why should you trust someone?
I am Aarihant Aaryan! Welcome to the Iron Sharpen Iron newsletter,
I share my weekly homework from my startup journey, learning about human behavior, and sometimes decoding industries and business models for fun.
I can’t control my curiosity :) )
Important Note: Today I’m taking Iron Sharpen Iron to a new level, It is going to be a new 0-1 Journey, share more about that at the end of the newsletter :)
Most Indians SUCK at trusting people or building trust
That's why the rich keep getting richer!
India is a super diverse country, the trust and wealth revolve around their own communities.
When trust is concentrated only toward the top 5% - wealth-making opportunities dry up - The rate of innovation takes a toll. Lives become inefficient.
If you observe wealth or transactions of any form (Money, opportunities, mating, business) happen in groups where there are people of similar values and beliefs
i.e A diamond community, Marwari community, the African community
The worst part is that people who weren't trusted enough will keep hating people who were well-trusted.
People don't hate the rich for the money, they hate them because they cracked for trust like no other.
What can trust do?
1. Trust brings progression:
If you observe first-world countries like Singapore, China, and America - trusting someone naturally comes to them. When people constantly trust someone, people create more wealth and more innovation that brings progression to humanity.
All countries with high trust are extremely prosperous and have low crime rates.
If everyone is experiencing the same kind of trust, it's a mere policy.
The best way to understand whether you're well-trusted is by understanding the kind of bets and risk people are taking for you.
This is the same reason your manager gets paid more than you do.
Even if you have the best skill and credentials in the world, if you can't crack for trust, you are living a sedentary life.
2. Correlation between trust and wealth:
I always thought, why do the rich keep getting richer - It's because they are well-trusted - Imagine, Tata launching an FMCG product, many would trust it.
So the higher you climb the trust ladder, the more wealth you crack.
When you are at the top of the trust ladder, you become a ladder on your own - you trust many others, hence you create a huge proportionate of wealth.
When you are at the middle of the ladder, you have limited access, power, and risk-taking ability to trust but it's a choice you make - if you don't do it the top of the ladder will not expand.
Middle-of-the-trust ladder folks tend to half-trust people, which creates a shallow approach for the person who is trusted, eventually resulting in them doing the same and pushing them to the bottom of the ladder.
When you are at the bottom of the ladder, you want to make sure you make your community go up the ladder, in the "hope" of them uplifting you sooner or later - people perceive that them being a ladder for someone outside their community is like someone pushing them down.
3. If people don't crack for trust, they will be replaced:
If you don't crack for trust, you will be replaced by tech products. People didn't trust to buy from random people - hence marketplaces came into existence, bore the risk, and replaced the wealth-making opportunity and the work of the traders.
This way is the fastest and most efficient way to jump from the bottom of the trust pyramid to the top of the pyramid, Just replaces people who can't crack for trust.
How to get Trusted?
You might be thinking if we are living in such a low-trust society, how can you build trust and create more impact/value?
Don’t expect to be trusted, if you don’t trust “First” :
It is massively important for you to constantly trust first and take the risk. If you operate out of mistrust or doubt, why would anyone trust you?
Here are a couple of points that might help you :
To build trust or accelerate it get trusted by people/organizations who are well reputed or trusted or people who are percieved as God Figures:Trust is decentralized in nature, it is one of the best ways to accelerate trust.
Senior Politicians use this method wonderfully to get their new candidates trusted, Religious institutions use this wonderfully when they want to open up their new institutions in new locations. Even banks do this to fintech - that’s why neo banks are being well adopted in India.
Frequent Engagement → Familiarity → TrustThis is something many suck at since they have a transactional intent, If you can build trust with this method, no matter how many mishaps happen, they will keep trusting you.
If it takes one bad incident for someone to lose trust in you, was it even trust?
In my opinion, that person or institution had more transactional feelings about you.
Trust comes from familiarity that is borne through a frequent engagement, that has emotions involved on a higher level.
Big Announcement:
Today we launched Iron Sharpen Iron paid WhatsApp group, If you ever read my newsletter and found it insightful or has impacted your life at any level - I can assure you it’s going 5X better than this - my notion and keep notes can vouch for it :)
Here's what you get from the group:
Get access to my exclusive insights very often ( the ones that I mostly don't share on social media) and get to discuss them with a like-minded community
Jam on ideas and hot topics every weekend
We have rolled out yearly access, it's 220/- per annum but this isn't for everyone - for now we can only accommodate only 50 people - will open new slots later
Ps: Already 25% of the spots are booked, sorry I launched the group yesterday since I only share a newsletter on Sundays, you guys are getting to learn about it a bit late - we start our first discussion on Monday :))
You can join the community using this link: Iron Sharpen Iron Paid Group
If you have already joined, Bring a friend :))
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