The Trust Battery
Treat every relationship as a battery that each interaction charges or drains
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 85%
The Trust Battery models trust as a charge level between two people rather than a binary state. When you first meet someone, the battery sits at 50%. Every interaction thereafter nudges it up or down: kept promises charge it, broken ones drain it. Because the effect compounds over time, the governing formula is trust = consistency + time. A single cancelled plan barely moves the needle, but repeated small betrayals discharge the battery until collaboration becomes impossible. Conversely, sustained reliability lets people close deals on a handshake. The practical target is to be someone whose battery stays charged above 80%, meaning you do most of what you say you will. It applies identically to business partners, friends, and audiences.
Origin
Shopify founder Tobi Lütke coined the trust-battery metaphor; the consistency-plus-time formula and the compounding-trust framing come from Polina Pompliano and Naval Ravikant, as discussed in Hidden Genius.
Core principles
- 01Trust equals consistency plus time
- 02Trust compounds; so does mistrust
- 03Every interaction charges or discharges the battery
- 04One broken promise is survivable; a pattern is not
How to run it
- 1
Start every relationship at 50%
Assume a new person's trust battery begins half charged, neither earned nor lost yet.
Pro tip This stops you from expecting instant deep trust or granting it.
- 2
Make and keep small promises
Consistently deliver on what you say, since reliability over time is the only real charger.
Pro tip Small promises kept often beat grand promises made rarely.
- 3
Notice what each interaction does
Audit whether your behaviour charged or discharged the battery after key exchanges.
Watch out Mistrust compounds just as fast as trust, so repeated small letdowns are corrosive.
- 4
Hold the charge above 80%
Aim to keep the battery consistently high so that handshake-level trust becomes possible.
Pro tip High trust removes friction: deals, favours, and collaboration all get faster.
In the wild
You meet someone and plan a first date; they cancel at the last minute. On its own this barely dents the relationship. But if they keep promising things and breaking those promises, each broken commitment discharges the trust battery a little more until it becomes genuinely hard to rely on them at all, regardless of their intentions.
→ The relationship never reaches the handshake-trust level where real collaboration or intimacy is possible.
Common mistakes
Expecting trust to arrive instantly
Trust requires the time variable in the formula; treating it as immediate leads to over-trusting strangers or feeling betrayed too early.
Dismissing small broken promises
Each minor letdown seems trivial, but because mistrust compounds, a pattern of them silently drains the battery to empty.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders, partners, and anyone building durable professional or personal relationships.
Not ideal for
One-off transactions where no ongoing relationship exists to compound.
From the transcript
“I include the formula trust equals consistency plus time.”
“You meet and you have each have a trust battery... aim to be a person whose battery stays charged at over 80%.”
From the episode
The 10 Habits Of The World’s Most Successful People - Polina Pompliano - #655
Polina Pompliano