2 2 IT WASN’T LONG AGO that my company, Influence & Co., was a young startup. Those early days were a sleepless roller coaster of excitement and frustration. As a new entrepreneur, I remember being blindsided by the emotional intensity of it all. Thinking back, one memory sticks out as both a little traumatic and incredibly formative.
We were struggling to make things work as a company. It was getting to me pretty bad, and I started to doubt not only the company but myself and my abilities, too.
I was attending a networking session at one of my first conferences. I didn’t know a single person there. However, with my background in sales and experience in real estate, I thought I’d still have shot at schmoozing my way to some success.
But something wasn’t working. I was getting stonewalled—not just by one or two people but by everyone. I couldn’t connect for the life of me. The sense of not being able to get through to a single person was overwhelming.
All of a sudden, I felt the same defeated feeling you might have experienced in your middle school gym class playing dodgeball, when the team captains are down to two remaining options: you and another kid. You’re hoping the captain calls your name so you’re not left standing there alone and embarrassed, but he calls on the other kid instead. You immediately feel like an outcast, and you give up before the game even starts.
That’s how I felt.
Once I left the event, I called my wife. After a minute of doing my best to put a positive spin on what I’d just experienced, I broke down. I remember talking to her with tears in my eyes, struggling to be honest about how things weren’t going well. We had poured all of our energy and emotion into this company, only to discover that we’d launched in an industry devoid of opportunity. It was a hopeless, desperate feeling.
Now when I think about that phone call, I cringe a bit. Embarrassing, humiliating, kind of dramatic—not exactly feelings I like to relive. But I also feel a sense of gratitude. As awful as it was, that experience inspired me to look at opportunity from a completely different perspective.
Why couldn’t I connect? Why was everyone so guarded? The answer was simple: because nobody trusted me. No one was even familiar with me. It wasn’t enough to be charming. I had walked into a roomful of strangers (most of whom already knew one another and had done business together) with nothing to show that I was worthy of their trust. I was just another random guy making a cold pitch—the human equivalent of a pop-up ad.
As I thought more about it, I realized that my despair was misplaced. Our industry wasn’t some barren, opportunityless waste-land; there were too many success stories for that to be the case.
The truth was that the field was brimming with endless opportunity—but all of it was locked up behind a giant wall of distrust.
I learned that these walls of distrust—or trust barriers—exist everywhere. No matter what field or niche or position level or company size, trust barriers exist. And they’re the biggest factors that prevent you from building relationships with the audiences you’re trying to reach.
My whole founding team at Influence & Co. dealt with similar situations, too. Brent Beshore, the CEO of our holding company, adventur.es, faced barriers when he had to earn the trust of the new companies he was prepared to invest in. My cofounder, Kelsey Meyer, struggled to be taken seriously as a young entrepreneur. Although she was probably brighter than most people 15 years her senior, she was still fresh out of college.
When I talked to a friend of mine about the struggles he faced as an experienced salesperson switching industries, he told me about his troubles building a solid client list. Even though he had experience and knew what he was doing, no one in this new industry knew that about him. They weren’t familiar with him at all.
My brother had the same problem: He started a law practice and was trying to attract the right partners. No one was beating down his office door demanding to work with him. He had to build trust with his audience before he could get anywhere.
All this is to say that my situation at this conference was not unique. Everyone deals with trust barriers, not just my fellow marketing, branding, and PR peers.
After we’d come to this revelation and while we were still scrambling to survive the launch stage, we began contemplating a set of questions that were as complex as they were simple:
What is trust?
What does it mean to be trustworthy?
Why do people trust each other?
My first lesson was to stop thinking about trust as if it were an inanimate object that either exists or does not.
Trust is a living, breathing, emotional bond that connects people to one another. It’s intimate, personal, and powerful. In a world where it seems like everyone is out to pitch, scam, or screw you, it is also a rare and precious commodity.
Trust manifests itself on a spectrum. The degree to which you trust someone determines how far out you’ll stick your neck for her. Therefore, to overcome barriers of distrust, it’s not enough just to be a trustworthy person—you have to be a person who creates trust.
Think of it like a campfire. To be trustworthy is to have your kindling, wood, tinder, and matches all set up and ready to go. But in the immortal words of rock icon and park ranger Bruce Springsteen, you can’t start a fire without a spark.
As you’ll see, there are no shortcuts to gaining someone’s trust. It takes time to create an emotional bond and energy to bring it to life. If you don’t make a long-term commitment to keeping the fire going, it will quickly burn out.
The deeper I delved into my exploration of trust, the clearer its relationship to opportunity became.
Think of the people you trust most in the world. (For me, they are my wife and mother: two people who consistently help, educate, challenge, and make me better in every way.)
How long did it take you to picture their faces? One second? Maybe two? And when was the last time you thought of these people? I’m going to guess that it hasn’t been longer than a week or two. Now make a mental list of the things you’d absolutely never ever do for these people if they were to ask you for help. Pretty short list, isn’t it?
When you trust someone completely, you place that person directly at the topmost point of your mind. And so long as you trust that person, he or she will stay there. You’ll do whatever you can for him or her, seeking out and creating opportunities to make life better for him or her.
This can all be distilled into a simple formula, shown in Figure 2.1. In other words, if you can consistently generate and sustain trust, you can create your own opportunity.
Figure 2.1 Formula for Creating Opportunity
Now I’m not saying you can be everyone’s wife or mother. (That’s just weird.) What you can do is hit enough trust touch points that you earn a place at the top of people’s minds so you’re the first person they think of when it’s time to make a decision. Think of it as a trust equity meter: each touch point helps you get another share of trust equity, and you’ll become a larger holder of their trust.
When someone is looking to hire an attorney or work with a designer for her company’s website or developing partnerships for his next opportunity, the person who’s built trust, hit enough touch points, and earned top-of-mind status will get the first call.
On the personal side, it could be that a friend of yours has an extra ticket to the Grammys and is looking for someone to go with. You want your name to be the first one that comes to mind. (I saw this happen. I knew someone who had an extra ticket to the Grammys, and you know what? The person who got the first call was one who had recently helped this friend move some furniture into his house. See? This mindset can apply to more than strictly professional opportunities.)
It may sound intuitive (it is), and it may sound like alchemy (it’s not). Either way, this formula was the culmination of my studies in trust, and it hit me like a divine revelation. Since making it the central pillar of our business philosophy, Influence & Co. has grown substantially: we’ve had a revenue growth of 5,000 percent, earned a place on the Forbes “Most Promising Companies in America” list, received recognition by the United Nations with an Empact Award for Best Marketing and Advertising Company, and recently ranked on the Inc. 500. More important than accolades, though, is that we’re surrounded by constant opportunities for growth.
But it’s easy to talk about how wonderful and important trust is in business and in life. The real question is, How do you make it happen?
Trying to force another human being to trust you is both manipulative and counterproductive. You can’t make someone feel an emotion; you can only create the conditions for that emotion to emerge organically.
The following touch points are ways to create these conditions. Because we’re dealing with complex human emotions, don’t think of this as a rigid checklist that will guarantee a specific set of results. Instead, think of it as a fluid set of guidelines for carrying yourself in a way that invites people to trust you.
What follows is an overview; we’ll delve deeper into each touch point later in the book.
You cannot trust what you don’t believe to be real. And yet so many of us contort ourselves into some premade mold of what we think we’re supposed to be. The introverted entrepreneur strains to be the life of the party, and the fun-loving CEO forces a constant scowl to come off as a person of seriousness.
What is true in your personal life is just as true in your professional one: bullshit derails relationships. When you pretend, not only are you putting distance between yourself and your next opportunity, you’re making yourself miserable as well.
When I was younger, I used to think it was cool to call my friends and share (or exaggerate) my successes. I felt a pressure to impress others, and as I got older, I realized I was actually hurting my relationships with my closest friends. I was acting like someone I wasn’t, and they could see right through it.
In 2014, Target CMO Jeff Jones published a post on LinkedIn titled “The Truth Hurts.”1 The post came as Target was trying to rebuild after the news of a massive data breach, compounded by the sudden resignation of its CEO in the fallout. Rather than trying to spin the terrible news, Jones was completely up front—not only about the impact of the crisis on the business but also about the emotional toll it was taking on the team and on himself.
Jones’s authenticity inspired me. I began to write more openly about the self-doubt I experience about my writing skills (a nerve-racking prospect for the head of a content marketing company). These articles were exercises in authenticity.
The response was tremendous (and unexpected). Needless to say, given what my company does, this created quite a few new opportunities for us. The connections this sort of authenticity helped forge have been as vital for our business as they have been for my personal growth.
Take a minute to evaluate your own authenticity. You’re reading a book. Nobody’s judging you. Be honest with yourself here.
Years ago, if I had spent time thinking about my own authenticity and asking myself if I was truly authentic, it would have been a brief exercise in self-awareness. The answer would have been “Absolutely not.” It’s not like I was actively trying to be inauthentic, but as I said, I used to feel a constant pressure to impress others. And that sort of motivation doesn’t lend itself very well to developing or practicing authenticity.
Since then, I’ve continued to make a conscious effort to challenge myself to become better, and I’ve been fortunate enough to surround myself with people who aren’t afraid to call me out when I need it. When you’ve got good intentions and you’re trying to become the best version of yourself, authenticity extends naturally from those efforts.
I’ll leave you with this on authenticity: There are certain things to which people are naturally drawn, things we’ve got a sense for, and I firmly believe that authenticity is one of them. My three-year-old daughter loves the movie Aladdin so much that she wants to watch it together basically every night.
Now, if you’ve ever seen Aladdin, you know that one of his three wishes is to become a prince so that he can impress Princess Jasmine. When she starts getting suspicious of him, the Genie advises Aladdin to just drop the act and tell her the truth already, later turning into a bee and whispering “Bee yourself” into Aladdin’s ear.
This is the part where my daughter gets so frustrated (and it’s kind of amazing to watch). She throws a fit every time and says, “Daddy, why is Aladdin being like this?” My three-year-old can tell when something isn’t authentic, and I don’t think that ability goes away as we get older. In fact, I think we get better at sensing it. We become more skeptical and, therefore, even more attracted to authentic relationships (and brands).
If you’re still skeptical about whether it’s possible to create opportunity for yourself, try doing it for someone else. It might sound counterintuitive, but one of the best ways to help yourself is to help others.
It’s easy: each time you speak to someone, simply close the conversation by asking, “How can I be helpful to you?”
Being this direct will give you insight into the barriers that stand between this person and his goals—and how you can help dismantle those barriers. Sometimes doing so is easy and all you have to do is shoot off a quick e-mail or make a phone call to connect people to the resources that will help them meet their goals.
Recently, a member of my publications team was at a conference on the West Coast that was hosted by a particular media outlet. We were using Slack to catch up, and I asked if there was anything I could do to help her out. She was struggling to set up a meeting with this media outlet, and it turned out that I knew the SVP of that company. With an e-mail that took me a total of 30 seconds to write, I reached out to him, and he provided my team member with exactly what she needed—and we made a new business opportunity happen. My employee was so grateful. I could tell that something as simple as an e-mail went a long way to building more trust between us.
If it weren’t for people introducing me to their strategic contacts, providing constructive feedback on my pitches, and sharing valuable industry insight, Influence & Co. would certainly not be where it is today. Minor though they may seem individually, these acts of helpfulness add up and have determined the course of my business and my life. I’ve never forgotten the people behind them.
More cynical readers might accuse me of advocating bribery. Not true. A favor with strings attached may achieve some sort of immediate quid pro quo, but it has no lasting power. It’s far more effective to help others without expecting anything in return. Most people will feel deep appreciation, and appreciation is a ladder to top-of-mind position. When helping others becomes the framework through which you interact with the world, you’ll find yourself at the top of many minds.
I tend to think of myself as somewhat of a likable person. I grew up in the Midwest, after all, which is like coming of age in a likability boot camp—or so I thought. Then I read Jeff Haden’s article “How to Be Exceptionally Likable: 11 Things the Most Charming People Always Do,”2 and I realized I had some major work to do.
Likability matters. It’s hard to trust someone you don’t like. Because we are passionate, high-energy people, this is something that many entrepreneurs and executives struggle with, as the intensity of our passion can easily rub others the wrong way. It’s necessary to find a balance between intensity and accessibility, one that neither suppresses nor sacrifices authenticity.
Finding that balance starts with understanding yourself and your personality and exactly what kind of “likable” you want to be. Jeff Haden offers some great advice, and later, we’ll go into more depth about applying his list of advice to your unique brand of likability. It takes work, but investing in your likability will pay off in trust.
Familiarity is the other side of the likability coin—it evokes a sense of closeness, a feeling of genuine connection. Familiarity emerges at its purest in face-to-face conversation.
Imagine yourself at one of those networking sessions where everyone you talk to is looking slightly beyond your left ear, scanning the room for someone more important. After a few of these interactions, you meet someone who is actually curious—not only about your business idea but about you as a person. The questions are real without being intrusive. Where did you grow up? Where do you get your ideas? What do you love about what you do? Just imagine how this person would stand out from the rest.
I had an experience like this recently. I was at St. Mary’s University, waiting around to address students at their graduation ceremony. With some time on my hands, I approached the organizer and struck up a conversation. Within minutes we made the surprising discovery that we had grown up three blocks away from each other. Three blocks.
The sense of familiarity I feel with him now is as strong as if I’d known him for years. Had one of us looked slightly past the other to find someone else or stuck to superficial small talk, we would still be strangers. Cultivating a sense of genuine curiosity and learning to ask the right questions will help build familiarity with others and transform you from random outsider to trusted insider.
If you treat your brand as an afterthought, you’re simply fortifying the barriers between yourself and opportunity creation. A vibrant, flourishing brand is one of your most powerful tools in creating trust and opportunity.
Take a look at Tesla. If you’re not a luxury electric vehicle industry insider, you may not know much about the inner workings of the company. Chances are, however, that you’re familiar with Elon Musk’s reputation as rocket scientist/climate activist/genius innovator—or, as blogger Tim Urban calls him, the “world’s raddest man.”3
Perhaps you’re one of Musk’s millions of Twitter followers, or maybe you just notice when he’s quoted in an article on tech, which is all of them. The benefits Musk reaps from his stellar brand extend to his companies, too.
Now compare Musk to my friend Dave Kerpen. Unlike Musk, Dave isn’t a billionaire celebrity (though he is a pretty rad guy). But that hasn’t stopped Dave from becoming one of the most respected thought leaders in the field of digital marketing. To achieve and sustain this position, Dave maintains an impeccable personal brand—he publishes some of the most insightful content across the most relevant platforms, engages his audience in meaningful, personal conversations, and comes off as the great guy he really is. The success of Dave’s brand has been a huge asset to the success of Likeable Local, as well as Likeable Media—and will be an asset to any company he’s involved with in the future.
It is vital that you invest in executive branding—not just your own but your entire team’s. Each of your team members is a potential thought leader; the more thought leaders represent your brand, the more trust you generate with more audiences who can relate to you.
Have you ever read an article that feels like it was written especially for you? Maybe it answers a specific question you’ve had on your mind for a while or it gives you some piece of advice that seems tailor-made to your life situation. When this happens, it creates a sense of connection to the author that makes you want to read everything she’s ever written and anything she’ll ever write.
Content triggers help foster this connection between you and your audience. As we talked about in Chapter 1, these triggers are the patterns that emerge when you listen to the demands of your target audience. The question to ask should sound pretty familiar to you: “How can I be helpful to you?”
When we started listening, really listening, to our audience, we learned that many executives who were enthusiastic about investing in content marketing were getting insurmountable pushback from their CFOs. So we began crafting content around this content trigger, publishing articles like “4 C-Suite Objections to Content Marketing and How to Overcome Them.”4 By speaking directly to the needs of our target audience, we were able to gain their trust.
Education is the most important trust point because knowledge is power. When you educate people, you are empowering them.
All of the previous touch points fall under the umbrella of education in one way or another. One of the most effective and easily scalable ways to unify these practices is through high-quality digital content.
Content’s potential as an educational tool is limitless. Use it to share whatever knowledge you have that others will find valuable—industry insight, best practices, experiential learnings—and they will reward you with trust.
If this all seems like a lot to take in, don’t worry. In the following chapters, we’ll explore tactics for transforming these trust touch points into habits. Once these strategies become second nature, everything you do will generate trust and get you closer to being top of mind.