029: Leverage Part 1 – From The One Minute Millionaire – Business Knowledge Series

“A baseball player plays baseball. The leverage comes when he is watched by tens of thousands of fans at the stadium and viewed nationally on television. The large salary a ballplayer makes comes from the revenues of this leverage.”

“Teachers, on the other hand, usually have 25 to 40 students per class. They have very little leverage and thus their salary is relatively low. Both the baseball player and the teacher add value (with the teacher generally seen as adding more value), yet the baseball player has the greater leverage and thus is able to demand and receive more money for his services than the teacher.”

“Leverage is the power to control a lot with just a little. Big doors swing on little hinges.”

– Excerpt from The One Minute Millionaire, chapter: Leverage

This was draw by the folks at Ramen Empire. Check out their regular comic strip and other stuff they have done.

The One Minute Millionaire was one of the first business books I ever read, and boy was it good. It’s a New York Times Bestseller for a reason, and in my opinion, it’s one of the classic business books out there. This book is a must read for entrepreneurs in general, because it goes over topics fundamental to business. Every entrepreneurs needs to know concepts like leverage, systems building and networking in order to have a base level of business competency. A crash course in entrepreneurship for those of you who didn’t go to the business school.

Don’t expect high level internet business type of strategies though. It was written during the Web 1.0 era, and contains strategies popular at the time. It does talk about the email marketing strategy, which is a classic strategy, and still very much in use today.

One truly unique aspect of this book is that it’s really two books in one. All the pages on the left are non-fiction, and contain all the explanations and examples of all the business concepts in the book. All the pages on the right side amount to a fictional story, in which the characters learn and use the same business concepts in their story. The way the book was set up was to appeal to both left brain and right brain readers. The hard knowledge is dolled out on the left, and the story-learning format is dolled out on the right. Readers have the choice of reading either one first, or both at the same time.

I personally read the story first as it was more enjoyable and gave me and overview of all the concepts. Then I delved into the pure non-fiction side of the book to really get it’s essence.

In case you were wondering, the book was jointly written by Mark Victor Hansen (of Chicken Soup for the Soul) and Robert G. Allen (of Multiple Steams of Income). Yes, you got that right, that’s two big names in the business/self-help category. That in itself is a lesson in leverage. Both authors already had a large fan base for their existing books. By writing a book together, they leveraged on each other’s fan base. Both fan bases would now be exposed to this great book, and the other books they each wrote on their own.

Do take note, the book does have a fair amount of New Thought, and general motivation. #justsaying. I’m fine with reading New Thought material, but I know some people do irk at sight of it.

Let me know in the comments if you have read this book too! And don’t forget to subscribe!