Speaker 1: In the world of business and startups, how do you
Speaker 1: turn hard manual effort into effortless momentum. Nathan Barry, the
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of convert Kit, has found a way,
Speaker 1: and it all comes down to a concept from physics
Speaker 1: called a flywheel. So what on earth is a flywheel
Speaker 1: and how did Nathan use the concept to revolutionize convert
Speaker 1: Kit's sales process and tobocharge his company's growth. Welcome to
Speaker 1: How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies
Speaker 1: for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.
Speaker 1: On today's quick Win episode, we go back to an
Speaker 1: interview from the past and I pick out a quick
Speaker 1: win that you can apply today. In today's show, I
Speaker 1: speak with Nathan Barry about how he applied flywheels to
Speaker 1: grow convert Kit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a flywheel is a concert than physics really
Speaker 2: of taking manual effort and then transferring it into something
Speaker 2: that like either storing the energy or carrying it forward.
Speaker 2: So the first time that I encountered a flywheel was
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight and I was in Lisutu,
Speaker 2: which is the landlocked country inside of South Africa, and
Speaker 2: we were working at an orphanage and we had drilled
Speaker 2: a well and we were going to put a pump
Speaker 2: on top of the well. And Masera, the capital city
Speaker 2: where we were at, had electricity, but in the two
Speaker 2: weeks we were there, I think it went out like
Speaker 2: eight times. So we didn't really want to put in
Speaker 2: an electric pump on this well, and so I was
Speaker 2: thinking like, okay, we're adding a hand pump, and Jason,
Speaker 2: one of the guys leading our trip, was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: We're gonna put a flywheel on it. So instead of
Speaker 2: the hand pump, which would be this long handle, you
Speaker 2: go and pump your water and this the handle gives
Speaker 2: you leverage, but there's a direct tie between the effort
Speaker 2: that you put in and the impact or the results
Speaker 2: that you get back. And at the moment you stopped pumping,
Speaker 2: you immediately stopped getting water. And so instead of that,
Speaker 2: the flywheel is this large metal wheel that sits up
Speaker 2: on top of the pump. It's hard to get going initially,
Speaker 2: but instead of this linear up and down movement, it
Speaker 2: carries that momentum forward and it builds momentum over time.
Speaker 2: It still needed input, but I could basically with one
Speaker 2: or two fingers, just keep this thing spinning. And so
Speaker 2: that's a metaphor. Obviously, like we get to apply it
Speaker 2: to all these other areas of life and business, and
Speaker 2: like we talked about health and fitness. That's a flywheel.
Speaker 2: It is incredibly difficult to get going if you're starting
Speaker 2: with really small changes. You're just saying, oh, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: eat a piece of fruit every day. You can build
Speaker 2: on from there. So I really came to three laws
Speaker 2: that define a flywheel, especially in the business case. The
Speaker 2: first is every step in a flywheel should flow smoothly
Speaker 2: from one into the next. The second law is that
Speaker 2: it should get easier with each rotation, and then the
Speaker 2: third laws it should deliver more with every rotation. So
Speaker 2: that's flywheels at a high level. But and we can
Speaker 2: go wherever you'd like from there.
Speaker 1: I would love to get an example from within convert
Speaker 1: Kit in the sales process, because I think everyone listening
Speaker 1: will have some kind of a sales process in their business,
Speaker 1: maybe that are directly involved in sales. How have you
Speaker 1: gone about applying the flywheel concept to driving sales at
Speaker 1: convert Kit.
Speaker 2: One of the biggest things that I did is I
Speaker 2: started direct sales being a content marketer. I was thinking,
Speaker 2: I'm going to grow through content, right, that is how
Speaker 2: this business is going to grow. Turns out it's really
Speaker 2: really hard to sell software through content, especially software that's
Speaker 2: not very good yet because it's new, and so the
Speaker 2: pivot to direct sales really let me grow the company
Speaker 2: and get traction early on, especially because what happens when
Speaker 2: selling through content is if you and I are having
Speaker 2: a conversation. We're sitting across from each other at a
Speaker 2: coffee shop and I'm saying, would you like to buy
Speaker 2: convert it become a customer. If you were to like
Speaker 2: look at me and then like push back your chair
Speaker 2: and without saying anything, just get up and leave, that
Speaker 2: would be socially unacceptable on so many levels. Right. If
Speaker 2: I say, hey, will you buy this thing? You were
Speaker 2: obligated by the rules of our society to give me
Speaker 2: a response. It might be like maybe I'll think about
Speaker 2: it or no, but you have to give me a response.
Speaker 2: And whatever response you give me, I can learn from
Speaker 2: that when you think about content marketing. That socially unacceptable
Speaker 2: interaction happens all the time. I can just hit the
Speaker 2: back button. I've completely rejected you. You get no feedback,
Speaker 2: and that's what happens on the web. So I love
Speaker 2: it when people will go into direct sales because it
Speaker 2: gets them all of the feedback. So my flywheel for
Speaker 2: convertant direct sales like it worked, and then now years later,
Speaker 2: I'm like, why did that work? I'm like, that was
Speaker 2: a flywheel and I didn't even realize it. So I
Speaker 2: started just identifying potential customers. I looked at who was
Speaker 2: successful and convert it, and I was like, okay, let
Speaker 2: me find people like them that got me, Like lists
Speaker 2: of men's fashion bloggers in New York Paley Arrecipe blog,
Speaker 2: try to get as specific as possible. Then I'd reach
Speaker 2: out with a personal message and I would ask about
Speaker 2: what was frustrating So specifically I'd see that they're using
Speaker 2: mail jump and I'd say, hey, I was wondering whether
Speaker 2: what's your biggest frustration with using mailchip. The reason I
Speaker 2: ask is I'm working building a tool called convert it
Speaker 2: and it's used by and I would drop my the
Speaker 2: only two relevant names that I had that was a
Speaker 2: customer or someone else, and I just love to get
Speaker 2: your feedback, right, So I'd start with that it had
Speaker 2: a pretty good reply right, and people would say, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm really frustrated with it's hard to tag and organize
Speaker 2: my audience, it's hard to set up automations that are
Speaker 2: relevant to my subscribers, things like that, which very conveniently.
Speaker 2: I'd built the product because I use mail Chip, but
Speaker 2: I was frustrated by these exact same things, and so
Speaker 2: I'd say like, oh, here's how we're solving. I'd love
Speaker 2: to get on a call and show that to you.
Speaker 2: And that worked really well, and at some point I'd
Speaker 2: ask for the sale and they would usually say no
Speaker 2: now thankfully because we're on a call, they had to
Speaker 2: tell me why. And the reason they said why was
Speaker 2: usually it's too much work to migrate. We've been using
Speaker 2: this other tool for three years, five years, and we're
Speaker 2: deeply embedded, until finally, like, out of desperation, like it's
Speaker 2: not that much work, blah blah blah, I'll do it
Speaker 2: for you for free. And that's where our concierge migration
Speaker 2: was born. And I would pull up their mail Chip
Speaker 2: account and their can Work account here and another like copy
Speaker 2: and paste over their emails and then edit all their
Speaker 2: forms and switch those over. And what that did is
Speaker 2: That's how I landed the customer, and then I would
Speaker 2: get a testimonial and the recommendation, Hey, who else should
Speaker 2: I get on? Convert it? That recommendation to other people
Speaker 2: completed the loop right. It brings my flywheel background to
Speaker 2: the beginning, because then now I've identified new customers. And
Speaker 2: so if we go through our three laws for this
Speaker 2: direct sales flywheel first is every step moves smoothly one
Speaker 2: into the next. Right, migration goes to testimonial, which leads
Speaker 2: to new customers or new referrals that I can then
Speaker 2: talk to next. It gets easier with every rotation because
Speaker 2: my prospecting got more dialed in my cold email, I
Speaker 2: knew what worked. My sales calls got a lot better,
Speaker 2: the product got better, and then it also drove more
Speaker 2: results with every rotation because I could reach more and
Speaker 2: more people. Word of mouth started to kick in a
Speaker 2: little bit, and so I just noticed that that flywheel
Speaker 2: was so hard to turn it first, but it got
Speaker 2: just a tiny bit easier with every rotation up until
Speaker 2: the point that we've just had a huge amount of
Speaker 2: momentum in word of mouth.
Speaker 1: That's such a great story, such a great example. I
Speaker 1: love that I hope you enjoying today's Quick Win episode.
Speaker 1: If you would like to hear the full chat with Nathan,
Speaker 1: you can find a link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
Speaker 1: you work, can Live. I write a short weekly newsletter
Speaker 1: that contains tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for that at Amantha dot com.
Speaker 1: That's Amantha dot com. If you like today's show, make
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Speaker 1: on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of
Speaker 1: the Coulan Nation. A big thank you to my editor
Speaker 1: Rowena Murray and Martin Nimber for doing the sound mix.