Monica's going to leverage her pizza delivery service into a seven-figure book contract. Implicit in leveraging is the notion that your lever is being used to horn in on something you couldn't receive in a straight swap. Like a bachelor trying to leverage two cheap dates into an overnighter. You can't use your leverage to gain something you actually deserve. It almost goes without saying that leverage is beautiful if you're the leveragor, less so if you're the leveragee.
Advertisers leverage our flimsy dreams into cold, hard cash.
Coffee has been leveraged into cappuccino, spaghetti has been leveraged into pasta. Some of us are born without the leveraging instinct and are thus leveraging-impaired, but don't suppose you're going to be able to leverage that into anything. So grab whatever's handy and leverage whatever you've got into a bigger and better lever.