What Wicked Teaches Small Business Owners About Truth, Power, and Standing Alone

From the desk of the Chief Strategist, Small Business Whisperer

I walked out of an early showing of Wicked this week with my mind racing—not about the spectacle or the music, but about how painfully relevant this story is to the small business owners I work with every day. One line in particular has been haunting me: The Wizard’s assertion that “the truth is what everyone agrees on.”

As someone who’s spent years helping small business owners navigate impossible decisions, toxic markets, and their own self-doubt, I recognized something profound in that statement. It’s the lie that kills more small businesses than poor cash flow or bad marketing ever could.

The Dangerous Comfort of Agreement

Here’s what I see happen to small business owners all the time: You’re struggling. Revenue is flat. Employee morale is low. Customer complaints are increasing. But when you talk to your business coach, your mastermind group, or your advisory board, everyone agrees: “The economy is tough right now. Everyone’s going through this.”

That agreement feels good. It feels validating. And it’s killing your business. Because while it’s true that external factors matter, the truth—the actual truth—might be that your pricing is wrong, your service has declined, or you’ve been ignoring a problem with your operations for six months. But that truth is uncomfortable, so we create a consensus around a more palatable version.

As small business owners, we’re especially vulnerable to this because we’re isolated. You don’t have a board of directors demanding answers. You don’t have shareholders asking hard questions. You have yourself, maybe a partner, and a handful of advisors who care about you and don’t want to hurt your feelings.

The Small Business Whisperer approach: We help you build what I call a “truth team”—people who care enough about your success to tell you what you don’t want to hear. Not yes-men. Not cheerleaders. Truth-tellers.

When Your Community Calls You “Wicked” for Doing Right

Let me tell you about Maria, a restaurant owner I worked with last year. She discovered her kitchen manager was cutting corners on food safety—nothing criminal, but enough to make her uncomfortable. When she addressed it, he quit and bad-mouthed her all over town. Other restaurant owners told her she was “too rigid.” Her former employees said she was “creating drama.”

Maria felt wicked. She questioned herself. She wondered if she’d overreacted. But here’s what I told her, and what I’m telling you: In small business, your reputation isn’t built on being liked. It’s built on being trustworthy.

Small business owners face these moments constantly: • Firing a popular employee who’s undermining your culture • Raising prices when your competitors haven’t • Refusing to compromise on quality to match cheaper alternatives • Turning down a large client whose values don’t align with yours • Standing by an employee when customers demand they be fired

Every one of these decisions might make you unpopular. You might lose business in the short term. People might talk. But this is where your business is actually built.

The Small Business Whisperer principle: Your business survives on thin margins and reputation. You can’t afford to be wicked, and you can’t afford to compromise on what makes you trustworthy. There’s no hiding at small business scale—your choices are visible to everyone.

The Wizard Behind Your Curtain

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: Many of us are performing success rather than building it. We’re posting on social media about our wins while ignoring our accounts receivable aging report. We’re buying new equipment to look successful while our cash reserves dwindle.

We’re acting like we have it all figured out because we think that’s what leaders do. I’ve sat across from dozens of small business owners who’ve maintained this performance until they couldn’t anymore. The day they finally pulled back the curtain and admitted they were struggling was the day we could actually start fixing things.

What performing instead of building looks like: • Spending more time on your brand image than your business model • Saying yes to every opportunity because you’re afraid to seem small • Hiring before you can afford it to appear more established • Keeping struggling products or services because you’ve publicly committed to them • Making decisions based on what other business owners will think

The pressure is intense. When you’re a small business owner, you ARE your business in everyone’s eyes. Admitting struggle feels like admitting failure. But here’s what I’ve learned working with hundreds of small businesses: The ones who make it are the ones who stop performing and start building. Your Voice vs. The Crowd’s Advice

The small business world is drowning in advice. Every guru, every podcast, every LinkedIn influencer has a framework, a system, a “proven method.” And when you’re exhausted and uncertain, it’s tempting to just follow what everyone else is doing.

But here’s what Wicked reminded me: The most important voice in your business is yours. I worked with a gym owner named James who was told by every expert that he needed to scale—multiple locations, franchising, digital products. Everyone agreed this was “the path.” But James kept feeling something was off. When we really dug in, he realized he didn’t want a fitness empire. He wanted a single, exceptional gym that truly changed his clients’ lives. Everyone thought he was thinking too small. But James knew his truth: He was a coach first, not an empire builder. He redesigned his business around that truth. Today, he has a waitlist, charges premium prices, and loves what he does. The question isn’t “What does everyone say I should do?” It’s “What do I know to be true about my business, my market, and myself?”

The Real Cost of Going Along

Let me get specific about what staying silent costs small business owners: When you don’t speak up about price increases you need: You slowly go out of business while telling yourself you’re being “competitive.” Meanwhile, your quality declines, you cut corners, and you ultimately fail your customers worse than a price increase ever would have.

When you don’t address the toxic employee: Everyone knows who I’m talking about. The one who’s great at their job but terrible to work with. You tell yourself you can’t afford to lose them. The truth? You can’t afford to keep them. They’re driving away your best people and your best customers.

When you don’t pivot from a failing strategy: You’ve invested so much—money, time, identity—in a direction that isn’t working. Everyone around you knows it, but they also know how much you’ve invested, so no one says anything. Sunk cost fallacy is real, and it’s expensive.

When you don’t set boundaries with customers: The customer who demands discounts, special treatment, endless revisions. You’re afraid to lose them. But they’re costing you more than they’re worth, and they’re training other customers to treat you the same way. The cost isn’t just financial. It’s the slow erosion of why you started your business in the first place. It’s the growing gap between what you promised yourself and what you’re actually doing.

Building a Business on Actual Truth

So what does this look like practically? How do you run a small business where truth matters more than consensus?

1. Create real accountability structures. Not cheerleaders—truth-tellers. This might be a peer advisory board, an honest bookkeeper who shows you the numbers you don’t want to see, or a strategist (hint: that’s what we do) who asks hard questions.

2. Build measurement systems that don’t lie. Your feelings about how the business is doing don’t matter. What do your numbers say? What does your customer feedback actually say, not what do you want it to say?

3. Practice small courageous acts. You don’t have to tackle everything at once. Have one difficult conversation this week. Raise one price. Address one issue you’ve been avoiding. Build your courage muscle. 4. Document your values and actually use them. Don’t put them on your website and forget them. Use them as decision-making filters. “Does this align with our stated values?” is one of the most powerful questions you can ask.

5. Find your people. Not everyone will understand why you do things the way you do. That’s fine. Build community with business owners who share your values, not just your industry.

The Choice We Make Every Day

Here’s what I want you to understand: You didn’t start your small business to be the Wizard—creating illusions and managing consensus. You started it because you saw something that could be better, different, truer.

But somewhere along the way, many of us forget that. We get caught up in playing the game, meeting expectations, fitting in with what everyone agrees a “successful business” should look like.

Wicked reminds us that there’s often a cost to staying true. You might be misunderstood. You might be criticized. You might lose people who matter to you. Your competitors might think you’re naive or difficult or “not business-minded.”

But you might also build something that actually matters. Something that reflects what you truly believe. Something that serves your customers genuinely rather than adequately. Something you can be proud of when you look in the mirror.

At Small Business Whisperer, we work with business owners who are tired of performing and ready to build. Who want to stop managing consensus and start facing truth. Who are willing to be called “wicked” if it means being right.

The question isn’t whether the truth will cost you something. It will. The question is whether the alternative—building your business on what everyone agrees on rather than what’s actually true—is sustainable.

I don’t think it is. And after watching Wicked, I’m more convinced than ever that the small business owners who make it aren’t the ones who play it safe and stay popular. They’re the ones brave enough to tell the truth, even when everyone disagrees. What truth is your business avoiding? I’d love to hear from you. Sometimes the first step is just saying it out loud to someone who won’t try to talk you out of it.