One of the pivotal, early moments in my mentoring (or even qualifying someone for mentoring) is when I ask, “How much did you make last year?” That is a simple question, not unlike “How tall are you?” (It’s not like I’m asking, “What do you weigh?”)

Most people will say, “$150,000 and I wish it were more,” or “$300,000, but I worked far too hard,” or some variation. Fair enough.

But some will say, “What do you mean by ‘How much did I make?’ ” or “Last year isn’t a good year to use,” or “Well, that’s not easy to answer.”

It’s very easy to answer and you don’t have to give me the decimals, but if you don’t know the answer to that question you’re either not really running a business or you’re kidding yourself. If you’re embarrassed to tell a potential mentor or coach, all the worse, since honesty is the key to such relationships.

Oh, you kidder, you

One fellow who called me seemed like a pretty decent candidate until he informed me that he had published three books. “Commercial or self-published?” I asked, since that’s important for my understanding.

“Oh, commercial,” he assured me.

“What publisher?” I pressed.

“Fair Elms Publications,” he explained.

“I don’t know them, where are they located?”

“Well, I own Fair Elms, but it’s an independent operation, so I am commercially published.”

“No, you’re not. You created a paper company to use as a publishing entity but you are actually self-publishing.”

“No, that’s not true so long as the publisher is a different company from mine.”

“I don’t need to debate that and we don’t need to work together, have a nice day.”

I’ve observed people lie to themselves for so long, as such length, that they begin to believe the deception. When I confronted someone about having Merck as a client, since I knew Merck very well after 12 years of work with them, the individual hemmed and hawed until he finally named a site in Massachusetts.

“That’s a sales office, with about a dozen people,” I recalled. “What could you do in such as tiny operation?”

“Well, I made a sales call there.”

“You’re listing prospects as clients?!” I yelled. And then it dawned on me that he had been citing Merck as a client for so many years, unchallenged, that he had begun to believe it himself.

I’m a big boy, and I can usually tell if you’re kidding me, or I’ll find out easily enough. But if you’re kidding yourself convincingly, you don’t belong in this business and certainly aren’t capable of helping others. You can’t live a lie and expect others to trust you.

What’s it all about, Alfie?

People have ups and downs in the consulting business. That’s because it is a business, not a life statement about our worth or place in the cosmos. I always admire people who say, “It’s a bad time for me right now,” or “I really blew an engagement the other day,” or “I’ve still got a lot to learn.” Those people can be helped because they have a good idea about where to start.

But those who wish to obfuscate and deny are in a different ball park. I’ve claimed on many occasions that meetings of the Institute of Management Consultants and National Speakers Association are gatherings of people who come together to lie to each other about how well they’re doing. If you believe everything you hear there, you would be the least successful person in the room!! (Those IMC chapters which begin the meeting with each member standing up and introducing himself or herself to everyone else, including bragging about how good they are, are more painful than root canal. A real client in there would roll on the floor in laughter.)

I’ve made more errors than I have room here to recount. I’ve had bad times. I’ve blown assignments. All of that has made me a better person and, I suspect, more credible to others who undergo the same yin and yang of business life.

The worst sin is to lie to ourselves, because we fall victim to believing it. We are then in a position of being unable to improve, correct, or redeem. If you tell yourself and others that you are excellent with CEOs, never actually having encountered one in a meeting, then the chances are you’ll never learn the appropriate skills and fail miserably when one does show up. That’s a high price to pay for artificial self-worth.

Next time someone asks you how much you made last year in an appropriate conversation, see if you can tell them without squirming or dissembling. That’s the sign of a confident person, and that’s the person I’d trust for advice.

© Alan Weiss 2007 All rights reserved.

Alan Weiss, Ph.D. probably has the strongest independent consulting brand in the country, and maybe beyond. He is the author of 26 books appearing in 8 languages. He runs the unique Million Dollar Consulting™ College three times a year. He has won dozens of writing and consulting awards and is a member of the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame.® Contact him at http:www.summitconsulting.com, or his blog, http://www.contrarianconsulting.com.