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Hey, this is Sharan Trivatsa. Welcome back to the Business School Podcast. In this episode, I'm going to tell you about the formula for trust. Well, if you strip everything away, the single most valuable currency in the world is trust. We're taught how to do math, we're taught how to write code, maybe we're taught how to maybe make money, but nobody ever teaches us how to build trust. And that's what I'm going to break down for you step by step, starting right now.
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One thing is for certain, just because it's trite and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to. How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question, and this podcast
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will give you the answer. My name is Sharon Trivata, and welcome to Business School
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Foreign.
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My goal for you is this. By the end of this episode, you're going to know exactly how to become someone that people genuinely trust without any kind of manipulation, without playing any mind games. There's no CIA or FBI hostage negotiation trick to make yourself more trusted or salesy or becoming a closer. You have to do just the. The things that you do without trying to be someone you're not. And so people throw around the word trust often. Like, I trust her. I don't trust that guy.
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We have a trust issue on this
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team, and most of the time they've not spent a lot of time thinking about what the word trust actually means because it's a pretty big word. And I think that's okay. There are really two kinds of people when it comes to a word like trust. There's a group that is, that just goes with the general idea. Everyone kind of knows what trust means. You either feel it or you don't. You have it with somebody or you don't, and that's enough. The group is, by the way, that group is not wrong. They are just working with kind of a. A general picture of the word trust because they have not spent some time thinking about it. And then there's the other group, the group that actually sits down and says, wait a minute, what is trust? How does it work? Can I build it on purpose? Can I engineer it? And I think that the second group ends up doing significantly bigger than the first. And I want to give you that second group. And I'm not telling you that one group is right or wrong. I'M just definitely, I would wager that one group is way more successful and way happier and way more fulfilled. So let's start with the definition. There are a lot of definitions of trust. You can go look it up there. The worst way to start a speech is to say the Webster's dictionary defines trust as blank. Like, that's dumb. Don't ever do that, right? But if you go and try to figure out the definition of the word trust, you will find anything from the draconian view of the world, which is really good of saying trust is making yourself punishable, which is like, oh, if I actually trust somebody and then they'd violate my trust and I actually punish myself associated with it. Or there's the more positive view of the world, which is either way is okay. It actually defines it the same word. And I tend to be on the other side. And so I have been thinking about the definition and I said, well, what exactly is it? And I feel like trust is confidence in future behavior, right? Well, what does that mean? When you trust someone, you're making a prediction. You're saying that I'm confident about what this person will do next. That's the whole thing. So when you hire someone, you are predicting when you go into business with your friend, you are predicting. When you hand off your kid to another parent for a carpool, you are predicting when you send your sister or brother or mom or dad a general contractor that you know, you're putting your own name on the line for that person because you are predicting how they'll treat the client. Every single act of trust is a bet on what happens next, right? It is a confidence in some kind of future behavior. And like any bet, you can win or you can lose it. So I think it's important to start with what trust is not. And if, if, if trust is confidence in future behavior, what is it not? So a lot of us confuse trust with other things like that feel like trust, but are not actually trust. Like, take warmth. You probably know someone who's one of the warmest and most likable people in any group. You, you'd have them at your dinner table every week if you could at some point that same person let you down or something that, that you did not expect them to do. Because warmth is not trust. Warmth is just warmth. And we probably have to define what warmth is at some point because warmth is some kind of behavior, right? Or take familiarity. Well, I know people I've worked with for, I don't know, 10 plus years that I would not put in charge of something important. Because knowing someone for 10 years tells you 10 years of history. It doesn't tell you what they'll do when things get difficult or challenging or complex, et cetera. Because you may have, may or may not have to have worked with them in that way. So then you have this charisma. Well, is charisma trust? Well, no. When someone walks in, walks into, you know, walks into a room or walks into a place or walks into a group and they, they have this magnetic energy about them. Maybe because they have a big brand or maybe because they're good looking or maybe because they have this, they have, they're happy and they have this feeling around people. It's not necessarily reliable. They're just charismatic. Well, we can go define charisma later, but that's not trust. Well, what about success? Well, just because someone is successful, do you trust that person? Well, that is a, I will tell you, most entrepreneurs trust people that have done better than them. Like, and I'm actually not in that bucket whatsoever. I used to think that, hey, someone has had more success than me and they say something, then I should trust them. Because you know what, I got to give them kudos, I got to give them credit because they are, quote, more economically successful than I am. I know several entrepreneurs who actually perceive this latter theory, they always say, all right, you know, I hit it, I hit $10 million and the next $50 million mark is this entrepreneur. And like, you know, I trust that person because they got there and whatever they say I'm do and then I'm going to get there and then they, I don't care about them anymore and then I'm going to get to the 100 million mark and then I don't get that. I don't care about that person anymore. And people are just like, you know, they just, they want to win, right? And in, in the process of winning, they say all to everyone else, they don't give a right. And I think that the, the reason there is they just trust the person to get the, the result that they want now and so they trust success. A good run of results tell you something, but it doesn't tell you everything. I, I, right now, I, I, I'm not joking. I know an entrepreneur right now who is pretty good, right? Like, he's done fine, but if you map his career, especially over the last 10 years, the dude is like the, you know, I think the son of the God of luck. Like every single thing that could have happened in the world that was actually lucky. I call it the pandemic or call it the people that he met or call it the random things that happened in the world or what all of those things happened. And that was able to like really do amazing things for his business. Now I not taking any credit away from him, but I am because people don't see all the other things that happened to make it happen. That's why I don't give a lot of credence to other successful people. And because none of these are trust. Right. They may, you may have some because of what they've accomplished, but they are not doing anything to get the trust. So it was really important for me to actually explain to you that trust is just confidence in future behavior, not confidence. Not just, not just a track record of what they have done in the past. Right. And that was my big learning. And overall. So you're like, well, if it's not that, Sharon, what is it? Well, in my opinion, I think there's a formula for it because that's what I've been trying to like develop, saying, well, what, what is? How can I establish something that someone can actually take and do something with? Well, there has to be a formula. There has to be an input output equation. And I want to give you the formula. And that is it has three parts competence, which means you have the skill to do a thing. Character and consistency. Right? So. Well, what, what, what does it, what does that mean? These things are not just competence, character and consistency. I think they are a product of them. Meaning it's competence times character times consistency. And I say that because even if one of those are off, if you have a zero in one of those, everything goes to zero. All three have to be there. So let's walk through each one. Confidence. You know, it's. That's pretty simple, right? Is that. Can they actually do the thing? Do they have the skill or the capability to do the thing? Say your, Your doctor could be the warmest, kindest, and most caring person you. He may be great with people. He may remember your. I don't know the names of the kid, your kids and your dog. You. You genuinely might like going to hang out with your doctor for the three minutes that you get to hang out with them. But if they're not skilled at the art of being a doctor, if they're not skilled at medicine, if they're not skilled at diagnosis, if they're not skilled at treating you. I'm sorry, your warmth. Their warmth doesn't protect your health. No, it doesn't. Right. So competence is whether they can do the job, do they have the capability to do the job? No amount of good intention makes up for that. It's the same idea if you are, say, hiring someone on your team. They may be excited, they may be cool, they may be good looking, they may be whatever. They may believe in what you're building. But, but the, and if they, but they, if they have not actually don't have the skill to do the work, then they're going to not make it. Right. And so you have a motivated person who can't do the work. And that creates its own problem. And that's why competence is a, is a big issue here. So that's, number one, very hard to get trust without competence. The second is character. Well, character is a little trickier because now you have to start to define character, et cetera. And I'm not going to go down the path right now. I actually think competence without the character is actually more dangerous than just being bad at something. Imagine you have the same doctor. Imagine this doctor is still highly skilled. Imagine they're cool. But what if they're telling you that you need more procedures that you don't actually need because it makes them more money? Is that doctor trustworthy? Well, absolutely not. And in some ways they're worse than a doctor who's actually not that good because now you're dealing with someone who can do the job and is using that ability against you, who's just sharper, who's smarter and who wants to get more money out of you. This may be the same idea with a business partner. Maybe they're sharp, maybe they know how to close, maybe they're good at sales, maybe they have a brand and maybe they know how to run things. Maybe they're good at operations. But when, when there's money on the table and the choices to, you know, between what's fair to you and what's fair for them, which way do they go? Which, how do they actually lean? And I think that is the character question. I'm not going to define the character question. I think, you know, is, is the person doing right or wrong? I will define that in a later time. Probably good for this, but I just wanted to give you the sense of like, is, are they going to do the right thing at the right time? Right. And that I think that is important. The third is consistency. I hate this word because it's been thrown around way too much in modern jargon. They're like, oh, you just have to be consistent and you'll do the thing. I, I am defining it a little differently on this one. I believe that one good result doesn't tell you everything. One great decision, one time, they came through for you. That is just a single data point. A lot of people treat that as a transactional relationship. And I think transactional relationships, essentially what the behaviorist will say is like, hey, if you do the transactional thing over and over again, that means you show me a history of doing that transactional thing. Therefore, I believe that the more transactions I do with you, the better that you will deliver on the same thing. So it is confidence in the future behavior, doing the thing in the right transaction. Therefore, that trust requires enough repetition so that you can see an actual pattern. It is just pattern recognition. That's all it is. So it could be the same doctor who could be just as competent, who could be just, just as honored, but does not do right by you. Say they cancel often. Say they're hard to reach. Say sometimes you see them, they're like kind of there and fully present, and sometimes they're clearly not paying attention. Can you predict what they're going to do when you walk in? Can you predict future behavior? And if you say no, that's a problem, because trust is confidence in future behavior. So if you can't predict the behavior, you don't have the confidence. And if that confidence bucket goes to zero and it's a product of consistency, character and competence, then there's no, there's not a lot of trust. By the way, I have a friend who's extremely smart, extremely sharp. He has pretty good judgment, he has pretty good values, but he's wildly up and down, meaning he'll do something for three weeks and then, then he'll act like it never happened. And over time, people, including me, have stopped counting on him for anything that is important because he is consistently inconsistent. These are the number one type of people. I stay away from, people that are consistently inconsistent. And they just cannot stand that because I have no idea what I'm going to get. Sometimes I will get an immediate response on text message. Sometimes it'll take three weeks. Sometimes when they want something, I'll get an email and otherwise I won't. Sometimes I'll get great work product, and then two weeks later I'll get crappy work product. I just cannot handle consistently inconsistent people. And because of that, the trust goes lower. And that's why this multiplication thing matters. If one of these goes to zero, that entire trust equation breaks down. So if you take great competence, great character, but uncompletely unpredictable. There's. You can't make. There's no confidence on future behavior. 0 if they're very consistent. Say they're very skilled, but their character is off.0 if they are a great character, but very consistent, but they can't actually do the thing. They don't have the capability for the thing. They have good intentions, but they have no results. So, zero all three together is what actually looks like, you know, the people that are trustworthy. So when you look around and you look at the core people in your life, and you're like, these are the people that I trust. I guarantee you, you will see a combination of competence, of character, and of consistency. Maybe next episode, I'll break down, like, the definitions on each of them, but I wanted to give you kind of this framework overall. So to me, well, then you must be thinking, well, all right, dude, what is. Is this actually real? Like, give me, like, a real example for this. Take Warren Buffett. If you're not familiar with Warren Buffett, here's the kind of short version. He's one of the most successful investors in history. He runs a company called Berkshire Hathaway. Just retired from that, actually. He's the chairman now, and people all over the world give him their money to invest. I'm an investor in Berkshire Hathaway, not just a little million billions of dollars. And they do it kind of without blinking an eye. The question is, why? Because for 50 years, he's done the exact same thing, the exact same way. And even on top of that, every year, he writes a letter to his investors in a simple, plain tone, in clear language, breaking down his thinking. And that consistency where, like, hey, when markets crash and everyone else is panicking, and he explains that, hey, this is the time where you want to be fearful when others are greedy, and you want to be greedy when others are fearful. So when the markets crash and everyone else is panicking, he buys more. When everyone else is excited and the prices are high, he waits and he's like, hey, I'm chilling on the sidelines. And he has been completely predictable for five decades. And that predictability is the reason that people trust him with their money. He didn't. It was. It's not that he's charismatic. There's no hype. Yeah, he's got his quirks, but there is an earning component to that. I think he's earned the trust by doing the same thing the same way over and over again for so long that people have just been like, hey, of course, of Course, I have confidence in his future behavior. Right. I take the number one podcast in the world, Joe Rogan, whether you like him or not, he's in a different version, I think of the same idea. I don't even watch Joe Rogan that much, but I know that he's the host of one of the most listened to podcasts in the world for one reason. He talks to 14 million people per episode. And what he did was he sits down with somebody that he is curious about without a script, without any like, oh, I got your questions. And he has a conversation. He literally uses it as free conversation for him. And he goes as long as he can go three plus hours. And whether the guest is famous or not famous, whether guess is someone you've heard of or not heard of, he does it the same way over and over again. And so I think the, whenever I see a Joe Rogan clip, I knew exactly, I know exactly what I'm gonna get because he's not trying to pull one over on the person. He's not trying to make something work. He's just sitting there saying, listen, I'm gonna do this three hour thing, I'm gonna get everything out of you and I'm just gonna do it in a cool, calm, collected way. And that's why it works. There's this guy, I don't know if you know, his name is Lance Armstrong. He was like a world class American. He survived cancer and then he went on to win, I think the Tour de France six or seven years in a row. He was, I think, the number one person to able to do that. And if you don't know, the Tour de France, it's the, the biggest cycling, the most prestigious cycling race in the world. And I believe that six or seven wins in a row is probably the number one in history. He was probably one of the most celebrated athletes on the planet at a given time. And he had a cancer charity because he had testicular cancer, I believe it or not. And a hundred million people or more were wore this yellow Livestrong bracelet to support him. It was like a symbol of, you know, kind of what's possible. The entire bracelet movement started because of Lance Armstrong. And then people accused him of using performance enhancing drugs. And for years he just said no, that he never did that. He told them in interviews that he never did that. He went on television, on tv and he said he never did that. He was, I don't know, furious that people accused him. He sued people who said that he did that publicly. He repeated the Denial so many times, so convincingly that most people believed it. And then he sat down with Oprah and admitted that all of it was a lie. Everyone, the whole time. He used banned drugs throughout his entire career. And he later told them that. I think I'm quoting some version of this. That one big lie that I repeated a lot of times. I can't remember that line. He's like, I had one big lie that I repeated a lot of times. Now it's pretty crazy that, you know, if you say the same lie over and over, you actually start to believe it yourself, which is a title for a different episode. But I think the crazy part is he was banned from a sport for life. Every person who publicly defended him. Think about the people who trusted him. His friends, friend, every sponsor, every supporter, every person that bought the freaking Livestrong ban had used their.
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They felt like they used their trust against him. And I think that's what happens when they say one of the things in the competence, character consistency, the character kind of variable in this went to zero, therefore the formula goes to zero. So I think that this is the key part that the trust is tested when your incentives change. In this case, for Lance Armstrong, the incentives changed, right? He had to keep up this image. Now, what does it actually mean when you're being reliable and it co. And it like. And it doesn't really hurt you to be reliable when it costs you nothing? Well, almost everyone's reliable when there's no stakes, when there's nothing on the line, of course you're going to be reliable, right? But when telling the truth is easy, almost everyone tells the truth that doesn't tell you anything useful about that person. What about the other direction? I think the other direction happens when, when you're, when you're keeping the. When you have to. When the stakes are higher, when honoring a deal means giving something up, when telling the truth is gonna suck, that's when I think it really matters. I think politicians are the most obvious version of this. I can never run for a political office because I will just tell the truth and then I will screw myself. But before an election, almost everyone sounds insanely trustworthy. They show up and they make promises and they look you in the eye and they're like, listen, I am going to change America. And the real question is, what do they do when they get all this pressure? That's hard. And by the way, it's different. It's not different outside of politics either. It's kind of the same thing your say your Painter is responsive when they're trying to win your business? Are they equally responsive six weeks into the job? Why does every single general contractor have a bad reputation? Because they are responsive when they try to get the job and then they're just. Then everything is delayed and over budget. Why? Your employee is accountable when the mistake is small. Are they equally accountable when the mistake is big and admitting it to be like, painful or even career ending for them at the business? Your business partner maybe is aligned with you when the interests match, but are they aligned with you when the interests don't match? I think that doing the right thing becomes expensive sometimes. And I think that is where the trust really hangs in the balance. I think that's hard, right? So all of that, you're like Tron, thank you for sharing all of this. But, dude, I understand the trust is important. So how do you actually build trust? So if you've been waiting, this is the time you've been waiting for. How do you actually build trust? Your trust score, I believe, I don't believe is fixed. Meaning, let's say I trust you. On a scale of 170%, sort of. Your trust score is not fixed. You can make it go up. And I actually think you know what I'm going to say. If you're, if you're listening to this, you're probably thinking about someone specific. Maybe it's your partner, maybe it's your spouse, maybe someone on your team, maybe it's your friend. Maybe somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that trust is not where you want it to be. Maybe it's for yourself. So here are the two things that maybe you can do about it. Number one, say the thing that you're. That they are already thinking. So most people will try to do better and hope the other person picks up on it. And I would suggest not to do that. All right. The faster, easier path is saying the thing that the other person person is already thinking about but has not said to you. For example, I would say something like, hey, I told you that I would have this done by Thursday, and I did not. That's on me. Here's what happened. This is not an excuse, and here's what I'm going to do to fix it. Now they're already. They already know that you said you would get it done but didn't. They don't want to bring it up to you because it can affect their relationship. But if you just bring it up and it's what's in their head, I think it builds Trust. You don't need a long speech. You don't need a big explanation. You just have to own it. Say the thing that they're already thinking, and you have to think about why this works. Right? This is the character component. You've seen a problem and you've called it out. You answered the question that they were already thinking, but they didn't ask you about it because of discomfort. Now you also makes them do the same thing. They no longer have to wonder whether you even paid attention. They no longer have to wonder whether you respect your own word. They no longer whether you wonder whether you respect their relationship. And just by saying what they are already thinking makes them believe that you believe and you understand this relationship and why it's important. Say the thing that they're already thinking. Number two came up with this phrase called become a small promise banker. Say it again. Become a small promise banker. Well, what do most people do when trust is kind of low? They want to make big gestures. They want to make dramatic promises. They want to do long apologies. They are like, ah, this is a full reset. I will never do this ever thing ever again. Do you think that helps? Usually not. Because a big promise is just another prediction that you're asking them to believe something. And right now their confidence in your predictions is already low. Right. A big promise that falls short makes things that it's gonna fall short that you're. It makes things worse because you're increasing the stakes in your favor. Now you have to go deliver on this thing. And if you miss, they trust you even less. I think about a small promise banker. Small promise banking, I think, works differently. So you make a clear small promise, Right? When you do that, you keep it exactly what you said you would do, and you do it again, and you do it again. And each promise now becomes a deposit, being a banker. And that deposit builds in that account and that. And over time, that confidence in your future behavior goes up because they can see a pattern. You said you'd made a small promise, you delivered on the promise. That's what's important. I really don't think that the size of the promise matters is keeping the promise that matters. So, for example, if let's say you have not delivered, delivered on three assignments in the last three weeks, instead of saying, I promise, I will deliver on the fourth assignment, you don't say that. You say, hey, by tomorrow I will have a plan to show you what I'm going to do. Hey, by the next day, I'm actually going to give you part One of the plan. Hey, the day after, I'm going to give you part two of the plan and I'm going to give you a recap of these three plans by Friday. And then next week, I'm going to show you the part three parts that I've done to see if that plan is the draft is okay with you. And then now what you're doing is you made these small promises. So you just give me a plan, then you're giving me part one, then you give me a part two. One, it allows you to deliver the thing that you can do so that you're not put in a difficult spot. And two, when they see the multiple things that you said you would do and you actually delivered on them, they get more confidence. So the two ways that you could actually get more become more trustworthy is number one, say the thing that they're already thinking and number two, become a small promise banker. If you just do those two things, you automatically start to build more trust. And I think you can start to raise your trust score with anybody by just doing those two things in any relationship. By the way, I do that with my children a lot. Now, let's say I say I'm going to play a game with them, right? And I'm on my phone. Well, I don't say, hey, I'll. I promise I'll never be on my phone. I don't say that. I'm like, hey, for the next 30 minutes, I promise that I will not touch my phone. Here, you can take my phone and plug it into the wall. What am I doing? I'm giving, I'm becoming a small promise banker, right? That way I can, I can bank that promise and I can get the proof around, around that pattern so they know exactly what that is. So two things. I'll say it again. See the thing that they're already thinking, Become a small promise banker. Because at the end of the day, trust is confidence in future behavior. So if you can say the thing that they're already thinking and you become a small promise banker, everything gets significantly easier. Your trust score, I really believe, is a reputation. And reputations are built on one promise kept at a time. Remember how we sliced it? Greatness is a choice on this stuff. I hope this was helpful to you. If you like this, this is a little departure from what I normally record. If you like this, can you screenshot this and tag me? That way I can make more like this for you. This is the number one currency in the world, which is tr. I wanted to give you a formula that you can use. So if you like this, feel free to send it to somebody. But more, more importantly, screenshot this and tag me. That way I can make more like this for you.
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Hey, this is Sharon. I have an awesome free gift for you just for listening to the podcast. As you may know, I've got a chance to build two billion dollar companies the hard way. So if you like this episode, you will love getting the exact playbooks from those wins. It's on my sub stack called My Next Billion. It has the exact frameworks I wish someone had given me when I was figuring it all out. Now you get the real lessons from
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the trenches as I go for a
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three peat and build the Next Billion. So everything's free atmynextbillion.com. please check it out. Mynextbillion.com.