Why E-Commerce Keeps You Stuck (And What to Do Instead for Member Growth)

When people are able to take your ideas and run with them and then your business takes on a life of its own and everybody is creating value for each other. When you can do that, you have got a nearly perfect business. Which is why flywheels are so valuable. Foreign. Hey, I'm Gina Bianchini and this is People Magic where I show you the absolute easiest way to create a $1 million community.

Hi Gina. I just finished the People Magic masterclass and I don't think I fully understand the concept of flywheel. It feels like a buzzword that's super easy to use in class discussions, but. But I'm unsure how it translates to a day to day business. Can, can you explain a bit more?

I love this. So some of the things that conceptually, once you get your head around them are like aha. Moments aren't totally obvious when you are looking at them for the first time or maybe even the fifth time. So I'm super glad that you raised your hand and you said, hey, wait a second. So slow down. Fundamental concept is in a linear world, like you say in a day to day business, it sort of feels like what you do is you show up, you do a bunch of things, take a bunch of steps, you get a result. Like somebody pays you money for something, you deliver the product and then you start over again. So you gotta go out and sell people on stuff, you gotta then have multiple conversations, they buy the product and. And then you gotta start over again with somebody else. Or in some cases, if you're doing an E commerce business, which is one of the reasons why I do not love e commerce businesses, is that you gotta then go sell that same person a second or a tenth time. That is a linear business. And if anything you can think about it as that sort of step by step, I gotta go and I gotta sell the same person another mascara, another outfit, another pair of shoes, another battery pack. Although that one starts to get interesting because you have repeat purchase or a replenishable good as they taught me in the fancy MBA school. So a flywheel is different and this is how a flywheel is different. So for example, the reason I love communities and again this is a community that can be monetized we with ongoing membership fees. So recurring revenue membership fees, a paid course or set of courses that you can get repeat purchases from, a challenge or an event. So that's how you can monetize. And by the way, challenges, courses, events could actually live in a membership. So when you are building a community, something different happens. You Invite in your first 10 members. You are really clear that they're all going through the same transition. And your value that you are providing them is, hey, I'm raising my hand. I'm going to take care of all the organizing. I'm going to introduce you to amazing people who are on the same path. We are going to rally a group of first time engineering managers. We're going to bring people together, we are going to have fantastic conversations. We're going to build a culture where there's absolute confidentiality and we are going to share our stories, our experiences, our hopes and dreams, our fears and misconceptions. But we're going to do it together. And if we do it together, we're each going to be able to take on more and more responsibility, which also probably means we're going to get paid more and more money. We are going to define together what it means to be an engineering manager over the next 10 years, as new technologies show up and new ways of being being productive and new ways of organizing, our teams show up, our ability to react to really dynamic changes and technology innovation, all of that's going to happen because my value is in going and finding and bringing together first time engineering managers and creating the culture that exists in my community and our community that we're building together to help each and every one of us achieve professional success. So what happens when I build that business? Well, I bring in 10 people and I probably am going to have fun bringing in more and more people, but number one, those folks are actually providing value for each other. I'm not producing a ton of content. People are drowning in content today. I'm not producing content. I'm creating the experiences that people feel comfortable sharing their stories, experiences and ideas in pursuit of that goal or as they navigate that next transition. A first time engineering manager. An engineering manager taking over and having directors underneath them for the first time. An engineering manager who's tackling new projects, or an engineering manager who is turning around a low performing team. All of those things are gonna be the places we can take our community. Okay, so coming back to the flywheel now I bring in those first 10 people, they start providing value to each other again. Each and every person has to go and create their own results. But the community is there to create all sorts of new support mechanisms, new insights, new practices, new habits that just get so much easier to do. A community, this is what a flywheel is. Those 10 people are probably going to get better results because they are in this community. And guess what happens when people get results. This is happening to me right now with this podcast. As this podcast becomes popular and is well reviewed and showing up on charts, the number of people I have coming to me right now being like, hey Gina, what are you doing to create a successful podcast? I want to have a successful podcast. Well, then I can share my stories, experiences and ideas. That's a flywheel. Because now I have brought in more people to the community because I can basically say, hey, you want to join my community? We are sharing all the behind the scene things that are working today to make a podcast successful, to build a subscriber base, to build loyal listeners, to build the frameworks or mechanisms by which those loyal listeners start to invite other people in to subscribe to the podcast. I know I like went from first time engineering managers to podcasters. Just forgive me for shifting my examples here, but I think this is really important. In a flywheel, I don't have to do all the work. It starts to build momentum of other people taking actions. Like members providing value for each other means that I don't have to provide all the value. Members getting fantastic results and talking about it to other people means that I don't have to go out and talk to people that I don't know because I've really created an incredible experience for those first 10 members. And those 10 members are building the momentum by going out and talking to three more people that are first time engineering managers or engineering managers who are leveling up, or podcasters who are just starting off, or podcasters who are like, I got 30,000 subscribers, I want to get to a million downloads. That type of network, more people. Being a part of what you're building creates momentum that you otherwise cannot create on your own. So going back to the very beginning, a linear business of I gotta sell somebody new every time and I gotta resell them because I'm only selling this like one widget versus you want to belong to our community because things are happening in our community that are going to get you results and transformation that you can't get on your own. And it's happening, happening here. Hop on the train. That hopping on the train, guess what? Number one, I, as the, as the business owner didn't have to go sell. My members are selling and bringing in that next, that next person or the hundredth person. And then what's even better is that the value that's being created is not my content, it is my hosting. It's the fact that I'm convening people. And when you create These kinds of networks, what we call people magic, because people are creating value for each other. They're creating these magical experiences and creating magic to help people get results in transformation that they cannot get on their own. That stuff is magical. That is what we are talking about when we talk about creating people magic. It has momentum. It creates momentum so that for every action that you take as the business host, you get 10 times the momentum and results in a flywheel than you do if you don't have a flywheel. So you're talking to people like, hey, if, what if I could help you get the results that you want? What if I could help you make another 50 or $100,000 next year? Because you are going to be a absolute star of a first time engineering manager, or because you're going to be able to build a podcast that offers the space and the attention that brands want to partner with. That is a flywheel. So hopefully that's a little bit clearer. A flywheel business is one where you're like getting up every day, being like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe that a hundred people met over in San Antonio, Texas, because they're a part of the network that I started with 10 people to be able to help folks. And I am helping folks. And you know what? It actually turned out that I can help more people in more ways because they pay attention to what they pay for by charging. And now that is a flywheel that has momentum to it. And you are seeing things pop out of the network that you are creating. But I want to talk about why creating a community with a flywheel is so powerful. And it's that every action you take to talk to one person, that person's going to talk to other people to create the conditions every week for your members to come together. They're going to find things and take risk and take action that they wouldn't otherwise take. And it is going to go find five more people that are going to be excited about what you're building? That's a flywheel. And it is the absolute most valuable business that you can create. And there's absolutely nothing. You don't need a degree to have a flywheel. You don't need some incredibly creative idea, you don't need a lot of money. A flywheel only requires you to make extremely good decisions in how you spend your time while you're building your business. So being able to bring people together, when you do that, you unlock a flywheel that can take and run itself. And that is why I am so passionate about creating People Magic, creating this kind of momentum driven business that is going to create things that may be steady for a little while and then all of a sudden one day takes off. That cannot happen in an E commerce business that you're like having to like resell people every. Every week or every day. I shared with you the feeling of momentum that comes from a flywheel. When people are able to take your ideas and run with them and then your business takes on a life of its own and everybody is creating value for each other. When you can do that, you have got a nearly perfect business, which is why flywheels are so valuable. This is People Magic. I'm Sheena Bianchini. Until next time. Thank you for being a part of People Magic. If you want more of a deep dive in any of these topics, but certainly having the framework of People Magic profit, head on over to the website. The link is in the show notes. Have your own burning question about creating People Magic? Well, I want to answer it. So here's what you're going to do. You're going to just drop your question in the review section, wherever you're listening to this podcast and keep tuning in.