how to survive the trust recession

Summary

there’s a trust recession happening. people don’t believe content anymore. they assume the post is AI, the testimonial is fake, the offer is bait. small business is hit hardest because we don’t have the brand equity of a Fortune 500 to ride out the skepticism.

the framework is still KLT: know, like, trust. but the road to get there has changed.

what’s working in 2025:

1. get personal. stories beat scripts. the more specific the story, the more it stands out from the AI-flavored sludge everyone else is posting.
2. stop the AI slop. write your own captions. write your own emails. AI is a great editor and a terrible voice.
3. behind the scenes. show the building, not just the launched. people trust what they can see.
4. be findable. when someone Googles you, what they find should look like a real person who has been around for years. consistency over time beats viral spikes.
5. stand the test of time. new accounts don’t get trust. accounts that have been showing up for three, five, ten years do. the moat is time.

what trust looks like in practice: when someone buys from you, it isn’t because of one post. it’s because they’ve watched you for months, seen you not lie, seen you keep showing up, and finally decided you were safe.

trust is earned. not automated.

Transcript

why people don’t trust you (and what to do)

There is a massive trust recession happening right now for small business owners. Whether you’re online, brickandmortar, doesn’t matter. People don’t trust you, so they’re not buying. And if people don’t trust you, that’s only going to make your job harder and harder as time goes on, as this trust recession gets deeper and deeper. Let’s talk about what you can do to overcome this trust recession, get more people to trust you, and eventually become customers. So if you study marketing at all, you will know about KT, no like and trust.

That is the triedand-rue method to develop a relationship with someone and get them to become a customer eventually. They need to know you, they need to like you, and they need to trust you. But that is easier said than done. Back in the day, and keep in mind, I’ve been doing this for well over a decade, all you really had to do as your competitive advantage was produce content online. And that gave you enough authority and people got to know you.

And so you’d have this no- like and trust factor kind of checked because also the only way people used to use Instagram when it first came out was to actually be social, was to actually share your life or pictures of your food and all that kind of stuff. So no like and trust was a lot easier back in the day. Now everybody’s doing it. You know, everybody’s producing content in some way. Somebody has an endgame if they’re producing content. uh whether that’s that is on Instagram or YouTube or a podcast, it doesn’t matter.

Um it’s it’s very easy now for everyone to be skeptical because 10 million people are doing the same thing. And I’ve just seen this transition over time to where we went from, you know, social media being truly social, uh engaging, interacting, helping people, and then it went to this extremely polished uh you know, everybody kind of has the same level of professionalism. They’re all doing the kind of the same stuff. But what I what you see when you see these pendulum swings is it swings back.

And I feel like we’re swinging back to almost when social media first started when people were being real. And I think that’s what it’s going to take for you to start breaking through this trust barrier.

klt: know, like, trust still matters

Because I’ve been experimenting with this recently and let me preface this with I am no social media expert whatsoever. I’m not trying to sell you on anything on like how to grow your following, how to go viral, none of that. I’m not good at that stuff. And in all honesty, it’s not what I’m trying.

how content shifted… and why it’s coming back

But what I’ve noticed recently with experimenting with different forms of content is the raw stuff works better. The old school stuff like the picture of, you know, whatever with a good caption, the picture of uh, you know, I had one of me writing at my desk with a legit caption that I wrote wasn’t AI generated. And these things are getting way more engagement than previous. It’s this being raw. It’s being real with your audience, with people who are interested in following you.

You might have something to sell. That’s okay. Everyone has something to sell. That’s not the problem. It’s how you’re producing the content that matters. And ultimately, we have to shift back to where things started. going back to like my newsletter. If you’re subscribed to my newsletter, if you can’t, there’s a link in the description of this episode somewhere so you can sign up for it. But I try to be very real in my newsletter to engage with people because that’s where I’m doing most of my business and engaging with people is through email marketing.

That’s like the big thing that I know the most about and have utilized over the years and really is the triedand-rue method without having to get stuck into the algorithm and everything. But what I’m what I’m realizing is this barrier for no like and trust uh or really just this trust recession overcoming it is very difficult and I’ve been experimenting ways to overcome it and I want to show you know go over what I’ve done and what you can do to start to overcome this trust recession.

So the first thing is you have to be producing content.

what content builds real trust in 2025

Like I said, most everyone is now, but if you’re not, now is the time to get in the game. Whether that’s personal brand content, content for your business, if you are just kind of trying to check the box in this category, it will fall flat. But you need to be producing content. Make it a major part of your strategy moving forward. Because I’m be becoming the older dinosaur in the space, right?

get personal: stories not scripts

It doesn’t make me less relevant because I’m still running multiple companies that are successful. we’re seeing growth, all that kind of stuff. So, I still have a lot of strategies. But as the younger kids get older, right, they become your new buyers, you have to realize that they look at things differently. They want to interact with you, not over a phone call. They want to do messaging. They want to see your social media profiles, those kind of things.

That’s what they’re looking for. And as these generations move up and up and be have more purchasing power and you’re still in business, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re interacting the right way. So step one, make sure you are producing content. This is not a check the box thing. This is a major massive business strategy. You have to be doing it. The world’s not moving further away from that. If anything, the world is moving more and more towards that each and every single day at a rapid speed now because everyone’s putting out AI slop for the most part.

Which brings me to my second uh point is get personal on your in your content. Whether it’s uh you know podcast, video stuff like I’m doing right now. Get personal. Share your personal experiences and your story and your journey. Share those things on Instagram, wherever. Like start to share your legit story that you wrote, not the AI slop, the AI crap, cuz I think people are going to push. I already see it.

stop the ai slop… write it yourself

People are pushing hard against that type of content. It’s it’s sloppy. It’s crappy. Nobody really wants to hear it, see it, read it, anything. There’s too much of that out there. So the another way for you to get over that no- like and trust barrier is to start to produce real stuff. So get personal, share your stories, share some of your personal life stuff. If you’re not into that, maybe you want to keep your kids out of it, whatever.

You can set your own rules, but getting personal and sharing your personal stories is something that you have to do. If you just think about how to actually get another human being to know, like, and trust you, they have to get to know you. Get to know you is not, you know, me just telling you how to do email marketing. getting to know you is like, “Hey, yeah, I’m Jerred Moon. I have three kids. I live in Dallas, Texas.” You know, a little bit of be behind the scenes on me, my story, why I’m doing what I’m doing.

Those kind of things are what people want to know to check the box. They want they want to like you, too. Like, how do you get someone to like you? It’s like just not everyone’s going to like you. And so, don’t don’t take it that way on the no- like and trust. Not everyone needs to like you, but the people who are like you or who want to know more about you, they will end up liking who you are.

And you do that just by sharing who you actually are. And then the trust factor is kind of checking the box. If someone’s knows you, they like you and they can find out whether or not they trust you through viewing your social media profiles, your email newsletter, all those kind of things, they will start to realize um that they can trust you. Like I the only the biggest checkbox I have for me and people ultimately working with me or not working with me is I just actually have been doing this for a long time.

So you can Google my name J E R E D Moon Jerred Moon. If you if you Google it, you’ll realize, oh yeah, he’s been in the game for a long time. Here are a bunch of articles. Here a bunch of pictures like here are different websites and stuff. You’ll realize I’ve been doing it for a long time. And so that kind of can start to check the box for trust. Now, you don’t have to do this for 10 or 15 years like me and have like an online presence for the Google ability, right?

But you can start to build up your website that has your name on it, has your brand name on it. People can go there. They can find out if they can trust you through verified uh reviews, all these kind of things. There are a lot of things that you can be doing, but you have to also get personal and share your stories.

behind the scenes as a trust strategy

Now, the last thing is more behindthe-scenes content. And this is where I think we’re we’re shifting back to the way things were, which I think is it’s funny. It’s always it’s funny to see these cycles of right everything’s super polished and professional. Um that’s been the last couple of years of social media, but then AI came strong over the last 36 months and now people are using it just to like whip out like a bunch of AI slop, AI crap.

And now we’re going back to like, yeah, share a picture of your workout, share a picture of your food, whatever the case is. And people are going to engage with that.

how people vet you (even if you don’t know it)

Actually write the content, actually write the caption, and people will start to see a little bit more behind-the-scenes journey of who you are. Again, you’re checking those no- like and trust boxes. So, start to think about this as you’re crafting your own social media strategy, your online presence strategy, your personal branding strategy, whatever you’re trying to do right now. The ultimate goal at the end of the day in marketing is and has always been to get people to know, like, and trust you.

And how you do that is different than how it has been over the last 2 years. You have to go back to a lot of behind the scenes. You have to share stories. You have to get personal. You can share the other helpful content that you have, whatever you’ve been producing. That is obviously you need to prove that you can solve a problem for the prospect, right? But at the end of the day, people need to know, like, and trust you.

And if you can start to do all these things, you will start to overcome this trust recession that is a massive, massive jam in the industry really for everyone right now because people will see your stuff and they’re like, “H, yeah, I don’t know.”

build trust by standing the test of time

Immediately skeptical. Then they’re going to go through your social media profile. They’re going to do their research. They’ll do their due diligence. This is happening to you each and every single day, even if you don’t know it. You might have a brand profile with a 100 followers. It doesn’t matter. If someone lands on your business profile, they’re going to research it. They’re going to see whether or not they know, like, and trust you. That’s not what they’re saying in their mind, but that’s what’s happening.

And then they are going to immediately rule you in or rule you out based off of what you have produced and what you’re sharing. So keep that in mind as you push forward and we go through this massive trust recession. I don’t know what’s on the other end of this. Like I said, I think AI is making it so much worse because nobody really cares about content as much anymore. They’re just like, “Yeah, you did this with AI.

I don’t care.” You know, whatever. So, you’re going to have to start to differentiate. I know in some of my brands, we’re taking a complete no AI stance. AI is not allowed to write a caption. This was different than just a few months ago, you know, like where AI was producing a lot of the captions, but I was producing a lot of the content, right? We’re taking a dramatic shift in some of my companies to where we are just we’re not doing it.

We want to be authentic. We want to be real and we want people to be able to trust who we are and what we do. And a lot of times your brand presence and just standing the test of the time is ultimately how you get people to trust you. But if you really want to get personal and share the behind the scenes, you’ll get them to know and like you as well. And then you’ll start to really edge out the competition cuz they’re not doing things like that.

You know why they’re not doing it? Because it’s uncomfortable and they’ll have to try hard to get it done.