Building trust without performing it

What it really means to earn like + trust through your words in a world obsessed with performance, strategy, one-size-fits-all storytelling and aestheticised authenticity.

Most of us who run businesses spend a lot of time thinking about the questions: how do I get more people to know me? see me? like me? how do I get them to trust me enough to buy? how do I build a community of people who I actually like too?

Maybe not those words exactly, but that’s essentially what we’re all saying, right?

Because we’re told that these are the twin pillars of good marketing: Like. Trust. Like. Trust. Like. Get enough people to know you, fall in love with you, and you’ll be forever gravy, baby.

And it makes sense, of course. We want connection. We want credibility. We want the kind of recognition that says: it’s all worth it, all of this time and effort, you did something good. You made something good. People are happy. You can sleep now.

(ok maybe that last one is just me).

But I want to ask you to pause here with me, just for a minute.

I want to ask you to consider what these words actually mean. Not in the Instagram-quote sense. Not in the funnel-strategy sense. But in the human sense.

Like + trust.

What does it really mean to earn someone’s trust? Like truly? To have a person really trust you? Believe you and believe in you? To know that you have their best interests at heart, even when it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement? What does it mean to be liked — truly liked — not for your branding, not for that one cute Insta post or your Substack notes (that honestly, could rival Jane Austin’s private journals), but for who you are?

And how do you even begin to deserve that?

Because I think we’ve been getting this backwards. All of us. Myself included.

Here’s how I look at this in my marketing (and how I teach my clients to write in a way that actually builds real trust) now…