The Story Behind the Mirror

nuda veritas started the way most honest things do. Not with a business plan. Not with market research. With a question that would not leave me alone.

I spent decades sitting across from people in their most honest moments. In therapy rooms. In boardrooms. In living rooms where the marriage was falling apart and no one knew what to say. I built and ran therapy clinics. I worked with family offices where the money was generational and the dysfunction was too. I got my PhD not to hang it on a wall but because the questions I was asking demanded better answers.

Then I started writing about it. Not the clinical version. The real version. The version where a therapist admits he does not have it all figured out. Where a father of five talks about what it actually costs to show up honestly for the people who depend on you. Where leadership is not about strategy or charisma but about whether you can sit with your own shame long enough to stop projecting it onto everyone else.

That became the book: You Can't Make This Shi!t Up. 12 chapters. 7 archetypes. A framework for understanding how people actually lead, love, and hide.

The assessment turned that framework into a mirror. 98 questions across 7 dimensions, scoring 12 leadership vital signs on a 1 to 10 scale. Not a personality quiz. A profile. The naked truth about your leadership soul.

And klimt? klimt is the companion that walks with you after the mirror shows you what it shows. Named after Gustav Klimt, whose painting Nuda Veritas depicts a woman holding a mirror outward, daring the viewer to see themselves. Three personas. The vulnerable professor who teaches through story. The street smart operator who gives you Monday morning tactics. The wounded healer who sits with you when it hurts.