After talking to many of my entrepreneur friends, one big topic always
\ncomes up – Trust.<\/p>\n
\nThey always ask:<\/p>\n
\nHow do you know your partner?
\nHow long have you known him?
\nHave you worked with him before?
\nHow do you know he\/she will deliver?<\/p>\n
\nAnd the list goes on and on. Questions upon questions. Some of which I do
\nhave answers and many I don’t have answers for, dependent on whom it is
\nwe’re talking about.<\/p>\n
\nIt seems that just about everyone has gotten burned in their past lives in
\nsuch business relationships. And unfortunately, I haven’t pinpointed any
\nreliable way of knowing how to trust someone completely unless you work
\nwith them for a long time. And even then people can betray your trust.<\/p>\n
\nSo if you have to work with someone for a long time, then how did you start
\nin the first place, given your lack of knowledge about this person?<\/p>\n
\nAt one time, you would have trusted family members. But I don’t think that
\nis a safe criteria to go by either. Your aunts, cousins, brothers, even
\nyour parents, can betray your trust in these matters.<\/p>\n
\nI’ve heard stories of best friends becoming non-friends when they enter
\ninto business together.<\/p>\n
\nI’ve heard stories of people starting businesses under the euphoria of hope
\nof making tons of cash, but only to end their business relationship in a
\nhaze of hate for the other person and how it was absolutely hell working
\nwith them.<\/p>\n
\nIt is really unfortunate that so many people can’t get to some basic level
\nof doing what they say they will do, and if they can’t, then just saying
\nso. I think this is the core of trust. You need to be straight with your
\nbusiness associates as to what you can’t and can do, and what you are
\nwilling and not willing to do. Too many people hide behind some facade of
\npassive-aggressive fear of failure and false pride and refuse to just be
\nhonest and clear with others around them, as well as with themselves.<\/p>\n
\nI’ve already had an encounter where I had trusted someone, only to find out
\nthat this person could not be trusted and actually lied to me at the end.
\nI got out as fast as I could but still I lost a lot of cash. Well, what
\ncan you say- entrepreneurship comes with risk.<\/p>\n
\nAnd so it is with trust. Trust comes with risk and yes you need to
\nminimize the risk associated with trust. So I try to do better in
\nlistening to my intuition, read up on how to tell if someone is lying to
\nme, do some reference checking to see what others say. But somewhere along
\nthe line, you need to fish or cut bait. You make a call and either it
\nworks out or it doesn’t.<\/p>\n
\nI think the key thing here is to know that trust is not without risk, and
\nthat even after doing everything you can to maximize your trust in a
\nperson, you can still get betrayed. The object lesson would be to minimize
\nthe exposure of your assets to such risk, to be able to let go of your
\ninvestment if it goes sour, and to always learn and try again.<\/p>\n
\nThe worst thing you could do is to retreat into some cave and never trust
\nagain…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After talking to many of my entrepreneur friends, one big topic always comes up – Trust. They always ask: How do you know your partner? How long have you known him? Have you worked with him before? How do you know he\/she will deliver? And the list goes on and on. Questions upon questions. Some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angel-investing-venture-funds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dshen.com\/blogs\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}