It seems pretty obvious that if you are going to pitch for investment that you would want to be completely honest. I mean, are people really that stupid that they believe that the lies wont come out in the due diligence process?

Then again, a lot of business owners and business leaders are, to varying degrees, delusional about the actual state of their business. They view everything vis-a-vis the venture through rose tinted glasses, or worse through a refraction crystal that paints all sorts of pretty colour and rays of lights on the canvas they’ve created.

I've been in this game long enough, over 30 years in fact. From that experience I know that people quite often are not intentionally dishonest, they're just not honest and being honest and real with your story is just as important for yourself, as it is for pitching to an investor.

So for yourself, in terms of understanding where your business is, measuring a business's performance, and being able to optimise your business, to be able to either respond to opportunities, or create new opportunities, or respond to those situations which come up, which aren't so favorable towards you you need to have a clear picture of where you are and where you are headed. If you’re pitching for investment the investor will want the same thing.

In this episode I explore some of the ways people lie to themselves and (un)intentionally lie to others, or as a minimum misrepresent what they are presenting when they talk about their business, so that you might identify the traits when you see them.

I’ll come back to this in other episodes as well because the topic is multidimensional and one short video or podcast doesn’t do the entire topic justice. That and I tend to stray from time to time 🙂