The Game with Alex Hormozi - Why Trust Is a Bad Bet | Ep 979

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Download your free personalized $100M scaling roadmap in under 30 seconds: https://www.acquisition.com/roadmap?el=yt-alex-486r&htrafficsource=youtube      What does trust actually mean? How do you know that you trust someone? In this episode, Alex defines four types of trust and the two variables that determine each type. He offers a precise framework for understanding trust in relationships, becoming trustworthy, and how a single act of betrayal can undo years of trust overnight. In this episode 00:00 Why trust feels vague and its true definition 01:11 Four types of trust and their determinants 03:51 When to trust someone and why trust matters 06:05 How to become trustworthy More Value: Join The Live Scaling Workshop In Las Vegas: https://www.acquisition.com/o-vegas      Download your free personalized $100M scaling roadmap in under 30 seconds: https://www.acquisition.com/roadmap?el=yt-alex-486r&htrafficsource=youtube   Get the $100M Book Bundle: https://shop.acquisition.com/pages/100m-book-bundle   Discover The Easiest Business I Can Help You Start (Free Trial): https://www.skool.com/hormozi   Free Books and Video Courses: https://www.acquisition.com/training DISCLOSURE Information shared here is for educational purposes only. Individuals and business owners should evaluate their own business strategies and identify any potential risks. The information shared here is not a guarantee of success. Your results may vary. Copyright © 2026.

Why don't you trust me? Right? Something that we might say to somebody or you might say the reverse is like, just trust me. And that word, people have a very hard time of knowing like, what the hell does that even mean? What does trust even mean? And so this is departure from my normal business content, but I think you will like it, or at least I do. And so I was thinking about this because someone recently was like, hey, trust me. And I was like, huh, that's an odd command.

What does that even mean? And so I want to break down, number one, what does trust actually mean from a behavioral perspective? How can I look at someone and say trust has occurred here? right? And then are there different types of trust so that, which is what confused is this whole thing because there isn't just one. There's actually four. And this was after actually thinking about this one statement that a friend made to me. And so the four types of trust actually correspond with two big variables, which is who's at risk and who does the punishing. So whoa, slow down. So you're saying trust is about punishment? The answer is yes. So if I trust someone,

it means that I make myself punishable by them. So for example, example, if I say, I'm going to share a secret with you, then it means I give you something that you can punish me with. And the idea is that I believe I'm making a bet that you're not going to punish me. And that's the risk, right? And so the idea is we have you who are at risk, so you risk, and then we have the other person punishing, right? That's the first type. The second type of risk is that someone else does the risking with you, and they say, I'm going to give you a secret, I'm going to give you a knife and I can point it at my back and I'm going to bet that you're not going to stab. So now you're the one who can punish them. That means that you are being trustworthy to them.

I'm going to give you prescriptions on how to actually do this because this has been so helpful for thinking about this through like a relationship. Like imagine Layla and I were married and I want her to trust me more and she wants me to trust her. So it's like how can we actually prescribe do these things to gain trust? And this is what I wanted to talk about and that's what we're going to do. All right. Let me just cover the other two. So if you're at risk, who else? is the possible punisher? Well, it's the environment. So that means that reality punishes you. So what does that actually look like? That would be, hey, can I trust you to pick my kid up tomorrow? Right? Sure. How would that happen? Well, I'm going to give them something, two different things,

that I value a lot. They could punish me. They could kid. That would suck. Right. Or they could not pick up my kid also would suck. Are they the one doing the punishing? Well, kidnapping, yes. But if they just didn't keep their word and just didn't pick the kid up, the environment would do the punishing. Right. Now, to the same degree, someone can trust me, and it can't just, doesn't always have to be about action, like me doing something for someone else. It can also be about advice. So if I'm like, man, I really trust her. I trust her advice. She is good insight, right? Then I might follow that advice, and a bad thing would happen. And then I'd be like, I don't trust her that much. She gets terrible advice, right? And so these are the four conditions.

So you basically have secrets or information, right, that someone can give you or someone, or someone or you can give someone that they can use and hurt you, or you give someone your word that you're going to do something, either make it happen or that they should do it. And in either of those scenarios, the environment does the punishment. All right. Now, how do we make this useful? Okay.

Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage roadmap from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple times. And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. and I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what the constraint feels like, what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it, and then what steps we actually took to graduate, and we've done this across software, physical products, service businesses,

brick and mortar, all of this, and it works. And it's my gift to you. It's absolutely free. And so the link's in the description, but you just go, acquisition.com for it slash roadmap, just enter info, and it'll spit it right back to you, all free. Here's the thinking process around should I do this? So two questions. Number one, do they, do they, have a track record of protecting what they've been given, the things and information that you've given to them, right? Have they had a knife before, pointed at your back, and not used it? And does burning you cost them more than protecting you, aka, is betraying you a bad deal for them? And so if both of those scenarios, meaning they gain more from protecting you, number one, and number

two, they have a track record of not burning you, then it makes sense to go forward with the trust. Now, why would you trust to begin with if we define trust as allowing yourself to be punishable? Because the ceiling of a relationship with potential is based on the shared context as both people have about each other. If I had a stranger as the completely opposite extreme, there's a limit to how much I can help someone if I don't know anything about them. And so every single thing that we volunteer about ourselves gives the other person context. Now, the more someone knows about you, the more they can hurt you. Right. And so the idea is a perfectly trusting relationship would allow both people to best serve one another.

The difficulty is that humans oftentimes have short-term incentive. that are adverse to their long-term goals. I'll give an example. So if I trust my wife and I say, you know, I don't like my mother. I'm making this up. All right. And later, in a fight, my wife uses what I told her about my mother. And it could be tomorrow or it could be six months from now. If she uses that against me, then I'm going to be way less likely to trust her again. But it means that the calculus that my wife has to make in the moment when I've given her something valuable is that she has to say, me winning this argument in the short term is not worth the cost of losing their relationship. And so it's really difficult about trust. Is trust almost more than

anything else is based on zero punishment? So what does that mean? So it means that you give someone a little bit thing and they don't do anything bad with it. You give them a little bit more. Don't do that. You give them a little bit more. You give them a little bit more. And eventually the incentive for them is so high to wrong you that they do. And that sucks. And so when they do that one time, and people, I mean, think about the relationship with the marriages where it's like, I trust him for 20 years, you know, and then like, boom, we did that one thing. And now is it. Could never trust them again. Right. It's because the punishing event of betraying someone will literally undo all the reward and reinforcements like as you did beforehand, which is why if you want to be trustworthy, you have to do

zero punishment. And that means both when they disclose the thing, someone says, hey, I'm coming out of the closet, I'm gay now. The moment they give you the thing, for sure is a reinforcing event to make sure that you not only want to be neutral, but like, thanks for sharing that. You're secret safe with me. It's your news. Whatever you want me to do with it, I'll do with it. All right?

The second thing is that it doesn't get used in the future against them. So not like necessarily talk to them, but like if you share it with somebody else and the nap person hurts them, they still don't trust you and won't want to trust you and then you get a reputation of something whose loose lips sink ships, right? And so if you want people to trust you and you want to trust them, then you need to make sure that they are trustworthy, which means have they followed the prescription of becoming trustworthy that I just

outlined? And the reason that I think you have to do it with every time you share something, especially if it's material. Obviously, you're not calculating every single decision, right? But when it's a material thing, calculating it independently and thinking, wait, if I give this thing, the incentive is way too big, like, what do I gain from this versus what I risk? And fundamentally, this is, some people see this and think, oh, this is just so true. transactional, and I think you're wrong and I think you're dumb. I'd be really honest with you. We all make this appraisal of pluses and minuses in our minds on some level. I'm just trying to clearly define it so that I can recognize what I'm like, I don't trust this guy. I could actually

ascribe a filter being like, why don't I trust him? Oh, when did I make myself punishable that he used against me? Oh, in these specific scenarios. And then that way, when the person's like, why don't you trust me? It's like, well, here's four reasons. I told you this and then you used it this way. I told you this and used it this way. And so the equal opposite is like, I want to be a trustworthy person because gaining trust with other people gives you a lot of stuff. So number one is it makes you more influential. If you have trust, you haven't used anything that someone else has said to hurt them, then they will trust you with more things, which means that your ability to have context on them is higher. Number two, if they trust your advice, the other type of trust,

and they follow your prescriptions and good things happen, the likely they follow the future prescriptions goes up. If you say, I'm going to pick up the kid, and then you do, the likely they'll trust you to pick up the kid in the future goes up, which also means that we have to keep our word. And so whenever you have the opportunity to break your word, that is at a short-term benefit to you, realize that you do not harm the relationship, you likely end it.

It just doesn't die immediately. It's kind of like cutting a tree off the vine, The tree's still there for a long time. And sometimes there's a hollowed out dead tree on the inside. It's still there visibly. But we all know it's dead on the inside. The stream of nutrients, which we can see truth as nutrients in a relationship, it gets cut off the moment someone betray somebody else. And so I would use this frame and I'm using this now because I'm giving a presentation tomorrow to my company sharing something that they could use to hurt me. But I'm trusting them by making myself punishable, which gives everyone else in the business the opportunity to earn more of my trust. which to be fair, I've already given it to them. It's really theirs to lose. Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage roadmap from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple times.

And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what the constraint feels like? Like, what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it? And then what steps we actually took to graduate? We've done this across software, physical products, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this, and it works.

And it's my gift to you. It's absolutely free. And so the link's in the description, but you just go, acquisiton.com forward slash roadmap. Just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you all free.