As critical as trust is to a relationship, I am often suprised at little time people take in earning it.
We walk around expecting everyone else to earn our trust, but at the same time, we send ourselves to school in order to learn how to “manage customers,”"manage employees,”"manage bosses,”"manage impressions,” and “manage expectations.” The underlying assumption is that (1) you should come to me, and (2) if you want me to come to you, I can show you where you’ve erred in your thinking.
The next time you think of managing someone else’s opinion of you, ask yourself instead what you can do to earn that person’s trust.
More to the point: the only real reason you would have for managing someone else’s impression of yourself is that you haven’t earned the benefit of the doubt.
Can you imagine trying to use impression management to land the love of your life as a spouse? It can’t possibly work–the relationship would be based on a lie! Now, I’m not saying that you can’t have a very satisfying date with someone you won over with a well placed line, or that you shouldn’t be on your best behavior, but I am saying that if impression management is at the core of your relationship, it hasn’t a shot.
To build a meaningful relationship, you have to earn each other’s trust. You have to go on a first date, with all those awkward moments and jitters, and figure out what each other is about.
At the same time, you’ll need to figure out how to get the person to agree to a second and third date, too–trust won’t be earned in a night! And how do you do that? By demonstrating that you are willing to continue working toward earning the other person’s trust, and that if you are going to shape their opinion of you, you will do so by putting yourself on your best behavior rather than through impression management! This is what makes new relationships so fragile and yet so rewarding: fragile because you are trying to earn someone’s trust without having complete control over how they see you, and rewarding because surviving that challenge itself can be immensely fulfilling.
Plenty of people–myself included–would say that we do business with people we like. The reason I say this is because we are predisposed to like people who make an effort to earn our trust. We like people who are willing to risk that fragile period, take us on a first date, and who take satisfaction from building relationships. We like people who like us.
Before there is trust, there is like. Before there is like, there is a first date.
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 
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