November 17, 2021

Have you seen my keys?

Let’s say you managed to accidentally park your car on top of your keys.

You wouldn’t be able to start the car to move it off the keys, so you’d have to lift the vehicle.

Assuming you’re not built like Franco Columbu, you wouldn’t be able to do this brute force with your bare hands.

So what would you do?

You’d use a tool.

One option would be to grab an aluminum baseball bat and a cinder block.

I imagine that’d go something like this...

You put the cinder block behind the bumper, wedge the bat between the bumper and the block, and push down as hard as you can.

You find that you can’t generate enough force by yourself, so you flag down your neighbor and he helps you push.

Finally, the two of you together - with much grunting and groaning - are able to raise up the rear of the car enough to kick it over a few inches to free your keys.

Another option would be to grab a hydraulic trolley jack.

I imagine that’d go something like this...

You roll the jack under the rear of the car, pump the handle a few times with one hand and minimal effort, leave it raised while you casually retrieve your keys, and then twist the handle a little to release the pressure and safely return your car to the ground.

Now...

Of these two tools:

Which one is easier?
Which one is faster?
Which one is safer?

(Answer key: jack, jack, jack)

Here’s the thing

Hourly billing is like the baseball bat.

It creates a certain amount of leverage but it requires a lot of heavy input and the maximum output force is pretty low (e.g., you couldn’t lift the back of a UPS truck with it no matter how many neighbors you flagged down).

What if there was a business tool like the hydraulic jack that allowed you to produce much more output with much less work?

Would you want it?

The easy answer is “Of course!”

BUT!

Would you be comfortable doing less work and making more money?

Or would that seem unfair or unethical or maybe even sacrilegious to you?

Hit reply and let me know.

Yours,

—J