Helping People Get From Where They Are to Where They Want to Be…Sometimes That Passes Through Where They Need to Be First

Before you read another word, do one thing. Write one sentence that says where your business actually is today. Not where it is headed. Not what you are building toward. Where it is, right now, in plain words, with a number in it if you can stand to look at one.

Most people cannot do that in under a minute, and the ones who can usually pause.

Watch the pause. The hand goes to the future. We are about to launch. We are scaling. We have got something big coming. Ask a second time and you get the vision statement, and it is usually a good vision statement, because owners are good at the future. It is the present that gets tricky.

That pause is not a discipline problem. It is an honesty problem, and I understand it. Where you actually are feels like an admission, and nobody wants to read their own admission out loud, especially the person signing the checks.

So we skip it. We start with the vision because the vision is pleasant and the honest look is not. Then a year and a half later the marketing is not working, and everyone blames the marketing. The marketing was not the problem. The vision was fine. The position was wrong.

Where you need to be

Here is what I have learned, mostly the hard way: I help people get from where they are to where they want to be…sometimes that passes through where they need to be first.

I want to be careful with that word. Need. Not where they want to be next, and not where it would be impressive to be. Where they need to be. There is a difference between the place you would choose and the place that actually comes before the place you are aiming at, and it is usually a place with less to show for it.

The middle place does not look like progress

A few things I know about that middle place, from being in it more than once.

It does not look like progress from the inside. This is the part that breaks people. You are working more than you ever have, and the only visible change is that you are tired. The books look worse. The phone is quieter than you want. If you are measuring this week against last week, you will conclude you are failing, and you will be wrong, because the work that moves a business from one place to the next rarely announces itself in a single week.

It costs money in a way you cannot explain to anyone. I have been in the position of putting money into something that looked, from the outside, like it was not working. Everyone has an opinion when you are in that stretch. Most of those opinions are about what you should be spending on marketing, and almost none of them come from somebody who has had to make payroll in the same week.

I said something out loud in an interview recently that I do not usually say in a marketing conversation. I said we almost lost the business, and it really hurt us. I did not say it for sympathy and I am not saying it here for that either. I said it because every owner I talk to is somewhere on that same road, and most of them believe they are the only one on it, and that belief is expensive.

An almost-lost year does something to your arithmetic. You stop pricing for the customer you wish you had. You stop buying tools for the business you are planning to be. You start asking what this thing has to earn before it is allowed to cost.

And it changes what you are willing to say. This one is the hardest and it is the one that matters most for a business owner reading this. When you are standing in an honest place, you stop needing to sound impressive. You can tell a customer what the work actually costs, what it includes, and what it will not do. That is a much better sales position than the alternative, and you cannot fake your way into it.

I am going to keep this part general on purpose. I have been in that middle place more than once, in more than one business, and the names are not the point. The pattern is the same every time.

You think you are doing one thing and you are actually doing the thing that comes before it. The task in front of you is not the task on your plan. It is the thing that has to be true before the plan is possible, and it is almost always less interesting than what you wrote down.

The businesses that tell you the truth the fastest teach you the most. Short feedback loops, cash counted at the end of the day, either people came or they did not. When the numbers are that immediate you cannot talk your way around them, and you cannot negotiate with a week that already happened. Most owners do not have that. They have a dashboard and a story about the pipeline, and they can keep both alive for a long time.

Here is where I disagree with most of what gets taught about this. The advice is to start with the vision. Write the big goal, put it on the wall, work backwards.

I would rather you start with what you are avoiding

It is a shorter instruction and a harder one. You already know which number you have not opened, which conversation you have not had, which part of the business you walk past on the way to the part you like. It is rarely a mystery. It is whatever your attention slides off every time you sit down to look at the whole picture.

The vision is not worthless. It is just already your strong suit, and you do not need encouragement to think about where you want to be. The thing you are avoiding is what is holding your current position in place. It is the only one of the three places you can act on this week. The other two are fiction until that one is true.

An hour of work

Practical version, and it takes an hour. Write where you are, in one sentence, with one number. Then write what that place requires of you before the next place is even possible. Not the whole path. The next requirement. Then do that thing this week, and do not tell anybody you did it, because the point is not the announcement.

One more thing, and then I will leave you alone. If you are in the middle place right now, and it looks like nothing is working, I would not take that as proof that you are wrong. Most of the people I know who build anything durable have a stretch in their story that they get quiet about. Years they would not want to repeat.

That is not failure. That is the road going where roads go, which is through the parts nobody photographs.

Sometimes it passes through where you need to be first.

Frequently asked questions

What does "where you need to be first" actually mean?

It is the step that comes before the thing you are aiming at, and it is usually the step with the least visible payoff. A business that wants to grow needs a working offer before it needs more traffic. A business that wants more customers often needs to fix what happens after a customer arrives. The needed place is the unglamorous one.

Why not start with the vision instead?

Because the vision is the easy part. A clear look at where you actually are is the part that changes what you do on Monday, and it is the part people skip. You can act on your real position this week. You cannot act on a goal two years out.

How do you know if you are in that middle place?

The work is heavier, the money is tighter, and the outside signals are quiet. That combination is normal, and it is not by itself evidence that you are doing it wrong. The question to ask is whether the work you are doing is the work the next place requires.

How do I tell the difference between a necessary detour and a bad decision?

A detour removes an obstacle you can name. If you cannot say which obstacle this is clearing, it is probably a distraction wearing the costume of a plan.