It is similar to dressing the part you want - at least when that mattered. You buy more expensive clothes than you should be able to afford so that people think you are more successful than you are, and then they are more willing to bet on you, and then you become more successful.

There is nothing that is a red flag for me in the above story.

I also had a prospective first client want to visit our offices so I quickly rented an office and asked my part-time contractors to all come into the office that day to fill it out. It worked! And then I could afford an office and hiring those part-time contractors as full-time employees. So it was sort of a self-fulfilling.