Trust: The Last Unautomated Advantage in Business

I, I want to sort of remind the audience, you, you think about.

What you can trust in terms of media. I'm, I've been in the publishing business for 40 years. I've never seen any time where people distrust media more than any other and distrust everybody. And you think about the deep fakes that AI is capable of creating, you know, deep fake videos, deep fake images. There is so much fakery going on that people get tired and they are hungry for trust.

For trusted relationships. And Nate has been a pioneer in, in sales where he has created.

You.

Know, tell us a little bit about the connections that you have made and the meetings you have engineered.

Which led you to automate trusted scale. And that's your new innovation that is going to be on the market in January 2026. But share the path, the thinking path that you went along to discover that people are really starving for genuine connections.

Yeah. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna dive, double click on a couple things you said there, Gerhard, because we think it's connections, right. As sales professionals, definitely we think it's connections more and more and more. And it's a numbers game. These are words and philosophies we followed forever and when. And I thought so too, by the way. I ran a company for 15 years, set up over 100,000 C suite to C suite meetings, landed meetings for my clients, with Elon Musk, with Tim Cook, from very well crafted emails. And I was in that game for a long time, one of the world's leaders on executive engagement strategies. I wrote a couple books on it too. And I did an analysis this last year back in 2024, and I wanted to find out what the impact of these 100,000 meetings were on my clients. And I had about 320 clients over the. And I was actually pretty astonished. And I now what was a great number was that resulted in $3 billion of revenue for my clients. Okay, fair enough. But a lot of my clients had really big deals, so it kind of skewed the numbers. And what I found though, it was really the most like jaw dropping, eye popping insight was that only 3% of those meetings closed. And I was like 3%. I was like, I'm in the business. My purpose in life is to create relationships, not tactical deal flow. Right. And so I was creating these meetings to create the opportunity of a lifetime for companies. And it was falling by the wayside. And so I double clicked on that even further and I asked them deeper questions. Where did your deal flow come from? And you can probably guess what everybody said, like everybody gets most of their business from referrals. And I'm like, okay, so referrals come with inherent trust from a trusted person that that's where they got most of their deals. I get them 200 meetings with their exact ICP, they get 20 referrals and they close 10 of those deals and they only close a couple. With me I'm like, what the heck? It just doesn't seem equitable. And I sold against referral models forever. I sold like non scalable, non predictable. You don't know what you're going to get. You just take whatever you can. It's not in your icp, but hey, I need money. So we're going to do the deal. Like these are the things that I would hear all the time. So I sold against that. I was like, let me give you predictability. I'm going to get you exactly who you want. And that's what everybody thinks they want. But it's not what we want. We don't want that. We want more deals, right? And we think that more deals comes from more pipeline, from more connections, more LinkedIn networking, more whatever. But that's not the truth. The truth is, is that well transferred trust from one person to another is where deal flow happens. Think about that. So you have a market you're trying to get access to, you have a market you're trying to grow with. And what the big aha for me was when I did a research paper, I was like, I was in this conundrum, like do I stay in this business and keep doing this amazing thing? Which was on a downward trend because of AI by the way, and the impact of AI and the impact of what AI has done to cold email marketing, to cold calling, to content trustability. Like we have such a low metric for trust. Every B2B company I know is like, I don't know what to do. So I'm going to go start buying companies, right? That's what they're doing, right? Because my organic growth strategy is fire the sales team, go buy some companies. Like that's not a growth strategy, that's terrible, right? So what do we do instead? So I'm sitting here, I'm watching like, okay, everybody's doubling down on events. They're like, I gotta go shake hands more. Well that's a hard to scale model, but it's an amazing one. Gerhardt does great events, right? So keep doing those. But what tech? What martech, what sales tech? What is the thing that's going to help our Salespeople have the tools to engage the right people and get more business. Okay, So a couple of things happened. So I'm going to give you a couple little facts, and there's going to be three of them. So the first of which was I did a research study on 1,000 companies that sold in the last four years for over $50 million. And I wanted to know what were they doing that allowed the investors or the buyer to say, I'm going to give you this money because you guys are solid. Right? Here is the two things that came from that mind blowing. 99% of them had a predictable source of referrals. 99. Okay. 100% had 15 to 20% budgets set aside for their total revenue for their marketing and sales. Okay. But only 30% of those companies had a successful sales system. It's like, meaning 70% were throwing all their money away because they couldn't create predictable deal flow from a sales process. Like, oh, okay. But they still sold because they had a predictable referral source. All right, Mind blowing moment for me. Okay, two more facts. Okay, I got to go. Remember who gave the research, but the research was essentially as either Forrester or one of the bigs. And all the stats that got thrown at me. But one is 87% of our networks were blind to meaning. Think about this. You probably know 10, 13% of your network, your personal network, really well. It's 100 people. That's 13 people you know really well. You can ask, hey, who do you know? And we can collaborate. Gerhard and I do. Right? And we have access to each other's networks because we're very close, right? But 87% of your network, you don't have that. So you don't. It is called network blindness. You don't know who your best friend knows. You don't know who this buddy knows or that buddy knows. And sitting Inside of that 87% of network blindness is $88 billion of deal flow that is not getting touched every single year.

You have a few hundred people on your sales team. What does that mean? That's a lot of money sitting on the table that's right here in front of us. And so what we built is mydeeptrust AI. Our technology, deeptrust AI is a technology that helps you manage those most authentic relationships in a way that you don't fall by the wayside. And that 87%. And you open up network blindness, removing it from your world so that your trust assistant, DT My trust assistant that you're using can guide you and you can tell DT, you can say, hey DT, I'm looking for a CEO with revenues between 10 and 25 million in the USA in the consulting vertical. Does anybody in my network know this person? A person like that, and then DT is going to come back and say, well, you have first degree networks that fit that criteria, like these people. And then they know these people. Who would you like me to introduce you to or would you like me to facilitate a conversation? Boom. Done. That's my before, before brushing my teeth, morning question to dt and then off my day I go, right? So what we're building here is a tool to help you eliminate network blindness forever. Right? To enhance what happens when you are more authentically engaged with all the people that you deeply trust. Right? You're naturally going to get more conversation, you're going to build deeper trust with those individuals more consistently, more frequently on point. Because Stephanie, if I can ask you a quick question, what would you say is the value of your personal network.

And professional network? Gosh.

I mean, it's everything.

It's everything, right? We all answer the same question or it's priceless. It's everything. It's priceless. Like I can't put a number on it. You kidding me? Because it's so valuable. Now let me ask you another question, Stephanie. Out of your whole network, how many people are like in your deep trust network, people that would, you could really have a deep conversation with that would help you, that would refer you? I'm curious. Some people are hundred, some people are just a few, you know, Just how many would you say?

30? 50.

30 to 50. Okay, cool. And now outside of that 30 to 50, do you have another hundred that are like, they really respect you and they would still like want to help you grow?

Hope so.

You hope so, right? We hope so. The truth is we do. But we don't know because why we get so busy in our day to day, we get so busy on our day to day that we can focus on 5 to 18, 20 people maybe throughout the year that we're consistent with. But remember, trust is built through consistent, authentic and reliable engagement. Okay? It's not about the gifts you give or the deals you refer, although those play into it, right? They're really about how authentic are you? You know, I don't know, Stephanie, we just met just now. But you know, Stephanie, we get to know each other and I'm like, hey, I'd love to help you grow, Stephanie. What are you looking for? What can I do? Right? The best way I can do that is facilitate my trusted network and extend it to her. That's the best thing that I could do to show how much I trust her. You get it? So for all of us, the best salespeople in the world, some of you are probably on this call, you probably have your little black book and you know, your best clients names and their kids names and their wife's name and their anniversary and all these things, right? But there's no great automation model for that. There's no automation that supports you in that. And now I'm not a believer in automating trust, by the way. So something that we dropped on accident, I think a little earlier, I believe in enabling trust through automation. That's a really big difference. And the reason it's so different is I lose all my authenticity if I'm sending my wife a happy birthday note that was automated. God, don't let me ever do that, right? Because it just deteriorates the depth of, well, you didn't really think about me. That was just a system that did it for you, right? But if the system props up and pops up on my phone and says, and DTs like, hey, Nate, it's your wife's birthday this morning, you know, probably a week earlier would be better, right? And then DT says, hey, it's your wife's birthday in a week. Would you like to do anything for her? What do you want to do? Do you want to send her a note? Do you want to pre prep something, whatever? So she's helping me be prepared to be authentic, right? And that's all we can ask for. And what we want to be able to do is do that across a spectrum that's bigger than we can do on our own because we don't have time to think about it. So the system is going to monitor, manage and help you engage and help you enhance the deep trust, authentic relationships with the people that matter most to you so you don't have to think about it. And that is worth is priceless. That's priceless. Gerhard.

Nate, explain to us how you created your company, how you selected the people, how you created that board of advisors, and what's the.

The genius behind it? Because I think it's brilliant what you have done.

So we have a sister company that's a services firm, and in our services firm, what we do. So the deep trust is about helping you access, manage and enhance the network you have. As salespeople, we know we need to actually go outbound, we need to grow our network, we need to Find people that can help us grow our lead flow and get deals from trusted networks. And so, Gerhard, what we did for our own company is the application of what we train and teach other companies what to do, which is how do you, as a company, at the center of your company, build something that's so foundationally strong, it's called a trust infrastructure, right? Is more important than your sales team and then more important than your marketing or operations or customer service. At the center of your business, you build something called a trust infrastructure. And the trust infrastructure is understanding that your buyer, your market, has an offering, something that you offer. You have an icp, an ideal client profile, right above that, that needs that offering. And then above that are the people that control access, authority, trust and influence those four things with 30 to 50% of your buyer market and only about 15 to 25 people. And if you can find those people, there's hundreds of those people. But if you can find 15 to 25 of those people that carry those four things with your buyer market and you can get them aligned to your business, you will never look for business again. It will come at you. Cold prospecting is off the table, guys, which I love, by the way. Right? But, but what's better than cold prospecting? Say you, you're amazing at cold email. Or you got that one guy that can just. They can answer the phone and everybody loves them. And cold calling works for that guy. Cool. Do it right. But the deal flow that closes the most Highest conversion rate, 50% or better is trust referrals. The deals that close the fastest, 50%, faster sales cycles. Trust referrals, the deals that close bigger, 20 to 50%, larger trust referrals. So why, if we can scale that through this methodology and building an infrastructure, why would you ever do something different? Because you could drive so much business to your business effortlessly through great aligned, strategically targeted individuals that carry trust, influence, access and authority with your buyer market. So what I did for us, Gerhard, and thank you for the question is I have a board of advisors of 20 people they carry influence with. I mean, I don't even know what the numbers are because I just picked my 50 largest enterprise accounts as we go to market with the technology. And three of my board members, Gerhard being one of them, has C suite access to all 50. All 50. And if five of those companies sign on for us when we go live, and the enterprise version will go live in February.

We'Re a billion dollar valued company. Just like, just like that. Like, that's unprecedented. And it's so Exciting for so many people that we already have pipeline with five of them. And I'm talking like the salesforce is Siemens Accenture. I'm not talking like just any company. I'm talking like the biggest of the big. Because trust matters that much, right? And so how do you build that compelling message for your own business? How do you position your company to be at the forefront of something really co. So that the people that really can create that influence want to be a part of what you're doing. That's part of the strategy. And the build is building the five foundational items that can put your company in a position that can get you the board members that will get you endless referrals forever. That whole model is what our services builds out. So if anyone's interested in that, please ping me. But we have a consulting group that can facilitate two day trainings and that whole thing can be built out in less than eight hours for any organization. It's pretty extraordinary, right? And I think that this is what my if I can champion anything for everybody here, it's build your trust network. And understand that if you're a company owner, build yourself a trust infrastructure and don't, don't be slow about it because here's what's happening in the world. We all see it, right? We all see AI is automating everything. And by the way, for those of you that aren't founders, we love automation. Automation is like the awesome, most awesome word in the world for an executive. Why? Because it addresses the five psychological triggers that influence executives. And this is part of my, my book and all of our thesis for the last 15 years of how do you get an executive to move the needle? Not just say that's interesting but say, hey, let's take a call, right? Trust is first, okay, and now I always equated trust and credibility is the same thing, but they are not okay, they are not. Credibility is the things you've done. Trust is the feeling they gift you because of either your status or the person that gave you the referral, right? So if you don't have it, and that's why cold calling and cold emailing is such a hard business, is because that trust is never there. It just can't be there. Even if you build the greatest rapport, all you can do is credibility. So the most important thing and the five psychological triggers that move the needle to deal flow starts with trust. That's not there in any of those markets. So even if you crush it like I did for so many companies, for so long. It doesn't mean you're going to convert better. So what we should be after is, how do I convert better? How do I get more pipeline that converts better, converts higher, converts more powerfully? So let me build the models that are going to support that. So the first. First two, trust and credibility. The other three are time, money, and risk. And really, it's money. It's really make money, save money in the. In the. In the professional world, right? In the consumer space, if you're in the sales space, it's more about, like, how do I create pleasure or reduce pain, right? Same concept, but which leads to value. So. So if we have automation, which does. It does all of those, right? It saves money, it makes money, it reduces risks, and it shrinks time. It does everything. That's why automation is like the ultimate word. And that's why everybody loves AI so much, because of all of those things. But the problem is, what does AI miss?

I'm pausing for effect. Trust, Right? Pause for effect. It misses trust because it can't inherently do that. So our superpower, everyone here on this call, everybody listening. And, you know, for Gerhard, for all of us, for Stephanie, what our superpower is in the future of an AI Ran economy, which will happen is our trusted relationships will be the currency of the future, as Marc Benioff shared with me so kindly, which is trust is the currency of the future. And if we understand what that means, that means the better and more deeper and more authentic you can build your network, use our tool, do it right, use our technology, the better you can build that authentic network with the markets that help you in your professional career, as well as the people you just love and care about. Outside of that, then the richer you will be.

Okay.

In all forms of it. Go ahead.

I want to jump in because there's something that needs to be said about this. There's two things. One is you. We just had this conversation with Satyen about leadership that's aware and awake, that awakens the potential in people. And Satyen is on the board of advisors of your company. So I want you to explain the spirit of your organization and the value it has for.

Putting you in the orchestra position, the orchestra leader position, where everybody plays from the same sheet of music.

That's beautiful. So Satyam plays a role as an operator and on my board, guys. And there's a role that we really believe in called a chief coherence officer. And what that is, it's really about. How do you. It's not culture. Culture is different. Coherence is how people interact, right? How they deepen and make trust more authentic amongst each other. And the reason for this role and why I'm so excited about it is.

To build a trust infrastructure. It can't just be the old school culture. Build culture, build culture, have aligned mission and vision. Do the EOS model, those are great. And all of them have their place and they're all very practical. But at the center of all that is trust, right? Do we trust each other at the very core, do I trust you? And to do that, sometimes we have blocks, we have communications or perception blocks. So a coherence model, which is why Satyen is so important to me and my firm, is because that enables to get through some of those blocks or misconceptions. Because we're not all going to be the same and we don't want a company that's all the same person. We want dynamic thinking and we want confrontation. We want challenge and different points of view because that enriches the environment. But you need to do it in a cohesive and coherent manner and that's what that enables. And so I don't know if I'm answering your question exactly, Gerhard, but the essence of any organization that wants trust at the centerpiece and wants to evolve beyond the risks of what AI is bringing to the market. And for each of you as individuals, not all of us here are probably company owners like I am. And Gerhard and Stephanie, I think you're an entrepreneur as well.

If you're an employee for a company, how do you engage authentically and coherently your deepest trust networks for your own benefit, for your ability to hold a career position and not be taken over by automation because your network is so powerful and your influence and authority and access and trust with that network is inseparable. We don't do it because we're too busy. We're in the grind, we're running the rat race. So take a pause every morning. Use deep trust AI and enable yourself to build deeper, more authentic relationships. And I've done that with a board of advisors. And I want every group, every team on my company to feel that way. I want them to feel this coherence, this trust, this love, this compassion that I care about them, right? And we're a startup, we have pre revenue and everything like that. Like we have 20 board members. I have 12 operating people committed to our company. We have eight full time tech people running, you know, five engineers running on building our tech right now with no revenue and very, very little funding, right? They're doing it because of trust. They're doing it because they believe in the mission. They believe in the purpose and the direction. And there's a good structure and a trust infrastructure that's a physical structure that enables them to play within the wheels and we can put our arms around the world with it. And that's what I encourage all of us to do, is build that trust infrastructure for your business or for your personal world so that you can secure your future jobs. Right? I mean, if you're in a job that is at risk of automation, which 90% of jobs are sales worlds less so because it's relationship driven. But there's still lots. You guys see it, right? The sales administration roles, those will be automated. Those will be AI agents soon, if they're not already. There's just so many pieces that are getting chipped away at in the profession and we shouldn't be fearful of it. What I encourage you to do is lean into your networks, lean into the future thinking and then re. Educate yourself, deepen your relationships so that you can bring value to a company. Because value is going to be equal to your trust network. It's going to be equal to the authority, the influence, the trust and the access that you. That you carry with your marketplace. So add value to them. Lean in right now. Do everything you can to make that the richest environment possible. And give, give, give. And they will give, give, give back.

It is really interesting to me that when I, when I think about the referral I made for you to Mark Benioff that.

Who responded back to you and, and referred you to a senior vice president in the organization who came back to you and said, we want three things from you. We want to be a client, we want to be a partner. And we. What was. We want the investment.

Yeah, they might, they might invest.

Which it. It blew my mind how fast it went inside of less than a week.

So you guys, last week, Gerhard was, we were chatting and he's like, hey, check your email. I'm like, what? And he had just introduced me to Mark Benioff. That's kind of like, kind of cool, by the way. I didn't non. A non request that. He's like, hey, I just gave. I want to do a give. And so. And Mark responds. Talk to this guy Nitin. And, and so I took 36 hours to respond to it. Now. It didn't mean to take that long. I just, I was waiting for inspiration because when somebody responds to you, it's typ. Like some of my advisors were like, oh, just say thanks and go talk to the next guy. I was like, no, no, no, no. I want to plant a seed of trust. How do you plant seeds? You guys understand how that. How this works? Well, how do you plant a seed? What I mean by that is a seed is a thing that is going to sit in their mind and it's going to grow, okay? And I know the power of trust. I have seen that they had made layoffs, right? And they have agent force, so they have a whole entire huge organization concerned, not talking about it, of, am I going to get automated out.

Right? So I crafted a very polite email that said, in a world where AI is automating out employees.

Right, how does a company embrace trust with its people and for the future? I said, I'd love to have this thought exercise with you, and I know you're busy, I don't expect much, but if you would share your thoughts on it would be great. And that was it, right? So what I was doing was planting a seed of trust. Planting a seed of something that I know is going to come up in his world almost every day for the next several months. And I want him to think of my company when he thinks of the word trust. And so he comes back and he says, trust is the future currency, right? And so I don't know if he associates that now with me or not, but I know that he's going to be hearing it on every stage that he's in, because trust is a category of deterioration in the market. He's at the forefront of it with agent force, and it's a bipolar category. Companies want agent force, they want agents, and people want jobs. They want to be able to pay. And there's no solution without it. So what do we do? This is something we haven't addressed as a society yet, and we will have to. But the point was, is that, you know, for all of us here is that trust is the currency of the future. And for each of you, no matter what your role, no matter what place you're playing in the function of business, that lean into that network. Lean into your network, not your connections on LinkedIn. The thousands that you know. Stephanie, how many connections you have on LinkedIn? Like a lot, right?

I don't know. Thousands. 15. 1500. Right.

So 15,000, I think.

15,000. Okay. So 15,000. I have 30,000, which I don't even know this. They cap you out. You can't have more. So for me to take more connections, I got to delete people, which feels bad. So so it's, it's this. But I've been an influencer on the LinkedIn space for 15 years, so it's normal. But, but the point is, is that's. I don't know most of those people. Like, it's a needle in the haystack. If Gerhard was to ask for a referral from me, from LinkedIn network, like, it's good luck, you know, like maybe, I know, maybe most of it. It's a social following thing, right? And salespeople, we connect with everybody to try and get access. But what you want is trusted access. And so what I would encourage you all to think about is that inside of your active network, the network you currently have is just as a practice for this week and through the weekend. Go through all your text messages for the last seven years. Delete all the noise out, okay? And only keep people in your text thread that you know really well. And then go back seven years and so back to forward and start just texting them. Hey, how you been? It's been a long time. Let's catch up and watch the magic that happens. It's unbelievable. I just got an investor yesterday. I did this exercise a month ago and he couldn't talk till yesterday. And I got on with him and I told him what I was doing. He's like, oh, I'll invest. And he's cutting me a check today. Like, what the heck, right? Like that was from like. And we haven't talked in like two or three years. Which. He's one of my, like, I love the dude. Like, like, he's like one of my favorite people. I need a deep trust AI to manage that relationship better, right? Or Hadley, one of an attorney from Chicago who I met and had dinner with a couple times five or six years ago. He could have fundamentally changed my life forever, right? He has the relationships at the trusted level, at the highest trusted level that if I had kept that relationship fresh and followed up like I thought I should have and I, like, I really inherently wanted to just lost track of time and not enough of it. Like, he's one of those people I could have shared my deck with and kind of re engage. But not from a I want something standpoint, but because we've always been engaged, hey, this is what I'm doing. And he's there as my cheerleader, ready to go, right? So the point is here, guys, in our network, our networks are rich. They're super rich. Not money wise rich. They're rich in access and trust and advice of insights. And if you can understand how to tap that and you can just do that little exercise I just shared for today that's going to just change your world just over the next week. And imagine doing that consistently, predictably with AI support. That's what we offer.

So, Nate, really quickly, I know we're at time here. When you're using the system, are you loading in your network, are you telling it what you'd like to get more out of your network and it helps you decide which relationships to focus more on? Or do you do that like churning exercise through your text to be able to load those people in? And does it help you decide when to reach out to them, how to go get their birthday so you could send them a specific thing that they're interested in. You know, how does that work?

Yeah, we're working to make it so it's hands free, right? It's all integrations, set up, all your sync ups. You know, you might have to do a couple manual things in our early version, but you know, the ultimate vision of this is it's a central hub for all ways that you communicate and manage relationships and that every person in that you don't have to go log into something to go see it, like a CRM. You just ask dt, hey, dt, I'm about to meet with Stephanie. Can you tell me what's going on and give me a little brief and she can support you with that. Or in the morning DT will jump on, say, hey, I have some updates for you. And you'll say, okay, go ahead. And then DT is going to tell me, hey, these three people had birthdays. These people have upcoming birthdays is not a birthday app. Let's not get confused about that. Right? But it's going to basically, for important events that show up, it's going to let you know about those and then it's going to have a prioritization assignment. So like, hey, how often do you want to engage with Stephanie? Like, should we make this quarterly, monthly, you know, biannual every year? What's important for you? Then I tell it, you know, it's just conversational. So most of it though will be inferred. That's a very AI driven database platform. So it's going to look through all the frequencies and recencies and it's there to help you never forget the moments that matter with the people you care most about. And so that's what it's there for. That's the main purpose of the platform. The automation on the front end is built with integrations and then. And it should be mostly hands off when we're all done with it. So you get a. You get to interact with our little DT orb that floats around all of your platforms. It opens up on your phone, on your desktop, on your Gmail, on your Microsoft, on whatever you're in, in your LinkedIn. It pops up there as a. Hey, I'm ready to be partnered with if you have any questions about your network. Because remember, as professionals, especially executives, executives make most of their decisions through a referral because it's a trusted network. So if I want capital, if I want a deal, I want a vendor, I want to hire somebody. Or for those of you that are might be looking for a job, I'm looking for a job. Or I want some insights. The first thing we inherently do. Who do I know that knows that right now? You just ask dt. Hey, who do I know that knows this? DT will tell you right? Right away.

I think you really need three things. You need the trusted network, you need the relevant ideas, and you need thoughtful conversations.

Yeah, that's it. And Gerhard, you're. And you're a great example of it. And so our system's aiming to help automate most of that and enable you to be your highest and best self with the people you care most about. And then Gerhard, all that's possible very quickly.

Thank you, Nate.

Thank you guys so much.

Nate, great job. Very good.