should start a vlog on one of the video platforms. Lastly, if you like audio, then you should start a podcast. Step #2: Your show will be you documenting the process of achieving the same goal that your audience will be striving for. As you’re documenting your process, you’ll be testing your material and paying attention to the things that people respond to. If you commit to publishing your show every day for a year, you’ll have the ability to test your material and find your voice, and your dream customers will be able to find you. Step #3: You’ll leverage your Dream 100 by interviewing them on your show. This will give you the ability to build relationships with them, give them a platform, give you the ability to promote their episode on your show to their audience, and get access to their friends and followers. Step #4: Even though this is your own show, you’re renting time on someone else’s network. It’s important that you don’t forget it and that you focus on converting it into traffic that you own. Figure 7.11: As you create your own show, focus on converting traffic that you earn and control into traffic that you own. And with that, I will close out Section One of this book. So far, we’ve covered a lot of core principles to traffic. We: Identified exactly who your dream client is. Discovered exactly where they are congregating. Talked about how to work your way into those audiences (traffic that you earn) and how you buy your way into those audiences (traffic that you control). Learned how to take all the traffic that you earn and all the traffic that you buy and turn it all into traffic that you own (building your list). Discussed how to plug that list into a follow-up funnel so you can move them through your value ladder. Prepared to infiltrate your Dream 100, find your voice, and build your following by creating your own show. In the next section, we’ll shift our focus to mastering the pattern to get traffic from any advertising networks (like Instagram, Facebook, Google, and YouTube) and how to understand their algorithms so you can get unlimited traffic and leads pouring into your funnels.

We not me. True greatness will be achieved through the abundant mind that works selflessly, with mutual respect, and for a mutual benefit.

Again, let’s take the Push Up, a standard exercise that works your chest, shoulders, triceps, abs, obliques, and lower back (unlike benching which only works half of these). If you do Push Ups standing up with your hands against a wall a couple of feet in front of you, the exercise is pretty easy. Then try them with your hands on an elevated surface, like the edge of a bureau or windowsill. The lower the surface you use–a desk, a couch, a coffee table, telephone books–the harder it gets. Putting your hands on the floor, like a standard Push Up, is harder. If we put our feet on the coffee table and our hands on the ground, the exercise becomes significantly more difficult. This is using leverage to increase the exercise’s difficulty. To make the exercise still harder we could place our hands on one or two balls, like a basketball. Now we’re using an unstable surface. Still harder would be to do basketball Push Ups with pauses at the bottom. Still not hard enough? Try doing them one-handed on the floor. Then one-handed with your feet on the couch. Then on an unstable surface. Then with pauses … You get the idea. And this is only a simple example that can be repeated with many of my exercises. You’ll see the possibilities are endless. So there you have it: We’ve gone from one variation of an exercise, that probably everyone reading this book can do, to a more difficult variation that probably no one reading this book can do right off the bat. The difficulty of bodyweight exercises can be tailored to suit the needs of virtually anyone. You have total control of the resistance.

Law firms that fail to leverage lawyer SEO to get new cases will experience fewer leads and a higher cost per acquisition than their more savvy competitors. Lawful SEO knows that many law firms struggle with not being ranked in Google and having enough new cases each month to cover their nut. Book a call and speak to a 15-year SEO consultant who has helped hundreds of law firm websites get ranked in Google so we can reduce your stress, increase your ROI, and position yourself for future growth.

Coding, writing books, recording podcasts, tweeting, YouTubing—these kinds of things are permissionless. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do them, and that’s why they are very egalitarian. They’re great equalizers of leverage. [78] Every great software developer, for example, now has an army of robots working for him at nighttime while he or she sleeps, after they’ve written the code, and it’s cranking away. [78]

First things first. If they're going to let us fix the world, you got to make them take us seriously. Get some leverage. If they want to make you into a bad wizard, be a bad wizard. We can write the history books to say you were a good wizard. Or at least an okay wizard. They're not going to listen because we talk nicely, they're going to listen because we scare the shit out of them.

personal relationships are great leverage toward getting a deal done and getting the concessions you need. Use them to your advantage.

When it comes to money, perhaps the most popular personal financial advice in the world is to “pay yourself first”—to take some of the money that comes in, and before anything else, put that money aside to invest. The premise is that the most powerful financial tool in the world is compound interest, but if you never have any money to invest, you’ll never get to take advantage of it. You have to take that money first; otherwise, it just gets consumed by other things. Time is similar. Developing yourself is the most powerful tool in the world. As with money, promising yourself you’ll set time aside later in the day to do what matters most just never seems to work—just as money will always find a new home, so will your time. By the last few dollars of your paycheck, it’s too late to save; by noon, it’s too late to do what’s most important with your time. Miracle Mornings are like paying yourself first—in wisdom, productivity, and clarity. When you leverage mornings, it’s like you’re skimming the cream off the top of the day and giving it to yourself so you can invest it for huge returns.

As any truly formidable real estate investor will tell you, success doesn’t come from knowing how to negotiate—it comes from knowing how to solve problems. Your best deals won’t come from exerting leverage over the other party or from charming a buyer or seller with your charisma. Your best deals will come from solving the problems that are motivating the other party to want to enter into the transaction in the first place.