The Most Powerful 
Business Success Secret?

Why did McDonald’s become the single-biggest restaurant chain in the world?

It wasn’t the quality of the food.  It wasn’t the service.  It wasn’t the atmosphere.  It wasn’t the advertising, either.

If I can sum it up in one word, it was this: TRUST.

You could go into a McDonald’s in the next city, the next state, the next country over — or even all the way around the world — and you could have 100% TRUST that you’d have a McDonald’s experience.

Sure, they localized the experience a little bit, in completely different countries and cultures.

But largely, McDonald’s is McDonald's.

And as far as I understand it, McDonald’s still holds the #1 spot for fast food around the world — a position they’ve held for decades.

And sure, consumer preferences are trending away from burger joint fast food.  So Subway is gaining ground and could easily overtake McDonald’s in the next few years.

Still, this doesn’t disprove my point.

Because Subway has created that same trustworthiness that McDonald’s did.  Subway is Subway.  Again, TRUST.

This isn’t a million-dollar marketing secret.
It’s a billion-dollar business secret.

You can build a flash-in-the-pan success without trust.  Maybe.

At least, you can fake trust for long enough to take some money out of a market.

(Of course, if you’re faking trust, you might be doing the things that lead to the FTC or other similar agencies catching up with you.  Which is no bueno.)

If you want to build a real business that just keeps growing and delivering lasting success, it takes trust.

Trust is a cornerstone of success.

If you maintain and grow trust, attracting new customers and revenue as well as repeat business just keeps getting easier.

If you botch your trust with the market, you may struggle or even run your business into the ground.

A horror story of a business that lost my trust.

I’ve always invested in high-speed internet.

Today that’s faster than ever.  But ever since I was paying my own internet bill, I paid extra for whatever high speed was at the time.

In Lincoln, where I’ve lived most of my adult life, the government-sanctioned monopoly on cable service went to Time Warner.

Prior to fiber, cable was the fastest internet you could get.

So I had my internet through Time Warner.

The speed was good enough.  When it worked.  Which was often enough.

But note, I didn’t really have an option.  So I couldn’t easily go to a competitor.

Time Warner knew this, and…

They abused it.

They were in a market where they held a monopoly protected by government regulation, so trust was irrelevant.  At least on a short timeline.

They’d invite you in with low-priced entry rates, and double your rates 90 days later.

It was a constant battle.  You could call and threaten to cancel.  And they’d put you back on the introductory rate.  For another 90 days.  Until…

But every time they did that, it eroded my trust.

Not just mine, either.  Any customers who were paying attention seethed, but there was no better option.

They went through a couple name changes.  We got Road Runner.  Then Spectrum.

But all along, it was the same terrible service, from the same terrible company.

Then, the monopoly got disrupted.  

Not because another cable provider came into town.  But because fiber internet didn’t rely on the regulated cable infrastructure.

So a new company came into town, to lay fiber internet to the in-home router.

Then, this new company, Allo, did something even better.

They said, “No price games.  We’ll deliver ultra-fast internet, and here’s the price.”

Sure, it was more expensive when you weren’t on an introductory rate.  But there weren’t any games.

They also did something subtle, but powerful, to build trust.

While most internet is sold at “speeds up to,” this fiber company said you were buying “at least this speed.”

So rather than my 15 MBPS cable internet constantly clocking in at 14.73 MBPS…  My 500 MBPS fiber constantly clocks at a hair over 500 MBPS.

Which brings me to…

The unfortunate situation of a salesman selling a company that’s lost trust…

Spectrum, who used to be Time Warner, has seen their market share for local internet continue to crash.  At least in our city.

Rather than providing a high-trust service with high-trust business practices, they’ve put salesmen on the streets to pitch the same inferior service.

Recent posts in our city subreddit have suggested these salespeople are engaging in even more shady and deceptive sales tactics than the company…

Probably because there’s little oversight into how they’re actually closing customers, as long as the customers are signing up.

But when I answer the door and someone’s wearing a Spectrum shirt?

I flat out tell them I don’t trust their company, and will never do business with them again.

And I know I’m not alone.

When people in that same local subreddit ask about internet service, there’s a chorus of voices in support of this local fiber internet company.

And many of those voices are backed up with the same justification I’d give.

• They don’t mess around. 
• They deliver a great service.  
• And they do what they say they’re going to do.
  

They’re not perfect.  And the mere process of getting utilities buried in your yard has created some distaste.  But that’s few and far between, a one-time problem, and quickly forgotten in favor of an overall much better and more trusted customer experience.

But I can tell you this: Allo has largely destroyed the cable monopoly over high-speed internet in my city, by coming in and building trust.

Earlier I said Time Warner/Spectrum got away with abusing trust on a short timeline.  But that only worked while they were legally protected from competition.  On a longer timeline, that protection disappeared.  And they quickly discovered the market was more than ready to abandon them.

This applies in business after business, industry after industry.  It even (especially) applies to solo service businesses.

Don’t be mistaken because I’m talking about fast food and high-speed internet companies that I’m not talking about you.

TRUST is the lesson, the focus, and the principle.

Being trustworthy goes a long way to creating success.

Losing trust with a market can ruin you.

And abusing trust can lead to BBB complaints followed by enforcement action from government authorities.

We’ve seen a lot of that recently.  Direct response companies that focus on “sell at any cost” created rapid success merely on their ability to generate conversions.

But bad customer experiences piled up.  Followed by complaints.  And some of those complaints made their way to government agencies that regulate commerce.  And “Operation Income Illusion” was one of many targeting companies that were found to be in violation — first and foremost — of consumer trust.

Regardless of the size of your business though, trust matters.

Your buyer, whoever they are, makes a buying decision because they trust you’ll deliver on your promise.

How you fulfill on that (or behave when you can’t) will make or break trust.

And that happens person-by-person.

When you build trust, they come back.  When you abuse it, they leave.

Which brings me to…

The economics of trust.

You’ve probably heard truisms like “it costs 10X as much to get a new customer as to bring an old one back.”

This is repeated because it’s true.  But it does require trust.

Let’s say you spend $100 to get a new customer to spend $100 with you.

That might seem like a waste of money.  And if you don’t have repeat business, it is.

But what if that same customer trusted you completely, and returned to spend another $100 with you every 6 months for the next 5 years?

And what if your trusted relationship with that customer led to it being extremely cheap and easy to get them to spend that $100 every 6 months?

So your first $100 cost $100 to generate.  But maybe over the next 5 years, you spend just $100 to generate an additional $1,000 in revenue.

The profits generated from that first sale was $0.

But the profits from the subsequent sales was $900.

Of course this is a simplified illustration.  But it holds true in the real world.

Once you’ve established a relationship of trust with a customer, if you have something to offer them for a second purchase, a third, a fourth, etc…

They will keep coming back.  And it will cost a fraction to generate the additional sales versus what it cost to generate the first one.

But that only holds up if you maintain trust with the market.

Important: Trustworthiness is not a tactic.

Here is where I pivot and start talking about the training I’m delivering.

But before I do that, I want to underscore an important point.

I will teach tactics that help you build trust.  There are specific superficial steps you can take that make you more trustworthy, in the moment.

And if there’s anything that I’d love for you to “fake it ‘til you make it” on, it’s trust.

If you keep behaving in trustworthy ways, for whatever motivation, until you are just a trustworthy person…  GREAT!

But you can’t use trust tactics just to drive conversion, after which you switch back to being untrustworthy or deceptive.

Your behavior, as a business and as an individual, needs to be consistently trustworthy.

Then trust will accumulate, and it will have a snowball effect on your success.

Trust must become a fundamental disposition and operating principle.

That’s how it becomes transformative.

Let me show you the behaviors that lead to trust.

I’ve identified more than a dozen pillars of trust that will dramatically increase your marketing and business success.

Some are tactical and superficial, easier to replicate, and quick to have an impact.

Others are deeper, more core to the way you operate.

All serve to reinforce each other, creating a culture and essence of trustworthiness that will keep customers and clients coming back over and over again.

In this training, I break down and explain these pillars of trust, and how they can be applied in your business.

This may not be the most popular training I ever do. 

It certainly doesn’t feed the dopamine-induced drive for hacks and tactics, so common especially amongst the newbies to marketing who are just focused on getting their kicks.

But for real businesses that want to create a real impact for their stakeholders and in their markets, this is pure power.

Here’s how you get access to 
Pillars of Trust

Pillars of Trust: Dramatically increase your marketing and business success is the April 2024 Monthly Insiders Call for BTMSinsiders members.

This exclusive benefit of membership — included as part of the BTMSinsiders All-Access Pass — allows you to participate in the training live, plus gives you access to all past Insiders Calls recordings.