THE TRUST PRINCIPLE: REAP REWARDS WITH TRUST

A close friend of mine showed me how he works on his personal brand by letting me spend time with him. He was blessed enough to have bypassed the big mistakes we make in our youth. 

“And you’ve failed in managing your finances again”. He asked.

I hesitated and then nodded forcing a strained smile. 

It was his flawless personal practices at an early age that kept him away from shoddy business practices. For that matter, trying not to lose the trust of people, come what may, shone as his prominent trait.

Complementing this characteristic is his habit of not worrying about the comments of peers who lacked upright practices and had no good business concepts.  Remaining aware of who to take advices from has kept him on the right track. While most of the peers call him naive, I dub him “consciously naive”.  

Strangely, he trusts people without frowning.  People will let you down and break your trust in life and business.  Will this spin you off into a zone where you are skeptical of everyone who confronts you?  He responded to my curiosity with an earnest gesture.  

“I keep a safe side” He stowed his phone inside his pocket to explain. It reminded me of Einstein who said "The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe."

The secret that he isn’t afraid to make any kind of friends and roll out risky deals is that he puts up a little boundary to keep himself safe.  This, I realized, can give you great amount of freedom to go about exploring life fearlessly.

While this makes reasonable sense, nothing of these ideas can work if you haven’t worked on yourself first. Before you go around testing people to see who deserves to be trusted, make yourself trustworthy first. 

“Your most important asset is how much people trust you in the long run.” - his premises. Be they friends, family, customers or investors, they’ll make a way towards you if you are trustworthy. 

I saw him dealing with people. Keeping his words and commitment always remained his foremost priority. Your life and business can become a success if people trust you. Forget about the things that are not in your control. 

Practice self-control. Will power determines your ability to meet the targets you’ve set for yourself and this very act gives you the power to keep promises you made with others.  I knew at that instance I wasn’t qualified for being called an organized person but I wondered if soon I could be as vibrant and disciplined as he was. 

When I eagerly asked him to fill me in with his thoughts; sounding relieved with his own practices, he went “Every promise kept strengthens your personal brand a bit more."

Hardly have I heard him saying “I’ll try my best”. Most of the answers come in “yes I can do this” or a complete no. He avoids ambiguous communications, leaving no chance of pat deniability for failure. 

It pays off to be dependable and trustworthy.  It has to be part of your nature. If people desire to be acknowledged as trustworthy in business and act otherwise in daily life, they will see no concrete results.  Making money shouldn’t be the only aim but there must a higher aim associated with it. This is what will keep you going, no matter how hard the times.

This post is dedicated to a great friend Muhammad Suhaib who also happens to be my classmate.