Trust Battery

My Trust Battery Starts at 100%

Most people talk about trust like it’s something to be slowly earned. I don’t. I give it fully. From the beginning.

When you start working with me — in any capacity — you’re operating with 100% trust. That means I assume the best in you, I believe in your competence, and I back your intent. You don’t need to earn it first. You already have it.

What happens next? That’s on you.

This is where I connect deeply with Tobi Lütke’s “Trust Battery” metaphor. He speaks about relationships having a charge — you start at 50%, and it either gets charged or drained over time. I start mine fully charged. I gift you 100%. Not because I’m naïve, but because I believe that high-agency relationships deserve that kind of faith. But draining it? That’s easy if you’re careless.

Here’s how it drains:
Silence.
Ghosting.
Stonewalling.
Withholding updates.
Quiet quitting.
Overthinking.
Withdrawing into Cocoon.

These are not just red flags — they’re disconnects. I am the kind of person who will sit in the center of every messy, unresolved knot and try to untangle it. I don’t walk away from complexity. I lean in. I believe in confronting things — not with aggression, but with care. If we can’t fix everything, at least we tried. That means something.

But when you stop showing up, when you stop caring, when you drop ownership — I don’t chase. I don’t create drama. I don’t perform disappointment. I just recede.

Silently.

That’s when you’ll know it’s over. Not with a bang. With absence.
Because when I give up, I also give up ownership. I stop taking responsibility. I stop fixing. I stop investing. And for those who’ve worked with me closely, they know — that’s the real loss.

When I engage, you’ll feel intensity. Clarity. Skin in the game. But when the trust battery is drained and no effort is made to charge it back, I disengage — not out of spite, but out of integrity.

I don’t believe trust is a performance review metric. It’s a living signal. Just like Tobi’s Trust Index, I have one too. It doesn’t come from spreadsheets — it comes from my gut. From how you show up when it’s hard. From how you talk, follow through, and take ownership.

I don’t punish mistakes. I don’t need perfection. But I do need participation.
Trust with me is simple:

Start at 100. Keep it charged by showing up.
Lose it by disappearing.
Earn it back by doing the work, not making the excuses.
That’s how I operate. That’s how I lead.
And that’s how I know who’s really in it with me.