The Seven Rules of Trust, with Jimmy Wales | (Leadership, Internet, Entrepreneurship, Media)
episodePreviously titled “The Seven Rules of Trust, with Jimmy Wales (Leadership, Internet, Entrepreneurship, Media)” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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What is the foundation of trust in organizations?
Inside an organization, you have to have a lot of trust. Like, what is our strategy? Because uncertainty is worse in most cases than making a decision that's slightly suboptimal, you know, like, like completely whipsawing back and forth. So what are the principles that you need, you know, in order to build trust? Trust between maybe rank and file and the management. Trust between different equals in the company and things like that. It's fundamental to relationship. And in business, it's fundamental to actually getting things done.
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Are you interested in advertising with The Action Catalyst? Our listeners could be hearing about your brand right here, right now. For details, shoot us an email at info at theactioncatalyst.com. Today's guest is Jimmy Wales, internet entrepreneur and the founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. Named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People, his book, titled The Seven Rules of Trust, A Blueprint for Building Things That Last, is out now. Jimmy, hi. Hello.
Where are you calling in from today? I live in London now since 2010. So 15 years, 16 years.
Yeah, it's rubbing off on you, isn't it, Jimmy?
I mean, I'm trying not to, but the children tease me if I say zebra instead of zebra and that sort of thing.
Growing up near Huntsville, did you ever have a little bit of a country accent as a kid?
Oh, I definitely had a Southern accent. Yeah, as a kid. I lost it as a teenager, I would say. I went to a school where... Huntsville's a funny place. Huntsville grew from about 20,000 people in 1960 to about 200,000 in 1980. So it was a real boomtown. When I got to high school, most of the kids didn't have a Southern accent, so I lost it then. But my wife says I sound like Bill Clinton when I'm on the phone to my mom, so...
That's what I was going to ask. I love it. So I don't know, Jimmy, if you realize there's kind of a unique connection here, but you read the encyclopedia that was sold to you and your family by a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman, right? Yeah. So I, in the 21st century, as an 18-year-old, signed up to sell the modern day version of the encyclopedia. It was a student handbook, basically a reorganized encyclopedia for academics that I sold door to door. Wow. I did it every summer I was in college. And my favorite thing to hear at a doorstep is that someone had really bad internet connection because that usually meant I could make a sale.
That's great. I love that.
You get this world book encyclopedia. And how old were you when you're thumbing through this thing?
I mean, my mom bought it when I was three, as I understand. I mean, I don't remember because I was three. But as soon as I learned to read, probably, which was I was four when I started reading, but probably, you know, five, six, because the world book was actually very interesting. The way they edited it was very clever, actually. So the world book was an encyclopedia for children, but children is a wide range. And so they would make sure like an article about Tiger would have a reading level that was much lower, like a first grade, second grade reading level, because they knew kids at that age are interested in tigers and they're going to look that up. But they would also have an article on physics or quantum physics that would be more suited for a 13 year old.
I've always thought that's very clever. Obviously, Wikipedia doesn't do that. We can't do that. But I always thought that was pretty cool. You know, I only tied these two things together as an adult, right?
How did Wikipedia's origin shape its principles of trust?
I didn't think, oh, I always loved encyclopedias when I was a kid. It is true. I would say the original inspiration for Wikipedia came from watching the growth of free software, open source software, and seeing programmers coming together to collaborate in new ways, and realizing that that kind of collaboration on the internet where people could work together and
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