Why Trust Is a Bad Bet | Ep 979

**Alex Hormozi** (0:00)
Why don't you trust me, right? It's something that we might say to somebody, or you might say the reverse is like, just trust me. And that word, people have a very hard time of knowing like, what the hell does that even mean? What does trust even mean? And so this is a departure from my normal business content, but I think you will like it, or at least I do. And so I was thinking about this because someone recently was like, hey, trust me, and I was like, huh, that's an odd command. What does that even mean? And so I want to break down, number one, what does trust actually mean from a behavioral perspective? How can I look at someone and say, trust has occurred here, right? And then, are there different types of trust, so that, which is what confuses this whole thing, because there isn't just one, there's actually four. And this was after actually thinking about this one statement that a friend made to me. And so the four types of trust actually correspond with two big variables, which is who's at risk and who does the punishing. So whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. So you're saying trust is about punishment? The answer is yes. So if I trust someone, it means that I make myself punishable by them. So for example, if I say, I'm going to share a secret with you, then it means I give you something that you can punish me with. And the idea is that I believe I'm making a bet that you're not going to punish me. And that's the risk, right? And so the idea is we have you who are at risk, so you risk, and then we have the other person punishing, right?
That's the first type. The second type of risk is that someone else does the risking with you, and they say, I'm going to give you a secret, I'm going to give you a knife, and I can point it at my back, and I'm going to bet that you're not going to stab, all right? So now you're the one who can punish them. That means that you are being trustworthy to them. I'm going to give you prescriptions on how to actually do this, because this has been so helpful for thinking about this through a relationship. Like, imagine Layla and I were married, and I want her to trust me more, and she wants me to trust her. So it's like, how can we actually prescribe, do these things, to gain trust? And this is what I wanted to talk about, and that's what we're going to do. All right, let me just cover the other two. So if you're at risk, who else is the possible punisher? Well, it's the environment. So that means that reality punishes you. So what does that actually look like? That would be, hey, can I trust you to pick my kid up tomorrow? Right? Sure.
How would that happen? Well, I'm going to give them something, two different things, that I value a lot. They could punish me. They could kidnap my kid. That would suck, right? Or they could not pick up my kid, also would suck. Are they the one doing the punishing? Well, kidnapping, yes. But if they just didn't keep their word and just didn't pick the kid up, the environment would do the punishing, right? Now, to the same degree, someone can trust me, and it can't just, doesn't always have to be about action, like me doing something for someone else. It can also be about advice. So if I'm like, man, I really trust her, I trust her advice. She has good insight, right? Then I might follow that advice, and a bad thing would happen, and then I'd be like, I don't trust her that much. It's terrible advice, right? And so these are the four conditions. So you basically have secrets or information, right? That someone can give you, or you can give someone, that they can use and hurt you, or you give someone your word that you're going to do something, either make it happen or that they should do it. And in either of those scenarios, the environment does the punishing. All right? Now, how do we make this useful? Okay. Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10 stage roadmap from zero to 100 million plus, that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple times. And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it, and then what steps we actually took to graduate. And we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this, and it works. And it's my gift to you. It's absolutely free. And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap, just enter your info, and it'll spit it right back to you all free. Here's the thinking process around, should I do this? So two questions.