Real business truth

In 2001, I wrote my first business piece. Three words: Truth, Creativity, Power.

Twenty-three years later, those words are more true than ever. Except now I know most founders can't even face one of them.

You're drowning in performance metrics while your bank account tells the real story. You're raising rounds to cover the hemorrhaging. You're "pivoting" when you mean hiding. You're exhausted from fighting yourself every single day, and you think another strategy session will fix it.

It won't.

Here's what I've learned after 37 years of forcing truth into the light:

The performance always breaks down.

You can fake growth. You can fake success. You can fake confidence in board meetings and investor pitches. But you can't fake the cash account. You can't fake personal spending that's draining a million from the business when your actual profit is only $700K. You can't fake the moment when the biggest client leaves and there's no runway left.

Most struggling businesses aren't suffering from bad strategy.

They're suffering from avoided truth.

The founder who "doesn't count" mortgage payments in the P&L. The owner bleeding the company through personal expenses while claiming "healthy profits." The CEO who hasn't reconciled accounts in three years but has "big plans for growth."

I've seen it all. The elaborate dances. The creative accounting. The stories you tell yourself so you can sleep at night.

Here's what no one will tell you:

Truth isn't comfortable. It's freedom.

When you finally look at real numbers, not the story you've been selling but actual cash in versus cash out, something breaks. Usually it's your ego. Sometimes it's your identity as a "successful entrepreneur."

Good.

Because on the other side of that breaking point is where real business begins.

Real businesses don't need another round of funding to survive. They don't need motivational posts or hustle culture. They don't need to perform success while secretly drowning.

Real businesses are built on the same three things I discovered in 2001:

Truth in the numbers. No stories, no "interpretations," no creative metrics. Just reality.

Creativity that survives contact with that reality. Not trendy ideas or consultant speak, but solutions strong enough to handle the pressure that would murder the weak concepts most advisors peddle.

Power that comes from alignment. When nothing fights itself. When the owner stops sabotaging. When the business becomes coherent.

This isn't a framework. It's physics.

You can avoid it for months, years even. VCs tell me it takes them 18 to 24 months of quarterly board meetings to finally discover the financial disaster a CEO has been hiding. That's two years of burned capital and lost momentum.

But eventually, the truth will find you.

The question is whether you'll find it first.

Some founders can make this transition. They can stop performing and start building. They can face the shame, process the defeat, and rebuild on solid ground.

Most can't.

They're too attached to the story. Too invested in the performance. Too afraid of what the truth might reveal.

If that's you, I can't help you. No one can.

But if you're ready to stop lying to yourself?

Start here:

Show me your bank statements. Show me your real P&L. Show me the personal spending. Show me where you're bleeding.

Not because I want to judge you.

Because the work begins with truth, or it doesn't begin at all.

Twenty-three years ago I wrote that only the strong ideas survive.

Today I know it's simpler than that.

Only the real businesses last.

Everything else is just performance, waiting to collapse.