“Trust Wins: What Really Drives High-Stakes Decisions”

When the stakes are high, people don’t choose the best strategy—they choose the person they trust most. In this episode of 3 Second Selling, David Gee sits down with Thomas Cox of Cox Capital to unpack how trust is actually built in moments that matter. From why clients are “buying you” more than your process, to the power of listening over pitching, to the role of honesty, storytelling, and knowing who you’re not for, this conversation cuts through the noise of tactics and gets to the human side of decision-making. If you lead, sell, or advise in a skeptical world, this is a masterclass in becoming the person people believe. And trust. 

Transcript

David Gee

Trust as currency in high stakes decisions. Welcome to Three Second Selling, the podcast about attention, trust, and what it really takes to stand out in a crowded, distracted, and often skeptical world. I'm your host, David G. And today's conversation is about something that matters in every business, every relationship, and especially every high stakes decision, and that is trust.

Because when stakes are low, people make casual choices. When the stakes are high, when money is involved, when uncertainty is in the air, when outcomes matter, trust becomes everything. And let's be honest, financial services, one of those categories where trust is not a nice to have, it's the whole game. People aren't just handing over dollars, they're handing over their hopes, their fears, their plans, their family, their future. And that's why I'm glad to have this conversation today with Thomas Cox, owner of Cox Capital, and host of the Owners Table podcast. Welcome to the show.

Thomas Cox 

David, thank you so much. That was great. I appreciate it.

David Gee 

I think this is a timely conversation, with uncertainty in the air everywhere these days. So let's start there. In your world, it is full of jargon, performance strategy, returns, growth planning, spreadsheets, all that. When somebody is deciding to work with you, how much of that decision moves away from the spreadsheets and the return rates and all of that past performance and into simply

Do I trust this person?

Thomas Cox 

So I was a football coach for 10 years. And one of the things that I, in that culture, in that world, is storytelling. So let me answer your question with a story. Can I do that?

David Gee 

Of course. I love stories. 

Thomas Cox

So I was doing a seminar on retirement. We had a room full of 55s and ups and we were getting ready to do it. My wife looks at me and she goes, what do you want people to feel when you're up there presenting? 

And I go, I want to be relatable. I want to come across as trustworthy. I want to come across as genuine.

And I want them to, at some point, feel a little bit tense, but also I want them to laugh. So I want all of those things. So that's the story. Let me answer the question. They're buying me. They're buying Thomas. And so I may say things sometimes that may not resonate with someone.

Right, exactly. Exactly.

Thomas

But I may just be in that person's head on my left to where they fully resonate with who I am as a human being. The story that I told, the fact that I coach college football. I grew up in Birmingham, whatever, but they're buying me because the guy down the road got most of the same financial tools that I do. Now I'll say this.

David Gee 

Yeah, yeah, the connection.

Thomas Cox 

It really, really helps to become an authority in your space. You got to know your crap just because you're a nice guy and you're believable and you're attractive or whatever the things are. Does it mean you're the best fit for the job? You got to know what you're doing. You got to know what you're doing. And so I think the combination of those things is what builds trust.

David Gee 

I love stories. We remember stories 22 times more than features and facts and info. So I love to illustrate a point with a story. I didn't know that about your background. I just knew about the financial piece. But as you say that, I can really see that. And I can see lots of correlations between parents trusting their young men with you and a staff and sitting there in their living room when you're recruiting and saying, know, this is what I can do for your young man, not only on the football field, but, you know, in terms of molding them into a person. So that authenticity, that believability when, yeah, ultimately you're trying to sell somebody on something, the program, the school, all of those things, yourself, your staff, but...

Thomas Cox 

Yeah, sure.

David Gee 

Authenticity really wins the day, doesn't it?

Thomas Cox 

Yeah, because people typically can see through something that's inauthentic and being able to sit in the home of a guy, of a kid that grew up with it, with what I used to call it, three car garage. And then being able to also sit in a home where the mom is in jail, the dad is never in the picture and the mom, the grandmother who watches this kid has been in and out of jail. But then also being able to the next day to communicate to the players that are in your room that you're sweating with and bleeding with all throughout practice in the season. So you've got to go from, you've got to be able to go from room to room to room and A, be yourself, but B, meet people where they are. My old boss, okay, Chuck Amada, love him. He's wonderful. He's retired since then. The old football coach. He goes, Thomas, Thomas. You can't treat them all the same. All this bull crap about treating the players the same Thomas, you can't treat them all the same. Well, he's right because they've all everybody, everybody responds to different things. Being a college football coach and being in finance is a psychological game as much as it is anything. So you being able to play the psychological game of being able to roll with whoever you're talking to and being able to change in the drop of a hat is incredibly critical. Incredibly critical. And the ones that can do it from room to room to room are the ones that are typically successful in any walk of life, any walk of life, not just finance or football.

David Gee 

Let's stay on that credibility piece. There’s a sea of sameness in my world in sales and marketing, particularly now that we're spitting out all this content that's AI generated, it's hard to stand out. We're subjected to between 6,000, 8,000, 10,000 marketing messages a day. I mean, we're just flooded with information. You say that in your business there's also the same return rates, the same tools, the same basic processes that you're offering. So you need to be different somehow. I think that you come across as an authentic person, with that comes credibility. But what do you think in your business really builds credibility and what can damage it?

Thomas Cox 

Number one is experience and number two is validation. So I'll give you a great example. We have a hard money fund. So we loan money to people that flip houses in and around Birmingham and out in the state of Alabama. So we've got some criteria. Number one is they gotta be recommended by somebody. I'm probably not picking you up and lending you money if I see you on Instagram. That's number one. Number two, I'm gonna sit what we call belly to belly with you and have a meal and just ask questions to you and who you are. So I wanna sit face to face with you. That's number two. Number three is I need some personal information about you. There are two closing attorneys in Birmingham that if you've done any kind of real estate business you have to have gone through at some point. And if one or two of those guys can't validate you as a human, I'm not doing a deal with you. So you need experience, but then you need someone validating that you've done a good job for them. That's why it's really, really difficult in financial services, whether you're in insurance, you're a FA or whatever, it's really, really difficult to start. Charlie Nowlin, the guy that started the firm that we work out of. want to say Charlie's 83 years old. He's incredible. He's a wonderful man of God and just incredibly wise. He said, if you can make it past three years in insurance and finance, you can make a great living. And him being 83 years old, I'm sitting in office talking to the ladies of the day and he said, Hey, come here. pulls me in his office and just sits with me for seven or eight minutes and just asked me a couple of questions. Hey, what are you doing here? What are you doing here? Great. Do that. Hey, you need to think about doing this. So just having that experience that you can lean on, but also getting past the hurdles in the first part of your life is incredibly important because when people start telling other people about how great you are at said thing, it makes all the difference in the world.

David Gee 

Brand champion. In any business that is the Holy Grail when you have other people advocating for you. That's more effective than any social media post or any form of advertising. You seem like a straight shooter. An honest person who tells it like it is. I've tried to run my businesses that way. Before I was a professional keynote speaker I had my own PR consulting business for many years and, and I would be very honest with clients and counsel them on whether we were a fit for a project or campaign or retainer relationship. I work for money of course, it's not,  a nonprofit, but, I also can't feel good about taking someone's money if I can't give them a good return on it. So I had plenty of conversations in conference rooms with CEOs and entrepreneurs and business owners where I would say that and perhaps offer a referral to someone else or recommend an alternative. In your chair, do you find that clients respect that kind of honesty where you say, I can't predict everything, I can't promise anything, but here's how we think, here's how we prepare, here's how we respond, here's the process now make a decision. Talk about that process with clients or prospects.

Thomas Cox 

We specialize in infinite banking, which is creating your own bank in your ecosystem, in your business, in your investing world, in your life. It's not for everybody. It's not for someone that makes $72,000 a year that has zero dollars at the end of the month. And so I have to have that conversation. I’ll tell a story about a call I had the other day. A woman says I've seen all your videos and I've got this money and I want to do these things with this money. So well, let's look at it. Infinite banking is a custom suit. It is. You can't go to Nordstrom and pull something off the rack and typically have it look like a custom suit. And what are custom suits? They're expensive. But when they fit, they’re awesome. So I just sat with this woman for 45 minutes and said I don't think this is for you right now. I said, you make good money, but you've gotten yourself into a hole financially. with consumer debt, it becomes a little bit more difficult to practice this. Now, in 18 months or 24 months, would you be a candidate? Absolutely. But you've got to clean some things up. That's the first thing.

The second thing is when people are unorganized with their finances. I’ll just sit down with them and ask. Hey, what's your revenue? What's your profit margin? How much are you saving every month on a good month? What are you saving on a bad month? How much do you have invested? You have to be organized financially to work with us. And then the third thing I tell people all the time is I typically would not have an in-depth conversation with you about this unless you're qualified. So if you're qualified, if I'm talking to you more than one time about this, you're qualified. That's where the expertise comes in of me figuring out if they are a fit. And if they’re not, maybe somewhere down the road they will be. I think that honesty some credibility with them.

David Gee 

Absolutely. Let’s go back and unpack two things that you said that I think are really, really good and worth digging a little deeper on. I think it's a great convention and method to talk about at the outset of a conversation who you are not for. I'm writing a three second selling book and my first author coach said, right up front, tell them who this book is not for. And it seems kind of counterintuitive, like, well, you know, I'm trying to build an audience, not shrink it. But he said, no, no, no, just be upfront. This is who the book is for. This is who it is not for. He said that is a really effective way to get into a conversation. the other part is I love how you are a trusted advisor. Yeah, you're not going to become a customer today, but let me give you some advice just because that's who I am. And I care about you as a person, I want you to succeed. And when we play that role, more times than not, eventually that in ways that we understand and ways we don't, business comes back to us after playing that role. I think it's so important and I can see you excelling in that. Is that something that just kind of came naturally or is it a deliberate thing? Talk a little bit more about that if you would.

Thomas Cox 

You want to talk about the selfish answer or the honest answer? Which one you want to talk about? Which one you want to talk about first? The selfish answer or the honest answer? The selfish answer is when people are not ready for what we do, it's way more work. They become a liability for us and themselves. That's the selfish answer.  The second, the honest answer is when I put people in the wrong thing financially, I am setting them up for failure. And that's the last thing that I want to do is set someone up for failure because then I'm the freaking bad guy. Why? Because I'm the expert. And if I'm the expert and I've set them up for failure then I haven't done the right thing. I've made a little money, but I've pissed a  referral source away. I don't want to do that. Never. You never want to get rid of a referral source. Clients are hard enough to come by. So why would I want to make a bad client? 

David Gee

Exactly. Let's go a layer deeper because money is never just about money. It's emotion, it's identity, it's security, it's our future, it's fear, it's freedom, it's all of these things. So when people come to you, they might be looking for new financial strategies. They might be looking for a different way to skin the proverbial cat. But underneath, they're really asking is am I going to be okay? Are my kids going to go to college? Amf I going to be able to retire comfortably? Everyone I know has some form of financial insecurity. I think it's just part of human nature. So how much of your role is emotional leadership? Again, not just guiding people through the spreadsheets and the returns and the numbers, but really dealing with them on a different level?

Thomas Cox 

I had an old equipment manager when I was playing and when I was a coach. He used to say about our players, “Thomas, they don't know and they don't know they don't know.” It's the same with affluent clients and non-affluent clients. The gray matter in our brains is a sponge during those early years of our life. We are programmed a certain way. The hardest part about learning anything, is unlearning what you thought you knew. It's why you want to tell your kids about money really, really early. It's why you want to have as a parent and as a spouse, you want to have a healthy relationship with money early so that you can then communicate that to whoever it is. So people don't know because of the way they're programmed. And so what we have to do as much as anything is we become teacher and educator first and foremost. That's the first thing. The second thing is we become a, I hate to say this, we become a psychic, a future seer. We have to have the ability to see around the corner.

Our kids don't see around corners. They don't understand why they need to go to bed at 9:15 pm. They don't understand as athletes why they need to drink 100 ounces of water a day. They don't understand that what you're drinking today and you're eating today is going to determine success tomorrow. So sorry to get on the tangent, but as fiduciaries or people that are taking care of clients, we have to see around the corner.

And because what happens is that when clients can’t see the big picture they start to panic. And so after being an educator, we now have to be a psychologist and say, “Hey, let's pump the brakes. Here's what's coming.” And then here's what happens when you can really see what's coming and then you can convey to them what's coming. And then it actually happens. You become a genius. You are then more than just a trusted advisor. You become a friend, you become a confidant,  they start telling you personal stories about their life. And at that point it becomes where the trust is so high. The problem is this, is people that are, that are evil in this business or in your business or any business, they take advantage of that trust. We got to stay, we got to stay true. We got to stay patient to what we're doing. That's the one of the biggest things.

David Gee 

Yeah. Amen to that. And you mentioned pump the brakes. I'll have a little analogy of my own. I'm a Formula One fan and you can listen during these TV broadcasts during the races to the in car radio pit communication between the driver and the race engineer. And the drivers will complain during the race like, hey, why don't we pit? Why don't we take tires? What are we doing? And so on. 

Now the race engineer is sitting there with a bank of monitors. They've got the weather. They've got telemetry from 150 points on the car. They've got all the other positions of all the other cars. I mean, they are seeing the whole picture. And that driver in the car is just seeing out the windshield what's in front of them. The race engineer is looking at this whole big picture, literally and figuratively, and the driver is complaining as they look out the windshield at what is right in front of them. They don’t know what they don’t know. So, so analogous. 

You know, a lot of people listening are business owners, leaders, entrepreneurs, professionals who likely aren't in financial services, but as we've talked about, they're still in the trust business. So let me broaden this. If you were giving advice to any leader trying to build credibility with clients, teams, partners during uncertain skeptical times, what are two or three bedrock principles that you would tell them never to waver from and never to forget? 

Thomas Cox 

In your very first meeting, you need to do 10 % of the talking.

David Gee (29:58.923)

I love that! Yes, yes!

Thomas Cox 

The person who asks the questions is in control of the conversation. So if you can ask the questions, you can control the conversation. It's like the story of two guys sitting at the bar. For two or three hours. One guy, the one doing most of the talking, “wow, you are one of the nicest guys I have ever met. I feel like we are best friends. Thank you so much. Such a great time talking to you. What was your name again?”

David Gee 

Hey, that's happened.

Thomas Cox 

So when you can control the conversation, especially in conversation one, when you can control the conversation, it helps them feel more comfortable with you. So be the question asker. And I'm going be honest with you, cheat. Go on chat GPT or go on one of these AI models or LinkedIn and find some things out about the person you are meeting with. Get five base questions that can keep someone  talking for 45 minutes. 

Okay, that's the first thing. The second thing is...when speaking to someone, make sure that you say their name. Okay, so I'm going to give you an example, David. I've probably said your name five or six times and you've said mine once. Is that a bad thing? No, I'm just being extremely intentional about saying your name, using your name in an example. So if I can say your name and I can control the conversation so that you're talking 90 % of time, then trust is psychologically built in that situation.

David Gee 

I had a mentor early on in my business career that said if you're not listening, you're not learning. I deal in sales and marketing and I absolutely am convinced that listening, being curious, is our sales superpower. And yet when I go to trade shows or hear sales conversations with clients, we tend to shower our prospects with features and specs and info and infill and testimonials. If I just give someone enough information, being the smart person you are, you will conclude you should do business with me. And that's just not the way that we make buying decisions. We're trying to appeal to the wrong side of the brain. I love that you point out listening, because I believe listening is our sales superpower. 

Thomas Cox 

Yeah. Let me give you two easy tips. Number one, when your wife comes home or you come home or you see your wife, never ask the question, how was your day? Always ask the question, Hey, tell me about your day and then shut up. That's number one. That's kids, that spouse, that's everybody. that's the first thing. Open ended questions. 

The second thing is just about any question that you ask a client or a potential client or someone that you're trying to sell something to can almost always be started with, David, tell me about?  Hey, David, tell me about your ideal client? Hey, David, tell me about the type of industry that you really thrive in working. And then whatever the answer to that question is, is tell me a little bit more about.

You can go with that and just listen. Don't be so scripted when asking these questions that you have to get to the next question because 90 % of the time you're going to say something that's going to spark another question. Because I don't understand your work. I don't understand. And the best thing, the most ego inflating thing that you can do is teach me about something that you know more about because it makes you feel good about yourself.

David Gee 

Well, you had said my name five times and I think you just upped it another three or four times so the gap is widening Thomas. You know, I really enjoyed this conversation. What I appreciate about it is that even though the financial world can seem kind of technical and a little bit jargonistic and like it doesn't invite outsiders well, the deeper truth is very human. People want guidance. They want honesty. They want authenticity. We don’t earn trust by talking the loudest or the longest. It's built by showing up with clarity and calmness and consistency and credibility, especially when things feel uncertain. Thanks so much for being here. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Thomas Cox 

David, anything I can do to help you in the future, please let me know. you're a really, really good question asker. You bring the conversation back to important points and your questions are easy to answer. Keep it up. You’re doing a great job.  

David Gee 

Well, thank you. 

And I do want to make mention of something that kind of doesn't matter, but I want to mention it anyway. Thomas has a producer, an assistant, who reached out. I’m on a podcast list and your guy said you might be interested in being a guest on this show. And at first blush, it's like, I don't see a fit.

Yeah, trust is important in your business and my business. But beyond that I don’t see it. So he came back and said, no, let's keep talking about this, and we exchanged the framework of a conversation. And then Thomas you came back in an email and said you weren’t sure you liked the questions, or that it’s a fit, and I was like let's just punt. It's OK. Not everybody's a fit for everybody's conversation.

However, we persevered past those first impressions, and I have been fascinated as we dug in that you talk about things that I talk about all the time, becoming a trusted advisor, who this is not for, your ideal client, listening, being insatiably curious, you know, the discovery process. I mean, you touched on so many things I talk about all the time and it was unscripted, unprepared, unplanned for, and I love it. It's just one of the miracles of the universe when we have these kinds of conversations and these things enter the chat, so to speak, out of nowhere. It's affirming, it's exciting, and it's just so enjoyable.

Thomas Cox 

Here's the thing, it's all the same. Whether you're selling apples or you're selling annuities, it's all the same. Preachers sell Jesus, parents sell bedtime. Like, it's all the same principles and process. 

Thomas Cox 

Let’s leave people with two things. Number one, be a really, really good listener. That's the first thing. Slow down. Awkward pauses are okay. Because what they do is they bring you back into the conversation. Number two, tell stories. Facts tell and stories sell. Thanks for having me on David. 

David Gee

Thanks to our guest today, Thomas Cox, owner of Cox Capital and host of his own 

Owner's Table podcast. 

And thanks to all of you for listening to this version of Three Second Selling. If the conversation resonated, share it with someone who leads, advises, or simply wants to communicate with more trust in a skeptical world. Because in the end, people don't give their time, their attention, their confidence, or their money to whoever talks the loudest. They give it to the people who build the trust, who feel the most believable, honest, and authentic. I'm David Gee. We will see you next time. So long, everyone.