If you could start from scratch . . . ?

I lost my cell phone again. The second time this year.

Why am I telling you this?

Because as much as I thought I was done with multi-tasking, it turns out, I’m just as distracted as ever. Dammit.

On the day I lost my cell phone, I found myself preoccupied with many thoughts. I was at the BizTechDay Conference and very excited by the new ideas I learned about, and resources I wanted to tap into.

At the end of two exciting days, I was packing up my vendor table, talking to people, and shuffling my suitcases.

Somewhere in that scene, my cell phone vanished. But my on-again, off-again relationship with Verizon is not the topic of this post, it’s merely a confession that I’m not yet “healed.”

One of the thoughts on my mind at the time of cell-phone loss is what I wanted to focus on this week. It’s the idea that keynote speaker, Michael Gerber, Author of the E-Myth, discussed: clearing the slate.

He is a big proponent of starting fresh when you have a broken business, and according to him, most businesses are broken. In order to mend the business, one must change their mind frame about their business.

“Clearing the slate” is one way to shift the thoughts from a “broken business” state of mind to a functional business.

Now you’ll have to forgive me if I misquoted him a bit. Along with my cell phone were my notes from his presentation (and incidentally $6). Since I don’t have his words to directly share. I’ll share my own truth and how I interpreted his sentiment.

I believe that clearing the slate is the idea that we should stop going down a crappy path and start over no matter how much we have invested in the crap.

It is as liberating as it is disturbing.

I asked myself, where would I start over on Hatch Network if I could?

After a little reflection, I chose our website.

If you have had the pleasure of wandering through the Hatch Network website, you might have found yourself trapped in a bit of a maze. Not sure where to look, where to go, but at the end, you might have said to yourself, “I’m not sure what they have going on there, but I like the look and feel.”

Even if you have not said those exact words to yourself, they are words I have heard on more than one occasion.

Those words makes me cringe, and to me, cringing is a pretty clear indicator that something is broken.

In honor of my late cell phone, I will do as Mr. Gerber said. I will take a stab at wiping the slate clean starting with our website.

There are always multiple ways to interpret anything. So I do not interpret this particular “slate clearing” as deleting all of our work and starting fresh. But, my business partner and I both said out loud, “if we could start over, what would we do?”

Turns out, it was not so hard to clear the slate.

We took out a blank sheet of paper and re-sketching the entire layout and flow, without any concern for the internal architecture that could later block us up.

Pretending that we’re starting over on a new site has enabled us to get clarity and vision on where we are and where we are going. After a only couple of days worth of clearing, we find ourselves so much closer to a nice, clean, flowing website,

We promise ourselves that we will not dwell on the costs, the time spent, or the brain cells burnt out in the process.

We will look ahead and always remember to wipe the slate clean whenever something is not working as well as it could.

If you could start over on any area of your business, wipe the slate clean, what would you do?  Please share!