All The Ways I'm Building Free Leverage Right Now
The best use of your time is to build quality assets that work for you after you’re finished working on them.
Once you see how powerful this idea is, it’s impossible to unsee it. It’s what I spend 90% of my time thinking about and implementing.
Ideally, these assets work for you perpetually. Meaning they scale for free (media and code), last forever, and bring you opportunities for the rest of your life.
They may not make you money directly right now, but they will eventually - in multiple ways.
This is the way of the Leveraged Creator:
Create assets → scale them with free leverage → earn your freedom.
A List of My Assets & What They Do For Me.
Here’s a quick list of the assets I have out there working for me, along with their purpose.
Note that ALL of them scale for free. It costs me virtually nothing to send them out into the world and have them dig up opportunities 24/7, 365.
Asset: Film and TV Spec Scripts
My writing partner/wife and I have two movie scripts and two TV pilots out in the world working for us. These are forms of permissionless leverage (.pdf files) hustling to get us permissoned leverage (money).
When someone reads and likes our work, it creates three opportunities:
Opportunity 1: They want to turn our script into a movie.
This is the ideal outcome. A script is just a blueprint for a movie, and the goal for anything we write is that it gets made for film or TV.
Now, it may not happen quickly. Tara and I got two emails just this week from a Producer and Manager who are interested in a screenplay we finished writing more than a year and a half ago. And a friend of ours is just about to close a deal with a famous director on a screenplay he wrote 10 years ago!
These things take time. But when the asset is quality, anything can happen. That’s why it’s important to get it as “right” as you can before you send it out.
Opportunity 2: They want to collaborate on something else.
Our second feature script came about this way. We wrote a TV pilot that ended up in the hands of the co-creator of the TV show, Ozarks. He liked the script, and we ended up collaborating with one of his producers on a feature screenplay.
So even if they don’t want to make the project they read, they may want to collaborate on something else.
Opportunity 3: They become fans of our writing and keep us in mind moving forward.
A good script makes an impression on the reader. Even if we don’t hear back or get a no from a buyer, a quality script helps build our brand. Readers get a sense of our point of view, taste, and tone, and are sure to remember us down the line. That’s a win.
Asset: Internet Comedy Sketches
As I explained in last week’s post, our comedy sketches work in two ways: they are forms of permissionless leverage (cheap scalable media) that help build our brand.
AND they should us help get permissioned leverage (money and labor) in Hollywood to make our movies.
By producing stuff we think is funny under our own names, Tara and I help build our brand as we wait for someone to take a chance on us.
Asset: Tripteepictures.com
This is a simple landing page for Hollywood industry execs / managers / producers to learn more about our writing.
I wrote a few articles just to get some search traffic, but for the time being, this is mostly just an info site. I’m collecting emails too, but there’s no active newsletter at this time.
Assets: Wealest.com / Twitter Account
Most of you found me through Wealest.com. It’s a perfect example of free, scalable leverage that works for me all day, every day. The same thing goes for my Twitter account.
These assets do three things:
1) help build my brand
2) help other people think about how to build their brand, and
3) drive newsletter subscribers.
I also have a free e-book that does all three of these things as well: Become A Content Curator: Turn Your Passion Into A Valuable Audience. If you haven’t got a copy of it and want one, you can get it for free here.
Asset: “Leveraged Creator” Newsletter
The newsletter is a way to:
1) connect with readers (I love hearing what you all think so don’t hesitate to hit me back!)
2) drive revenue (through sponsorships and advertisers), and
3) experiment with products and services I want to create.
My e-book above was a direct result of an email I sent out to this newsletter list to gauge interest.
Outside of my film / TV activities, all roads lead to my newsletter. It’s a powerful tool and if you don’t have one, I highly recommend starting.
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I’ve done my best to break out the assets that work for me after I’m done working on them. Hopefully, it will give you some ideas about how to build and organize your projects.
Remember to be patient. It took me years to figure out how to get everything pushing in the same direction. And even now, it’s still a process of iteration.
In The End, It’s All About The Act of Creation.
But now I have a confession:
All the opportunities these assets bring me aren’t why I make them.
The real reason is much simpler:
I create all this stuff because it gives my life meaning.
The act of writing, creating, iterating, testing, and pushing IS the point.
It’s not about money, followers, pageviews, or subscribers.
It’s about scratching my own itch and creating value at the same time.
If you’re in it for the glory, find something else.
You’ll quit long before any payoff appears anyway.
Thanks for reading.