They say we got to earn trust or that it takes time to earn trust.

But for me, I give trust instantly. Because I openly receive and value the words you say the way I value my own. If you said to me “I can do x,y,z” – I believe you.

Trust is the most powerful currency in business.

With 20 years of delivering upon expectation after expectation. I can call someone within my network and they respond back “anything for you” that’s how powerful trust can be.

Equally, if we don’t meet expectations, then the trust factor is broken & trust can be easily be taken away. Especially if we don’t execute, lie or down-right be deceitful.

If you make that commitment, commit. If you can’t, then keep your mouth shut.

Thoughts on trust in business?

Transcript

Tobi: For me, trust. I’ll just give you trust instantly off the back. And the reason why I do that is because I place the values that I have, the words that come out of your mouth, are received by the way in which I value those words, not by the way in which you talk them, right? So if you said to me, “Tobi I can do this”, I believe you. Because if I told you “If I could do this”, I’m telling you I can do it.

So I kind of take your words as if they’re my own and I trust you instantly. A lot of people out there say that “You know, you have to slow it down. You’ve got to earn the trust. It takes… It’s earned, not given.” But for me, I’m the type of person that gives it straight off the bat and I’ll take it away very, very quickly if you either don’t execute, don’t deliver or you lie, right? Or you’re deceitful. And so for me, I’ll go out of my way to say I can deliver on X, Y, and Z. I’ll set an expectation. I’ll deliver on that expectation, time and time and time again. It’s like 20 years of being a commercial entrepreneur and that now I can call up customers and in different ventures that I’m in. And they’re “Tobi, yeah, what do I need to do?”

Because they trust me because I deliver on my work. Equally, the second that I stopped delivering or I start to fail or I start to say something that’s not going to actually be the outcome, it’s very hard to trust. Never. Me never, and that really comes back from when I… That kind of comes from me from when I was a kid. My mom always said, two things, “You never know who I know, so always be on your best behaviour.” And so I would go to parties as a kid, like kids houses, friend’s houses. I’d go hang out, I’d be in tournament’s, I’d be doing a whole bunch of different things. And my mom would give me feedback like, “How’d you know that?” She’s like, “Remember, you don’t know who I know. So always be on your best behavior.” And so kind of like going through that number, she was drilling me with them, but there was a value that she set.

She also told me about commitment. “If you make a commitment, you deliver on that commitment. If you can’t make the commitment, keep your mouth shut.” So the words that come out of my mouth are the words that I’m going to deliver on. And your words need to be authentic, right? In the early days, if you are a startup, and I’ll be honest with you, I think there’s maybe three or four startups out of 600 companies inside of CreativeCubes at the moment, a lot of them are larger businesses, but when you’re first starting out, it is critical, like live or die critical, that you, if you’re going to say something, you deliver on it. And I don’t care if you have to stay awake for three days straight, you deliver. And so, once you get your foot in the door, it’s critical. So I’d like to talk to you a little bit about something that sits adjacent to this trust, which is relationships.

So you execute and build trust to then build a relationship and then those relationships will either help you grow or they’ll kick you out, right? If you do right, you get the door ajar, right? You’ve got a foot in the door, “Sir, Ma’am, I’m going to do X, Y, Z. I’m going to help you do A, B, C.” You do it that door is now wide open. All right, you do it again that door now shuts. Doesn’t shut with you on the outside, it shuts with you on the inside, right? And what I mean by that is the relationship and the delivery, you become a trusted person that that company or organisation or other can lean on and they’re also in the eye of the storm, right? And so, relationships are critical to business. People do business with people they like, people do business with people they can trust.

If you are likeable and trustworthy, then you’re in and that door gets shut on your competitors and your competitors can say, “Oh, we can give you a cheaper, we can give you discounts, we can do this within.” When you are dealing with me, it’s never about money. Ever. I’d rather pay a premium and know that I’ve got solid foundation than pay peanuts and get monkeys. Right?

So that trust and that relationship that you’re building through trust helps you keep the door shut to competitors. Yeah. I’ll give you one last bomb, my three top values for running a company. Number one, relationships. Number two, relationships. Number three, relationships. These are sacred things. If you can deliver trust, deliver authentically, deliver on your word, relationships are going to be your elevator or your rocket ship.