project_log:015

Yo.

I had no Idea what I wanted to do when leaving high school.

My dad (a crazy good builder and property investor) suggested we spend the year rebuilding our family home. I accepted.

Throughout the year he would repeat the saying: "The power of leverage". I never understood it other than if I stick this large metal stick on top of a piece of timber and use it to lift something, I can lift heavier shit.

10 years on I realise the lesson he was trying to teach me: Leverage allows you to get more for the effort you put in.

So this week I want to share how to increase leverage as an Independent. Thinking about this stuff helped me 2x my income this past year.

I think it'll be worth your while:

1) Skill

I earned $55k per year in my first dev job. The guy sitting next to me earned $125k per year. This guy was also at his desk 30% less than I was and every time I looked over he was watching NBA.

How was this mother fucker making over double my income, working half the amount of time, and watching NBA all day?

The answer was skill.

What I didn't realise was that his output was so high during the times he WAS working that he justified the salary. He was outputting 3 times the amount of work I was in half the time. He was getting so much more for the effort he put in that it didn't matter how much he was working. The output was crazy.

This man had high leverage. He got far more for the effort he put in.

Lesson one: Skill increases leverage. Constantly build skills.

2) Deep Work

One of my favorite books is "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. Deep work is a strategy that anyone can implement today for free to instantly increase leverage. It simply means focusing deeply on the task at hand and not letting the over-stimulating world distract you.

Deep work allows you to accomplish more in the time you invest. Get more for the effort you put in.

Imagine these two scenarios:

1. You sit down at your desk, planning to design a landing page for your client. You've got your design software on one side, Slack open in the bottom right, and a web browser with a video you're watching.
   
   You start designing,16 minutes in you see an attractive red notification pop up on Slack. It's your workmate Sarah asking you a question about a different project. You quickly jump in and reply, then return to the design. When you get back to designing, you can't stop thinking about the project Sarah mentioned. You focus, concentrate and finally back on task.
   
   Sarah messages again. The cycle repeats.
   

2. You sit down to design a landing page. You set a visible timer for 1.5 hours to work on the task. You close every other window, turn off all notifications, and get to work. The 1.5 hours fly by, and you've produced a great result. You then open Slack and reply to Jim.

In scenario 2, you’re getting far more done for the time you invest. You have higher leverage, achieving more for what you put in.

Lesson two: Prioritise Focus.

3) Consistent Lead Flow

Alex Hormozi starts his 100m Leads book with the quote: "It's hard to be poor with leads bangin' down your door"

Consistent lead flow is the most potent lever I've found in my journey as an independent

(hoping that building software will replace this..)

The reason: It reduces risk significantly.

If you've spent anytime on twitter, you would have seen a post like: "just raise your prices bro". In theory this is simple. Raising your price gets you more $$$ for the effort you put in.

The problem is that raising your prices carries a huge amount of emotional baggage. You worry that people will say no and then you can't pay your bills. I was there. I know how it feels.

The solution: Consistent lead flow.

This allows you to take on more risk (AKA raise your prices) because the downside is a lot less scary.

For example, if you've got a ton of leads wanting to work with you, and someone comes along and wants to hire you tomorrow you can comfortably tell them your price is double what you usually charge. If they say yes, great. If they say no, oh well you've got a bunch of other people wanting to work with you.

Creating demand, even when you can't service the demand, is fantastic for business.

It's the reason I'm building Ballpark. It's also the reason I create content.

Lesson three: More leads means more demand. More demand means more for the effort you put in.

Theres a bunch of other ways you can increase leverage as an Independent. Theres one In particular that you can't walk out of your driveway without being slapped in the face by the marketing: AI

I'll save that for another post..

Constantly building skills, prioritising deep work, and consistent lead flow helped me 2x my income this past financial year.

I didn't work more hours than the last year.

I just had higher leverage.

Ballpark progress update:

I've got one more task before the flow builder is ready to go. Tested and all. There will probably be bugs that come up, but I'm super happy with how this is feeling. Here's a quick preview:

I allocated a good amount time to this feature. I'll be launching a higher ticket offer alongside the public launch that will need this feature to be rock solid. More on that offering soon... (I think its pretty smart)

Let's talk frontend widgets:

I'll be completely honest: I have no idea if the chat-style interface is going to be the best for conversion. It's a hypothesis that I'm willing to test. The beauty of how I've built this is that it doesn't matter what the frontend looks like. It could be a chat interface, a standard web form, a hybrid approach, etc. The backend will always remain the same.

During the beta, I can spin up other widget styles we can use to A/B test with. This should help test a few angles before public use.

If you have any ideas for how you think the widget should look, reply to this email. I've had a few people reach out with suggestions which have been super helpful.

Thats all for this week.

Appreciate you reading. Keep crushing.

Will

P.S. To those of you who replied to the last email wanting to participate in the private beta, thank you. I'll be in touch soon.