Issue #003
How I built the Coaching Flywheel
My first real job out of college, I worked at a fitness software company called Front Desk (now Pike13).
Not a glamorous start. I was answering customer support tickets, hopping on calls with gym owners, learning the product from the ground floor. But every few weeks, the company would hold an all-hands meeting, and our CEO Jon Zimmerman would talk about the flywheel.
He'd describe how each part of the business fed the next. How momentum built on itself if you kept the right things spinning. How the goal wasn't to push harder—it was to build something that eventually pushed itself.
I was 22. So, obviously, I filed it away.
WHAT’S ON DECK
The Playbook: The Coaching Flywheel’s origin story
Real Wins: What 25+ coach interviews taught me
Your Next Move: Design your own flywheel
Steal This: The books and people who shaped this
Coachstack Connect: A platform built for the system
YOUR MISSING PIECE
Most coaches build their business like a series of one-time wins. The Coaching Flywheel is designed to make each win feed the next one, so you're not starting from zero every month.
THE PLAYBOOK
The Long Road to One Clear System
It started with Jim Collins
I studied Economics and International Relations at George Mason, which gave me something I didn't fully appreciate at the time: a habit of thinking in systems. How incentives shape behavior. How small inputs compound into large outcomes. How sustainable models differ from ones that look good in year one and fall apart in year three.
Later, during my MBA at the University of Illinois, I read Good to Great by Jim Collins for the first time in a strategy course. Collins describes the flywheel as a heavy metal disc — almost impossible to move at first, but once it starts turning, each rotation adds to the last. Eventually, you're not pushing anymore. The thing is moving on its own.
I remember sitting in that class thinking about Jon Zimmerman's all-hands meetings from years earlier. The vocabulary was different, but the idea was identical.
That mental model never left me.
The coaches who changed the direction
Fast forward to early 2024. I'm lying awake at 4 AM with the idea for Coachstack forming in my head, and I spend the next several months doing what I'd learned to do in SaaS: talk to customers before building anything.
30+ interviews with career and executive coaches. Long conversations about their businesses, their clients, their day-to-day. What I heard was consistent enough to be striking.
These were talented, credentialed professionals. You know, people with real expertise and genuine results for clients. But their businesses were fragile. Income spiked when they landed a client and dropped when that client finished. They were posting on LinkedIn without a clear sense of what it was actually building toward. They had goals everywhere and systems nowhere.
One coach told me she'd had her best revenue month ever, followed immediately by her worst. She hadn't changed anything. That's the feast-or-famine cycle, and it's not a mindset problem or a marketing problem. Personally, I think it’s all structural.
That's when the flywheel clicked into place for coaching specifically. Enough with the tactics and approaches. They needed a machine.
The name came before the system
Well, here's something I haven't shared publicly before.
I had been calling the concept "The Coaching Launchpad" for months. It was fine. Descriptive enough. But it never felt quite right… it implied a moment rather than a motion. A launch is something you do once. That wasn't what I was trying to build.
One night I went back to the flywheel idea. Did a quick domain search for CoachingFlywheel.com.
Available.
I bought it within the hour.
That small decision forced a larger one. If I was going to call it a flywheel, I needed to actually build one. You know, a real, coherent system that coaches could follow from first client to sustainable income. Not a collection of tips. A cycle that compounds.
Ten years of inputs in one system
What went into building it isn't exactly a clean story. Some might think it’s messy, but one thing for sure, it was cumulative.
Years working across SaaS roles—product management, customer success, sales, operations—taught me how growth actually works at the business level, not just the marketing level. I watched companies grow fast and burn out, and I watched others grow slower and last.
I borrowed from people I'd studied and paid attention to over the years. Justin Welsh's work on building an audience and monetizing expertise shaped how I think about the early stages. Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole's writing on building a category newsletter influenced how I approached this one. Matt McGarry's thinking on newsletter growth informed the conversion side.
None of those people are coaches. I'm not pretending I invented anything here. What I did was take a decade of reading, working, interviewing, and failing, and ask one question:
What does this look like for coaches specifically?
The Coaching Flywheel is my answer to that question.
REAL WINS
The coaches I interviewed during those 25-30 sessions gave me more than market research. They gave me the honest version of what building a coaching business actually looks like—not the version that gets posted on LinkedIn.
The ones with stable, growing practices had all done some version of this cycle, even if they couldn't name it:
Clear, defined audience they were consistently showing up for
A way to stay in front of that audience that didn't depend on an algorithm
One offer that made sense for where their client was in their journey
Delivered well enough that clients talked (without being asked to refer anyone)
The ones who were struggling shared one thing in common:
Almost all of them were stuck in stage one—rented audience only, with no system to move people anywhere
Posting consistently but had no mechanism to convert that attention into anything owned or monetized
When a client finished, the pipeline was empty and they were starting from scratch again
That gap—between coaches who had built a cycle and coaches who were stuck in a loop—is exactly what the Coaching Flywheel is designed to close.
TL;DR
Peter’s guide to building your own coaching flywheel
Six stages. Each one feeds the next.
Build a rented audience. LinkedIn, social content, visibility. You don't own this audience, but it's where most potential clients first encounter you. The goal here isn't likes — it's moving people to the next stage.
Convert to an owned audience. Your newsletter, your email list. This is yours. Algorithms don't control it. When someone subscribes, you have a direct line to them, and that relationship compounds every week you show up with something worth reading.
Sell your flagship offer. When trust is built, the conversation about working together becomes natural. Not pushy. Not a pitch. A logical next step for someone who's been following your work.
Deliver results. The quality of your coaching work determines whether the flywheel keeps spinning or stalls. This stage isn't optional — it's structural. Weak delivery breaks the cycle.
Drive referrals and testimonials. Every client who gets a real result becomes a potential source of the next client. This is the stage that makes the whole thing self-sustaining over time.
Each rotation reinforces the one before it. That's the point of a flywheel. And once it's turning with enough momentum, you're not pushing anymore.
STEAL THIS
Three things worth your time if this issue resonated:
Good to Great by Jim Collins: Specifically the flywheel chapter. It's dense but worth it.
Justin Welsh's LinkedIn OS: The clearest thinking I've found on building a professional audience without burning out.
Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole's The Category Newsletter: Directly influenced how I think about what this newsletter is trying to do.
COACHSTACK CONNECT
The Coachstack platform is built around the flywheel stages — client portal, marketing hub, CRM, and business management in one place, so the system I've described above doesn't require five separate tools to run.
YOUR NEXT MOVE
Sketch your own flywheel. Not mine… yours.
Start with these four questions:
Who is in your rented audience right now, and are they actually the people you want to serve?
How are you moving them from a platform you don't own to one you do?
What's the one offer you want to be known for?
How will you deliver results consistently enough that clients refer you without being asked?
You don't need to have all four answers today. But knowing which one is missing tells you exactly where to focus.
Reply and tell me:
What would your coaching flywheel look like?
I read every response.
–
I've been thinking about the flywheel for over a decade without realizing that's what I was doing. The coaches who built the businesses they actually wanted. The ones with predictable income and clients they love working with weren't necessarily the most talented or the best marketers. Sometimes they were the someone who built a system and kept it turning.
Next week, we get into the first stage in detail: building a rented audience that actually moves.
—Peter
P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are 2 ways I can help:
Book a free strategy call — No pitch, just clarity on what's holding your coaching business back. [Book your call]
Apply for the The Signature Build — We rebuild your entire online presence in 30 days. Brand, website, lead magnet, email automation, LinkedIn, and all-in-one platform. Founding member rate: $2,999. [Apply here]