My team and I used to track a lot of numbers.
Revenue. Expenses. Conversion rates. Website traffic. Email opens. The list goes on. An hour every week, staring at spreadsheets, tracking everything.
And you know what? It didn’t help. I’d look at all these metrics and think… “Okay, cool. Now what?”
We were drowning in data but starving for insight.
The Problem with Tracking Everything
You might not know it yet, but maybe you’re making the same mistake we did. Tracking too much. Have dashboards with 47 different metrics. Monitoring everything.
And because everything’s important, nothing’s important. You can’t see the signal through the noise.
More data doesn’t mean more clarity. Most of the time, it means more confusion.
The Questions That Changed My Approach
Inside Mentor Pods, we spend a lot of time talking about metrics. Everyone shares what they’re tracking. And then we ask one simple question:
“Which one actually matters?”
Everyone was tracking a million things. But nobody could point to the one number that actually predicted their success.
Then our facilitator asked a follow-up question that stuck:
“What’s the one number that, if it doubled in six months, would change everything in your business?
Not revenue or profit. Not any of the obvious stuff. The one leading indicator that, if it moved, everything else would follow?”
That’s how you get your North Star Metric.
What Makes a North Star Different
Your North Star isn’t a lagging indicator.
Revenue is lagging, because it tells you what already happened. The same goes for profit, because it tells you how you did last month.
Your North Star is a leading indicator. It tells you what’s coming before it shows up in revenue.
It’s the first domino. The one that, when it falls, knocks down all the others.
How I Found Mine
I went back to my business and asked that question:
“What’s the one thing that, if it doubled, would change everything?”
I started with the obvious:
- More leads
- Higher close rate
- More revenue per client?
All good. But none of them felt like the real answer. Then I realized, the constraint in my business wasn’t leads. It was conversations.
We had plenty of leads. We just weren’t having enough actual sales conversations.
So my North Star became: “Sales conversations per week.” Not leads coming in. Not deals closed. Not proposals sent. Actual conversations happening right now.
When that number went up, everything else followed.
More conversations → More proposals → More closed deals → More revenue → More recurring clients.
When that number dropped, I’d see it in revenue 60 days later.
It predicted my future before the future happened.
The Domino Effect
Think about your business like a chain of dominoes. There’s a sequence. One thing leads to another. Your North Star is the first domino.
For a service business, it might be:
- Qualified sales calls booked per week
- Referrals received per month
- Proposals sent per week
For a product business, it might be:
- Email list growth per week
- Product demo requests per day
- Repeat purchase rate
For an agency, it might be:
- Client retention rate
- Active projects in pipeline
- Proposals accepted per month
It’s different for every business. But the principle is the same: find the one number that makes everything else move.
The Test
Here’s how you know if you’ve found your North Star:
Question 1: If this number doubles in six months, does your business transform?
If the answer is yes, keep going.
Question 2: If this number drops to zero for 30 days, does everything else collapse?
Not just suffer. Collapse. If the answer is yes, you’ve found it. That’s your North Star.
Why Most People Get This Wrong
I see business owners make two mistakes:
Mistake #1: They pick a lagging indicator.
“My North Star is revenue!”
No. Revenue is the result. It’s what happens after everything else works. Your North Star should predict revenue, not measure it.
Mistake #2: They pick something they don’t control.
“My North Star is closed deals!”
You don’t directly control closed deals. You control the activities that lead to closed deals. Pick something you can actually move.
What Happened When I Focused on Mine
Once I identified “sales conversations per week” as my North Star, everything got simpler.
Every Monday, I’d look at one number: How many conversations did we have last week? If it was up, great. Keep doing what we’re doing. If it was down, figure out why and fix it.
That’s it. One number.
And here’s what happened. My decisions got clearer.
- “Should we run this marketing campaign?” → Will it lead to more conversations?
- “Should we offer this new service?” → Will it create conversation opportunities?
- “Should we attend this event?” → Will we have meaningful conversations there?
My team knew what mattered. Instead of optimizing for everything, we optimized for one thing: get more conversations.
Everyone understood the goal. Everyone knew how to contribute.
My stress went down. I stopped worrying about 47 different metrics. I watched one. When that one was healthy, everything else took care of itself.
How to Find Your North Star
Here’s the process:
Step 1: Map your customer journey.
What’s the sequence of events that leads to revenue in your business?
Lead → Conversation → Proposal → Close → Delivery → Referral?
Write it out.
Step 2: Identify the constraint.
Where’s the bottleneck? What’s the first domino that’s not falling enough?
Not enough leads? Conversations or proposals?
Step 3: Pick the earliest point you control.
The earlier in the sequence, the better. That gives you the most advance warning.
Step 4: Test it.
Does it pass the two questions?
If it doubles, does your business transform? If it drops to zero, does everything collapse?
If yes to both, you’ve got your North Star.
What to Do Once You’ve Found It
Track it weekly. Put it on a dashboard and make it visible. Check it every Friday.
Optimize everything around it.
Every decision should be filtered through: “Will this move my North Star?” If yes, do it. If no, don’t.
Then communicate it to your team. Everyone should know what the North Star is and why it matters.
Make it the focus and protect it.
When things get busy, it’s easy to stop paying attention. Your North Star is the thing that predicts your future.
Keep watching it.
The Clarity
Once you have your North Star, everything gets simpler. YOU:
- Stop tracking everything and start tracking the one thing that matters.
- Stop reacting to every metric and start focusing on the lever that actually moves the business.
- Stop drowning in data and start having clarity.
That’s the power of a North Star. Not more information but more focus.
The Next Best Step
This week, find your North Star.
Map your customer journey. Identify the constraint. Pick the earliest point you control. Test it with the two questions. Then track it. Every week.
When your North Star is pointing in the right direction, everything else follows.
