We’re living through a trust recession.
Not just in politics or media — in business.
Too many people overpromise, underdeliver, and call it “excellence.” Too many say, “You can trust me,” when their actions say otherwise.
And so, little by little, we stop trusting anyone’s promises.
Even the good ones.
Because the breakdown isn’t just happening online — it’s everywhere.
The consultant who overpromised.
The contractor who vanished.
The friend who flaked.
Add to that a world where ten percent of creators produce ninety percent of the content we consume — most of it polished, performative, or transactional — and it’s no wonder we’ve forgotten what real trust feels like.
The kind that happens between actual humans — not handles. The kind built in conversation, not content.
Earned through promises kept, not posts liked.
Who do you trust?
When I announced I was taking on strategy clients full-time again, my inbox filled with familiar names.
All former clients.
Amie. Liz. Heather. Martha. Lori.
Women I’d worked with years ago — whose human-scale businesses had evolved, and who were ready for what’s next.
What we’d done together had lasted a long time. And when they outgrew it, they came back.
It was a beautiful full-circle moment — a reminder of how deeply trust can run.
And also a quiet reminder of how rare it’s become to build that kind of trust with people who don’t already know you.
It reminded me of something I sometimes forget in the noise of everyone promising the world: trust compounds.
Do good work, keep your word, make people feel seen — and they’ll find their way back to you.
Same with my favorite Irishman. He’s been running a high-end general contracting business in Manhattan for 30 years. Clients from 5, 10, even 25 years ago still call him.
Some don’t even ask for proposals anymore. They just say, “When can you start?”
No contracts. No convincing. Just trust — the old-fashioned kind.
That’s the reward for doing right by people.
But here’s the other side of the coin
That kind of long-term trust is something I’ll never take for granted. It’s the reason I do what I do.
But it also made me think about how easy it can be to stay in what’s trusted — even when we’ve quietly outgrown parts of it.
Because sometimes, the same integrity that keeps us delivering on every promise can also keep us doing work that no longer fits who we’ve become.
What if the people who trust you most… want you to keep doing work you’ve outgrown?
What if your loyalty — the thing that makes you trustworthy — is also what keeps you stuck doing what no longer feels aligned?
That’s the part nobody talks about in the trust recession.
Because sure, being trustworthy gets you return clients.
But if you’ve evolved, and your work hasn’t — you start breaking a different kind of trust.
The one with yourself.
When trust only flows one way
My clients are the kind of founders who actually mean it when they say yes.
They bend. They stretch. They overdeliver — because it’s who they are.
They’ve built their reputations on keeping promises — sometimes at their own expense.
That’s what makes them different. It’s also what makes them tired.
Because when trust only flows one way — outward — it eventually empties the tank.
They keep showing up for everyone else — while quietly putting themselves last.
And that’s when the misalignment creeps in.
Not because they’ve lost integrity — but because they’ve outgrown the version of their business their clients still trust them for.
So here’s the real question
My clients are some of the most trustworthy people I know.
They’ve proven it a hundred times over — in how they show up, deliver, and do what they say they’ll do.
But at some point, the question stops being “Do others trust you?” and becomes “Do you trust yourself enough to realign what’s next?”
To shift the work, the offers, the boundaries — so the trust flows both ways.
That’s what separates the outliers from the exhausted.
You can keep being the one everyone goes back to.
Or you can become the one they come back to for the right reasons.
The bottom line
It’s being true — to what you want your business, and the way you work, to stand for.
Because the goal isn’t endless return business.
It’s the kind that happens between actual humans — not hustle.
It’s return business that still lights you up — and lets you deliver your best, because you trust yourself to evolve.
That’s the beauty of a human-scale business:
Trust isn’t a strategy. It’s the structure.
Feeling the Strain of One-Way Trust?
If your business is built on keeping every promise — but you’ve outgrown the version your clients still trust you for — it might be time to realign.
BEYOND is a 90-day strategic experience for the outlier entrepreneur who’s ready to re-center her business around who she’s become — so the trust flows both ways.
