213: Flex Your Flywheel (for Solopreneurs)

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hi friends. As I recorded episode 212 on virtuous circles in building your Pivot portfolio for Career side Hustle or mainly for solopreneurs, I couldn't help but bring you this excerpt of Pivot to Profit. This is the free seven module bonus course that you get when you enroll in Momentum at Pivot Love Momentum and it's from the first module on Business Sanity by setting up a sound structure and foundation. This is an Excerpt from a 90 minute video course that we did over Zoom, but there was a specific section where I talk about Jim Collins Good to great the Hedgehog concept and the Flywheel. So I wanted to bring you that excerpt to build on what we talked about in episode 212 on virtuous circles and help you push your thinking about this a little bit further. If you want to access the full Pivot to Profit course, pretty soon I'm going to be selling that as a standalone for 997. That will happen as soon as we get the enrollment overview page set up and live and public on my website. So if you want to get it for a fraction of the cost as a bonus for joining Momentum and get a whole lot more to help you build your ideal six figure heart based business, I encourage you to head over to Pivot Love Slash Momentum with that. I hope you enjoy this excerpt of the first module of Pivot to Profit.

We don't know what blind spots we have and I encourage you, although you know Pivot Method is a strengths based framework. Be looking for where where might you have blind spots? Where might you be feeling discouraged or feeling like oh, you don't need to know something or something that's causing friction that you haven't shined the light of your awareness on yet. As we go through this whole class, whether it's this first module or six modules in be looking for things that you could apply to yourself and celebrate the things you've already done. There's no possible way that every single thing I teach is going to apply to everyone at every moment in time. So if there are things you already know and you're already doing, celebrate those things. You could even look for how you can optimize them even further.

Think of Business building as an Upward Spiral we're often learning the same information. I'm finding it very fascinating to read the same books that I read eight, 10 years ago. I'm just now rereading Good to Great Jim Collins. It was one of the first business books I read when I started working at Google, and I'm reading it through an entirely new.

So we may hear the same things. You may learn lessons that you thought you learned five years, 10 years ago, two years ago. But there's this upward spiral of increasing layers of sophistication and self awareness of who you are and what you're here to do in the world. And then not only is there this upward spiral of knowledge, but society as a whole continues to unfold and develop. So even if you learned all about lead generation and marketing 10 years ago, it's just a different landscape now. So now you're going to learn about Facebook ads and podcasting and these technologies and systems and software that simply didn't exist or weren't in the zeitgeist ten years ago. I talked recently on some class or a Momentum call or a podcast about the subscription economy. I believe it was in 10 streams of income. Well, think about that now. People are more and more used to subscribing to things, but 10, 15 years ago that wasn't the case. People were even wary to pull out their credit card and put in their credit card information online. And now that's assumed. It's a given. So there's not only your upward growth spiral. There's society, the economy, technology, innovation, and then there's reading the same timeless business concepts and principles and applying them to your new context. Also, be on the lookout for essentials. I'm going to share a lot with you, and part of the reason I'm doing that is because one of the things I love to do is search for information and synthesize a lot of different information. I actually like to know what is everybody thinking? What are the five best selling business books? What do they recommend and how can we pull what we need. So don't feel like you have to do everything that we're going to cover. Look for the essentials. Heart Based Solopreneurs Often your heart is in it. You maybe started delivering services, but now you know there's room to scale. There is room to create more systems, there is room to create a more repeatable, scalable business so that you the business is not entirely dependent on you. And it might not mean that you want to go get venture funding or you even want more than one employee or no employees or five employees that you don't really have visions of growing no matter what. I've done a lot of research now of blending the biggest business advice from the from books and businesses that are building hundred thousand person companies all the way to entrepreneur based business books and models. And what I'm going to try to do here is pull them together for us in this solopreneur bucket.

I love this quote from Dan Pink. He says mastery is an asymptote, taking us all the way back to calculus days. Mastery is an asymptote. It means that a curved line approaches straight. It approaches that straight line axis, but it never actually reaches it. Let this be a reminder to all of us in business building that business building and business skills is an asymptote. We can get better. We will probably never be there. There's no there there. It's like saying you're done growing as a person. It just. That's just not how life works. We're here to live, learn, love, grow and serve. So building a business. Don't feel bad. Don't look at where you are now and feel bad. Like I've done that so many times. And I just think that we are all on a lifelong journey and it's one of the best parts about solopreneurship. And business building is always aiming toward mastery and knowing we'll never quite reach it. Partly because of what I described with the marketplace always changing. So even if you master something once, definitely things get easier over time. But there's always more to learn. We talked in our recent Q and A call about the procrastination and perfectionism, the relationship between the two. Another Dan Sullivan concept and book about the 80% solution. I forget the exact name. You can get better at getting out of your own way and I think that's a big skill that you get to keep. Like the faster you get at getting out of your own way in terms of building the business and learning what you need to learn and implementing changes. The better off you're going to be, the easier it will be to navigate change moving forward. So that's why I'm not even emphasizing a lot of the mindset piece in this session. Because I feel like you just got to. You just got to get out of the way a little bit. Like we could sit and we could dwell on the mindset and how you got to think, but also if you just know what to do, if you just know a little bit of the structure you're trying to set up, it will create so much ease and you will have more mental space and capacity. Be proud of being someone who has the courage to have ideas, to put them out and to generate any amount of income or side hustle money for yourself. One of the best parts of business building is the constant learning. And I really believe that you are your best asset and these skills will serve you for the rest of your life. So if there is anything I'm saying today that feels overwhelming or shackly, as Martha Beck would call it, shackles on like, oh, that feels like a drag, stick with it. Because I really believe if you can get some of this down and reduce the intimidation factor and reduce the uncertainty that you are going to be building the best asset of all, which is actually not your business. It is you. Because if anything happens to your business, you get to take it all with you. And the more you invest in yourself and your knowledge and your clarity and your time and your freedom, then this will serve you the rest of your life. And I think that's the exciting thing. Isn't that one of the things that brings us all to solopreneurship and heart based business is serving others in the process? I was just having this conversation the other night. I hope that people are still inviting me to speak when I'm 80 years old. I really do. I don't want to have to work. I'd like to not have to work for as early as possible so that I can always work on the things that I do best. There's also not a time that I feel I'll ever want to stop learning and sharing. But I think it's really nice. And the optionality that we're trying to build for ourselves is that you don't have to work, that you get to work and you can work on only your zone of genius.

What is the formula for solopreneurship? Of course we can never have a true formula, but I believe it boils down to something like this. There's the Founder, that's you. There's your unique vision of what's needed in the world and your unique genius of what you are uniquely skilled at and what problems you like to solve in your way with your worldview and your life experience at this moment in time. Then the part we're talking about today, you do need some kind of business model, the systems in your business, some amount of support and then reducing friction over and over. Now all of these are an evolution. Business model can always be tweaked and improved. Systems, same thing, support. It's always going to shift as you and the business grows and downsizes and then friction. We can always be looking at what is causing friction and how do we reduce it or solve for that.

So with these in place and you kind of at the top of the chain here, I do believe that we can all build easeful, profitable businesses in, in a heart based manner with ease and joy, while serving the highest good. And I also think that, you know, fill in the blank. The world needs more. And the other day it just struck me, the world needs more joy. I really believe it. And I believe that us, we in this community of momentum can be examples of building easeful, joyful, heart based businesses that are profitable. I refuse to accept whatever people say isn't possible or can't be done. I don't buy it. And we can be that example because I don't think there are that many people talking about this in this way and showing this. I was listening to a podcast the other day and the person said, when they're hiring, they don't care. If the person they're hiring is kind, they don't care. They want them to have a good work ethic and something else and something else. And I thought to myself, I would never, I would never say that out loud. A and I would never hold that belief. I can't imagine that kindness is one of my core values. I cannot imagine trying to run a company without people in it that were kind. So it just kind of blows my mind. But let that be. Let that show you how much room there is for you to have your own values and bring them to your business.

A couple concepts to think about. So the hedgehog concept, what are you deeply passionate about? This is Jim Collins, by the way. Good to great. It's worth revisiting. Even if you've read that book. What are you deeply passionate about? What can you be the best in the world at? And what drives your economic engine? Now, we hear these questions a lot. Okay, but have you Revisited them. And have you revisited them in a context of what is already working? I saw some were adding the concept of ikigai, which is ikigai is more than just what does the world need? It really means the reason for waking up. It's a Japanese word. But they add this question, what does the world need? That I think goes really well with the hedgehog and then of course the queen bee role. What can you and only you do? So a lot of you, none of you are starting from scratch. I encourage you to not think you're starting from scratch. Oh, what am I passionate about? But like, of your current pivot portfolio of your current activities, what is working the best? What could you become the best in the world at? And that can be an intimidating question, of course. So that, that actually, to me, that question really encourages specificity because can I be the best public speak keynote speaker? No. I mean, like, maybe, but. No, let's be honest. But I could be the best at being like a heart based or a female entrepreneur. Heart based business owner. You know, if I get really specific. I think I hear a lot at conferences, people say, oh, that was so refreshing. You're so authentic, you're so encouraging. Like, as if they're surprised, like they're not really getting this. I was on a panel the other day with two or three other women. They just took it all so seriously. And then I'm just all about like, you know, let's have fun with this. So, and then what drives your economic engine? Really, truly think about that. What has already paid the bills? And what do you think has the best potential to pay the bills, but in a joyful way? And what does the world need? So I told you earlier, I got that hit. The world needs more joy. And even the business building world, even the entrepreneurship world, I think needs more joy. But truly the world, how would you fill that in? These are beautiful questions, as David White would call them. You have got to live the answers. Let these simmer. Write them on a piece of paper, tape them to the back of your front door or your office door, wherever you are going to see them. Keep living these questions.

So another Jim Collins principle is the flywheel effect. Maybe like me, you read good to great and you heard, yeah, yeah, the flywheel. And you kind of know the flywheel leads to momentum. But let's read this together. No matter how dramatic the end result, good to great transformations never happen in one fell swoop. There is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no Miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough and beyond.

Let this be a relief. Like if you have been waiting for the aha moment and you know, I'm all about nonlinear breakthroughs, but really, really we're all doing this like turn by turn. We're working, we're turning, we're trying, we're experimenting. And then eventually you do reach this flywheel effect, this point of momentum, or as Malcolm Gladwell would call it, this tipping point where you really, the flywheel is just going on its own volition. How do we get there? I read a fantastic takes less than an hour. He calls it the Flywheel monograph. I'm going to put it in the resources at the end. It's. He wrote a separate mini book just on the flywheel concept. And in it he shares this diagram that the Amazon Flywheel is they give low prices on many offerings that will then increase customer visits, attract third party sellers, expand the store and distribution, and it grows their revenues per fixed costs. Like they're never raising their costs to do this. And even if you would include prime in here somewhere, prime has been a huge part of their flywheel. Now when I read business books like this, I think, okay, that's great Amazon, but how am I supposed to do this? I really apologize. This is my chicken scratch of I did not in the moment that I did this, think anyone was going to see it. But I realized building a PowerPoint diagram is so boring that I'll just take a picture and show you. So this was done in two minutes. I didn't give it too much thought, so it could be missing something, but I took a stab at mine and then I'll show you a few others. So original thinking, like a book or a speech that has a method, a simple system or a template often counter to the status quo. So the whole point of Pivot was you don't have to know your whole career map. The only move that matters is your next one. From there, build profile as a thought leader. So the more high profile I am, the the more I can create this tight knit, engaged community. You'll see I specified tight knit. I don't have a huge platform. I probably have 10,000 people. I cleaned out my list. It was 15,000 cleaned out people who didn't open. It's now 10 of those, probably 3,000 open any given email. So it's tight knit. My Flywheel could probably fly much faster if I had a bigger list. But you'll see that each thing fills the next. So what am I giving to the tight knit community? Ongoing service like delivering value through the Pivot List newsletter, podcast, momentum, licensing courses. So that's a lot. But how am I delivering my services? And then built in listening loop to me is very important. It's how my hearing, how's my ear to the ground of what people need, what's happening out there. And a lot of that includes myself. What am I struggling with? What can I solve? What's a stress or a struggle? And how can I share my synthesized process so others don't have to reinvent the wheel? That is really the ticket to my thought. Leadership is something I go through, I struggle with and I somehow systematize it and synthesize for others. And I love doing that by like gobbling up tons of books and podcasts so that you don't have to. That's how we got even this class today. I tried to draw the typical business model so they have a unique superb product. They do content and marketing that generates sales, that they have consistent delivery and customer support and then they have like an operations team that helps deliver it. And then they also have a way to identify problems and do market research. A typical or good business has one unique superb product and they get this flywheel of really generating around their unique product. Your turn. Try to sketch your flywheel. I've just shown you a couple examples. If you're just starting out, you can go with your ideal flywheel. But think about any amount of success that you've had. How did you generate it? And try to capture that in a flywheel format. Think about six components. Try not to make it too many more than that. What are the crucial six elements that generate that momentum for you? And try to see if any elements of your flywheel are not absolutely crucial to generating that momentum and then which ones are absolutely vital that the whole thing would not work without it.

I really encourage you check out the Flywheel monograph and see what is your ideal flywheel. This is a question to explore over the next few weeks and even months of what are the vital behaviors in your business to give you that unstoppable momentum. And we're still talking about the business model and the structure, so we haven't even yet honed in on the one idea or the one income stream.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tip tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.