Find Your North Star

Today I want to talk about the need to find your North Star for your business and the value this will provide to your day to day actions. What do I mean by North Star? To me this means the one big purpose that drives all decisions for your business. It is much more than just your corporate principles. It is your reason for being. For a company like Apple, it might be designing beautiful products for consumers. For a company like Tesla, maybe they would say to make all cars in the world electric. Think big on this North Star.

I run a group called Beyond The Game Network. We pair our team of pro athletes with startups to drive value for both. When we think about our North Star, it is that our athletes are our biggest asset. For us, this concept drives decisions we make every single day. It means that we only invest in a startup if there is a clear path for our athletes to help the company. It means that the athletes in the group will never pay for anything we offer, and no one will sell to them through us unless it is a paid sponsorship. It means that the athletes won’t be pushed to invest in startups, and if they want to invest then we need to insure they have the education and resources to do it effectively.

The great part of getting this North Star set for your business is that once you do, decision making becomes so much easier. When you are approached about something new from inside or outside the company, you just ask if it aligns with your North Star. If not, well that’s an easy no. You have the answer and the reason ready to go for whoever is asking you. No role for our athletes? Forget about it. You want to sell something to our athletes? No thank you. The art to this is making sure you define your North Star broadly enough to not restrict your activities unnecessarily. Find a broad, clearly defined North Star and you can follow it every day.

Thanks for reading today’s post, I hope this provides you a helpful framework to guide your business.