I’m often asked “Why are you called My TrueNORTH?” so thought it best if I shared the story behind our #brand. (After all, every business has its own story, right?)
The Story of the Explorer’s Compass
Imagine. You are an explorer standing exactly on the North Pole. It’s been a long journey and it’s freezing cold. You pull out your compass.
What direction would the needle on the compass point?
The answer may not be what you think!
In order to answer this question, you will have to understand the difference between the true geographic north and magnetic north.
Because these two north locations are completely different.
What is the Geographic (True) North Pole?
The Earth rotates on the geographic north and south poles. The geographic north and south poles are where lines of longitude (meridians) converge in the north. The south and north pole are directly opposite to one another.
The North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Scientists have tried marking the North pole. Because the water here is permanently covered with moving sea ice, it’s practically impossible to construct any type of permanent station at the true North Pole.
On the other side of the Earth, the South Pole lies on a continental landmass known as Antarctica. Because the ice on top of Antarctica moves only a few meters a year, the United States Antarctica program has installed a marker here to delineate the true South Pole.
What is the Magnetic North Pole?
The Earth is one big magnet. The Magnetic North Pole (also known as the North Dip Pole) is a point on Ellesmere Island in Northern Canada where the northern lines of attraction enter the Earth.
A compass needle rests freely in its casing so it can manoeuvre itself. When you pull out a compass, it aligns itself with the Earth’s magnetic field. The small magnetic pin is how a compass responds to Earth’s magnetism.
This means that a compass needle will point to the Magnetic North Pole – which is different from the geographic north.
But how much of a difference is the magnetic north vs geographic north? (And what has this got to do with my business?)
Where would a compass needle point if you were standing on the true North Pole?
If you were standing on the geographic north pole holding your compass, it would point towards northern Canada at Ellesmere Island. This is a difference of about 500 kilometres between the Geographic North and Magnetic North poles! But, the Magnetic North Pole is actually moving kilometres every year. This phenomenon is known as the Polar Shift Theory.
Magnetic inclination varies according to where you are located on the globe. In order to point you in the right direction, users can compensate for magnetic inclination by using charts of declination or local calibration.
What has any of this got to do with my business?
When you first set out in business. Whether that quit your job or simply determined you wanted to work for yourself. You had a plan, a goal, a vision of what success looked like for you, your family, your business.
Ever since then, you’ve been busy working towards making that a reality. And yet, in my experience (17 years a Business Owner, and having worked now with well over 8,000 others) those who actually achieve everything they first set out to achieve are few and far between. (Statistics, shows less than 6% of business owners ever achieve what they first intended for their goals and success aspirations).
So why is that?
Ask the 94% who don’t achieve their goals, and they have a long list of reasons as to why it never worked the way they had expected:
- Recession
- Government
- Brexit
- COVID
- War
- Competition
Trust me, if I had £1 for every time someone offered me a reason as to why they didn’t achieve their goals, I’d be a wealthy man! The simple fact is, (just like an explorer seeking to reach the pole) life got in the way and they got blown off course!
So are you Explorers?
Yes, and no. My TrueNORTH is a team of Business #Scaleup Sherpa’s. We work with ethical business leaders, who are seeking to align themselves and their businesses with bigger, bolder, more impactful goals. They recognise they may have been ‘blown off course’ (within My TrueNORTH we refer to this as SOS – Shiny Object Syndrome) and seek help, guidance, support and accountability to recalibrate both them and their business with those aspirational goals of achieving Success Summit
Just as a Sherpa is there to support the Explorer achieve their summit. We tailor our proven methodology to you and your business. Ensuring we align you, your team and your business, to the long term goals and aspirations your first had when you first started. And make this a milestone for all to work towards (But not its final destination…)
Our holistic business compass looks at your business from 8 different perspectives. And ensures each has the right people, systems and processes, and are aligned with the goals and aspirations of the business leader.
But beyond this, we also work on legacy, helping leaders live a legacy (rather than simply leave one behind), enabling them to love what they do, for what it, in turn, does for them, their stakeholders and their businesses.
Isn’t it time you reviewed the direction of travel within your business? Our #ADDAZERO ScaleUp Scorecard offers you the opportunity to benchmark your business against more than 117K other businesses and identify the opportunities and vulnerabilities in your business. With practical guidance and where to focus your attention first.
What’s more, it’s FREE
As part of our mission, to support 1,000,000 Business Owners to significantly and sustainably scale up their businesses, sufficiently to generate more new roles than there are those seeking employment, and eradicate unemployment in the UK. We are gifting this in-depth, bespoke scaleup report to you FOR FREE.
Simply click on THIS LINK to get started…