(This is a guest post from the lovely Wendy Cholbi. Wendy is running a course on creating a website and the business to go with it starting TOMORROW, so if you’re at all interested, go right now. Yes, before you read the post. The post will still be here when you’re done.)

Why are you reading this?

No, seriously, I don’t mean to be flippant or anything here, but why are you reading this, really?

In fact, I’m going to take a step back and ask you why you’re in business to begin with (or why you want to start a business if you haven’t yet).

Most business and marketing advice starts with your products, your business plan, or your customers.

Over at Your Web Coaches, we teach ittybiz owners how to think of their businesses as living things, using the metaphor of the Small-Business Tree. The leaves and branches are made up of all the marketing you do as a small-business owner, and the trunk is made up of your USP and target market.

I’m not going to offer advice on creating a USP or identifying your target market because Naomi has been there and done that. And I’m not going to give marketing advice because giving marketing advice in a guest post for IttyBiz would be like, I don’t know, showing up at Martha Stewart’s house to offer napkin-folding tips.

So I’m going to ask you to dig down to the roots of your business, the part of your business that may be invisible to anyone except you. Before you create a product, before you have your first customer, and before you write a business plan, your roots exist. Your unique roots anchor and sustain and feed you, whether your product fails or your customers desert you or your business plan goes awry.

Going back to Naomi’s post about Things, Chains, and Changing the Fucking World, she uses the word “thing” to mean one kind of root. The kind of root that gives you the strength to get up in the morning. To keep going day after day even when people think you are crazy or selfish or misguided.

No one can hand you a set of roots; you get to grow them yourself, and tap into them when you need them. They’re there whether you know they’re there or not, so the trick is to first become consciously aware of them, and then to purposefully strengthen the ones you choose.

That’s important, so I’ll say it again:

First: Become consciously aware of your roots. This can be as simple as jotting down the roots that you know exist, or as complicated as going on a soul-searching retreat and immersing yourself in personal-growth hippie-talk for a week.

Second: Purposefully strengthen the roots you choose. This is an ongoing (lifelong, probably) process. A business-speak way to put it would be something like “creating and maintaining systems that support your business.” Be ruthless in pruning the roots that don’t support you and drain your energy, too.

It’s my firm belief that your business roots are inseparable from the roots of your life as a whole (this is one reason why so many people are ultimately unfulfilled in so-called “regular jobs” — when you put in eight hours a day devoting your energy to someone else’s dream, your own life roots suffer).

There’s a saying about how you find out who your real friends are in a crisis. This applies to roots as well. Your real, true, live roots are not fickle. They don’t desert you when the going is tough or when money is tight. No, during these times your roots literally ground and anchor you; they remind you what is true and what you’re working so hard for.

So your roots deserve your full attention, and your conscious energy to grow them.

Businesses that lose (or maybe never had) their roots are sad and soulless. When you chop down a tree and sever its roots, you kill it. Without roots, a tree can be gorgeous (think Christmas trees!) but it’s totally and completely dead. You can stick it in a bucket of water, but in a week or so the needles will be turning brown and dropping off no matter what you do.

All the tinsel in the world can’t disguise a dead tree, and all the slick, fake marketing tricks in the world can’t disguise a soulless business. Stick to what’s real and alive, and your business (and your life) will thank you.

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Wendy Cholbi teaches people how to consciously grow their businesses in an organic, heart-centered way. Along the way, she helps people make friends with technology so they can spend more time doing the things they love and less time stressing out about hiring a webmaster. For a free half-hour of tech hand-holding, free ebooks, and info on upcoming workshops, visit YourWebCoaches.com.