In my last two “Saturday Musings” I’ve shared about the two life principles of truth and trust. Both these principles are the foundation stones for building strong relationships that stand the test of time. Even though they are vitally important, without the third principle learning, truth and trust can become soul destroying as you berate yourself for, yet again making another mistake.

A learning mindset means that when you “blow it”, you give yourself the grace to learn from the situation. This provides the liberty to improve yourself if you’re faced with the same issue again. A learning mind focuses not on condemnation but on improvement.

To illustrate this point, let me share with you a story that I read a number of years ago. An IBM salesman received a phone call that meant he’d missed out on a $10 million-dollar deal. He’d put a lot of effort into trying to secure the agreement, but the results clearly showed that he’d cost the company a lot of money.

With a downcast face he packed his personal belongings into a box, stepped out into the hallway and closed his office door for the last behind him. He headed to his boss’s office to say good-bye. “It’s always better to resign rather than be fired,” he said to himself.

We recently had a new client that does a significant amount of domain traffic revenue come across to ParkLogic (I'm a co-founder) for a test. They were previously with a single parking solution and I thought it would be interesting to share with you the results as a case study in why domain traffic optimisation works.

After 6 days the overall results a 20% uplift in revenue…..which is quite a good given the short time frame. It's still early days for the optimisation process to kick in and effectively route the low traffic domains to the highest paying monetisation solution.

When you begin to unpack the data a little further an even better outcome is just on the horizon. For instance, for all those domains that have exhibited at least the same traffic levels as the previous month’s baseline the uplift in revenue has been 39%.

If we hand back to the client, the bottom 10 worst performing domains out of nearly 4,000 in the test then the results completely change. Overall, the performance is a 41.2% revenue uplift with a 75% increase in revenue for domains that had at least the same traffic as the baseline. This is a HUGE result where the revenue line has nearly doubled!

I wouldn't be surprised if the revenue line continues to increase over the next 6 weeks as the optimisation process hones in on the best performing solution. From that point onwards, optimisation will continue every second of every day.

There is nothing stronger than when you trust a person completely and nothing more devastating when trust is broken. So how do you gain someone’s trust and how do you maintain it?

Both these questions are at the heart of our society as trust is the glue that bonds us all together. Without some level of trust, your relationship with your spouse, children, neighbours, and government would shatter.

From a business perspective, contracts may spell out what each party expects of the other but ultimately, it’s trust that underpins the agreements. Without trust, we won’t have business and society fall into anarchy.

The first thing to realise about trust is like every relationship it’s built upon a solid foundation of truth. I discussed truth in last week’s Saturday musings and you may want to have a read of that article. Assuming you are truthful then how do you build trust?

The fact is, trust takes time to develop. Although it can be instantly lost, it’s rarely, if ever, immediately given. A good way to think about trust is to imagine everyone has a “trust bank account” that you can deposit or withdraw from. The question is, what are you depositing and withdrawing?

Whether it be with work colleagues, clients or even family members building relationships can be one of the most difficult, time consuming but fulfilling activities you can do. Let’s assume we are all telling the truth….so what do we do when we discover someone is lying?

Truth is a Perspective
Over the years, I’ve seen so many people accuse their friends and even family members of lying. Sadly, it’s almost with a sense of glee that they pounce on a perceived untruth and fling it in the face of a loved one. I have no idea why some people like doing this….after all, aren’t they accusing someone they care for?

Here’s a good lesson. Always remember that truth is a perspective and when you are looking from the outside at another person’s life you may not know the full details of the picture. Because you believe you’ve caught a person in a bold faced lie doesn’t mean that it’s true…..

I recently received an email from a person accusing me of a whole lot of things….none of which were true. They’d leapt to a huge number of conclusions based upon an external perspective and without knowing the actual facts. The challenge for me was how to respond to the accusations in a manner that I hoped would be received. This leads into the next topic…..

How to Share the Truth
Here’s the catch with the truth…..huge amounts of damage can be inflicted on relationships when the truth is shared in a negative, rather than a positive manner. It’s very easy to shove the truth in someone else’s face but much, much harder to share it in a way that it will be received.

After NamesCon I headed over to San Francisco and the offices of Escrow.com. While there I had a chance to check out the Escrow.com offices, chat with the team and interview the CEO, Jackson Elsegood.

In the short interview we discuss NamesCon, the new Escrow.com API and the problems of clawbacks with payment systems such as paypal and credit cards.