Sugar, a lot of success has to do with belief. You have to convince yourself before you can convince someone else. If there is no faith, no belief, no conviction, you can't sell it. No matter what "it" is. It sounds like this man has convinced himself (and done a good job, too!) that whatever "it" is, is a good thing; he now can convince others that "it" is a good thing, too. Does it look like exaggeration? When you dig beneath the surface, it probably is -- for now. But if his belief system is strong enough, eventually he will convince others, and his success becomes a self-fufilling prophecy. Success breeds success. There are a lot of books out there that describe this. Visualizing your success, acting as if it were already a fact, until it becomes a fact. Personally, I'm not very good at it. I'm more like you, I can't 'fake' it. But the real difference isn't real vs. fake; it's--Do I Believe Enough To Make It So? For me, personally, I need a few real successes that validate what I'm doing; then I can construct a success scenario. But not everyone is like me, a lot of people can construct success 'out of thin air'. Think of actors. They make us believe they are really cannibals, or pirates, or aliens. They are 'believeable' in their characters. Not the same? I think it is. They couldn't "sell" those characters to us, if they first didn't convince themselves. OK, that's enough, soapbox's getting shaky here.