The Power of Leverage

My journey into sales started at 16. My first job was at McDonald’s, working on the counter.

To many, that’s not “sales.” But to me, it was. I had to sell the experience. Make customers happy, smile back at them, and hopefully make their day a bit better. I wasn’t shifting big-ticket items, but in that moment, I was selling the McDonald’s experience.

That short stint set me on a path into traditional sales and customer service. From there I moved into other roles: working in a golf retail store selling clubs, selling golf days at a course, selling building products at a local merchant, and eventually into specification sales and bigger-ticket items.

Looking back, that whole journey, and the one so many sales people are still in right now, was built on a one-to-one system. You have a product or service, you sell it once, then you start again. Rinse and repeat. 5 days a week.

It’s the way we’re all taught sales should work. And it’s how 90% of businesses still operate today.

I loved this method of sales in my early career. None of it really felt like work. I was just doing what I enjoyed, connecting, talking, helping people buy. I loved it.

That carried me well into my early 30s. But around 32, things started to change for me. I was getting tired. Tired of the same old slog: sell a product or service, hit target, then wake up the next day and start again. Every month, every quarter, it reset.

It was the hamster wheel. And once you’re on it, it feels impossible to get off. In sales you make decent money, and trying to find a job that replaces a sales income is hard. So you end up stuck, and that’s where I found myself for a long time.

And the harsh truth? By then I’d worked hard for over 15 years, from 16 into my early 30s, and I felt I had nothing to really show for it. Yes, I’d had decent jobs, a good salary, even some holidays in the sun from my 4 weeks a year holiday entitlement., but there was no freedom. No asset. Nothing that carried forward if I stopped.

From 32 to 38, I became obsessed with finding a way out. How could I escape the grind without losing everything I’d built? That became my mission.

And then it hit me.

I had no leverage.

What leverage really means

Leverage is when the effort you put in once keeps working for you again and again. It multiplies your time and energy.

In sales, I had no leverage. If I stopped making calls, stopped booking meetings, stopped showing up, everything stopped with me. The moment I went on holiday, momentum died. Every Monday morning, I had to start from scratch. That’s not leverage. That’s labour.

For years I thought that doing the job well would eventually free me. But it doesn’t. Doing a good job is the minimum, it’s expected. Leverage is what changes the game.

The “aha” moment

Schools sit on significant capital when it comes to their estates, and they’re complex, valuable organisations. But they’re not easy to reach. Most salespeople I knew were lucky if they opened two new doors a year.

I had average success selling into schools back when I was out in the field. I sold flat roofs for years, and schools need a lot of flat roofs. Between schools and hospitals, that was my lane.

But the reality? I’d only ever work with maybe two or three schools a year. Nothing ground-breaking. Schools were hard to break into. They needed trust, they already had supply chains in place, and who was I to convince them to uproot that, just to come to me?

So I did what everyone did. I sent emails, I went to every event, I tried every tactic just to get noticed. And to be honest, I hated it. I knew how good my products were, but construction is such a noisy market that unless your product is wrapped in gold, it barely gets attention.

I’d sit at expos with a table full of gimmicks, spin the wheel, guess the card, free pens, anything to pull people over to the stand. And all the while, I was just one of dozens of other suppliers fighting for the same scraps of attention.

I knew I needed to change something. I needed to get hold of this market. But at the time, I had zero leverage.

So I started experimenting. I asked myself: “What if instead of chasing schools one by one, I brought them together?”

So I tried it. I set up a small roundtable. And in one move, I created a space that attracted nine schools at once.

I remember going home afterwards, buzzing. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d cracked a code: one-to-many instead of one-to-one.

While everyone else was still banging their heads against closed doors and dropping thousands into events and marketing just to get noticed, I’d found a way to open several doors at once. And the more I thought about it, the more obvious it seemed: this was leverage.

Because I created a space where school estates teams could get genuine value and peer-to-peer support, everything shifted. What they needed wasn’t another supplier pushing products or services, what they needed was connection, shared knowledge, and a trusted space to talk.

So my method worked. I created value through information-sharing, and all I had to do was sit in the room.

That was Phase 1. I suddenly had leverage, not in the form of a product or a pitch, but in access.

But it didn’t stop there.

I became obsessed. I lay awake at night replaying those events, sketching out ideas, asking myself: “How far could this go? What if this became its own thing?”

That’s how SETL was born.

The snowball effect

After just two roundtable events, I had access to 18 Multi-Academy Trust estates teams. That would’ve taken me years to do the old way, if it was even possible at all. But it took just six weeks.

That’s the power of leverage. I didn’t chase 18 doors. I built one room and invited people in.

From there, the snowball rolled. Schools told other schools. Companies wanted in because, for the first time, they had a platform that gave them visibility without the endless cold calls.

What started as a handful of events grew into School Estates Thought Leaders (SETL), a community, a network, a space that didn’t exist before.

And today? Just four months and 10 days after launch, SETL has members from over 55 Multi-Academy Trusts and more than 600 schools represented across the UK. Not too bad for a lad who used to sell roofing.

From hustling to selling access

Here’s the shift that surprised even me.

When I first created SETL, the goal was simple: generate opportunities for myself. It was a smarter way of opening doors.

But once the leverage kicked in, everything changed.

Today, I’m not interested in transactional sales with schools. I don’t need to. Instead, I take the leverage I’ve built and turn it back to the market: “Would you like access to the SETL community?”

That’s what I sell now, access. And in return, I focus 100% on creating a brilliant experience for the estates professionals inside.

I now have the support of nine incredible partners who all understand leverage. They know that being in the SETL room means they don’t need to sell hard. They just need to show up, provide value, and by default, they win work.

And here’s the thing: once you understand leverage, it strengthens everything, including negotiation. Back when I was hustling, I had no real power at the table. Now, with SETL behind me, I do. It means I don’t have to chase. It means I can pick and choose who I work with. And when someone asks me to run a workshop or share what I know, I can set my price with confidence, £10,000 for a session, because I know the value of what I bring.

That’s not arrogance. It’s just the reality of leverage. People need me more than I need them. It really is that simple.

My world looks completely different now. I rarely do networking events, and I don’t attend meetings just for the sake of being seen. I don’t need to anymore.

Instead, I ask if the thing I'm been invited to moves SETL forward, if it does I'll do it. If not, its an easy no.

Leverage is insanely powerful, and it’s changed the way I work forever.

What SETL could become

And here’s the part that really gets me thinking.

Every time a new school or Trust joins SETL, the whole network gets stronger. It compounds. What started as one event could, in three years’ time, represent thousands of schools and estates teams across the UK.

And what does that mean? It means the lever gets longer.

Try changing policy by talking to 18 schools. Impossible. Try it with the collective weight of 1,000 schools in your corner? That’s influence. That’s leverage on a national scale.

But here’s the strange part. While the machine has grown, my role has changed. The 12-hour days I once put in have dropped to 4 hours of strategic work. Meetings, writing, decisions that move the needle. It feels bizarre. I’ve been institutionalised into long days of spinning plates, so the shift takes getting used to.

Then I remind myself: that’s the whole point of leverage. I’m working fewer hours, but the value of those hours has gone up tenfold.

That’s the difference between labour and leverage.

Where you can add leverage

I’ll never go back to transactional sales, chasing a deal that only lasts once. I’ve seen what’s possible on this side of the fence.

But if I was still in the grind today, here’s where I’d be looking to add leverage:

Build once, use often. Instead of writing 50 one-off emails, create a guide, checklist, or video that your whole market can see and share.

Create rooms, not just meetings. One event or webinar can reach 10–20 people at once, and the credibility lasts long after the room is empty.

Document the journey. Content works while you sleep. Case studies, posts, blogs, podcasts, all building trust with people you’ve never met.

Think platform, not pipeline. Pipelines reset every month. Platforms grow stronger the longer they exist.

Train once, repeat forever. Record a session, a demo, or a workshop, and make it an asset you can use again instead of repeating yourself every week.

Turn answers into assets. Every time you answer a client question, don’t just say it once. Write it down, make it shareable, turn it into a resource others can find.

Even this blog is leverage. I write it once, and thousands of people will go on to read it. That’s thousands of conversations without me picking up the phone.

If you’re still selling the old way, here’s the challenge: stop selling one-to-one. Start selling one-to-many.

Final thought

I’m always asking myself: where can I find the next lever?

SETL has given me a blueprint for building leverage in a sector that had so little. And now, I’m looking wider. Construction is full of underserved groups that still rely on the hamster wheel. They don’t need another sales pitch, they need someone to build them a platform.

That’s the opportunity. That’s the lever.

And that’s the game I’m playing now.

See you next week 👋