Effort is linear. Leverage compounds.
You can work harder. There's a ceiling on it, and you'll find the ceiling sooner than you think, usually somewhere around the third night in a row you didn't sleep properly. Effort scales with the hours you have, and you don't have many.
Leverage doesn't care how many hours you have. A piece of code does the same job at 3am as it does at noon, for the thousandth customer as it did for the first. An audience you built last year still reads what you write this year. A distribution channel keeps sending people while you're at the dinner table.
That's the difference. Effort is something you spend. Leverage is something you own.
So before I add anyone or anything, I ask whether the problem is actually a leverage problem wearing an effort costume. Most of them are. The thing that feels like "I need more hands" is usually "I haven't built the system that makes the hands unnecessary."
Code, community, distribution. Build those first. They keep working after you stop.
Apply leverage before you apply yourself.
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