Find out today about my momentary confusion in France, and why it reminded me of a recent conversation with a client…

Transcript:

Hi and welcome to another episode of BaranovTV, designed to demystify the world of accounts and tax and to help your business grow.

This episode I want to talk to you about perception. I had a bit of a confused split second when we were in the van just now.

We were driving up towards Calais, and we’ve driven up from the South of France today, so, it’s been a really long driving day. We saw Calais on the road signs for the first time, which is always a real lift. But at the same time, I’d just looked at the Sat Nav and the Sat Nav was saying to me it was 114 miles to Calais, and I came to the road sign that said 184 and I thought, oh my goodness, what’s gone wrong?

Well actually, stupidly, of course, it’s 184 KILOMETERS to Calais. All of the road signs in France are in kilometers but our Sat Nav, obviously, is in miles.

Now perception is everything and in my head, I’d much rather have had 114 miles than 184 kilometers, which is madness because it’s exactly the same amount of distance, obviously.

This brought back to mind, a conversation I had with a client earlier in the week, a guy called Peter, who has had a conversation, he was feeling a bit low because he’d had a conversation with a friend of his or more of an acquaintance.

He was playing golf with him and the guy turns up in a flashy new car and on the golf round was saying about all these new sales that he’d got and how marvelous business was.

Now Peter’s business is doing well.

He’s only been trading for about 18 months but he’s doing well and things are really solid. He’s putting money away every month for his taxes and his sales are profitable.

Things are going in the right direction and he should be really pleased with what he’s doing but he’s applied his own values to the comments that his acquaintance made.

• He’s assumed that the flash car is fully paid for.
• He’s assumed that the sales are all profitable.

But these ARE assumptions.

And we’re all as humans guilty of doing very similar things. We look at social media and we assume that everyone’s lives are marvellous, yet we know the reality of what goes on behind our own front doors.

So my message really this week is really simple, it’s just saying that, beware of perception, focus on the reality, and just be aware of what people might be saying behind what they’re ACTUALLY saying!

Peter has gone away with a slightly different thought and to ask his acquaintance whether he wants to share any more information. I don’t actually think he’ll want to because I think the reality might be very different.

I’ll leave you with that thought.

I’m going to go off and grab my train back into the tunnel and get back to Blighty, and I’ll see you all very soon.