You’re in your truck right now, aren't you? Driving from one client to the next. Or maybe you're on the treadmill, trying to sweat out the stress of the day before it even starts.
You’ve got a lukewarm coffee in the console, your phone is buzzing with notifications you’re trying to ignore, and your mind is a battlefield. You’re replaying the meeting you just left—did I say the right thing, did I price it too high, too low?—while at the same time prepping for the one you’re driving to. You're thinking about that invoice that's 30 days past due, the proposal you need to finish tonight, andw the fact you promised your kid you would be home for dinner.
You’re successful, right? People look at you and see the business owner, the expert, the guy who's "crushing it."
But in the quiet of this commute, you know the truth. You feel like a fraud. You feel like one dropped client, one missed deadline, one bad month could bring the whole thing crashing down. Because the entire business rests on one person: you.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve been fed the great lie of modern entrepreneurship: that the hustle is a badge of honor. I’m here to tell you it’s not. It’s a failure of systems. In this first episode, we're going to dismantle that lie. We’re going to redefine what trust actually is in a business, and I'm going to give you the foundational blueprint for an engine that builds that trust for you—so you can finally get free.
My story isn’t a Silicon Valley fairytale or it didn’t start in a boardroom. It started in 2008, stepping off a plane from Brazil into Texas with a basketball scholarship, $200 in my pocket, and no idea how to speak a word of English.
Failure wasn't a possibility; it was an existential threat. So I did the only thing I knew how to do: I hustled. Relentlessly.
I was the captain of the basketball team—a position of leadership—but I was also the guy in the laundry room at midnight, washing the team’s uniforms just to afford groceries.
After college, I landed my first accounting job. For five months, I didn't have a car. My commute was a 12-block walk, rain or shine. I’d wear running shoes and carry my dress shoes in a backpack, changing on the steps of the office building so I looked the part. I remember my shirt stick to my back before I would even made it two blocks away from my apartment.
That walk wasn't a choice; it was a necessity. And people in the office noticed. "There's the guy who walks 12 blocks." It built a reputation. It built trust. It screamed, "This guy is reliable."
And that reliability trap is seductive. You start to believe your willingness to suffer is your greatest asset. It leads you to make bad decisions. I remember taking on a client in my early days—let's call him "Richie"—because he paid well, but my gut screamed "no." He was demanding, disrespectful to my process, and every interaction felt like a battle. But I needed the money. That 18% interest on my car loan wasn't going to pay itself.
So I did the work. I hustled, I stayed up late, I put out every fire he started. I delivered. But the cost was immense. My other clients suffered. My family suffered. My health suffered. I was succeeding, but I was miserable. My work ethic had become a weapon pointed directly at my own freedom.
That’s the reality of a business built on grit alone. You are the only tool in the toolbox, and you're getting worn down to nothing.
This all came to a turning point in the pantry office. For five years, that little room was the official home office for my firm, Terra Accounting. It was the only place I could work without my wife and kids disturbing me. My schedule was the definition of grit and hustle. I would be in there from 5 AM to 7 AM, then race to my corporate job from 8am to 5pm, and then I was back in the pantry from 8 PM until 11 PM or sometimes midnight. That room was my world, and I was surrounded by cereal boxes and cans of soup.
One night, it was almost 11 PM. I was staring at a horribly complex partnership tax return, the numbers swimming in front of my eyes. The house was quiet except for one sound: I could hear my wife laughing with one of our kids who had gotten out of bed. A real, deep, joyful laugh.
And it hit me like a physical blow. I was twenty feet away, but I might as well have been on another planet. I was the architect of my family's financial security, but I was completely absent from its joy.
I had built a cage, gilded it with success, and locked myself inside. My identity was so wrapped up in being "the guy who outworks everyone" that I didn't know who I would be if I stopped. If I wasn't the hustler, who was I?
That was the moment the myth shattered. Working like this wasn't a badge of honor; it was a strategic failure. My relentless effort was a sign of my lack of systems. And I knew, with absolute certainty, if I did not build a machine to do the work, I would be the machine for the rest of my life.
This brings us to trust. In a world of AI, automation, and digital noise, the ability to build genuine human trust is the single greatest competitive advantage for a service business.
But we've been taught a broken model of trust.
That realization forces you to rethink everything, especially trust. We think trust is built through grand gestures. Heroic efforts. We're taught the "trust fall" model—a big, dramatic moment of proof. That ridiculous team-building exercise where you stand on a table, close your eyes, and fall backward, hoping your colleagues catch you. It's the perfect metaphor for everything that's wrong with the hustle approach to trust.
My "Richie," my 12-block walk... those were trust falls. And they are a fundamentally broken way to run a business. They are exhausting, unscalable, and they attract the wrong people.
Real trust, the kind that builds a sustainable business, isn't a fall. It's an engine. A system that runs quietly, consistently, and reliably in the background. It has three core components.
1. Consistency: Imagine two contractors. Contractor A calls you once, spends an hour on the phone, promises you the world. You feel great. Then, you don't hear from him for two weeks. Contractor B sends you a simple, 2-paragraph email every Friday at 4 PM with a status update. No drama, no grand gestures. Just a predictable report. Who do you trust more by week four? Contractor B, every time. The system is what guarantees that 4 PM Friday email goes out, whether you're in a meeting or on vacation. That's systematized consistency.
2. Competence: Competence isn't just being good at your job. It's building a system that only allows you to do the work you're great at, for the people who value it most. The lesson from my "Richie Client" wasn't to work harder; it was to build a client intake system so bulletproof that a client like that never even gets a proposal from me. A system that protects your competence is the ultimate form of quality control.
3. Transparency: This is the scariest one, but it's the most powerful. It’s not about projecting perfection. It’s about owning your failures. I once made a mistake that cost a client four figures. My stomach was in knots. The old me would have tried to fix it quietly. The new me picked up the phone immediately. I said, "I messed up. Here's what happened, here's how I'm fixing it, and here's the system I've already built to ensure it never happens again." That single act of radical transparency built more trust than a hundred perfect projects. He's still my client today.
Consistency, Competence, and Transparency. That’s the engine. It’s not sexy. It’s not that American Dream montage where you’re expected to melt your life into the hustle. It’s the quiet, relentless hum of a machine that builds trust while you sleep.
Building my business around this principle changed everything. The trust I built through relentless hustle got me the opportunity to partner in a 30-year-old firm, managing a team of 20 people overnight. But it was the systems I immediately started building—the Trust Engine—that allowed me to handle that scale without collapsing. It allowed me to stop being the guy in the pantry and start being a CEO. To stop washing the laundry and start coaching the team. It gave me back my time, my energy, and my presence as a husband and a father.
Freedom isn't about not working. It's about working on what matters. It's about having the mental space in your commute to think about the future of your business, not just the next fire you have to put out. It's about building a legacy, not just a job for yourself.
That is the promise of this podcast. We believe in Action Over Theory. Every episode will give you a piece of the machine. If you’re ready to move from the Reluctant Hustler to the Intentional Operator—if you're ready to build a business that serves your life instead of consuming it—then hit that subscribe button.
And here’s my challenge to you: Picture one person in your life you trust completely—a coworker, a client, a friend. What is the one small, consistent action they take that earns that trust? Whatever that action is, that's your model. That's your first step. Replicate that principle in your own business this week. That is your first gear in your new Trust Engine.
