Stephen has been studying and learning how to use and explain trust for Organizations. Let’s just say, you need to get vulnerable for this one.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients, so here’s one of those.
[Out Of This World Plumbing Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast, Dave Young, alongside Stephen Semple, and Stephen, you’re supposed to whisper-
Stephen Semple:
We’re going off the reservation, I know. Yes.
Dave Young:
You were supposed to whisper in my ear today’s business that we’re going to discuss, and you just mentioned trust, and I’m thinking, this is not like a bank and trust. This is not like a trust fund.
Stephen Semple:
In God, we trust, money.
Dave Young:
No, not that. Basically, this is like trust. This is like consumer trust, people trusting each other, people trusting businesses, people trusting, I don’t know, government. Are we living in a post-trust age? Is that the question?
Stephen Semple:
Well, Gallup and other organizations that measure basically people’s trust in institutions and organizations and businesses and things like that across the board all agree, it’s at an all-time low. Across the board, our trust in organizations, businesses, other people, things like that has declined to a level not seen before. And what’s disturbing on this is if you’re coming up with an innovative idea, if you’re wanting to create a movement, if you’re wanting to get support from something, if you’re wanting to sell a product or service, everyone agreed. I had the opportunity to run lots of workshops and speak at lots of places, and I’ll ask people, is trust important to what you do? Everyone agrees, trust is super important.
Dave Young:
Sure.
Stephen Semple:
We all agree on that. Studies show trust is way down. So we all agree it’s really important, all the studies show its way down, so it got me to thinking and really studying, how do we establish and build trust as organizations? And what I found was there’s actually three levels of trust, and one of the things we’re going to dive into here in a little bit, the highest level is this concept of parasocial relationships, which we’ll dig into. But I just thought, if you’re wanting to build something big and large and grand, there’s a point where what you’ve got to recognize is you’ve got to get people to trust this new idea that you’re doing. So when I get talking to folks about trust, I’ll often ask, “What are the things that you do to build trust?” And we did this in the workshop that I did with Matthew Burns and Gary Bernier.
Dave Young:
Selling professional services.
Stephen Semple:
On the selling professional services, one of the questions was that, and people talked about how, well, you do what you say you’re going to do and be on time and be polite and be transparent and all those things build trust, and it’s true, but those are like level one trust things. They will form a basic level of trust. And the other challenge with it is, for the most part, they were things that you had to have an interaction with the client or the prospective client in order to even establish that.
Dave Young:
Man, this is a Gordian knot. [inaudible 00:04:46] This is a tough nut you want to crack.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
I think of a lot of things. When do you want to dive into the parasocial effect? It happens to me, oh, I don’t know, three, four times a month. Somebody will show up at Wizard Academy at a class and they’ll go, “Wow, I love that podcast that you and Stephen do. I feel like I know you.” And that’s the parasocial influence.
Stephen Semple:
It is.
Dave Young:
They don’t know me from Adam, but because I’m this wacky, goofy guy that is your sidekick on this podcast, they think they know me.
Stephen Semple:
Right.
Dave Young:
And to be honest, I think I’m pretty close to just being me when I’m doing this podcast, right?
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
What you see is what you get, but man, there’s some… I think of some of the podcast, guys like Joe Rogan, and if you listen to Joe Rogan long enough, you’d feel like you know him, and does that mean you trust what he says? I think the other problem with the parasocial influence is that people know it and can use it. You can create trust where you may not be trustworthy, but you’ve figured out how to use Parasocial influence to the point where people trust you because of this mask that you wear of trustworthiness.
Stephen Semple:
Well, it’s not a mask. This is what we’re going to explore.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
So the basic level of trust, let’s just go through the first two because what happens in Parasocial is the highest, third level. So the first level is the basic trust. Be a good person, do what you say you’re going to do, show up on time, be polite, be respectful, be transparent, all that. It’s your basic level of trust. Now, there’s another level of trust above that, and it’s called transfer trust. Because again, these workshops that we’ve done, people will say, “Yeah, but I also get referrals and referrals are even better.” Well, it refers to transfer of trust, so in other words, if you trust me and I say, “That Bernier guy’s a great guy,” a degree of the trust for me is transferred to that other person, and so you now trust that other person. So that’s transferable trust.
Dave Young:
Do you count reviews into that category?
Stephen Semple:
Yes, sure, and all these things are a scale. The more you know me, the higher the transfer. Google Reviews are absolutely a transfer of trust, yes. And again, these are all on a continuum. There’s some that are… The more me and the more you trust me, the stronger there is that transference of trust.
Dave Young:
Yeah, I agree.
Stephen Semple:
All those things are all on a continuum, and they’re the second level. They’re even more powerful than the basic level. And just like an anonymous Google Review is less powerful than a Google Review where it’s from somebody and it’s even more powerful if it’s from somebody that I know and trust, right?
Dave Young:
Yeah, for sure.
Stephen Semple:
Now, here’s where it gets weird, and this is where people will get frustrated. A social influencer on Instagram will sometimes have more weight and more power on their recommendations on some medical procedure than a medical doctor, and this is where it gets weird. And part of it is, now, when we talk about parasocial relationships, we’re bastardizing it a little bit, because if you actually look up parasocial relationships, parasocial relationships happen, are defined by the social scientists that are studying this stuff as being the experience you had where somebody comes up to you feeling like you’re already in a relationship and they may approach you in that friendlier manner even though you’ve never met. Most people come up to you, they’re a little bit reserved, and then you get that person who walks right up to you like you’re buddies, and you’ve never met them, but they feel like they’ve met you because they’ve been listening to this podcast.
Dave Young:
Yeah. So it tends to be a one-way street, the parasocial influence, right?
Stephen Semple:
It is. The parasocial influence… But that’s the parasocial influence. Now, I’m going to take it to trust, because the people who’ve done a great job of developing really deep parasocial relationships are people like the Kardashians, who share all of the craziness of their life publicly, right?
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Okay.
Dave Young:
Sure they do, but do they really?
Stephen Semple:
We feel like they are.
Dave Young:
We feel like it. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
But what’s happening is they’re not just sharing the good, they’re sharing the bad and they’re sharing the ugly. Now, here’s what ends up happening. For the history of mankind, up until the last couple of decades, if you knew the good, the bad and the ugly about somebody, chances are they were a member of your village.
Dave Young:
Sure. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
So for the vast majority of mankind, the only people that you knew, the good, bad and the ugly were people inside your inner circle. They were members of your village or they were a co-worker, but they were somebody you actually knew well.
Dave Young:
And probably why we always say an expert is somebody from 50 miles away, because we know the good, the bad and all the things from the people that live near us.
Stephen Semple:
Correct. So now what ends up happening is the signal to us when all of a sudden, one of the Kardashians gets on and shares the bad and the ugly, all of a sudden, we develop that tight relationship because the only people that historically, through the entire history of mankind, that we knew the bad and the ugly were our close community. That means guess what? We’re now close community, even though it’s only one way. Emotionally, that’s what happens. Now, when somebody’s in your close community, do you trust them? Yeah, you do.
Dave Young:
Well, it depends.
Stephen Semple:
People that we know the bad about them, we trust them. We actually do trust you.
Dave Young:
We trust them to be who they are.
Stephen Semple:
We trust them to be who they are, and so when they recommend something, we see that recommendation as genuine.
Dave Young:
Sure. That, I’d buy.
Stephen Semple:
Right? Now, again, remember, I still might not see them as an expert, because remember, expertise and trust are slightly different things. But the emotion of trust I extend to them, which means when they make a recommendation, there’s transferred trust to that recommendation.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
Okay. Now ,how do we then really establish deep parasocial relationships? It actually comes from sharing weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
Dave Young:
I agree. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Right. So if we want to as a business develop that highest level of trust that comes with parasocial relationships…
Dave Young:
Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business, right after this.
[Empire Builders Ad]
Dave Young:
Let’s pick up our story where we left off, and trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.
Stephen Semple:
If we want to as a business develop that highest level of trust that comes with parasocial relationships, we actually need to share in vulnerability, not just our expertise. “Oh, I’ve got 25 years in this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” That actually doesn’t establish it, and in fact, the power of that has gone down because our trust of institutions have gone down. We trust medical doctors less today than we used to, so standing up and saying, “I’m a medical doctor with a degree from Harvard,” doesn’t mean as much as it used to.
Dave Young:
Sure, yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Sharing some of your past life screw-ups actually is more powerful.
Dave Young:
Are you doing this in an effort to get me to share my screw-ups? I wasn’t prepared for this. I didn’t have a list ready.
Stephen Semple:
No, but the weird thing is talking about your family and talking about the arguments that you had with your sisters and things like that actually is powerful messaging towards developing trust.
Dave Young:
Sure, I agree. The opposite is true. If somebody that we’ve been relationally close to, I’m talking like business relationships, right?
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
But we don’t know any of their personal foibles or history, even though we’ve known them for some time, I don’t think we trust them as much as people who we’ve talked to about matters of the heart and frailty and fear and failures.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, because trust is this weird, wacky, wacky-doodle emotion, isn’t it?
Dave Young:
Mm-hmm.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. That person that you know all of their weaknesses and all other flaws, you trust more. Now, you know they’re not a medical doctor and they’re giving medical advice. You may not accept that they have expertise in an area that they’re talking about, but you do trust them.
Dave Young:
Yeah. Yeah, I’d buy that.
Stephen Semple:
And then the person has the deep expertise, you might not actually trust.
Dave Young:
It’s true, and I am not going to get into details but I had that experience with someone in the medical industry actually just this morning, where some of the things they said to me, I’m like, “Eh, but really? You don’t know me.”
Stephen Semple:
It’s this weird thing.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
And then the other thing is, the other area where we can get trust is by extending trust, and so this is the reason why I want to talk about vulnerability. So the real key in all of this, when we share a weakness, we’re being vulnerable because I’m opening myself up for ridicule. “I screwed up in these things. Man, Dave might judge me and never like me again.” That’s what creates that feeling of vulnerability. I’m opening up, I could be judged, I could be seen this way. We could now no longer be friends. This is a vulnerability.
Vulnerability also comes when we extend trust. Extend trust, we make ourselves vulnerable and we get trust back, because anytime we are vulnerable, that’s the key to trust-building. So a great example of that, and here’s where you can apply it to business, so let’s tie this back to one business lesson, your guarantees, your warranties. So as soon as you create a guarantee or warranty, you open yourself up to that percentage of the population that take advantage of things and could take advantage of you. “Oh, my God, if I did this as my warranty, people could take advantage of me. One hour heating and air. If we’re not on time, you don’t pay a dime. Oh my God, we could really open ourselves up. Okay. So you know what? Let’s put in the disclaimers to protect ourselves.”
The moment you start putting those disclaimers in to protect yourself from that person means I don’t trust you and I’m going to protect myself from you with all of these disclaimers. I’ve now weakened the trust relationship. The more I’ve removed those disclaimers and say, “No, there’s no disclaimers,” I actually start building trust because I go, “Look, I trust you to be honest with me. I trust you to be honest with me, so you know what? I don’t have the disclaimer.”
Now, here’s what I know. Yes, there’ll be the odd person who will take advantage of you, and you’ve just got to be okay with that, and what you’ve got to ask yourself is for those couple of people who take advantage of you, I’m able to build massive levels of trust with the rest of the world. Is it worth it? That’s really the question you have to ask yourself. But people don’t realize, and the real reason for a warranty is actually to build trust. You can trust my product, you can trust my service because I have this warranty. And then the moment you start putting the disclaimers in it, you actually start bringing down the trust and weakening your own warranty, and I don’t think people realize that.
Dave Young:
No, and they don’t realize too that someone that actually makes a claim on your warranty, it provides you with a story to tell, and I’ll give you an example. The jewelry client that guaranteed that the center stone of your engagement ring or your diamond jewelry is not going to fall out.
Stephen Semple:
It’s Kessler, right, that does that?
Dave Young:
Kessler’s the first one. This was a different one, but what happens is you make this guarantee now, and of course you hedge by making sure that your settings are strong. If somebody makes the claim that their diamond fell out, that it wasn’t theft or fraud.
Stephen Semple:
Right, yes.
Dave Young:
If there’s any piece of that ring left and you can bring it in, we would like to have a look at it, because a jeweler with a loop can tell if there were pliers used to pry the diamond out as opposed to it got slammed in a car door and the diamond fell down the drain. And if you lost the ring entirely, that’s an insurance claim, or it was stolen, that’s a police report. One of the ones that I’m thinking of, the customer lost it. Their finger got caught in a shark tank when they were diving, and it’s like, “Well, that’s a really cool story to tell in an ad, and yes, we replaced the diamond.” So when you talk about, yeah, there’s a cost, first of all, it’s way more rare than you ever think it’s going to be.
Stephen Semple:
It absolutely is.
Dave Young:
Unless you’re actually a fraud and you’re ripping people off left and right, the people that make claims on your warranty are going to be way farther and fewer between you ever thought possible.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
But when they do make the claim, you’ve got a fantastic story that then demonstrates that trust was well-placed.
Stephen Semple:
Absolutely. And if you think about it, the whole purpose, the whole purpose of creating a warranty or a guarantee, the whole purpose is to build trust, and the moment you start putting all these disclaimers in because you don’t trust the customer to be honest with you, you are dramatically weakening your warranty. It doesn’t carry the same power as it used to.
Dave Young:
If this jeweler would’ve said, “Oh, well, if you’d read the fine print, you’d realize that this warranty is not valid if you’re engaging in high risk sporting activities where you have to use your hands in-
Stephen Semple:
Or the worst ones where it’s like, if we deem that this was a high risk activity, there’s all sorts of things that can be done. So what I want people to realize is the highest level of trust, so if trust is really, really super important and you want to gain that trust, you can do it through parasocial relationships where you’re sharing personal stories or you share vulnerabilities and weaknesses and flaws about yourself, own up to them. The other way you can do it is just through the vulnerability. Vulnerability comes from the extending of trust first, which is then really having those warranties and guarantees and things like that with few, if any restrictions, and it’s scary. I get that it’s scary, but there’s a power to that fear.
Dave Young:
Yeah. If you want people to trust you, you must trust them first.
Stephen Semple:
Correct.
Dave Young:
You have to trust them to do the right thing.
Stephen Semple:
And you can trust them by having limiting things on your warranties, and you can trust them by trusting when you share a vulnerability with them that you’re going to be judged, but it all comes with the extension of trust first.
Dave Young:
Now, just because we’ve talked about this, I don’t want people to stop coming up to me and pretending that we’re old friends. If you listen to the podcast and you run into me, please, please, please, I’d like to get to know you too, right? You’re going to feel like you know me, but give me the chance to get to know you.
Stephen Semple:
So here’s the challenge, Dave. If you want more of that to happen, you’ve got to just start sharing a few more vulnerable stories.
Dave Young:
So you really want to know the details of the medical conversation I had? No, you don’t. You don’t want to know that.
Stephen Semple:
You can save it for the next time.
Dave Young:
Yeah. Well, let’s just say it’s a developing story.
Stephen Semple:
Give us an update next time.
Dave Young:
Maybe so.
Stephen Semple:
All right. You know what? I wanted to share this conversation about trust because I think it’s really important simply because everyone’s agreeing it’s important, and yet it’s declining, and this is what businesses and professionals and entrepreneurs need to do in order to build trust.
Dave Young:
Yeah, I agree, and I’m glad we had this conversation, Stephen.
Stephen Semple:
All right. Thanks, David. Thanks for your time on this and thanks for hearing me on this little journey that we did today.
Dave Young:
All right, and for all your bank and trust needs, speak to the fine folks at Empire Builders Bank and Trust.
Stephen Semple:
Because you can trust us.
Dave Young:
You can trust us. Just one last point, the least effective way of building trust is to say, “Trust me.”
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, that’s it. That is the guarantee that you can’t trust the person.
Dave Young:
Yeah. “Oh, trust me.”
Stephen Semple:
On that note, David.
Dave Young:
Thank you.
Stephen Semple:
Thank you.
Dave Young:
Thank you. Bye.
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