Locating Your Center of Gravity

A Perspective Shift for Sustainable Success

What if your business had a gravitational pull?

What if, instead of pushing harder — at sales, strategy, growth — you identified the single point in your business that, when strengthened, naturally aligned everything else?

That’s your Center of Gravity. And if you’ve felt misaligned lately — like you’re working hard, but something’s still off — this might be why.

What is a Center of Gravity?

Two Examples of Business Centers of Gravity

To help this land, here are two examples of fictitious businesses with clear, emotionally resonant Centers of Gravity:

🌀 Example 1: Pollen Studio — a creative agency for conscious brands

Center of Gravity: We design for internal alignment, not just external aesthetics — helping visionary founders build brands they can actually live inside of.

• Strategic anchor: Clarifies purpose before producing assets. Moves the business upstream from visuals to identity.

• Emotional anchor: Speaks to the founder’s deep desire to feel seen, expressed, and aligned with their brand.

• Effect: Stronger resonance, longer retention, and more values-aligned client referrals.

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🌱 Example 2: Root & Ritual — a wellness membership for high-achieving women

Center of Gravity: We don’t optimize for habit tracking. We optimize for self-trust — helping women return to their own rhythm, not someone else’s routine.

• Strategic anchor: Focuses the business on building inner authority, not external compliance.

• Emotional anchor: Speaks to the quiet burnout of always optimizing and performing.

• Effect: Deeper loyalty, higher engagement, and a distinctive positioning in a crowded market.

These are gravitational levers — not marketing lines. They sit at the root of the business, not the surface. Everything else orbits from there.

If you’ve ever felt like your business is working technically — you're posting, selling, delivering — but it still feels like something is off… like you’re pulling everything uphill while trying to sound like it’s all smooth…That’s usually a Center of Gravity problem.

Maybe you're optimizing for revenue, but secretly burnt out. Maybe your team is focused on metrics, but no one’s clear on what really matters. Maybe your clients are buying, but not transforming — and you feel it in your gut.

The Center of Gravity is the hidden focus everything in your business starts to orbit around.

It’s both:

• A strategic anchor — the upstream focus that, if improved, would positively shift everything downstream.

• An emotional anchor — the thing your business or leadership is really about, underneath the headlines and deliverables.

  
  

When your center is clear, aligned, and shared — energy flows. Your message clicks. Your team moves in sync. Clients stay and refer. But when it’s misaligned — when you’re optimizing for the wrong thing — you feel it as resistance, confusion, disconnection. Even if you’re technically succeeding. This is about making sure the engine of your business is pointed toward something that creates meaning and momentum — not just motion.

Why Customer ROI is a Powerful Business Lever

The most effective — and underused — Center of Gravity in business?

Customer ROI.

Not in theory. In action.

Businesses that orient around customer ROI — making sure people genuinely get more than they paid for — create:

• Higher retention and referrals

• Lower marketing spend

• Better talent attraction

It’s an upstream variable — meaning small improvements ripple far.

Yet so many businesses chase conversion, reach, or revenue… and miss the deeper lever entirely.

What If You Can't Measure ROI Easily?

Not every industry can cleanly measure ROI. That doesn’t mean they can’t locate a strong center of gravity.

Take hospitality. Some of the world’s best hotels don’t optimize for guest ROI — they optimize for employee joy. A delighted employee delivers beauty in every detail. And that beauty transforms the guest experience.

The thread is consistent: the Center of Gravity must still be upstream, variable, and rooted in goodness. And it must sit where small improvements ripple widely across your system.

Extractive vs. Integrative Business Models

This is one of the simplest ways to name the difference between businesses that burn out versus those that build momentum.

	Extractive	Integrative
Primary question	What can I take?	What can we create?
Energy source	Scarcity, control	Abundance, alignment
Pattern	Resistance, burnout	Flow, cooperation
Result	Hollow wins	Satisfying, sustainable success

An extractive center fights human nature. Even when it wins, the win feels hollow. An integrative center makes success feel collaborative. Real. Alive.

This distinction is subtle, but it changes the emotional tone of everything you build.

How to Identify Your Business's Center of Gravity

Here’s what to look for when you're locating your Center of Gravity:

1. Upstream — It influences many results with one shift.

2. Highly variable — Small tweaks = big effects.

3. Emotionally resonant — It feels like the right thing to build around.

4. Systemically generous — It serves others, not just the self.

This isn’t about high-minded aspirations. "A more beautiful world our hearts know is possible" is a beautiful vision. But it's an outcome, not a lever.

Look for the upstream cause. The measurable, behavioral shift that quietly changes everything downstream.

Real-World Example: Dean Graziosi's Business Shift

Dean Graziosi’s company grew from $10M to $100M with one shift:

• They stopped optimizing for conversion.

• They started optimizing for customer success stories.

They literally tracked which ads and funnels led to real transformation — not just sales.

This is a textbook case of moving your Center of Gravity upstream.

More trust. More referrals. Less resistance. Better results.

Center of Gravity and Long-Term Business Success

An integrative center doesn’t just grow your business. It stabilizes it.

It gives your clients something worth belonging to. It gives your team a shared reason to care. And it gives you — the founder, the leader, the builder — a real reason to keep going.

Extractive systems self-terminate. Integrative systems self-organize.

Which one are you building?

Burnout | Belonging and growth

How to Reassess Your Business Center

Reflection:

What is the gravitational center of your business right now?

Is it what gets you paid — or what makes the work meaningful?

What would shift if you moved slightly upstream?

If this gave you a new lens — or helped you name something you hadn’t been able to see before — this might be your next lever.

And if you're not sure? That’s a great place to begin.