Leverage Strategy No. 1 - Take the Wind Out of His Sails

The first leverage strategy is concerned with utilising your opponents’ energy so that he wears himself out. Like the bull fighter against the bull, the animal has greater strength, weigh and speed plus sharp horns so on the face of it he has the best chance of winning but the matador creates targets for the bull to charge again and again so that it becomes exhausted. Once it is exhausted its natural gifts of strength, weight and horns are nullified as it no longer has the energy to utilise them, it then becomes more malleable and becomes an easier kill.

This strategy also works by getting ones enemy to exhaust his resources; getting him to waste his money, spreading himself too thin or overextending himself financially. The strategist calculates how to encourage ones target to think that his time, money or resources will solve the problem and like the charging bull he thinks only of attacking and not of the consequences.

Once we understand leverage we can observe how others waste their energy running around like headless chickens thinking that working harder or faster will accomplish the task when their experience should already have told them that it is not working. A self-employed contractor may have freed himself from the chains of his employer only to find that he has chained himself to having to do everything now in his new business. Long hours, heavy work and having to do all the tasks of the business can soon wear him out unless he can recognise that this strategy of doing everything his self cannot work indefinitely. When he recognises this and starts to leverage the help of others to help him achieve his tasks he may initially find that he is earning less but has more energy and a more balanced view of his business with which to make it grow.

In competition and faced with and strong, muscular opponent that we cannot match for strength we can be elusive and annoying, hitting and running, refusing to be drawn into a war of attrition, exchanging blows that will get us damaged and instead getting our opponent more and more frustrated so that he chases and chases until like the bull he becomes exhausted and an easy target for our best shots and giving you a seemingly easy win.