Trust - The Foundational Key to Success in Events (and Life)
/Hi there!
Let's talk about trust. It's the invisible currency that makes the world go round, the secret sauce that transforms ordinary partnerships into extraordinary collaborations, and what separates the amateurs from the pros in every single industry.
Trust isn't just a nice-to-have – it's the non-negotiable foundation upon which every successful relationship is built. Whether we're talking brands and customers, agencies and corporate partners, event teams, families and friends, or that most important relationship of all (the one with yourself), trust is your golden ticket to a life of seamless success.
Your executives need to trust that you’re guiding them in the program’s best interest without micromanaging and making decisions by committee. Your team needs to trust you’re their “shit umbrella” and have their back so they can keep focused on their respective roles and responsibilities. And you? You need to trust that everyone will deliver on their role so the whole event comes together beautifully, overseeing things as a leader and inspiring people to come together operating as #OneTeam with a shared goal.
I’m just coming off a beautiful milestone birthday celebration where my client trusted me so much that they didn’t even request a week-of meeting or event day walkthrough. I had provided them consistent updates, handled all of their guest communication while they enjoyed a month-long vacation the month before their big bash,. They were so relaxed on the day of the event, they arrived later than planned since they were relaxing at home watching tennis in the morning trusting that I had everything covered!
I understood their goals, their budget, and what they hoped to get out of the event, and they told me they loved how I made it simple for them to make decisions. They never second-guessed my recommendations, and the result? A flawless celebration that looked like it belonged in a magazine with the client overjoyed, guests raving about the seamless experience, and my team and vendors all one-team working together in harmony with smiles on our faces since we could all do our jobs (well) and deliver joy.
This is why I start every pre-con (pre-conference) with a compliment to the team involved, and appreciation for everyone’s efforts, why I ask what’s keeping everyone up at night, and then resolve it in advance so we enter the event feeling secure, confident, and ready to be able to “add magic” rather than fight fires.
An example from this past weekend? I was so relaxed at our seamless registration desk, that when a guest told me she’d forgotten her lipstick and couldn’t find a store in the small town of Yountville that sold it, I told her not to fear. I pulled up Doordash on my phone, asked for her color preferences, and had two colors of lipstick delivered to the front desk within the hour. I even covered the cost for her so she wouldn’t have to bother with that. She was so thrilled, she kept telling me it was the most magical thing that had happened to her that day. When everyone is working in harmony, the team has the mind space and desire to go above and beyond, and create magic. A far cry from how a team operates under stress with no room to say “yes” to additional requests or think creatively and with a kind, giving mindset.
Compare this to events where trust is lacking – where vendors are constantly questioned, where team members hide information, where everyone's covering their own backs instead of working toward the shared vision. Those events feel tense, disjointed, and frankly, exhausting for everyone involved.
Gianna’s Gem: Planning events without trust is like conducting an orchestra where nobody can see the conductor. It's pure chaos!
Why Brands Must Earn Customer Trust (And Keep It Sacred)
Picture this: You walk into your favorite boutique, and without even looking at price tags, you know everything you pick up will be worth every penny. That's trust. When customers trust your brand, they become more than buyers – they become believers, advocates, your personal cheerleading squad.
Take Patagonia, for instance. They've built such unwavering trust by consistently delivering on their environmental promises that customers will literally tattoo their logo on their bodies. When Patagonia says "Don't buy this jacket" in an ad promoting sustainability, people trust that they mean it – and ironically, it makes them want to buy it even more.
Or consider how Glossier built an empire by trusting their customers to be part of the conversation. They didn't just sell beauty products; they created a community where every customer felt heard, valued, and trusted to shape the brand's future.
When trust exists between brand and customer, magic happens. Customer acquisition costs plummet because word-of-mouth becomes your best marketing channel. Retention skyrockets because people stick with brands they trust. And here's the kicker – trusted brands can charge premium prices because customers know they're getting premium value.
The Agency-Corporate Dance: Trust Goes Both Ways
Now, since this newsletter caters to event and business professionals, let's talk about the beautiful dance between agencies and their corporate partners. These relationships bloom when trust is present, and I've watched it crash and burn spectacularly when it's not. And while trust takes weeks…months…years to earn, it can be lost forever in one minute.
When an agency trusts their corporate client, they bring their A-game creativity without fear. They pitch bold, innovative ideas because they know their partner will give them fair consideration. They show up, go above and beyond and even flex on things like pricing and timelines because they want the client to win. They feel skin in the game as a trusted partner. Meanwhile, when corporations trust their agency, they give them the creative freedom to work magic instead of micromanaging every pixel and comma, and they hire them without a lengthy RFP process because they know the agency will deliver.
I typically give agencies the trust to give a creative pitch their all without micromanaging the process and putting too many constraints on them. For a recent program, I gave my agency complete creative control for an experiential activation. The result? A 40% increase in social impressions. Why? Because trust allowed the agency to take calculated risks that a fear-based relationship never could have supported.
On the flip side, I've witnessed agencies bend over backwards for corporate clients who questioned every decision, demanded endless revisions, and never quite believed in the expertise they were paying for. The result was always the same: diminished morale, mediocre work, unachievable timelines, budget overage, and everyone walking away frustrated and never wanting to work together again.
The Most Important Relationship: Trusting Yourself
There’s one relationship that I’ve only really started to excel at with age (I’m no spring chicken!) and that’s self trust. None of this external trust matters if you don't trust yourself first. And I'm talking about really trusting yourself, especially when it comes to listening to your body, tuning into how you feel around people, in your gut, and trusting your intuition. (ps, meditating helps hone this intuition!)
Your body is your most honest advisor. When you walk into a meeting and your stomach tightens, that's your body saying "pay attention." When you feel energized after a phone call with a potential client or collaborator, that's your body giving you the green light. When you're pushing through exhaustion or sickness instead of resting, and rewarded it for it by your clients, that's your body begging you to trust its wisdom.
I learned this lesson the hard way when I ignored my body's signals during a particularly intense event. I was running on fumes, working despite a 103 fever, and telling myself I'd rest "after this project." My body was practically screaming for me to slow down, but I didn't trust what it was telling me. The result? I ended up recovering for two weeks, missing an important social event I was looking forward to. Now I trust my body like I trust my best friend – because that's exactly what it is. When it says I need a chamomile tea instead of another espresso, I listen. When it says this client meeting feels off, I pay attention. When it says I need to meditate rather than doing a HIIT workout, I honor that wisdom. And it’s had a 100% success rate for me. Trust the body.
The Time, Money, and Seamlessness Factor
Working with people you trust isn't just emotionally satisfying – it's financially brilliant. Trust eliminates the need for excessive RFPs and iterations, check-ins, and protective measures that eat up time and resources.
When you trust your team, you spend less time on status meetings and more time creating and celebrating. When your clients trust you, they approve concepts faster instead of requesting endless revisions. When vendors trust each other, projects flow like silk instead of grinding to a halt over miscommunications.
I once calculated that working with trusted partners cut project timelines by an average of 30% compared to working with new or unreliable vendors. That's not just efficiency – that's pure profit, darling.
When Trust is Broken: The Road to Redemption
We’ve all had it happen– sometimes trust breaks. Maybe a vendor doesn't deliver as promised. Maybe a client changes the scope without adjusting the budget. Maybe you hear someone talking negatively about a person they pretend to be friendly with in group settings.
Broken trust isn't the end of the world, but it is a crossroads. You can either let it destroy the relationship, or you can use it as an opportunity to build something even stronger.
The key is radical honesty and swift action. Acknowledge what doesn’t feel right without making excuses. Take full responsibility for your part. Communicate clearly about how you'll prevent it from happening again. And then – this is crucial – follow through on every single promise you make during the rebuilding process.
And if the other party isn’t willing to own up and take ameliorative action, know when to walk away. Life is too short to engage in relationships that aren’t productive and built on a foundation of trust.
Trusting the Process and the Universe
Finally, there's the ultimate trust exercise: trusting the process and the universe itself.
This means trusting that the right opportunities will present themselves at the right time. It means trusting that setbacks are setups for comebacks. It means trusting that you don't have to control every variable to create something magnificent.
When you trust the process, you stop forcing outcomes and start allowing them. You pitch for your dream client and trust that if it's meant to be, it will be – and if it's not, something better is coming. You launch your passion project and trust that the right people will find it. You take calculated risks and trust that your skills and intuition will guide you to success.
Trusting the universe doesn't mean being passive – it means being actively aligned with your values, your vision, and your inner wisdom while staying open to possibilities you might not have imagined.
The Trust Imperative
At the end of the day, trust is everything. It's the difference between transactions and relationships, between surviving and thriving, between working harder and working smarter.
In your business relationships, be trustworthy first. Show up consistently, communicate clearly, and deliver on your promises. The trust you build today becomes the foundation for tomorrow's opportunities.
In your personal relationship with yourself, listen to what your body and intuition are telling you. They've never steered you wrong – you've just forgotten how to trust their guidance.
And in your relationship with life itself, trust that you're exactly where you need to be, learning exactly what you need to learn, becoming exactly who you're meant to become.
Because here's the ultimate truth: when you operate from a place of trust – in others, in yourself, and in the process – you don't just succeed. You soar.
What I’m Loving this week: For all my favorite vendors, partners and products, visit: https://www.giannagaudini.com/gianna-recommends
Agency I trust and Love: One of my favorite experiential agencies, MAS, has been an agency partner to me for over a decade supporting me with Google’s Think Events, where they supported me in building a custom app (that actually won an award for best B2B event app), Executive Summits, and even Google Cloud Next, plus supporters me with the most prestigious events for SoftBank, and now Developer Events at Windsurf. Most importantly, they are not only extremely talented tastemakers, but they’re so consistently good at what they do that I often find they’ve answered my questions before I even need to ask them. And…I genuinely enjoy hanging out with them as people, as an extension of my own team.
In their own words, “At MAS, we create moments that move people, shift perception, and spark lasting connection. It’s not about one-off moments, it’s about earning a place in your audience’s story. Brands trust us to lead with heart and imagination and we deliver more than engagement...we deliver impact. Because when people feel seen and valued, trust follows, and that’s where real brand love begins”. If you’d like an introduction, please reach out to me as I can’t rave highly enough about them as partners.
XX,
Gianna
P.S. Want to pick my brain?
Book me here 👉 intro.co/giannagaudini (check out the feedback from others who have worked with me as well in the reviews!)
