You Are Here

Every mall has one of those big directories behind glass. Hundreds of stores, colour-coded wings, levels stacked on top of each other, washrooms marked in blue. Somewhere in the middle sits a small red dot that says You Are Here.

That dot is the most important thing on the map. The rest of it shows you where you could go, but the dot is the only part that tells you something true about where you are. Without it, you could stand there for ten minutes, find the exact store you're looking for, and still have no idea whether to turn left or right.

We Like Starting at the Other End

When people plan a business, they usually start from the other end of the map. They picture where they want to be in a year, the income they're aiming for, or the day they can finally quit the job they don't want anymore. Those are good things to have. A destination gives you a reason to walk.

What a lot of plans skip is the dot. That isn't laziness, either. The dot can be uncomfortable to look at.

Finding it starts with writing down how many people are on your email list today, not how many you expect to have once you start posting properly. The harder part is being honest about how many hours a week you really have. Hours you'd have if work were quieter and the kids were older don't count yet. After that, look back at what you've already tried and what it actually did.

A Route From the Wrong Spot

Skip that step and you end up planning a route from where you wish you were.

Say you decide to post every day, because that's what someone with twenty free hours a week can do. You've got six. Two weeks in you're behind, and it feels like failing. It isn't, though. The plan was drawn from the wrong spot on the map, and a route that starts in the wrong place can be perfect in every other way and still never take you where you meant to go.

Marking the Dot

This doesn't take long. Grab a piece of paper and be honest with it.

Start with reach. Count the people you could contact today, on a list, in a group, or anywhere else the connection belongs to you and not to a platform. Work out how many hours a week you can give this without borrowing them from sleep or from your family. Write down what you've tried in the last three months and what came of it. Then add what you already do well, because that's on the map too.

Don't dress any of it up. Nobody else has to see it.

That's your dot. It might be smaller than you hoped, and most people's are at first. A small dot in the right place is still worth more than a big one in the wrong place.

The funny thing about the mall directory is how good it feels once you find yourself on it. Suddenly the whole map makes sense. You can see where the escalator is, and the store you wanted turns out to be closer than you thought, or farther, but at least now you know which way to walk.

Every few months, find the dot again. It won't be where it was, and that's how you'll know you've moved.

Nobody ever got lost because they knew where they were standing.