Costume vs record
One gets you through the door. The other survives the fluorescent lights.
The Confidence TrickFirst edition · ~11k words · a blade, not a memoir
The Confidence Trick
A short book for founders and CEOs who bought the costume and still wonder why the room didn’t buy them.
Confidence is a performance.
Conviction is a record.
Thirty years of rooms. The scar and the craft. Why performance dies under pressure — and a Conviction Story doesn’t.
Talk. Don’t lurk.
Call Paul+44 7380 36 77 44Emailpaul@paulregan.coLinkedIn/in/paulreganmbaWhat’s inside the blade
Five things confidence
doesn’t want you to know.
Rooms price you in four minutes
Turing. Bits. Web Summit. The deck is still open when the room has already decided.
Warrior → Act 3
Taking the hill is not the same as building something that outlasts the applause.
Same machine
A pitch and a con share the wiring. Only one of them leaves a record.
Stop performing
Knowing the enemy isn’t stopping. Stopping is a practice.
The anatomy
Eleven cuts
Titles as labels. No spoilers. Turn the page yourself.
Prologue
This is not a memoir. This is a blade.
The Confidence Trick
Mayfair will sell you the costume anyway.
Same Machine
How a con works. How a pitch works. Same animal.
Record vs Performance
The enemy named. Props vs proof.
What It Cost
Bounded confession. What you refuse now.
Attention
The first honest test — before the ask.
Six Beats
Story machinery founders can actually run.
Trinity
Value · Market · Story — miss one, sell nothing.
Ego Dilutes
(Experience × Expertise) / Ego. Physics, not morality.
Proof
Receipts. Before trick → after record.
Stop Performing
The Diagnostic as practice, not brochure.
Write the Record
Verbs. What to do Monday.
The Best Story Wins.
You can’t outperform your identity.
Authenticity is everything. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
First edition · free
Take the blade.
First edition PDF. Direct download.
No drip sequence. No webinar bait.
Free. First edition. ~11k words. Built to cut, not to impress your bookshelf.
Still walking into the room without a load-bearing story?
Founder Story Sprint
£3,500 · one day
Founder/CEO walking into Turing, Bits, Web Summit — or any room that prices you in four minutes. We don’t polish the deck. We rebuild the story so the right people arrive already convinced.
A handful of slots. Not a funnel. A door.