Megan Jones, a director at investment banking firm Hadley Partners, in fact laid out 17 words and phrases she doesn’t like to see in business plans.  The first of them are “next big thing” and stuff along the lines of “bigger than Google.”  Professionals need to see solid data, not wild claims.

“Best,” “top,” and “leader” were cited for similar reasons.  Then “guaranteed” is another problem word, and “game changer” and “paradigm shift” are too fuzzy, according to Jones.

Finally (we won’t repeat the entire list), Jones wrote, “Reality: when you are pitching an early-stage opportunity, you are also pitching yourself.  If you are talking to quality investors, most of the above words don’t tell them anything about your business.  But they do tell the investor something about you – you are prone to exaggeration, to vagueness, to hype, to lack of depth.  Those words are setting you back.”

So try to write or speak in clear, measurable terms.  Back up projections with statistics, and don’t get too sky’s-the-limit unless you enjoy setting off alarm bells.

Managers who follow this advice may be able to leave a better impression while making competing companies look more like TV pitchmen.

There’s a lot to be said for being open, of course; after all, it seems natural to try to spread correct information and build appropriate levels of excitement.  Still, Apple’s quite popular, and Brad Stone and Ashlee Vance recently detailed some rather paranoid corporate behaviors.

In a New York Times article, they wrote, “Work spaces are typically monitored by security cameras . . . .  Some Apple workers in the most critical product-testing rooms must cover up devices with black cloaks when they are working on them, and turn on a red warning light when devices are unmasked so that everyone knows to be extra-careful . . .”

Also, “Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for marketing, has held internal meetings about new products and provided incorrect information about a product’s price or features, according to a former employee who signed an agreement not to discuss internal matters.  Apple then tries to track down the source of news reports that include the incorrect details.”

So if, for whatever reason, you think your company needs to keep a lid on things, know that some precedents have been set.  Just be careful about incurring any you-don’t-trust-us backlash.

Reporter Rob Hof was attending a developer conference in San Francisco when he happened to wind up walking on the street a ways behind Brin.  So for starters, yes, Brin was walking, instead of being chauffeured around in a vehicle that would rival the president’s limo.

Then, Hof noted, “Brin had absolutely no handlers with him, no one telling him where he was scheduled to go next.  I mean, here’s a billionaire, a founder of perhaps the most famous and one of the most successful companies in the world, who presumably has way too many other important things to do.  And yet he’s just ambling along, just another young guy in San Francisco (with no socks, as far as I could tell) . . .”

Hof later continued, “The second thing that struck me was that he was still clearly testing out something on his phone, presumably Latitude.  Surely he has hundreds or thousands of engineers who are already doing this, but he seemed to be taking the responsibility to check out the company’s products himself, in the wild.  In fact, he seemed truly absorbed in it.  This also has to be a good thing, a CEO with an intense interest in his company’s own products.”

So try not to insulate yourself too much from your coworkers and normal people.  Stay involved with product development.  And stay enthusiastic about your work, too, if possible.

Then maybe you’ll get to the point where, like Brin, you’ll at least always have the option of taking a private jet.  Just consider wearing socks the whole time.