What if it's easier than you think?

Amateurs think it takes money to make money, but there's something so much bigger that the pros actually do that'll take you much further.

Hell yeah! I'm Amara Andrew.

And I'm Jeff Sarris.

And this is Useful Not Famous, the show about how to actually run a successful business.

Yeah, and actually make money, not fame.

Yes. Fuck fame, make money.

So yeah, what's the topic today? What are we talking about?

So, today we are talking all about leverage.

Yeah, now leverage is interesting because leverage is—money is leverage, but that's one little sliver. Leverage is so much larger and there's so much more potential, so getting caught up on money isn't an issue.

Well, yeah. So, we want to deep dive into, yeah, what exactly leverage is, how to actually use it to your benefit, and why some conventional words of wisdom may not be accurate.

Yeah, and this is a 15-minute show. We have three 5-minute segments that we'll actually do this time with our little timer because—

Because we're on our way to the airport.

Yeah, because we're flying to Buffalo. But I'm going to set the timer so we can dive right in, but here's our 5 minutes. Let's see, will it focus?

There's the 5 minutes. Okay, let's go. So, why are we talking about leverage?

Why is leverage important?

Leverage is probably one of the most important things in running a business and knowing how to do it successfully. So, like one of the pearls of wisdom that people always pass off is you have to spend money to make money. I guess it's an adage, but whatever.

I digress. Big words. But you have to spend money to make money, and so many people get caught up in that in various different ways, I guess.

I'm trying to be very diplomatic about it because it could work for some people, but something that we're very adamant on is not spending more than you're making because if you do that, I guess let me back up. We're talking about when you start a business, also. So, you can't put your cart before your horse just like I'm doing right now, talking about the topic.

But—

No, I just wanted to, before we get too far just sort of down that path, define leverage because leverage, sure, it's money. It's time. It's skills.

It's resources.

Connections.

Network. Yeah, so those are five things. I mean, if I look to my notes, I probably have some more, but basically, it's the thing that you want to do is you want to use the leverage of what you have to get to where you want to be, and that is so powerful.

And money alone isn't Money is only the start of leverage. It's one bit, and you can put your foot on the pedal with money when you're actually bringing in money, but you'll never do anything great if you're always worrying about paying your bills.

Yes. So many people start a business operating under not even just minimal debt, but tremendous debt, which that actually terrifies me in many different ways. But it feels like—and you've run many successful businesses, but for me—

And I've never taken money. Like, that's the—this is why this speaks to me so much because it's how we built MAVEN, how I built SPYR, how I built stuff with all my partners.

Yeah, which we'll dive into a little bit more, in the future. In the future. In the future of this episode.

Time travel! But what absolutely is terrifying is already starting in the negatives to then try to get to the positives, which there are certain success stories where that can happen and work, but, again, it's because they leveraged all their other resources and things to their potential. And something that I particularly want to touch on is leveraging your network because that is very big, and that's something smart to do.

However, so many people don't leverage their network the right way, and it becomes a take, take, take instead of a mutual working for two different people in the scenario or however many people are in the scenario.

So, I want to give a quick little story, my backstory, quickly. I lost my job in 2009. I had been helping people online.

So, what did I do? Immediately, I turned to all those people and said, "How can I help you more?" I was trying to be useful, trying to be more useful to them. Someone said, "Oh, I have this membership course," when memberships were very rare.

He's like, "Would you sit in there and help the people who paid to understand…" stuff I was already familiar with. I did that, connected with someone who was like, "Oh, now can you actually help me in my business, be the developer? I need a new developer." Okay, so I did that.

So then, I immediately had money coming in. Then, I was building my skill set, leveraging the money coming in to build my skills, which then led me to start my business with my business partner who I met through that organization that I was a part of. Briefly part of that, leveraging into meeting someone, building a network, leveraging the network, and then I pushed all that leverage onto everyone else.

Like what I'm most known for, The Minimalists, like what I've done with The Minimalists and helped them start from literal day one. They hadn't had a website or anything yet. They were 14 days into The Minimalists.

And I want to talk about that leverage, also.

Well, yeah, and I just wanted to like real quick. I used my skill set, my abilities to help them because I wanted to, cause I saw something special in that. So, helping them redesign their books, redesign the website, figure out ways to make money, but they also then used their leverage to build something that's great.

Like it is an amazing platform, and part of the leverage then is network.

Tell me about this couch.

I know, so that's a—I know that's what you're excited about. But like, you can watch our documentary, it's called Minimalism. It was on Netflix forever, like top of the charts.

I put it in the description, so—

Yeah. Now, it's on YouTube, completely free to watch. But when they started touring, they toured around and—I think there were three or four people, six people.

There wasn't money coming in from touring, but they were building their community. But how do you do that? They leveraged, if you look at their backstory, having a little money from corporate America and then, also, connections.

Like, they slept on—not this same couch because we got a new couch, but—

We had to burn it.

But they slept on this couch multiple tours when they came through Chicago. And they did that. It's not glamorous.

It wasn't great. Now, it can look glamorous because they're doing like theaters and they're bringing in thousands of people.

And because they made sure—oh, time!

Wow!

They made sure not to go into debt, first and foremost. They leveraged what they had. So, they didn't splash out on first class and expensive hotels because, "Well, I'm worth it," which, no shade, you can do whatever the hell you want with your life, but if you're operating with that thought process already and you're not even making that money, good luck with the rest of your business.

Well, yeah, and just the positive side, like, okay, like, what do I have at my disposal? Like, I have skills, I know a few people now, I've—I can help people build profitable businesses. I can help people—

Where it's mutually beneficial, still.

Exactly. Like, I can help people do all these things, and then there can be ways that come back. Like with The Minimalists example, for example, like we made no money.

That was just helping people that we appreciated, and then with time, there became mutually beneficial ways where we both made more money. But it started by helping, and that's being useful. And real quick, I wanted your story.

Do you want to either touch on MAVEN, or do you want to touch on teaching?

Oh, it all kind of goes together. Oh, I should talk into the mic. It all kind of goes together.

Cause I feel like we're stealing we're stealing from our mid section, our mid section [laughter] "about us" section, just for a little more, why.

So, I don't even know where to begin with my leverage. Essentially, with MAVEN, I guess we'll touch upon just because that's what people are mostly familiar with, we were only able to start MAVEN because like I had some money from teaching and everything coming in already, and I already had. You then already had your business in place, SPYR, so together we had a pool of resources that we could combine while I was trying to figure out, "Okay, what's sort of What do I want to do?

How do I want to be helpful to someone? How can I help people in a way that is also satisfying for me so I don't want to jump off the Sears Tower?" Always the Sears Tower. Never Willis Tower.

If you don't live in Chicago, it's called Willis Tower now.

Boo! But anyway, figuring out how I could do that and how I could be helpful and using the resources that we had. So, for example, you're my resource, to put it very blunt.

Like, you are a resource for me because you already had 10, 12, 100 years of experience running your business. So, I could leverage that where it was mutually beneficial as well.

Yeah, it's a shortcut because I know I know the pitfalls that I ran into, that business partners ran into.

And it helps. Like, instant success. It's crazy.

Like—

But here's the thing, though. Your business started, if we couldn't leverage my skills and experience even, to have someone trust that you could do this because we were doing this together, leveraging my experience, leveraging that we were making money, because we couldn't charge Say you need to make $100,000 a year to live where you live.

We couldn't say to the first person, "Pay me $100,000 to do this," when they're just like—

We could, but we'd look psychotic.

Yeah, that would never happen. So, leveraging what we had already is the key, and it's it's how you ended up teaching at Columbia. You leveraged your network, your relationships, your knowledge in doing social media content around art history got you a teaching job.

Like, people don't It's hard to realize the butterfly effect that happens when you use leverage to create opportunities, and this comes back to action again. Like, my whole thing is action creates experience, and experience creates opportunity. But then when you have opportunity, you have to take more action.

So, you're you're on this cycle. It's like pedaling a bike. You just keep going, and that's what all of life is.

So, we want to we want to sort of get you to look at leverage more than just money.

Yes.

Because there is a point where business is churning, you have money coming in. Now, let me put that money into the business. Let's, whatever you want to do, run ads, pay for marketing, hire people, whatever you need to do.

But there's different forms of leverage that will get you there, and you can't jump the gun. And it's a video game. You start on level one.

You can't immediately feel like you have to be at level 100. You have to get a few of the little tasks knocked off and then a few of the other things, and then you get to level two, and level three, and level four, and eventually you get to where you want to be.

Well, and that's something, too, with people that we work with MAVEN, is now we're we're being a lot stricter where I particularly really only want to work with people who have actually tried to make video content on their own because then they sort of have an idea, and we'll get to the next section in a second, but they already have an idea of how to structure content, they've already done some studying, they've already made it on their own, they realize how difficult and time-consuming it is and can be, especially if you do it right, and they need somebody to help them and come in and like further crank it up a couple levels.

Like, that's very big. I totally forgot why the fuck I was bringing that up.

Well, their other leverage, though, is they're successful already.

Yes.

Like, we're not MAVEN is not a Being a MAVEN Top Banana isn't for someone who's starting out in real estate.

Oh god, no! It shouldn't be.

It's because you need to be able to devote a lot a lot of money. It's It's a lot of money for someone who's not making any.

Yeah.

It's a lot, lot of money if you're not making money. You need to devote money to your marketing because we're doing organic content marketing for people who have a successful a business that works and we make the business better.

Yes.

Okay, so let's do the second section, 3 minutes.

Next section.

What are we doing this week?

Okay, well, I got back into all of my passion, and it was a really weird week, to be fully honest. It was It started out pretty good. It hit probably the lowest valley I've hit in a very long time, so it just It wasn't very good, not to get into details.

Oh, like personally, just how things, like dominoes can fall and they can make you not feel good.

Yeah, and then feeling that like lack of like community and support, I don't know, it's just cumulative and then everything just sort of builds up, as we all know, and then eventually you just hit your point where it's like, "Okay, I'm just going to hang out down here for a couple days." But then it was like, "Okay, you can't have the highs without the lows." So then after that low, it's like, "Okay, what actually brings happiness and brings joy?" I love history.

History is like one of my favorite things and especially art history, and it's what I have all my degrees and background and education in.

It got you into this.

That's That's why it's so stupid full circle. It's like it's hilarious cause now I'm feeling so creatively inspired again and just like really excited. And—

And got you into this meaning you were doing 60-second art history on TikTok 6 years ago, I don't know.

Yeah, and it took off like crazy. So anyway, I just I've started recording those videos again, and that just because of all my experience, I already had experience working in social media before because I was a contractor with a company, blah, blah, blah. So, I had experience with creating social media content.

Then I created my own, then I was teaching, then MAVEN, and then now doing over 10 to 15,000 videos throughout MAVEN in like 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, whatever, however long it's been. Now, I feel like I'm even more proficient in making my own content, which is huge. So, it's like it's full circle.

It's like coming back, and I don't know, I feel so jazzed and energized. It's like crazy. You I am night and day a different person than I was like 2 days ago, even.

It was like awful. It was so bad.

But it takes time to address and look at where you're at and how you're feeling and, "What are we doing, and…"

And that was really important.

Yeah, like the business is working, but you can lose yourself in the business. So, leveraging skills, this is you're going to be leveraging other things to do the rewarding stuff that's tangentially connected to what we're doing.

Yeah, like leverage your happiness, too. Like, we haven't even talked about that. Now, I don't even know what that means as a concept, but make sure what you're doing, you enjoy.

So anyway, what have you been up to?

Say that one more time.

I don't know what I just said. I blacked out. What?

No. But leverage your happiness and do things that you actually enjoy. If you don't want to make content, you don't have to make content.

I feel like there are a lot of people who feel like they have to make content, but they hate all of it. They hate every single part of the process. You don't have to do anything.

Like, you can do what brings you hap- happiness and what brings you joy, and that's fine, and you can make it work.

Yeah, and then you leverage your skills to make money, but maybe the making money part isn't the joy.

Exactly. I fully agree. So, what have you been up to, really quickly?

Well, I just wanted to say that we're on our way to Buffalo to see Michelle, who is amazing.

Yes.

We're like We always love going there. The only downside is it's spring, it's sunny, it's kind of warm in Chicago, and it might snow there tomorrow, so that's not as exciting.

The sun is finally out!

So, here we go, 5 minutes on the clock. We have to literally leave in —

Your parents are going to pull up in like 2 seconds.

Yeah, we're getting dropped off at the airport. It's really nice. But yeah, we need to leave very soon.

But how? So, this is the section of the show where we talk about how can you leverage your own skills.

So, how would you recommend somebody leverage all their stuff?

And, before we get there, I just want to say if you enjoy the show, it would mean the world to us if you left a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or even a comment on YouTube, just because every little bit helps. And if there's anything about this that you're like, "Oh yeah, I love this," or I have a question or anything, throw it in your stories on Instagram or tag us anywhere in it because that'll help us grow, cause podcasts don't grow on their own.

Darn tootin'.

Okay, so what was the question?

I don't remember. I didn't know there was going to be a pop quiz. No, how do you recommend that somebody I guess we'll keep going with real estate professionals, just because that's primarily who we're working with MAVEN.

I think zooming out, though, is anyone.

So, how then for anybody, what would be How would you recommend somebody leverage what they have? So, if it was someone like me where like I've been in business for a little bit now, I have some resources, what do I do?

Well, I think one of the one of the big things is to anyone, this isn't to you because you don't have one, but don't quit your job. Like, people are like, "Burn the burn the boats, burn the bridges," whatever, because then you are desperate. But you're never going to create anything great if you're desperate.

Like, greatness comes from a space of abundance, and abundance doesn't mean money. Abundance means everything else that goes into being your creative best.

Yeah, doing a little side hustle. So, like a podcast that we started before was Side Hustle Saturday. I totally forgot about it until you found an old episode the other day, or it was probably weeks ago now, whatever is time.

But it was so fun to hear because it was like, "I started an Etsy shop! That did very well for me, like generating income when I was still a full-time employee." But then it was laying all these things out to then be able to make content, like making YouTube videos about Etsy. That took off like crazy, and I didn't expect it to.

But, all that to say, like leveraging everything that you have and just keep going and make it a side hustle first.

Yeah, leveraging your drive, leveraging your skills, like your skill set is and was then in art. So, it's like, "What can I do? I could illustrate.

I could make stickers and posters and da-da-da-da-da." And then it's like, "Oh, actually, this was a little confusing. Let me create a video where I teach people how to do this because it took me some time to do it."

It's almost like being useful is helpful or something.

Yeah, I know. And like Etsy alone, we wouldn't guide someone to be like, "You should make all your money on Etsy." That's very difficult. But that was the experience, leveraging your skills to gain experience and gain some money that then set the stage for everything else because more of the experience beyond the Etsy experience, you got video experience, and then you started making art history videos.

Like all of it just plays together from action.

I just wanted to say the Etsy experience sounds like a really bad band name. Or a great band? The Etsy Experience.

It's covered in doilies and things. Carry on.

But yeah, so what do you have at your disposal? Also, do you have a network of people that you can help? Not ask for help.

Like give help to people. Like Kidney Stone Diet is another platform that we have. The reason that works is, and the reason we have a platform with it, is that we were able to give to We were able to give our resources to build something when there was no return.

If we couldn't give years of make SPYR money, my company, and then leveraging that to be like, "Okay, I don't need to make money from Kidney Stone Diet, but we can build something great for Jill, and then we'll make money in the future." That platform wouldn't exist, and part of Let's just look at like my skill set is in building business.

It's building product. It's monetization. It's search engine optimization.

It's design. It's websites. It's all of the things that go into a business are what I've built up over 16 years.

So, look at yourself and be like, "Okay, what are the skills I have? Maybe it's negotiation. Maybe it's community building.

Maybe it's sales. Maybe it's something that's not even on your radar." Like, I like we met someone this week who he's built an amazing Instagram profile around automotive photography, and he's an IT guy. There's something in that IT space, too, that will help him in this world.

There's a way to be even more useful with the things you're doing day-to-day that can be leverage to growing and building something even greater, which he does great work. Like his videos, like, look, I'm so—

Yeah. And he's a very sweet person, too. Like, he was very nice.

Time!

We got to go!

And I was like proud to see what he's doing, proud, not like anything, but like proud of him because like when I as soon as I saw the video, his latest one, I was just like, "Look at that!" Like he's and he's doing it so well, storytelling, all the things. And those are things he can leverage in his content, and there's even more that he hasn't pulled from yet, and I sort of implore any everyone to do the same.

Look at your skill set and see how it works.

Exactly, and just I want to leave on a final note then. For real estate, so many people focus on, "Oh, I need to get the luxury listings. I need to work with the highest bidder." And we've talked about this in another episode, "Do you actually want to?" Some people suck, especially at that price point.

Like, it's going to be so—

Yeah, as clients, you mean.

Yeah, it's going to be so incredibly difficult to work with someone like that, and especially if you don't bond with that person, which, again, you need to show personality, blah, blah, blah. But figuring out who you actually want to help, just talking in a real estate profession specifically, figure out who your ideal client is, and that's what people talk about, blah, blah, blah.

But genuinely think about it. Like, do you want to work with dentists? Do you want to work with art nerds?

Do you want to work with sports people? Like, you need to find like your flavor of people. I was going to say sportsmen, and then I was like, that doesn't sound right.

But people who play sports, people who are very active. You'll probably get along way better with that person and feel more personally invested in who they are as people and finding them the best house or selling their house the best.

If that's you.

Exactly, if that is you. Or maybe it's somebody who loves shopping, then you just you feel more fulfilled with it, and then you're personally more invested in it.

And so I just want to say it's what for whom. That's our big thing, is what are you creating for whom. That's what you want to figure out.

So, that's it for this week.

So, we have to go.

Yeah, we're going to the airport, flying to Buffalo. Bye-bye!

Really got to go. Bye!