Grow Where You're Planted
December 1, 2025·0 comments·zg
Say you’re trying to light a fire. Before you get it going, before you make it as big or as hot as you need to, you need a spark and whatever is going to initially light your fuel. It’s the first step and it has to be very reasonable and very calculated.
Now, say you’re on LinkedIn, posting about how you’re “cooking with fire.” In that, you’re telling people your goal or mission or vision or whatever you’re calling it, is to help 1 million people with xyz thing.
I see the same logic in both of these examples. And I see a critical flaw in the second one. I think about this a lot.
Before you start a fire to, say, cook a meal, you have to understand just how much heat you’ll need, and have the goods to get your fire started (spoken like a person who hasn’t had the right lighter, or the best chimney for the fancy Japanese charcoals, or - look, I’ve struggled with this).
Before you help 1 million people, you have to understand how to help one person. And not just your brother or the college friend of your spouse. You have to prove your help’s value to a stranger who actually wanted it and then wants to go tell somebody else about it.
Figuring out the one spark, right under your nose, is wildly valuable and undervalued.
Because there’s no glory in it.
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