I had a conversation with a friend recently about a mutual acquaintance. She surprised me by calling him a con man. In all the years I knew this man, I’d never thought of him as a con man, but the title could fit based on the people who he’d ultimately screwed over. I pushed back with my friend’s characterization slightly because con man seemed a bit more malicious than what I percieved as his intent. Mostly I wasn’t sure if he’d crossed a similar line as ‘fake it til you make it’ in that in business, you often have to convince enough people that something will happen otherwise it won’t and at some point you may he overcommitted and have no choice but to embellish the truth and hope that some major piece doesn’t pull out and ruin the entire chain of dependencies. A prime example is missing payrole. It is basically death for a company, but saying you might miss payroll could guarantee you’ll miss payroll... so lie and hope for the best... Maybe not a great example, and he might be a conman for similar types of lies told to vendors. I do think it’s interesting that much of business relies on convincing people you can do what you say though...