Minimalism & Real Business: The Art of Letting Go
Unnecessary SKUs are like unnecessary emotions in life. Reduce the noise to reveal what truly matters.
The first product line I ever curated had forty-seven items. I was proud of it. Forty-seven felt comprehensive. It felt like I had thought of everything, covered every customer, left no need unmet. It felt, in short, like I knew what I was doing.
Within six months, twelve of those forty-seven items accounted for over eighty percent of our revenue. The other thirty-five were costing us money—in storage, in attention, in the cognitive load of trying to manage complexity that wasn't earning its keep.
I've come to think of this as the emotional inventory problem. We carry things—products, processes, habits, relationships—long past the point where they serve us, because letting go feels like admitting a mistake. Like saying that the version of ourselves who added them was wrong.
But minimalism, real minimalism, isn't about judgment. It's about honesty. It's about looking at what you're carrying and asking, without defensiveness: does this still belong here?
The SKU rationalization process I went through that year was one of the most clarifying experiences of my professional life. Not because we cut thirty-five products—though we did—but because of what the cutting revealed. It revealed our actual customer. The one who was choosing us, consistently, without prompting. The one whose problem we were genuinely solving.
We had been so busy maintaining the illusion of comprehensiveness that we hadn't stopped to notice who was actually showing up.
I apply this principle now to almost everything. To meetings. To metrics. To the stories I tell myself about why something isn't working. The question is always the same: what's really here, and what am I holding onto because I'm afraid to let it go?
The art of letting go isn't emptiness. It's clarity. When you remove what doesn't belong, what remains becomes legible. You can finally see it, and tend to it, and grow it with intention.
Forty-seven became twelve. Revenue grew. The team relaxed. And I learned something I've carried since: simplicity isn't the absence of effort. It's the result of it.