So What The Heck Is A Flywheel-old?

Hi there! My name is Melvyn Tan.

Before I talk about myself, let’s dive into what the heck is a flywheel.

To build a profitable one-person business can sometimes feel like turning a huge and heavy flywheel.

At first, the flywheel appears to inch forward in spite of pushing with great effort. As you keep pushing, the flywheel starts moving a little faster. Until, at some point, you achieve a breakthrough.

Sadly, most never see that breakthrough.

One-person business

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You’ve likely come across the growing number of one-person businesses online.

Most of these solopreneurs start by providing client services. Some progressed to becoming digital businesses by creating and selling digital products, where they earn an income with minimal involvement.

However, these one-person digital businesses, including myself, struggle to leverage technology effectively.

For the most part, we face one or more of these three major challenges:

• Getting discovered online
• Navigating the feast/famine cycle of solopreneurship
• Creating digital products that no one wants

Our mission here is to help you overcome these challenges by building a flywheel for your profitable digital business.

The flywheel effect

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The profitable one-person digital businesses are benefiting from the strategic compounding effect of their flywheels called the flywheel effect.

The flywheel effect and its impact on businesses is based on the book by Jim Collins, Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great:

In creating a good-to-great transformation, 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.

The flywheel, if well conceived and well executed, builds upon previous work leading to a virtuous cycle that creates an almost unstoppable momentum.

Per Collins:

Never underestimate the power of a great flywheel, especially when it builds compounding momentum over a very long time. Once you get your flywheel right, you want to renew and extend that flywheel for years to decades—decision upon decision, action upon action, turn by turn—each loop adding to the cumulative effect.

To accomplish this, you need to build a well designed flywheel that focuses on your message.

Build your flywheel now

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The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

—Chinese Proverb

If you want to build a one-person digital business that makes a great impact on the lives of your audience and yourself, then take your first step by building your flywheel around your message.

To help you get started, I’ve put together a three-part free email course where you’ll discover the principles behind building your flywheel around your message:

• “We-centric” message. Your message isn’t resonating with your audience because it’s “I-centric”. By making the shift from “I-centric” to “we-centric”, it helps your message resonates with the audience you want to attract.

• Existing demand. Your audience are already problem-aware. They’re actively searching for a solution. Find out how to align your message to their searches for solutions.

• Contrarian thinking. Find out how to offer solutions to solve their problems in a new way. With contrarian thinking, you can create solutions that generate multiple streams of diversified income for your one-person digital business.

About Melvyn Tan

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Hi there!

Allow me re-introduce myself. My name is Melvyn Tan.

I’m a strategy and systems consultant, content strategist, educator, one-person digital business, traveler, husband, and Dad based in Singapore.

From a consultant for small businesses to being a one-person digital business owner myself, I’ve witnessed the process of starting, building, and growing businesses.

While the end goal is rewarding, I find the process to be the most satisfying.

Specifically, I enjoy the process of identifying the needs of my audience, designing solutions to address their needs, and then scaling it via digital products.

As a strategy and systems consultant, I founded LINE Consulting in 2002 with a focus on helping small business apply for grants and subsidies provided by the government. In 2004, my partner and I worked pivoted to working with schools in Singapore on their School Excellence Journey. In 2005, we grew by 450 percent—signing up 18 schools—within six months at an average revenue per client of $10,000.

In 2009, LINE Consulting was officially appointed by the Academy of Singapore Teachers of Ministry of Education to conceptualize, develop, and deliver the Induction Program for School Staff Developers. This was our first experience of the flywheel effect because going forward almost 80 percent of all new businesses were via referrals from School Staff Developers.

As a traveler, I took a one-year travel adventure with my wife and two young children. From September 2016 through September 2017, we traveled to 13 countries and 46 cities in the United States and Europe. During this one-year travel adventure, I learned to leverage technology to create and sell digital products online. This became my second experience of the flywheel effect, where selling digital products allows me to work from anywhere I want.

In 2018, I created a total of 184 videos on LinkedIn and earned close to 500,000 views. This was by third experience of the flywheel effect, where these videos led to businesses and brands discovering me on LinkedIn.

Leveraging the flywheel effect, I started Befinity Media in 2018, where I was booked for speaking engagements, training contracts, private coaching clients. In addition, it gave me the opportunity to serve as a content strategist for prestigious brands like Yeo’s, Repsol Lubricants, Citibank, and Steinway & Sons.

You can get in touch with me here.

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