The Naked Truth

If you want true clarity about your business, you need to strip down and look at it in all its nakedness.

A long time ago, out of necessity, I developed a tool for business and other types of planning that all businesses must continually undertake.

I had discovered that when I questioned managers or entrepreneurs about their businesses, I was usually subjected to a barrage of canned product features, hollow marketing messages, and meaningless mission and vision statements. It was almost impossible to get through all the cliched verbiage to the essence of the business.

My seemingly simplistic tool asks six seemingly elementary questions: Who are you, what do you do, who do you do it for, what way do you do it, where do you do it, and most important, why do you do it. The answers must fit on one page.

Before I work with anyone, I like to walk them through the questions, so that we’re on the same page about their business.

Clients often scoff at it, because they think it’s too basic. They believe it’s impossible to capture the  complexity of their business on one page.

But is isn’t.

What I’ve found over time is that while these questions seem simple and elementary, they’re often very difficult for many entrepreneurs and managers to answer succinctly because they involve an extreme awareness and understanding of their businesses.  

Invariably, this process reveals that in many ways, they don’t really know their own businesses. They’re too busy “doing business” to actual do what they should be doing. They’re so enveloped in generic and cliched language that all meaning and purpose has been lost.

It’s not easy being simple.

Looking at yourself or your business with absolute clarity can be very tough. But it’s also very revealing.

You might discover that you really didn’t want to be doing what you’re doing in the first place. Your original idea was this, but you seem to be doing too much of that. Or you were being led off the original path by circumstances, and now your don’t even recognize your original reason for starting the business.  

So I was interested in a post by entrepreneurial guru Chris Brogan that advocates looking at your business naked.

Brogan says you should strip down your business so that you can see what your day looks like when you take away “all the other stuff.”

If you took all the “extra” away, he says, what are you? What matters? What do you do? How do you accomplish it?

What is the naked you?

Do this, as in my questioning tool, and you may discover something very important about yourself and your business.

Such as what you can leave off. Or what would make you more efficient. Or what your market really is, and who the important people in it are.

Most important, it will make you get off the frantic, day-to-day treadmill of execution and take a good hard look at yourself.  

There’s much to be said about getting naked.