Trust Before Products

A strategy of building trust through content creation before monetizing with products, demonstrated through examples of successful creators and businesses.

Core Strategy

• Build trust for 2-3 years through content before launching products
• Focus on becoming the most trusted voice in your niche
• Use short-form video content that can be distributed across all platforms
• Monetize through product launches after establishing credibility

Why This Works

• People need trusted sources for product recommendations
• Impossible to personally verify every product claim
• Trust is evolutionarily valuable - humans rely on trusted sources to avoid bad experiences
• Allows you to build an audience before asking them to buy anything

Real World Examples

More Plates More Dates

• Built trust through supplement reviews and content
• Became trusted voice in fitness/supplement space
• Later launched own supplement line
• Leveraged existing audience trust for product sales

Huberman Lab

• Built trust through scientific content and podcast
• Partnered with Momentous protein
• Partnership was extremely valuable due to established trust
• Rob Dyrdek said whatever they paid Huberman "wasn't enough"

Flavcity

• Creates content reviewing grocery store products
• 2.5M followers
• High engagement on product review content
• Builds trust through educational content about ingredients

Key Elements for Success

• Be willing to create "low quality" content that resonates
• Focus on what audience wants vs what you think they should want
• Remove ego from content creation decisions
• Use short-form video across all platforms
• Build trust before attempting to monetize
• Create shareable, viral content that establishes expertise

Content Distribution Strategy

• Short-form video works on all platforms:
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Snapchat
• First time all platforms support same content format
• Allows maximum reach while building trust