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We’re in a Trust Recession. What Would It Take to Rebuild It?

Trust in each other and in government has fallen for decades, while confidence in small business holds. What that means for people starting something, and the standard SideKix is holding itself to.

By James Martucci Published 28 September 2026 Reading time 5 minutes Category Community

When we started researching the market for SideKix, we went looking for places where people starting a business could get help. We found plenty. Online groups, communities, forums, all promising support for entrepreneurs and business owners.

Then we looked at who was running them. 100% of the 50 groups we reviewed were run by companies with something to sell.

That doesn’t make the advice or support in those groups worthless. A lot of it is probably good. But it leaves the person asking for help with a question they shouldn’t have to carry: Am I getting guidance and support, or am I entering a sales funnel?

That question follows us all over social media. Someone can share real experience and still want an audience, customers, or subscribers. Both can be true at once. The hard part is knowing when one is shaping the other. When every conversation feels like it might turn into a pitch, people stop asking honest questions. That hits hardest when you’re just starting out and don’t even know what to ask yet.

Starting something takes trust. You have to trust that your idea is worth chasing, that the information you find is good, and that the people offering help actually have your back. You have to believe the next step is worth the time, the money, and the exposure that comes with it.

For a lot of people, those bets are getting harder to make.

In 1972, 46% of Americans said most people could be trusted. By 2018, that number was 34%, and Pew found it still sitting there in 2023 and 2024. Trust in the federal government is even lower. In September 2025, just 17% of Americans said they trusted it to do what’s right most or all of the time. That’s one of the lowest readings in nearly seven decades of polling.

That’s what I mean by a trust recession. People haven’t stopped trusting altogether. They’ve just learned to keep it inside smaller and smaller circles. And starting something almost always means stepping outside yours.

It’s not only an American problem. Edelman’s 2026 global survey found that 70% of people were unwilling or hesitant to trust someone whose values, sources, background, or approach differed from their own. When trust stops at the edge of the people we already know, it gets a lot harder to find help, trade ideas, or build something with someone new.

Technology made information and advice easy to find. It didn’t make it easy to trust, decipher or act on. In 2024, 66% of U.S. adults told Pew they were highly concerned about people getting inaccurate information from AI. A confident answer can still be wrong, incomplete, or right for someone else and wrong for you.

That’s why this matters to us. SideKix exists for the person with an idea who doesn’t know where to start, the owner staring down a hard decision, and the leader working on a problem they can’t solve alone. When good support is hard to find or hard to judge, even really capable people get stuck.

Here’s what gets overlooked: people still want to believe in each other. Gallup’s 2026 survey found that 67% of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in small business. Meanwhile, average confidence across major institutions sits at 27%, one point above the record low. The goodwill is there. What’s missing are places where it holds up.

Now, the obvious part. I’m building a company too. SideKix is a business, and I’m writing an essay about hidden pitches while running one. We can’t ask anyone to trust SideKix just because we say we care. We have to earn it through the experience itself. So here’s what we’re designing for, and how you can hold us to it.

Kix, our AI guide, is built to help you talk through what you’re facing, look at your options, and turn a big goal into clear next steps. When an answer depends on facts Kix can’t verify, it’s designed to say so. When a real conversation or specialized expertise would serve you better, it points you to the right resources and Advisors. The decision always stays with you.

Trust also comes down to how people treat each other. Our Live Rooms are designed to give members a place to ask questions, share what they’ve been through, and meet people working through the same challenges. Our Advisor experience is built around real identities, clear expectations, and follow-through. Before you commit to anything, you’ll know who’s helping you, what they offer, and whether there’s a cost. No surprise upsell at the end of a helpful conversation.

We’ll keep testing ourselves against a few simple questions. Do people understand the guidance they get? Can they tell when an answer is uncertain? Do they feel respected when they ask a basic question? Did a connection actually help them take a real next step? If the answer is no, that’s ours to fix, not yours to tolerate.

You don’t end a trust recession by asking people to be more trusting. Trust comes back when people can see how something works, make their own informed choices, and get support that holds up past the first conversation. It grows when what someone says and what they do line up, with no hidden pitch waiting behind the help.

That’s the standard we’re holding SideKix to: helping people move forward, one clear action and one dependable connection at a time.

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