Why Do Customers Trust Small Businesses Less in 2026? (And How Do You Fix It)

[How Can Small Businesses Compete?]

As a small business, how can you possibly outcompete these huge corporations with unlimited resources and huge teams and huge marketing budgets and huge sales forces? How can you possibly compete? I am going to share with you some of the things that I talk about on stage when I am speaking to audiences of small business owners about three ways that you can do exactly that, because now is the era of the small business. Small is your superpower. You have things that are your natural advantage right now because of your size that big corporations just cannot possibly mimic.

So I want to start by saying, especially if you sell a commodity, you may say okay we sell tires, but our tires are the best. Well, your customers do not know that. They just see that you sell tires. So if you have a perceived commodity, whether that is a service or whether that is a product, you are not in the business of competing on price or speed or efficiency. The bigger corporations can do most of these things better than we can. They can compete on price and knock us completely out of business if they want to. They can be faster, they can be more efficient. So how can we compete? We leave them to compete on those things because we cannot compete directly head to head, and we focus on what we can win on — and that is standing out differently in a time when our country is focused on who can we trust and who can we form a real connection with. The answer is not big corporations right now.

So how can you stand out? How can you build that trust in a trust-deprived marketplace, and how can you be unforgettable so that when they do have a need, if it is not today, they think of you and not the biggest brand out there? Today I am going to focus on that critical part — how do you build trust — because when you have a customer base that trusts you, they are willing to pay more. They are more loyal. Statistics show this hands down. They are more loyal when they trust you and have a relationship with you, and they are more likely to be more forgiving if you mess up. I call it a customer brandship. It is like a friendship, but it is a friendship between your brand and that customer. And that is based primarily on trust.

[We Are in a Trust Crisis]

Particularly Americans, we have fundamentally changed in the past five years more than in any other period in our lifetime, in a century. I did a one-word poll, and I asked all of my followers and subscribers: in just one word, how are you feeling? And the answers were not very surprising. If you are listening to this in 2026 and everything is in upheaval and our country is in disarray and we are at war and gas prices are rising and all these things are going on — politics, you name it, everything is so uncertain — it is no surprise the words that I got.

Keep in mind this is across demographics, financials, genderless, all different generations. The only thing they have in common definitively is that they are Americans. These are just some of the words that I got: distrustful was the number one, uncertain, worried, cautious, distracted, hesitant, value-seeking, guarded, exhausted, divided. As Americans, we are not in a place where we automatically trust anybody these days if we have not met them. We are at the highest period of distrust. In fact, since I have been tracking it, it is what I call on stage a trust crisis.

[Ninety-Eight Percent of Us Distrust Businesses More]

I am going to ask you a question that I ask my live audiences when I am on stage. What percentage of people trust businesses less than just 10 years ago? The answer might surprise you. Ninety-eight percent of us. Ninety-eight percent of us distrust businesses more than just 10 years ago, and I almost guarantee that is more than just five years ago because Covid also changed us fundamentally. Throw that into the mix. That was the first thing that caused a divide in our country to the degree that it did in quite a long time, and that divide has just continued to fracture.

I describe it like a piece of glass — and it is not just a clean fracture down the middle, it kind of comes apart in shards. That is how I look at our country and how we are so divided on any number of topics today. And so what that means, if Americans have fundamentally changed, it means we as small businesses have to change how we connect with them, how we market to them, how we behave with them. You will either inspire trust or you will be lumped in with the ninety-eight percenters who do not inspire trust. So how do you become one of those elite two percenters that people trust?

[Show the Messy Middle, Not Just the Perfect End Product]

Telling stories builds trust. Stories are more memorable. They build trust if they are about real topics, especially the more you are vulnerable, the more you share behind-the-scenes things, real things that happened. You do not just share the pretty end product.

Think of any bakery. Think of the beautiful cake they share on social media. Well, that does not really stand out because every one of their competitors shares similarly beautiful cakes or cupcakes or pies. And it also does not build trust. Okay, you can decorate a nice cake, but it is not going to make me trust you over the bakery down the street or the bakery at my grocery store. What does build trust is letting people see the messy middle — literally the messy middle. If you are in a bakery, those surfaces are not clean. There is flour everywhere. If you have done your baking for the day, it is mayhem. You probably have flour all over your apron, on your face, in your hair. And if you have ever had a mishap in the bakery, that is the best time to pull out your phone and film that and just say hey everybody, look what happened today. Those are the types of things that build trust, not always the perfect end product.

Big corporations do not do this. Small businesses show the messy middle, and we are so much better at being real and being vulnerable. And ninety-eight percent of your target audience does not trust perfect anymore. Big corporations have not gotten the memo. They are still marketing like it is 2019, and they are still showing the perfect lighting and the perfect models and the perfect scenes, when all we want as exhausted Americans is what is real. We do not want the nonsense, we just want real talk. We want to see behind the curtain, we want to see how it is made. We want to connect, we want to trust, we want human interaction.

So be the face of your company, along with everybody else who works there, as often as you can. Talk directly to the camera, tell stories where you can, be transparent when you can about something that went wrong. That is such a trust builder when you say hey, we blew it, we messed up this entire order, and this stuff happens, here is how we made it right. That is a real moment.

[Out-Human the Competition]

How can you, overall, build trust? It comes from out-humaning your competition, even the small businesses that you are competing with down the street or online. Many of them have not gotten the message yet that they need to be real and transparent and imperfect. So many of us as small businesses, especially the longer you have been in business, were taught that in order to compete you had to look and sound like the big businesses in your space. Today, small is an asset. It is your superpower.

Being relatable is a huge differentiator. Being empathetic when things go wrong — and I am not talking about empathy that is scripted for a phone operator that reads out, I am so sorry that that happened to you. Anything that sounds scripted is not relatable and it is not real empathy. Family, pets, anything that is real in your marketing, in your videos, in your photos. If it is Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, showing yourself as a mom, as a dad, or with your mom or with your dad. Including your dogs. If you have a cat, show the cat — some people actually like cats. Those are the types of things that build trust. That is what makes you trustworthy. Showing you walking your dog, having your dog come into the store or the office, any of these things are so much more relatable than just saying hello, fellow humans, we have a sale this week, come on in.

How can you out-human the competition? By giving a face and a name and a personality to everybody that works in your company. I am a big fan of the tiny mic videos. If you do not know what I am talking about, go on YouTube or TikTok and just put tiny mic in the search bar, and you will see tons of amazing examples of tiny mic videos and interviews that businesses are doing all the time. They are so humanizing and they are wonderful.

[Take Action: Know Your Customer, Change Your Marketing]

Here is a little bit of homework. Pick three customer segments. If you serve a wider audience, separate them by age or by job — basically you are picking three typical customer personas. Then put yourself in their shoes and look at your marketing and your competitors’ marketing through their eyes. Where do you see things that would make them go, I do not buy that, I do not believe that?

Look at everything your competitors or you are claiming that cannot be proven with actual fact. You may say we have the best customer service. That is not true unless you have actual statistics, unless you have had an outside company measure that. Unless you have, you cannot say it. That creates distrust. Do not use those superlatives unless you can prove them, and change your marketing to things that show rather than tell.

For each one of those three customer segments, come up with a social post — preferably a video — of a relatable customer experience. Something one of your customers actually went through, a story where your customer is the hero and you are just the sidekick that helped them succeed. Capture that on video, or better yet, have the customer tell the story. Or come up with something that is a truth you have never shared before because you were afraid to say it. Lead a video with something like, here is something I have never shared before, or here is what big corporations do not want you to know. Those are things that make people lean in — but then actually share something real, something insightful, something relatable.

Go ahead and do that homework when you have a moment, and see how you would change your marketing, even the smallest tweak. Start small, do what you can with the time that you have. And with that, thanks for listening. Check out the resources vault at thebuyerinsider.com/vault, and we will see you on another episode of Underestimated.