Trust me Watching the news lately has me thinking about one word: trust. It started with Tiger Woods admitting in a press conference that he messed up. Now he's trying to regain the trust of his sponsors, fans and – last but not least – his wife. And speaking of screwing up, what a mess Toyota has on its hands! The company has a huge hurdle to overcome to regain the trust of its customers. Whether in your personal or business relationships, trust is critical to your success. If you break a trust, regaining it can be difficult if not impossible. You can say "trust me" or "trust us" all you want – but it is your actions that really speak to whether or not you can be trusted. In business, trust can be broken in a number of ways. If a business makes claims and promises and then breaks them, trust is broken. Do not claim you offer "easy returns," "quality products," "affordable prices," "relaxing atmosphere" or "fast service" unless you are certain you can live up to those promises. If you don't, you will break the trust of your customers and likely lose them for good. If you do mess up and betray someone's trust, you can regain it if you promise to make it right and then do so through your actions. Remember, actions speak louder than words. We've all experienced a situation when someone let us down and betrayed our trust. Most of us are willing to forgive and forget if that person or business "makes it right." Case in point: I recently ordered a product that did not work as promised. I called the company and they immediately shipped me a replacement product at no expense to me without requiring me to return the defective product. They trusted that I was telling them the truth about the defective product and they made it right ASAP. I will continue to do business with them. They took immediate action, they made it right – they regained my trust. For Toyota and Tiger it won't be so easy. It's going to require that their actions over time demonstrate that they can be trusted again. Deb Neuman is director of the Target Technology Incubator at the University of Maine, and host of WVOM’s “Back to Business.” Send your feedback to dneuman@maine.edu or visit her website at www.bizbuzzradio.com.