Lance almost sold his truck over a fake article
I pass Lance's food truck every morning on the way to the airport.
Same corner. Same guy. Same wave.
Lance has been running that truck for years. Good food. Loyal regulars. The kind of small operation where you know your customers by name.
But last week something changed.
I pulled over to grab a coffee and Lance was fired up. Red in the face. Waving his phone at a customer like it was evidence in a court case. "Did you see this? They're shutting down food trucks across the province. New regulations. It's done."
The customer looked uncomfortable. I looked at the article on Lance's screen.
It was from a site I'd never heard of. No author. No date. Just a scary headline and a wall of text designed to make you angry. I knew exactly what was happening.
The Red Flags I Saw Immediately
He read the headline and stopped there. Lance didn't click through to any official source. He didn't check if the regulation was real. He read a headline that scared him and treated it as fact. Most people do this. The headline tells you how to feel. So you feel it. And you stop.
He shared it before he verified it.
By the time I showed up, Lance had already sent the article to six other food truck operators. Group chat. All panicking. One guy was already calling his accountant. Six people making decisions based on something nobody checked.
He argued with anyone who questioned it.
When that customer said "I don't know, Lance — that doesn't sound right," Lance got defensive. Not curious. Not open to being wrong. Defensive. That's the tell. When someone pushes back on bad information and your first instinct is to fight — you're not protecting the truth. You're protecting your reaction.
He was already making plans based on the article.
Lance told me he was thinking about selling the truck. Moving to a brick-and-mortar setup. Changing his whole business model. Based on one article. From one website. That nobody verified.
This Isn't a News Problem. It's a Checking Problem.
Lance is not stupid. He's sharp. He built a business from a truck and a deep fryer. He handles money, customers, suppliers, and weather — every single day. But when bad information looks urgent, smart people stop thinking. The problem isn't that Lance saw a bad article. We all see them. The problem is he had no system for checking it before he acted on it. No second source. No pause. No question.
Just reaction.
I see this with people my age all the time. We grew up trusting the news. If it was printed, it was probably true. But that world is gone. Now anyone can publish anything. And the stuff that makes you angry spreads the fastest.
Lance is 57. He's been running businesses since his twenties. But nobody ever taught him how to verify a news story in 30 seconds. Because twenty years ago, you didn't have to.
Tomorrow I'm Going to Show You What I Gave Lance
I sat with him for ten minutes that morning. Told him to stop sending articles until he ran them through something first. Tomorrow I'm going to show you the exact prompt I gave Lance.
It takes less than a minute. You paste the article. The AI tells you what's missing, what's suspicious, and what you should check before you believe it. Lance used it that same afternoon. The article about food truck regulations? Completely made up.
But that's tomorrow.
Today I want you to think about the last article you shared with someone. Did you check it first? Or did you just feel it and forward it?
Hit reply and tell me — have you ever shared something that turned out to be wrong?
No judgment. It happens to all of us.
See you tomorrow.
— Kevin
Until next issue,
Stay in Win Mode!
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