About a year ago I faced a crossroads with my startup as I began designing the public face of the project: should I take the “Fake It ‘Till You Make It” approach or go “Radical Transparency” and be very honest and open about my shortcomings. Before I go on, let me quickly define each approach:

Fake It ‘Till You Make It: In today’s world of online communications, it isn’t hard to build an online presence that brings you authority and credibility (not to mention a global audience). Granted, there has to be some meat on the bones – quality and vision in what you are doing – because you are vying to capture and maintain the attention of major players in your field. But often the faces behind some major online presences are guys in their PJ’s working from their parent’s home, car, or local Starbucks hustling to achieve their dreams saying to themselves “Just Fake It ‘Till You Make It”.

Radical Transparency: A growing phenomenon whereby organizations defy the traditional constructs of “marketing” to share openly the shortcomings or challenges that they are facing. While this can be seen a “risky”, it often leads to an appreciation among followers and supporters who will then feel more inclined to support you either financially or with the technical/intellectual knowhow you are looking for!

So when I started Transparency Solutions, I decided to try and blend both (but between you and I, struggled with the risk associated with ‘radical transparency’ – seems kind of intuitive given my business model, though!). I definitely wanted to crowdsource parts of the business development and started a specific blog to do this, but it never picked up traction. When I built the website for my business, I designed it for the business that I wanted to run – it was a representation of my vision, and not of my reality at the time.

As entrepreneurs, we rely so heavily on the generous support of outsiders, supporters, and those random connections that end up bringing so much value to the table. When we get caught up in our own self-created delusion of “Fake It ‘Till You Make It”, we tend to close ourselves off to the massive brain power waiting to lend their thought or expertise to a budding idea.

And in the end, your brand will quickly lose its credibility if and when you can’t deliver what you’ve marketed yourself as. The deliverable is the most important part of the business, and being open and honest about what your capabilities as well as shortcomings are will go a long ways in creating a successful budding enterprise.