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- The Consumer Flywheel LESSSon
Every transformation worth anything is really a habit loop in disguise.
Good decisions compound. And, unfortunately, bad decisions compound, too. You can eat broccoli and exercise everyday, or smoke a pack of cigarettes and doom-post on Facebook, and both of those will catch up to you. Given that level of variance, it makes these habit-loops worth a closer look.
In the context of understanding why we do what we do, in business and in creative work, these habit-loops give extra context. You can use them to build on top of the LESSS is More, Marketing is Sales at Scale frameworks (and anti- frameworks) that we’ve been discussing.
These loops can be viewed from two perspectives to help us understand the compounding power of the transformation we are offering.
Perspective one is the Consumer perspective. Perspective two is the Creator perspective. Both habit-loops are effectively flywheels, meaning once we understand what gets them spinning, we can take it so far as to develop a plan to keep them spinning.
In its simplest form, the loop consists of an external event - what I call a muse, and a moment of curiosity where that muse captures our attention. Then comes a decision to experience what we found and, finally, a habit, where we embrace what just happened and go off looking for another spark.
Not only do these rhyme, the Consumer and Creator Flywheels push each other, and I believe they’re the key drivers between any and every successfully executed idea.
The Consumer Flywheel very specifically looks like this, broken down into stages:
Muse: The moment something in the customer’s world whispers, “Pssst! Pay attention to this.”
Curiosity: The active, “What is this? Is it for me?” investigation.
Experience: The actual contact with the product/service/story, where it’s applied.
Habit: The pattern that forms when experience + meaning yearn to be repeated.
Repeat: The loop spinning faster via story, social proof, and easier re‑entry for another turn.
Let’s pick on Netflix for a moment to think how they do it.
The app is on my TV home screen (muse). If my wife and I sit down to relax and unwind, it’s easy to see it and say, “I wonder what’s there” (curiosity). Once in the app, we see shows we liked, stuff it suggests, and we inevitably commit and click on something (experience). Once we are ready to call it a night, we commit to coming back to finish the movie, or show, or see the next one, etc. (habit). That last shift - from experience back to looking for a muse again - is what keeps the consumer wheel turning.
Netflix operates on a principle of offering an emotional transformation. We can see that in each stage of their process. This is where it starts to get really cool.
Muse: The trigger that reminds you “I want to feel something different, now.”
Curiosity: The poking around that enhances “what are we in the mood for?”
Experience: The viewing experience of “now we feel it!”
Habit: The pattern that ends the experience and tees up the return, with “What will we watch tomorrow night?”
Repeat: The emotional transformation starts over and keeps spinning faster as trust is earned
Does Netflix understand this about me? You better believe it. Maybe they don’t use these terms, but they definitely know what they’re doing and it’s a big part of why the product is so successful.
Let’s map LESSS across the Consumer Flywheel in the remaining categories.
Consumer Flywheel: Logical
Muse: The trigger that reminds you “I don’t know this yet, but I’d like to.”
Curiosity: The poking around that leads to “So that’s how this works.”
Experience: The learning experience of “Wow, I get it now!”
Habit: The pattern that ends the experience and tees up the return, with “If I could figure this out, what else can I learn?”
Repeat: The logical transformation starts over and keeps spinning faster as trust in the way you explain things grows.
Consumer Flywheel: Secure
Muse: The trigger that reminds you “I don’t feel safe enough, yet.”
Curiosity: The poking around that enhances “What would make me feel covered here?”
Experience: The relief experience of “Okay, this really works when I need it!”
Habit: The pattern that ends the experience and tees up the return, with “Whenever I worry about this, I’ll come back here first.”
Repeat: The secure transformation starts over and keeps spinning faster as trust in consistent, reliable fulfillment grows.
Consumer Flywheel: Status-Sexy
Muse: The trigger that reminds you “What do they have that I don’t?”
Curiosity: The poking around that enhances “That would look great on me.”
Experience: The living experience of “I feel like a different person with this on!”
Habit: The pattern that ends the experience and tees up the return, with “Should I have another one? Should I gift one? Who can I tell?!”
Repeat: The status-sexy transformation starts over and keeps spinning faster as confidence in your relative status grows.
Now that we’ve seen how each LESSS transformation behaves inside the Consumer Flywheel, the next question is: what does a healthy flywheel look like for each type of business relationship?
Enterprise B2C: what a healthy Consumer Flywheel looks like
Enterprise B2C is a big company selling to individuals, like Netflix, Amazon, or any major direct‑to‑consumer retailer.
When the flywheel is working:
Muse: broad experiential triggers (boredom, hunger, “nothing to watch”).
Curiosity: low-friction browse/search/explore.
Experience: fast, reliable, consistent delivery.
Habit: becomes the default choice whenever the need appears.
Repeat: reinforced by ubiquity, recommendations, and routines.
The key danger Enterprise B2C companies should watch for in their Consumer Flywheel is over-personalizing or getting too artisanal in what they offer. Even Etsy keeps the shopping experience Amazon‑simple without trying to customize their role in the process. The key to success is avoiding the Artisanal Delusion.
Enterprise B2B: what a healthy Consumer Flywheel looks like
Enterprise B2B is a big company selling to other big companies, like Salesforce, or Lockheed-Martin, or any major direct‑to‑business standardized deployment. (Note: the consumer here is really teams/organizations within larger organizations.)
When the flywheel is working:
Muse: “We can’t keep doing this in spreadsheets.”
Curiosity: demos, proofs of concept, internal champions.
Experience: implementation that actually works and gets used, including managerial approval.
Habit: daily workflow embedded in the tool, compliance sanctioned.
Repeat: renewals, upsells, and org‑wide standardization.
The danger in Enterprise B2B’s Consumer Flywheel is failing to find solutions that are inherently scalable. Just because a manager approves of an outcome doesn’t mean compliance will bless it. This team-of-teams procedural understanding is critical to avoiding the Bespoke Illusion.
Boutique B2C: what a healthy Consumer Flywheel looks like
Boutique B2C is a small company selling direct to singular consumers, like a neighborhood restaurant, a niche creator, or a small luxury goods business.
When the flywheel is working:
Muse: “I want that specific experience (again).”
Curiosity: intimate discovery channels / referrals (friends, small socials, word of mouth).
Experience: intense, memorable, story-worthy.
Habit: occasional but cherished repeat visits.
Repeat: stories and referrals about the experience as the ongoing spin.
The danger in Boutique B2C’s Consumer Flywheel grows out of success. Because the value is driven in part by scarcity, attempts to increase volume can work against the transformation that makes it special. Social media and the internet have made this extremely tempting and dangerous - avoid the Algorithmic Mirage of optimizing for reach and volume until the whole thing feels generic.
Boutique B2B: what a healthy Consumer Flywheel looks like
Boutique B2B is a small or specialist company selling to another small company or a small group inside of a larger company, with a much scarcer, and more highly customizable offering. Imagine a specialist advisory firm, or a small creative agency.
When the flywheel is working:
Muse: “We have a weird, specific problem here.”
Curiosity: referrals from trusted sources, case studies that rhyme, one-to-one conversations across the professional network.
Experience: custom, high-attention engagement and execution.
Habit: “call our people” whenever that niche issue appears.
Repeat: slow, steady referrals from delighted clients.
A Boutique B2B Consumer Flywheel will spin out of control if the business attempts to scale too far and too fast. Again, with scarcity as a core value driver, any attempt to offer more products or services than the current providers can deliver will spread the organization thin and weaken the quality and relationships driving the value to this point. Avoid the Premature Scale Myth by refusing to turn a referral‑driven practice into a cold outbound sales machine.
Each relationship type wants to spin a particular kind of Consumer Flywheel. Their success and their growth is dependent on them knowing and understanding what that process looks like. The dangers labeled capture the stories consumers tell themselves when they stumble into the wrong flywheel. The mistakes from the previous section are, at their core, examples of attempts to spin the wrong flywheel for the relationship you actually have.
Given how common these mistakes are, you’d think understanding them would be common if not obvious. Unfortunately, I know from experience that I’ve had to cobble together this understanding on my own. Learning to spot these examples has helped me understand what is working with a business and their customer base, or not, in short order.
If this is how your customers’ habits spin when things go right, the next post in this series will consider how to look at your own habits - what I call, the Creator Flywheel, that either keeps this spinning and compounding forward or quietly tries to spin until it dies out.