The slow work of trust
A while ago, I started noticing something across different go-to-market systems. They were optimized, at times. Organized, relatively. Even performing by traditional standards. But they weren’t building anything durable. The signals you get can feel hollow. And I think this happens when attention gets confused with trust. And as I connect with other builders, many systems, and people, today don’t know the difference.
Case in point, the Like Button.
It taps into one of the oldest instincts we have - the desire to be seen and included.
Some ancient traditions describe life as being shaped by invisible winds: praise and blame, gain and loss, fame and obscurity, pleasure and pain. They blow through us constantly. The trick is not getting carried away.
The Like is the digital embodiment of those winds. It’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always there. It was added to make things simpler. A clean, binary way to show approval.
You didn’t need to comment, or think too hard. One tap, and the system got the message: “This landed.”
The beauty of the thumbs up, is that it’s efficient: frictionless, scalable, and legible to algorithms. It also taught the system what to amplify: what gets liked, gets shown. What gets shown, gets liked. And so on.
That feedback loop changed things. The problem is, it also flattened things.
The system doesn’t understand why the Like happened. It doesn’t know if something was liked because it was true, or just loud. It doesn’t care. (empty barrels?) It just optimizes for more of it.
Over time, this pushed us toward emotional resonance over credibility, volume over meaning. Human expression became a game-able mechanic.
And, it’s chemical. Research from Psychological Science found that receiving Likes activates the nucleus accumbens, the same part of the brain triggered by food, sex, and stimulants.
“When adolescents received more likes, brain activity increased in areas linked to reward, imitation, and attention.”
— Sherman et al., 2018
Dopamine doesn’t care about quality. It tracks salience. It tells your brain: “That mattered. Do it again.” This loop, action, feedback, reward, is how habits form. Which is why the Like button is an accelerant.
But if you work in a trust-driven field, and most of us do, you’ll run into a problem.
Trust doesn’t scale like a Like.
This is especially true when your audience is affluent, risk-sensitive, and values experience over hype. They don’t respond to noise. They respond to credibility loops. Here’s what that looks like:
An advisor sees real results →
Shares with clients →
Clients convert and stay →
Advisor sends more business →
Product reinforces belief →
The loop compounds.
See, no Likes in this loop. Only actions: funded volumes, balance growth, repeat engagement, advocacy. You want conviction. An advisor’s referral. A client’s loyalty. Behaviour that compounds.
These are trust signals. But they’re harder to track. Harder to compress. And so most systems ignore them. Which is exactly why they matter.
Most GTM systems don't, and aren’t built, to detect them. They track what’s visible, not what’s meaningful. But the future of growth in financial services will depend on building systems that can:
- Detect and identify high-quality trust signals
- Distinguish noise from intent
- Close the loop between experience and behaviour
- Make trust visible and useable
The Like button trained the world to chase signals. But chasing doesn’t work here.
In our space, growth comes from stillness, structure, and earned trust.
Trust, like chemistry, compounds.
And that’s the loop that actually matters.
— KB