How I'm Using Leverage to Work Less (Again)

I'm switching up this week's newsletter format a bit.

I want to give you break from the build in public format I've been using these past 5 weeks. I don’t want to bore you with the repetitive phase of onboarding clients and getting work done, I want to talk about something more important.

Today you'll learn:

• How I'm using Naval Ravikant's 4 types of leverage to work less and earn more

• Why working IN your business vs ON your business makes all the difference

• What 3 fellow Gen Xers are doing to help others escape the corporate grind

• The 2 skills you absolutely need to stay relevant (and employed) in 2025

• What 80’s musicians married Paul Simon

Let's dive in...

The Blessing (and Curse) of Success

Now that I've reached my goal of making $500 in my newsletter business and am now delivering the service to that client on top of onboarding and delivering for my 3 new Google Ads clients, I need to make some adjustments to my business model.

These "Done For You" business models for newsletters and Google Ads have made me very busy. It's a blessing and a curse.

A blessing because, yay, money.

Curse, uh, now I gotta do stuff.

I am working IN my business way too much and need to be working ON my business. It is not sustainable and I know from experience I will burn out at this pace at some point. My focus now will be to find ways to automate my business.

I need to find ways to outsource more of what I do whether it's through human or AI labor or by increasing the focus on promoting software or services that don't require me to deliver the work.

I do not want to be working 8-10 hour days, I want to get it down to 2 to 3 or lower.

Do do that, you need to find leverage…

The 4 Types of Leverage (and Why They Matter)

There’s a guy named Naval Ravikant who I’ve been following for a few years now. The guy is an insight machine.

I guess you could call him modern philosopher. He breaks down wealth, startups, and happiness into simple, timeless principles.

He co-founded AngelList, invested early in companies like Uber and Twitter, and shares insights that have reshaped how people think about money, work, and freedom.

Naval's four points of leverage are powerful tools that can help us break free from the traditional time-for-money tradeoff and create scalable wealth:

1. Labor (People)

   • The oldest form of leverage

   • Involves hiring and managing people to work for you

   • Traditional businesses use this leverage

   • Downsides: Managing people is hard, comes with overhead, and can limit scalability

2. Capital (Money)

   • Using money to make money—investing, owning equity, or deploying capital in businesses

   • Requires either your own money or the ability to raise money from investors

   • Creates leverage because your capital works even when you're not

   • Barrier: You need capital or the skills to attract it

3. Code (Software)

   • The first of the modern, permissionless leverage types

   • Allows one person to build something that scales infinitely with little cost

   • No gatekeepers—anyone with programming skills can create wealth

   • Huge potential because software scales with almost zero marginal cost

4. Media (Content)

   • The most accessible and powerful form of leverage today

   • Content scales infinitely (tweets, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, etc.)

   • Helps build an audience and create a personal brand

   • No permission needed—anyone can start writing, recording, or publishing

I think this list is pre-mainstream AI. So, we could probably put AI into a couple of these categories - labor and code.

My Next Moves

That's what I am focusing on these days.

I’ll be focusing more on finding ways to automate the lower value aspects of my business that take up my high value time.

Like learning to build AI workers, finding people to partner with who can help and promoting more tools and services that offer affiliate commissions that are recurring (more month to month).

Gen X Shout-Outs

I just wanted to acknowledge some fellow Gen Xers I met with this week who are helping Gen Xers:

Toni Burns: When I was doing my rounds on LinkedIn I came across Toni's profile and I had to reach out to her. She offers custom health insurance for entrepreneurs. The reason this caught my eye is because one of the questions alot is what I do for health insurance as someone who is self employed.

Insurance is one of the biggest roadblocks for people going from employed to self-employed. But, compared to when I first started, it is becoming less and less of a roadblock and Toni is helping people navigate that. We talked, she is very cool and you should talk with her if you are considering self employment and need insurance.

Toni's LinkedIn (tell her Corey sent you)

Clorissa Osborn: Clorissa booked a meeting to ask me questions about how to market her Career Coaching business. I dropped the ball by not having good answers to her questions on the spot. But the meeting was a wake up call that I need to be doing a better job of teaching you the basics of marketing yourselves and your businesses. I've been preaching it but I haven't been doing a very good job teaching it.

Oh and if you are looking for help transitioning to a different career, reach out to her on LinkedIn (she’s very cool too) - Clorissa's LinkedIn

Tom Vinkler: This week, I talked with Tom Vinkler, a long-time Redefining Retirement reader. He had some questions about my newsletter that I missed last week. Tom is starting a business soon to help people get their dream job in 30 days. If you're interested, reply to this email, and I'll pass it on to him.

Big Takeaway This Week

Here's one more truth bomb from Naval that sums it all up:

This isn't just nice-to-have stuff anymore. With ageism and AI changing the game, you need both skills and the ability to market yourself. Those skills saved my ass again over the past few months.

And if you want help with that, I’m right here. Just reply to this email and tell me what's holding you back. I've been there, done that, got the scars to prove it - and I can help.

Music Of The Week

Remember this one?

Edie Brickell & New Bohemians “What I Am”

I rediscovered it again a couple months ago and I keep coming back to it.

Oh and I just learned this…

Edie left the band to marry Paul Simon and they have three kids together. Go figure.

Check it out…

Sounds really good with the volume up in the car when your driving and you need a mental break.

Anywho… that’ll do ‘er for today.

Have a good one,

Corey