You can’t fake a good story.

Socrates said, "Be as you wish to seem." As a business or a professional, you shouldn’t sell your customers or your employees on a story that isn’t true.

Case in point: the documentary The Queen of Versailles profoundly changed my life. It made me realize deeply that more showy wealth just means more stuff. More garbage. More headaches.

But there’s another part of that movie that no one remembers: the part that shows how they made their money… the sales floor in Vegas where they amped up their sales staff to go out and aggressively convince people to buy time shares.

The boss’s son tells all the staff—with a straight face, no less!—that what they are doing is saving lives by selling time shares. That their work is as noble as that of doctors, firefighters, nurses, etc.

Give me a break.

Of course, the tactic looks like it worked in the movie, and they did do hundreds of millions of dollars in sales on this premise. But would any intelligent person believe that story?

That selling time shares is saving lives?

When a quick Google search reveals countless people for whom their timeshare is a crushing, ever-increasing burden that they can’t get rid of, even in death?

Now obviously your team will be more loyal to you if they believe they are “saving lives” vs. “selling people expensive crap they don’t need and can’t afford".

But for a good business story to REALLY be a good story?

It has to also be true.