Building Powerful Flywheels: Unlocking Growth Engines for Entrepreneurs in the Digital Age

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:00]

Picture a huge, heavy flywheel—a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Now, imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible. Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. You keep pushing and, after two or three hours of persistent effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn. You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster, and with continued great effort, you move it around a second rotation. You keep pushing in a consistent direction. Three turns ... four ... five ... six ... the flywheel builds up speed ... seven ... eight ... you keep pushing ... nine ... ten ... it builds momentum ... eleven ... twelve ... moving faster with each turn ... twenty ... thirty ... fifty ... a hundred.

Then, at some point—breakthrough! The momentum of the thing kicks it in your favor, hurling the flywheel forward, turn after turn ... whoosh! ... its own heavy weight working for you. You're pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster. Each turn of the flywheel builds upon work done earlier, compounding your investment of effort. A thousand times faster, then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand. The huge heavy disk flies forward, with almost unstoppable momentum.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:35]

Those weren't my words, by the way.

Those were Jim Collins's words. He wrote those words back in 2001 --nearly twenty years ago-- in his book "Good to Great',' which is easily one of my favorite books. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend that you do.

And I agree with Jim Collins whole-heartedly. Flywheels are indeed incredibly important for building and growing your business. Every entrepreneur needs to have robust flywheels if they want to grow big...

Even creators.

Yes, you heard me right - creators looking to build six-figure businesses need to develop robust flywheels of their own.

To be perfectly honest, most creators DO understand this intuitively. But they do not know where to begin. Or what flywheels to develop. Or HOW to develop them.

So, that's what we'll be doing today. We'll be looking at ways to build powerful flywheels for creators.

Let's get started, shall we?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:02:33]

Hi, my name is Yong-Soo Chung and I am a first-generation Korean-American entrepreneur living the American dream. I started Urban EDC to cater to enthusiasts of everyday carry gear. I also own two other successful ventures: GrowthJet, a climate-neutral certified third-party logistics company for emerging e-commerce brands, and SpottedByHumphrey, an online boutique curating dog goods for good dogs. Through these three ventures, my business has generated over $20 million dollars in 8 years and I'm here to tell you how YOU can do the same!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:08]

On today's episode of First Class Founders, we are talking about flywheels, a concept I first heard from Jim Collins. Actually, the concept itself has probably existed since the dawn of time but Jim Collins was the first to use it in the context of entrepreneurship and it has stuck with me ever since.

Over the course of the last eight years, I have discovered that, as a creator, you need to build THREE kinds of flywheels: the AUDIENCE flywheel - for distribution, the PRODUCT flywheel - for your content, and the MONETIZATION flywheel - for obvious reasons!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:39]

Over the course of the next thirty minutes, we'll inspect all three flywheels in the context of this podcast.

We'll start by first looking at my audience flywheel and how it is helping me build solid distribution channels for my content. Then, we'll look at my content flywheel itself and how I am extracting maximum value out of all the content I create by making sure it reaches both WIDE and DEEP. Finally, we'll look at how I am using the momentum gained from both these flywheels to feed into the ULTIMATE flywheel - the flywheel of monetization!

Except, details on my monetization flywheel will be made available exclusively to the premium members of the First Class Founders community, in an exclusive segment of this episode through a special ad-free version of the podcast feed. To become a premium member of First Class Founders, sign up at firstclassfounders.com/join - look for the link in the show notes!

Go ahead and open that link in a tab, while I get this flight ready for take-off!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:41]

We have mentioned the word "flywheel" in several of our past episodes. Several of our guests have alluded to it directly or indirectly. I have mentioned it several times myself. Every entrepreneur intuitively knows about them. You heard a rather detailed description of the concept by Jim Collins at the top of this episode.

And, even if you haven't heard of 'flywheels', I am sure you have definitely heard of other phrases that are somewhat related. Phrases such as positive feedback loop, virtuous cycle, compounding effect, and probably the most common of all - consistency and perseverance.

The crux of the flywheel effect - or whatever you choose to call it - is simple. It's this:

"There is no single defining action that causes the flywheel to spin fast. The momentum of the flywheel is built over several rotations."

Yong-Soo Chung [00:05:27]

In business and entrepreneurship, a flywheel is a task or set of tasks that helps you build momentum by compounding your efforts. Each subsequent iteration of the task yields bigger results for the same amount of effort. This is called leverage.

This concept seems simple to understand but I have seen too many entrepreneurs struggle to put flywheels into action in their own businesses. I mean, how many times have you launched a new project only to abandon it for another shiny object? No judgment here. We’ve all been there, done that… including me. I am pretty sure that, in a lot of these cases, it happened because these initiatives weren't given enough time to build momentum.

Because, I can tell you for a fact that entrepreneurs who use the "flywheel effect" don't just succeed. They DOMINATE their respective markets.

Look at Amazon, for example.

In the early stages of building Amazon, Jeff Bezos focused on the fact that everyone loves a good deal. People LOVE low prices. It was these low prices that started Amazon's growth flywheel.

The more people found out about Amazon's low prices, the more they flocked to Amazon. The more they flocked to Amazon, the more Amazon appealed to other sellers as a marketplace and a platform. These third-party sellers brought with them an even wider selection of products. This wide selection of products attracted even more customers to Amazon.

The whole thing became a positive feedback loop... More customers led to more third-party sellers, led to more products, led to more variety, led to even more customers - in other words, a "flywheel"!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:30]

Additionally, once third-party sellers joined, Amazon no longer had to be the sole seller. That meant they could reduce some of their fixed costs, such as warehousing and distribution costs. They rolled these savings back into other parts of the flywheel and accelerated this effect even further.

And, yes, I'm using flywheels for this podcast too! In fact, that's the overall idea for this episode. I plan to transparently share details of my three flywheels with you, namely the audience, product, and monetization flywheels.

And I always insist on building an audience flywheel before building your product flywheel for a very simple reason… which I will explain in a short while.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:08:38]

And now, let's get back to the episode.

Before the short detour, I told you that I always insist on building an audience flywheel before building your product flywheel.

The reason is - my MAPS framework.

Back in episode 41, I outline in great detail the framework I developed over eight years of building my 3 successful businesses. I call it the MAPS framework and it is an acronym for Mindset, Audience, Product, and Scaling. In the episode, I emphasized the need to build your AUDIENCE before designing or building your PRODUCT.

EPISODE 41 - MAPS Framework (22:00)
"Once you have built up your audience, now you can begin to create a product for your audience's pain points and, how do you create your first product? You need to know your audience inside out. Your product needs to cater to the desires and pain points of your audience."

Yes, I know this sounds counterintuitive but, think about it. If you build your audience BEFORE you build your product, doesn't it make it easy to distribute your product?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:40]

And if you are a CREATOR, building an audience gives you the added perk of motivation - you now have a solid reason to continue creating content regularly! And, as I have already outlined several times throughout various episodes of this podcast, consistency is the name of the content creation game!

That's why I ALWAYS insist that, if you are a creator, you NEED to build your audience before you build your product.

So, what is MY audience flywheel as a creator?

For this podcast, my audience flywheel looks something like this:

Step 1: I find a guest with a big audience and record an interview with them for my podcast.
Step 2: The guest likes the interview SO MUCH that they share it with their audience.
Step 3: A percentage of THEIR audience then checks out my podcast and subscribes to it, thus growing MY audience.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:29]

With a bigger audience, I can target quote-unquote 'bigger' guests, which exposes me to even bigger audiences, and so on.

If you get the feeling that you've heard this all before, you are absolutely correct. Clint Murphy uses the same audience flywheel for his content, which he shared with us back in episode 36.

EPISODE 36 - Clint Murphy (08:32)
"And so the flywheel is, as we grow the social media, the access to guests increases. As we have larger and larger guests, the threads that we write on social media to promote the episode get more eyeballs because people wanna learn lessons from those people that you had on the show...Until they're both growing bigger and bigger."

Now, you may have latched on to the fact that step 2 -- the step where I said the guest shares the episode with their audience -- is highly critical in this entire endeavor. I mean, if the guest chooses not to share, the whole flywheel comes to a grinding halt, doesn't it?

So, why am I so sure that the guest WILL share my episode?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:11:48]

Well, because of several factors. One, I take a lot of pride in my work and that means I make sure that these episodes are nothing short of INCREDIBLE.

I work with a dedicated producer on all my episodes. Together, we ensure that the episodes are FILLED with useful takeaways. No matter how long and rambly I get while talking to my guests, the final EDIT of the episode only contains the KEY soundbites of our conversation - no fluff. My producer does a ton of work to ensure the listening experience is TOP-NOTCH. I invest a significant amount of BOTH time AND money into producing each episode.

In short, we spend a lot of time, effort, and money to make sure that the product we create is not just top-notch but also attractive enough that the guest feels like sharing it with their audiences.

And, here's another thing.

Whenever guests share my episodes, they share it with a personal note of PRAISE. Arvid Kahl, for example, shared my episode on HIS podcast feed with some incredible words of praise for me and the podcast!

EPISODE 24 - Arvid Kahl
“I don't usually broadcast interviews of myself on this show, but this one blew me away so much when I listened to it that I really wanted to share it with you here. The production quality of this podcast is so good, and it lays out my whole founder history, my whole journey, and even my current workflow so well that I couldn't help re-broadcasting this. So here it is, my chat with Yong-Soo Chung on first class founders. Enjoy!”

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:20]

What is that thing kids say these days? Game recognizes game, was it?

Okay, keeping those "my fellow kids" lame jokes aside, there are TWO reasons why I am making all this effort for my content.

One, I want to differentiate myself in this space. There are a TON of podcasts that interview founders and entrepreneurs. As far as I know, First Class Founders is the ONLY podcast that doesn't record hours of long-winded rambling conversations and serves them up as a 'podcast'. No, I value YOUR time far too much to do that to you.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:52]

Two, I think of it as an investment into my creator business. Let me explain with another example. When I bootstrapped my first business Urban EDC, I bought a high quality DSLR camera to take high quality photography for each product. Did I really need to do that? No, Urban EDC would have been fine with just photos taken from my iPhone. But, because I did that, it helped Urban EDC stand out as a high-quality shop for high-end everyday carry products.

Think of it as me greasing my audience flywheel. By investing into the quality of each podcast episode like this one, I make it easier for any listener to consume my content and perhaps, just maybe, even share this episode with a friend. That will bring in new listeners to the show.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:14:40]

But, Yong-Soo, what if your guest still refuses to share it with their audiences? Or doesn't give you enough exposure to their audience?

And, let me be honest, it could happen that a guest doesn't share my content on THEIR channels. The reasons could be anything, ranging from: difference in audience sizes, difference in expectations, bad timing, bad luck or any one of a thousand other reasons!

Of course, you can’t predict for sure that your guest will share your episode. But, I can tell you this with 100% certainty: your chances will be much, much higher if you create something that truly “wow”s them.

In fact, back in episode 38, Chenell Basilio mentioned it as one of the growth-levers for her newsletter Growth in Reverse...

EPISODE 39 - Chenell Basilio (10:08)
"So it's kind of like, it depends on who I'm reverse engineering. And some people find it really interesting and will share it with their own audience, which is kind of cool. So it's like I'm hitting different people every week, but that's hard to manufacture. I've just kind of let it happen because I don't know, that's not one I could figure, uh, out consistently."

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:42]

In my opinion, the reason why these big creators want to share Chenell’s work is because she spends literally 20-40 hours each week dissecting their journey. If someone listened to every single podcast episode you’ve ever been on and read every single piece of content that you’ve ever written, and organized the entire thing into a beautiful deep dive read by tens of thousands of other creators… wouldn’t you want to share their work?

Yeah, I certainly would. So, by creating an amazing podcast episode for each guest, I’m increasing the likelihood that they’ll share it with their audience. And so far? It’s working.

Each and everyone of my guests has been kind and wonderful enough to share my episodes with their audience. Some, like Arvid, have even been kind enough to share it in their own podcast feeds!


Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:27]

So, let’s quickly review the three key principles for building my audience flywheel:

PRINCIPLE NUMBER 1: Find a creator who has useful knowledge to share.

PRINCIPLE NUMBER 2: Create great content that STANDS OUT from others in the same niche.

PRINCIPLE NUMBER 3: Continue to create great content CONSISTENTLY.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:16:47]

Oh, one other thing... YOUR audience flywheel doesn't need to look exactly like mine, by the way.

You can choose an entirely different strategy to attract your audience. Maybe you attract an audience by offering freebies in each episode or newsletter. Maybe you have some expertise in your domain that just cannot be duplicated or emulated. Maybe you just have a knack for attracting audiences.

Just remember this: ALL FLYWHEELS BEGIN WITH A VERY SIMPLE BUT DECISIVE ACTION.

For Amazon, it was their decision to lower their prices. For this podcast, it was my decision to invest in high-quality production.

Is there a SPECIFIC decisive action that will kickstart your flywheel?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:45]

Let's now talk about the second flywheel all entrepreneurs need to build- namely, the Content Flywheel.

If you refer to the MAPS framework, you will notice that the P of Product comes right after the A of audience. Once you have built yourself an audience, it is time to build and launch your product to the audience.

If you are a creator, your CONTENT is the product. So, building your product flywheel basically involves building yourself a robust content flywheel.

But how do you build a content flywheel?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:19:14]

The answer is simple. You repurpose content from one platform to another! In fact, you can repurpose more than content - you can even repurpose IDEAS and recycle them into future pieces of content for yourself.

Let me elaborate a bit.

What I am about to tell you is something I haven't discussed on this podcast before, so listen carefully. Maybe take notes!

Ready? Alright, here we go...

As a kid, when we used to make lemonade, there was only one cardinal rule - squeeze every last drop. I do the same thing with my content. I maximize the value of each piece of content I create and publish.

For instance, this podcast episode began as a vague idea in my head but all ideas go through a few iterations on different platforms before ending here! Specifically speaking, this episode first began in the form of multiple individual posts on X, formerly known as Twitter. Then, because those posts did well on X, I decided to convert it into a podcast episode.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:09]

While writing the script for this episode, I had another idea, which will become the topic of my newsletter in the future! And, maybe, while writing content for the newsletter, I will have another idea for another thread, or an episode...

And I'm not the only person who does this, by the way. Back in episode 24 of this podcast, Arvid Kahl explained how he reuses content from his podcast to generate content for his other channels...

EPISODE 24 - Arvid Kahl (18:35)
“Arvid Kahl: People told me, "I love your writing, love your blog, love your newsletter, but I don't have time to read. The only time that I really have in a day is when I'm driving in my car."
Yong-Soo Chung: Yeah, you guessed it. Podcasts.
Arvid Kahl: I guess the deciding moment was when somebody told me, "I'm dyslexic. I love what you're saying, but I have a hard time reading it."
Yong-Soo Chung: Arvid simply took the content of the newsletter, and recorded in audio.
Arvid Kahl: So that's where the podcast started. The podcast was really just me narrating the article that I wrote from my blog and my newsletter at the same time.
Yong-Soo Chung: And with a format like this...
Arvid Kahl: YouTube was just the next iteration. I just turned on the camera while I was narrating the thing.”

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:09]

Now, I know this seems like a lazy thing to do, let me assure you, it is actually the SMART thing to do.

Why? Because you DON'T have the same audience on all platforms. Most people gravitate towards a specific social platform and spend most of their time on that one.

A Twitter -- sorry, X-user -- might not spend a lot of time on YouTube.

An Instagram user might not even have an account on LinkedIn.

It ABSOLUTELY makes sense to repurpose the same content and send it out to as many distribution channels as possible.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:38]

Now, while we are still talking about Arvid's content-juicing strategy, I'd like to draw your attention to another thing he does with the interviews on his podcast.

EPISODE 24 - Arvid Kahl (23:19)
"In those interviews, I would have thoughts, I would have ideas for things to talk about. So I don't even need to source my ideas myself anymore, I just need to have a chat with somebody, and something will come up, about which I will then write the week of the interview. So both the interview and the topic that I talk about in my monologue thing are interconnected."

Yeah he too uses his guest interviews as a way to generate FRESH content for his podcast and his newsletter!

So, in summation, a single interview with a guest gives me enough materials to generate a podcast episode, a weekly newsletter, and a thread on X. I've also been experimenting with short form videos and they seem to be yielding some good results. Maybe I'll incorporate those in my content pipeline as well. And, on top of all this, I also get additional ideas for future podcast episodes too!


Yong-Soo Chung [00:22:39]

That's a 5x to 6x ROI from a single interview!

Basically, the key here is to not only repurpose content onto other platforms, but also repurpose IDEAS... Which you can recycle into future pieces of content for yourself.

Your goal with the content flywheel is to never run out of content to share. And if you set up your flywheel correctly, you should find yourself continuously generating more and more content that you can lean into with each successive rotation of the flywheel.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:23:08]

So, to summarize, here are the three key principles of my CONTENT flywheel:

PRINCIPLE NUMBER 1. Squeeze every last drop - extract as much content from each piece of raw content as possible.

PRINCIPLE NUMBER 2. Repurpose your content for different platforms - each platform has a different audience.

PRINCIPLE NUMBER 3. Identify NEW ideas from existing content and then leverage them for the next turn of your content flywheel.

Okay, the third and last flywheel that I want to talk about today, is the MONETIZATION flywheel but I'm making it available exclusively to premium members of First Class Founders.

Yeah, you might think this is ironic but I think of it as the perfect example for my monetization flywheel. And if you want to know why I think this is the PERFECT example, all you have to do is join the First Class Founders community by going to firstclassfounders.com/join - look for the link in the show notes!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:01]

Okay, let's quickly recap the key takeaways for this episode:

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 1: Every creator needs THREE kinds of flywheels: the AUDIENCE flywheel - for distribution, the PRODUCT flywheel - for your content and the MONETIZATION flywheel - for obvious reasons!

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 2: To build a robust AUDIENCE flywheel, follow these three principles: find a creator who can share useful knowledge, create great content that STANDS OUT from others, and continue to create great content CONSISTENTLY.

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 3: To build a robust CONTENT flywheel, follow these three principles: squeeze every last drop - extract as much value out of the content you create, repurpose your content for different platform,s and identify NEW ideas from existing content and then leverage them for your future content.

TAKEAWAY NUMBER 4: To build a robust MONETIZATION flywheel, become a premium member of the First Class Founders community!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:24:57]

I hope this helps you build robust flywheels as a creator and sets you on the path to generate great content, find great audiences, and monetize effectively!

Alright, that wraps up today's show! 

In the next episode of First Class Founders, I’m talking to Nick Huber! That’s right, I’m talking to Mr. Sweaty Startup, himself. If you’re not familiar with Nick, he’s built a multi-million dollar storage business along with several other businesses leveraging his massive audience on X… in true First Class Founders fashion. This is one of the best episodes to date - you definitely don’t want to miss out!

And, one last thing before I go... If you're a new listener and you enjoyed this episode, you can follow the show by going to FirstClassFounders.com and clicking on the link that matches your preferred podcast player - like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, you can also add YOUR voice to the show by leaving a message on firstclassfounders.com - for example, what did you think of this episode? Let me know.

And, when you get a chance, could you also head over to FirstClassFounders.com/review and leave the podcast a five-star review? It really helps boost credibility for the show which means more incredible guests for you! And why wouldn’t you want that? I’ll leave a link in the show notes to leave us a 5-star review. Thank you so much!

If you wanna connect with me, you can hit me up on X, formerly known as Twitter @YongSooChung. I’m pretty active there and would love to connect with you. You can find links to all my social accounts in the show notes.

I'll see you on the next episode of First Class Founders.