Does The Flywheel Effect Work To Build A Million Dollar Solopreneur Business?

Welcome to The Solopreneur MBA, my weekly newsletter to help coaches, consultants, and solopreneurs build online businesses they love. My name is Krista and I have made it my professional and personal mission to help entrepreneurs overcome the roadblocks holding them back from success and ultimately help them to achieve their business dreams. Thanks in advance for reading the latest newsletter edition. Hit the ‘Subscribe’ button to support this channel and share this newsletter with friends, family, clients, or entrepreneur friends! Enjoy!

In the height of the dot-com bust in 2001, Jim Collins published a revolutionary book, From Good To Great (Affiliate Link). It was a well-timed release when many companies were out-of-business or barely surviving and desperately needed inspiration and motivation. Jim is a student of what makes great companies tick. His work caught the eye of one of the greatest companies in the world, Amazon, who invited him to meet with their founder and then CEO, Jeff Bezos and a select few executive team members for a discussion on the matter.

In his book, Collins describes The Flywheel Effect as follows:

“There’s no single defining action, no grand program, no single killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, it feels like turning a giant heavy flywheel. I mean, picture yourself pushing with great effort, and you get that flywheel to inch forward. You keep pushing with persistent effort, and you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn. And you don’t stop. You keep pushing. The flywheel moves a bit faster and it gets two turns. And then four and then eight. It builds momentum.“

Collins argues that the flywheel is the way a company achieves greatness.?

Building a Flywheel For a Small?Business

When I first read From Good To Great, I ran an agency with many employees. So my application of the flywheel was focused on leadership, customers, and team performance. In 2017, when I went solo, I admit that in the beginning, I was sceptical that the flywheel would apply to me. But since I appreciated so much the concept, I thought to give it a try.?

Below is my version of the flywheel adapted to a single-member or small business.

Feel free to steal my strategies, just remember to credit me please:

Let’s further analyze the flywheel components that work brilliantly for small businesses, especially coaches, consultants, and creators.

1) Exceptional Content For One Topic

You can’t become known as an expert or thought leader unless you show mastery over one specific topic. If you try to become known for multiple things, you will create brand confusion, kill your SEO, and disappoint your public. Generalities weaken your brand. Specificity strengthens your brand.

Create a separate flywheel around your audience at the core and use content buckets they care about as the components for your wheel. A content bucket is a group or category that contains sub-topics your audience cares most about. You build them carefully based on market research. Business owners who try to forego market research pay the price of misalignment, low engagement, or even indifference. Plus, online social and search algorithms hate generalists and favor experts.

Measure your results frequently to understand and adjust your success. Never keep producing content if it isn’t resonating with your audience.

Pro Tip: Look up content by hashtags and keywords to see what is popular. Consider the comments section on popular posts, books, and videos.

“The one who gives the market the most and best information will always slaughter the one who just wants to sell products or services.” — Chet Holmes

If you need more help, I have a ton of content around market research inside my?Profitable Solopreneur Community.

2. Master One Platform At A Time + Mistakes To Avoid

There are two platform levels for you to pick that you are willing and ready to dedicate time and money to — your primary platform and your social platform.

A big mistake entrepreneurs make is to try to do too much at once before fully mastering one platform. First, pick the platform that resonates most with your preferred content. If you hate listening to podcasts, don’t create one. If video terrifies you, don’t commit to a YouTube channel before getting help to feel comfortable on camera. If you despise reading, don’t start a newsletter.

Another big mistake is neglecting to choose a primary platform and instead focusing on only one (or a few) social media. This is a terrible mistake that will cost you.

Finally, a widespread mistake, sadly, is not to monitor your performance metrics closely. The results? You are putting out content for too little ROI.

a) Primary Platform

A primary platform is defined by you owning the experience (almost) entirely. Will you produce a newsletter, a podcast, or a YouTube channel? All of these platforms require third-party software or distribution but essentially belong to you and a person who subscribes will be able to easily access all content with minimal interference by the algorithms. An audience built off a primary platform tends to be loyal and value your content.

b) Social Platform

A social platform is rented land that is very unstable and dependent on algorithms that change frequently and often work against you to promote your competitors. Even when someone follows you, they are only shown your content if the algorithms favor it and that can change at any given moment. An audience built off a social platform tends to be flaky and may not value your content.

Please pick your social platform on two factors: 1) Where you love spending time and 2) Where your target audience appears. Hopefully, this is the same place. If not, consider getting to know a new platform where your audience is active. Use market research to validate this decision.

Always start with your primary platform then establish a social platform to drive traffic back.

Learn all you can about one primary platform and one social platform. Invest your time and money into working with experts to develop your media into a professional, highly converting channel that will attract and delight your ideal customers. Once you see serious success on that platform, consider expanding to a second, then a third.

Remember, the more platforms you engage on, the more time and money you will need to invest, so plan accordingly to avoid producing mediocre quality, not correctly measuring metrics, and burnout.

3. Build Power Partnerships

A huge part of market research is understanding who dominates the market you are trying to rise in. Who are the most famous voices and respected thought leaders in your industry? While it may be difficult starting out to build partnerships with those leaders, you can become their biggest fans. Why in the world would you support your competitors? Easy answer: you need them. They have achieved what you aspire to or are trying like you so why not try together? Below is my strategy for building power partnerships:

a) Those At Your Level (Allies)

Look for smart, driven givers with good values who regularly show kindness and demonstrate a serious commitment to business growth via consistent, high-quality content combined with great offers. Those are your people. Befriend them, do what you can to support them, and rise together. They can become your accountability partners, and you can share resources.

b) Those Ahead Of You (Influencers Who Are Still Reachable)

These individuals have done the work and built strong brands, but they are not quite at the level where they don’t answer their DMs or emails. They can become great partners for you, but you need to make the first move by delivering value to them. Earn their trust and respect by being a giver and helping them win.

c) Your Dream 100 (Top Influencers Who You Dream Of Working With)

Chet Holmes invented “The Dream 100” in his book —?The Ultimate Sales Machine?(affiliate link). In his lifetime, Chet developed a reputation as being one of the world’s top marketing and sales experts, working with 60 of America’s Fortune 500 companies, running nine divisions of billionaire Charlie Munger’s company, and writing the best-selling book I mentioned above.

Chat Holmes said you don’t need to focus on getting all the clients in the market. You need to get the RIGHT clients. He achieved this in his career by selling ads to the top buyers in his day. Because he picked the buyers with the most significant ad budgets, his company immediately rose to the top position.

Another thought leader who practices The Dream 100 strategy is Russell Brunson, founder of Clickfunnels, who speaks extensively about how he used Chet’s method to grow his business. Read Russell’s book,?Traffic Secrets?(Affiliate Link), for more information.

I built an 8-figure agency off this concept, landing top Silicon Valley companies as clients. It works, my friends!

How can you implement the Dream 100 approach? Easy. Identify the clients who meet the following criteria, no matter what service industry you serve :

1. They won’t blink an eye to spend five figures or higher on services they find valuable to solve their problem. Broke people won’t grow your business.
2. They have a long-term need for your services. No quickies.
3. They have proven leadership. Look at their history of success to know if you are working with a finisher or a potential quitter. Stick to serving winners since they are less risky to work with and tend to have all the qualities you want in a partner like respect, integrity, empathy, and trust.

You can read more criteria for your power partners in these two articles:

The Undeniable Top Five Characteristics Of An Entrepreneur

The Five Fail-Proof Predictors To Find A-Players To Work With In Your Business

Note: The strategy above applies to B2B services. If you sell toothpicks or cheap products, you must modify your approach.

4. Beast Mode

While I am anti-hustle, I will be honest that you must work hard when you are pursuing your goals. The main criteria of beast mode is giving your all and bringing your A game day in and day out to be proud of your work and make a name for yourself in a competitive industry.

Anyone who isn’t ready to work hard should not start a business. Working hard doesn’t mean compromising health and self-care, but it leads to temporary sacrifice. For example, I don’t have a tv, and I spend most of my “free time” on health, family, or personal development. You will need money to invest in your business so you may not take a nice vacation for the early years of your business. You may have to live too because investing into your future is more important than a fancy new car or material possessions.

Beast mode is always one of the signs you are going to win. Even in the very early stages, when I see someone incredibly driven and passionate, I know it is only a matter of time. On the other hand, wet blankets have no place in business. If you aren’t a hard worker, get a highly secure job where you know extra effort won’t be required of you.

5. Outsource All But The Essential

In his book,?The One Thing?(affiliate link), Gary Keller teaches us how to prioritize our tasks so we can focus on what matters to have the most impact in business.

The most prominent mistake entrepreneurs make is trying to do it all themselves. There is no better way to minimize growth, increase the risk of burnout, and destroy your life.

Learning how to identify your core tasks and outsource the rest is a significant milestone and rite of passage every successful business owner goes through, without exception.

Note: Automation is a form of outsourcing. Today, Tech and especially AI can do a lot of manual tasks so you can focus on your ‘one thing’.

Two other books that go deeper into organizing business tasks that I highly recommend and made a massive difference for me are:

The E-Myth?by Micheal Gerber (affiliate link)

Clockwork?by Mike Michalowicz (affiliate link)

“In my opinion, the most important thing for an entrepreneur is to create more space to do deeper work.” — Alex Hormozi

These two articles can help you run your business more efficiently:

The Employee Worker Mentality / Busy Bee Syndrome That Will Kill Your Business

How I Plan Out My Weekly Priorities as a Single-Member Entrepreneur for Ultimate Success

6. Sales Machine

I’ve saved the best for last! If you want your flywheel to work, you can’t skip the final step: The Sale. You didn’t put all this work into your flywheel to neglect the most important part, did you? What a waste that would be! Yet I regularly consult with entrepreneurs who are doing just that. They spend an enormous time and energy on producing content and then wait. For what, I am unclear. Naively, they seem to believe clients will flock towards them. When this doesn’t happen, instead of looking at the obvious, their non-existent sales activities, they blame their failure on the algorithm or develop doubts about everything, sometimes even deciding to walk away from their business.

So how do you build a sales machine for your flywheel? Read my article below to learn more about the system I teach for B2B service providers:

My Number One Sales Weapon for Solopreneurs To Make 10k Monthly And Beyond

Video Version

If you learn information better via video, you can watch the 12-minute video version below:

https://vimeo.com/kmollion/businessflywheel?share=copy

Conclusion

Yes, the flywheel effect works for small business but you must do it consistently, measure metrics, and most importantly, not skip any of the six steps, especially the last one. The customer is at the heart of the flywheel so you’ll want to make sure you have daily interactions with them.

Are You Growing an Online Business, Interested in Monetizing Your Content, or Trying to Build Influence in Your Niche? Then I Invite You to Join 31,000+ Subscribers Who Receive My Weekly Tips?Here.