How to go from SMART goals to flywheels

If you're setting SMART goals for your creator business, you're already ahead of the game. But while it's a good start, it's not the whole picture. Why? Because goals have an end.

You reach the milestone, check the box, and ask yourself: What now? You need to set the next goal and then the next one, and exert energy to accomplish them. It can get tiring pretty quickly.

The good news is that there is an alternative way, systems. Systems never stop. Once you set them in place, they can bring the results for years to come with minimal effort from you.

An effective business flywheel for creators combines the best of both worlds: SMART goals for direction and effective systems for scaling and growing efficiently.

If you're not sure what a creator economy flywheel is or how to set one up for your business, we've got you covered. In this article, we will walk you through a proven roadmap to transform your SMART goals into SMART(ER) goals and turn them into a self-reinforcing loop of revenue, engagement, and rapid growth.

Goal-First vs. System-First

Founder and CEO of Kit, Nathan Barry, believes there are three ways to do things in any creator business:

• Scattered: You have a loose goal and direction in mind, but no solid strategy or systems in place to help you get there effectively.
• Linear: You know where you're going and how to get there, but every time you set a new goal, you're back to square one—no efficient systems are in place.
• Flywheel: You know where you're going and how to get there, and you have systems in place that work for you even in your sleep.

You never want to be doing things in a scattered way, but even doing things in a linear way may not be sustainable in the long term. Let us explain why.

Imagine two creators: Jada, a wellness coach who has a goal of launching an online course, and Mateo, a productivity expert who has a YouTube channel and wants to create an online course, too.

Jada set the goal of launching an online course that brings in $10K in the first 90 days. She's working in a linear way: set the goal and figure out the steps to achieve it. After creating the course, she promotes it to her followers on social, runs some ads for the offering, and hits her $10K goal in less than 90 days.

After the intense pre-launch and launch period, Jada is exhausted. She accomplished her goal, but without reliable systems in place to support her offer post-launch, she needs to actively invest time and effort to keep up the sales.

Mateo takes a different approach. He builds a system: he creates a free lead magnet and drives traffic to it through his YouTube channel (evergreen content) to get people into his email list, where he has set up automation to nurture every lead. At the end of the welcoming sequence, he sells his course.

After people take the course, he invites them to join his affiliate program. People who love the course rave about it to others and bring new leads to Mateo's course without him having to lift a finger. It's a slower approach, but his revenue grows steadily over time without needing big-time launches over and over again.

Jada has a goal-first mindset. Mateo uses system-first and builds a creator flywheel instead.

Flywheel Anatomy

The flywheel effect was first introduced by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great in 2001, but this business concept was made famous by none other than Amazon. Brad Stone explains how Amazon used this strategy to build an empire in the book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

"Lower prices led to more customer visits. More customers increased the volume of sales and attracted more commission-paying third-party sellers to the site. That allowed Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like the fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the website. This greater efficiency then enabled it to lower prices further. Feed any part of this flywheel, they reasoned, and it should accelerate the loop," Stone writes.

The flywheel anatomy consists of four steps:

• Attract: Draw the attention of your ideal audience through free, valuable offers (lead magnets, blog posts, etc.)
• Convert: Turn warm leads into paying customers through optimized funnels (landing pages, low-ticket offers, etc.).
• Expand: Utilize upsells, order bumps, bundles, and other offers to increase lifetime customer value.
• Advocate: Encourage satisfied students to promote your brand via referrals, affiliate programs, user-generated content, testimonials, and community engagement.

A well-designed creator economy flywheel creates compounding course revenue without you having to chase down each individual sale.

Mapping SMART(ER) Goals to Create Effective Flywheel

We already discussed the difference between creators who are goal-oriented first versus creators who are system-focused first. However, when it comes to setting SMART goals vs systems, it doesn't have to be one or the other. Most successful creators set SMART(ER) goals and use systems to achieve them.

SMART(ER) Goals: The Framework Explained

Setting SMART(ER) goals is crucial for success. It helps you get clear and focused about what you're trying to achieve, so you're not just "hoping" that something works, but you have a proper strategy in place and can measure success.

SMART goals are:

• Specific: Your goal is clear and detailed.
• Measurable: Your goals are measurable, so you can track progress and asses as needed.
• Achievable: Be realistic about the goals you set, but they need to be just a little bit out of reach to entice you to push forward.
• Relevant: Your goals should align with the overall bigger business strategy and aid it.
• Timebound: Your goals need to have a deadline so you can see the finish line.

SMART(ER) goals are everything above, plus two additional steps that help improve your chances of success:

• Evaluate: Don't set your goals and forget about them. Make sure you do regular check-ins with yourself to evaluate what's working and what's not.
• Recycle: After you evaluate, repurpose what worked for you in the past instead of coming up with content, offers, and strategies from scratch each time.

SMART(ER) Goals Flywheel Integration

Once you have set your SMART(ER) goals, it's time to build the flywheel systems to help you achieve those goals. How do you do that? Let's break it down.

Let's say you're a stylist who sells 1:1 styling sessions. You set a SMART(ER) business goal of gaining 1,000 newsletter subscribers in the next 90 days. Here's how you'd achieve it by building a flywheel system:

• Attract: Create a 10-page workbook on how to build a capsule wardrobe and a landing page that captures email addresses. For the next 90 days, post Instagram Reels and TikTok styling videos that offer value and promote the freebie in the end.
• Convert: Set up an automated onboarding email sequence for people who sign up to receive your freebie that delivers the lead magnet, introduces your work as a stylist, and promotes the 1:1 styling coaching at the very end for those who want personalized help styling their wardrobe.
• Expand: As an upsell to your 1:1 styling session, offer a color analysis. Alternatively, you can offer personalized wardrobe audits as order bumps.
• Advocate: Create an automated email delivery for every customer that asks for their feedback on the session and encourages them to leave a review in written or video format. You could offer a discount code for the future as an incentive.

Building a flywheel system like this that runs by itself for every goal you have is a surefire way to growth and long-term success.

Your Creator Flywheel Blueprint

To help you map your own creator business flywheel, we have created a free, downloadable, fully customizable canvas.

Use it to:

• Identify the best ways to attract new leads
• Build effective funnels and warm-up automation to turn warm leads into paying customers
• Find additional ways to provide value and increase customer LTV
• Design a referral and advocacy loop that grows your business while you sleep

Friction Audit & Momentum Metrics

Setting goals and creating systems that help reach them is just part of the success. Another crucial component is auditing the performance, reviewing the metrics, and strategically pivoting. For the flywheel to be successful, you have to reduce friction and ensure the velocity is just right.

Run a Friction Audit

A friction audit means looking at your systems and reviewing where, in the process, you're losing momentum. You need to know where people get confused, frustrated, or drop off before they take action, so you can adjust and improve:

• Where are people bouncing? Check your website and landing page analytics to see whether the visitors leave early without taking action. If your landing page promoting a freebie has high traffic but a low conversion rate, it's a sign that something is off and needs improvement.
• Is the CTA clear? If someone lands on your blog post but doesn't see a clear CTA (call-to-action) that gets them deeper into your ecosystem, they may need to email or DM you. Or they may simply leave without taking action. That's friction that's bad for business.
• Upsells too early or too late? Timing is everything when it comes to making a sale. If you offer something too early, people won't buy because they may not trust you enough yet. And if you offer too late when they're already checked out, busy with something else, you may also be losing potential sales.

Momentum Metrics

Momentum metrics are not vanity numbers. These guidelines are essential for tracking the effectiveness of your flywheel. Pay attention to:

• Monthly email list growth: Your email list is one of the most important assets, and the monthly growth (%) tells you whether your "Attract" stage is effective or if it may need to be tweaked because it doesn't speak to your ideal audience.
• Sales velocity: Tracking the average time from acquiring the lead to them making a purchase tells you how well your "Convert" funnels are working. The faster someone makes a purchase, the more efficient your funnels are.
• LTV (lifetime value) per buyer: This metric measures how much money a customer spends over time. High LTV is what you should be aiming for, and it tells you that your "Expand" stage of the flywheel is working well.
• Referral rate: Tracking the referrals allows you to see how well your current students are advocating for your brand, which is key for long-term business success and shows you whether the "Advocate" stage is set up effectively.

Teachable Feature Stack: Fuel for Your Flywheel

Teachable Pro makes building an effective flywheel for your creator business easy in multiple ways:

• Landing pages: You can create fully customizable landing pages for every offer you have that converts visitors into paying customers. No coding or design knowledge is needed, and the whole process takes only hours and not days.
• Abandoned cart emails: Set up an automated abandoned cart email flow that triggers whenever someone adds one of your offers to the cart without checking out to entice people to finish the purchase. You can set it and forget it while knowing that you're not losing any warm leads.
• Order bumps: Create effective order bumps to complement your high-ticket offers and grow your revenue without additional effort.
• Coaching: Expand your offerings even further by offering coaching packages as a standalone product or as a way to add extra value to existing offerings.
• Affiliates: Make advocating for your brand easy with affiliate program integration that handles the onboarding and payments for you.
• Community and memberships: Turn your audience into raving fans with the community and membership features that allow you to create a space for your students to connect and build long-lasting relationships.

Successful Creator Case Studies

Let's take a look at three creator examples who have successfully implemented the flywheel method for their businesses.

Sahil Bloom

Sahil Bloom is an athlete-turned-investor and content creator who runs a newsletter with over 300,000 subscribers. His goal is to grow his newsletter to one million subscribers using a very effective flywheel system:

• Attract & Convert: He uses Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to engage his audience and attract new subscribers to his newsletter.
• Expand: He uses the Kit Sponsor Network to find sponsorships for his newsletter to monetize his subscribers.
• Advocate: Sahil reinvests what he earns into acquiring more subscribers using SparkLoop's Partner Network. The platform allows him to pay to acquire high-quality subscribers who are automatically added to his list.

Ali Abdaal

Ali Abdaal is a doctor-turned-YouTuber who is known for his YouTuber Academy and productivity content. Over the years, he has built a highly effective flywheel structure that helps his creator business make millions every year. Here's what his flywheel system looks like:

• Attract: Ali has a YouTube channel where he gives away tons of valuable content to his ideal audience for free.
• Convert: He tailors the content to speak to his ideal audience, who is interested in starting their own YouTube channel. At the end of his extensive YouTube videos, he upsells his YouTuber Academy, a premium course.
• Expand: Aside from the online course, he also has a community for entrepreneurs and a book on productivity that he promotes to his audience where relevant.
• Advocate: Ali's very open about his students and their success stories that speak for themselves. His wife, Dr. Izzy Sealey, is a YouTuber who took his online course and started her own channel as a result, which has grown to hundreds of thousands of followers in record time. And she's not the only success story of people who have taken Ali's course and gone on to start successful YouTube channels.

Nathan Barry

Nathan Barry, the founder and CEO of Kit, also uses a flywheel business strategy to make money as a content creator. Here's how he does it:

• Attract: Nathan uses the Sparkloop Partner Network to attract high-quality newsletter subscribers who are interested in joining his email list.
• Convert: He offers a high-quality free email magnet to get people onto his email list, where he has strategic automation set up to warm up any new leads he has.
• Expand: After the free content, the warm-up leads receive multiple offers for low-ticket products that are relevant to the free content people receive when signing up for their newsletter.
• Advocate: He then reinvests the money he makes to attract more subscribers to his list and grow it even further.

90-Day Flywheel Activation Plan

It's possible to completely transform your business in 90 days. Set SMART(ER) goals, and build a flywheel system to help you achieve them in no time with this 90-day activation plan:

Week 1: Clarify Your Offer & Audience

First, define your core transformation. What's the big outcome your course or service delivers? Then, identify your ideal buyer. What problems are they actively looking to solve? Once you know that, choose the main offer to anchor your flywheel.

Week 2: Map Your Flywheel

Download our Creator Flywheel Canvas. Using it, define your current and planned activities in each stage (Attract, Convert, Expand, Advocate) and set one SMART(ER) goal per spoke:

• Attract: 500 new leads in 30 days
• Convert: 5% sales conversion from freebie
• Expand: 30% of buyers purchase the upsell
• Advocate: 10 student testimonials

Week 3: Create Your Lead Magnet + Entry Point

The next step is to design a freebie that solves a small, urgent problem (checklist, mini-course, template). Then, build an optimized landing page on Teachable (or another platform). Next, connect an email welcome sequence that primes subscribers for your offer and introduces them to your brand.

Week 4: Set Up Your Funnel

It's time to add your core offer (course/product) to Teachable. Then, create an order bump that complements the core offer well and helps solve an issue your audience has. Don't forget to set up tracking and analytics to measure success.

Week 5: Publish Content to Attract

Time for action! Launch 2–3 high-value pieces of content that link to your freebie and invite people to sign up for your email list. It could be blog posts, YouTube or podcast episodes, Instagram Reels, TikTok videos, or anything else you prefer.

Week 6: Warm Up Your List & Launch

You want to send a pre-launch email series (introduce yourself, tease benefits, and give tons of value for free) to your email list. Building trust is super important, and your email list is the place to do that. At the very end of the warm-up sequence, sell your offer to them.

Week 7: Collect Proof & Engage

This step is crucial for maximizing your sales! So, gather early testimonials or feedback from your students. Create a private community and invite them to join so they get added value and a place to connect with other people. If possible, ask engaged students to record a quick video. Video testimonials have a much stronger impact.

Week 8: Advocate Engine On

It's time to turn up the heat and launch a simple referral program or affiliate link system (Teachable makes it super easy). Then, follow up post-purchase with a "Share the love" email, inviting people to join and give your brand a shout-out.

Week 9: Friction Audit

With every part in place, you want to do a friction audit to make sure everything is working well. Where are people bouncing? Review your landing page heatmaps or analytics and pay attention to all the areas that may need improvement.

Week 10: Funnel Optimization

By now, you should have enough data to help you optimize. Identify your top three highest-performing content pieces and double down with ads or cross-promotions to maximize the impact.

Tweak your email sequence or sales page based on open/click/purchase data. Improve copy clarity, visual hierarchy, or trust-building elements like testimonials.

Week 11: Evaluate & Recycle

Time to evaluate your flywheel performance. Review your SMART(ER) goals:

• What exceeded expectations?
• What flopped—and why?

You want to turn successful content into evergreen assets (automated sequences, lead gen ads) and repurpose testimonials into ads, sales page copy, or emails. Scrap what didn't work!

Week 12: Plan the Next Loop

Congrats, you made it to the end of your 90-day experiment! With everything you've learned, it's time for the next big thing. Set new 30- to 90-day goals using real data from your experiment and create a second flywheel that works for you while you sleep.

Start small. Build tight. Evaluate and pivot smarter. That's how you grow compounding course revenue with a business flywheel that will serve you for years to come. 

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