When you live in a world of curated feeds, it can sometimes feel impossible to know what’s real. Finding the companies and people who are making genuinely great products while maintaining the values that you support is like finding a needle in an ever-expanding haystack.  And when you are the company trying to stand out in that haystack, how do you gain the trust of customers to show that you are the real deal?  “We connect brands to their fans, but also we connect fans to each other. And the way that we do that is not based on any basic metrics. It's not based on how many followers somebody has. It's not about how much they bought from you as a brand… How we have attracted so many fantastic brands is that we bring back this layer of true fans that has possibly been lost in the world of influences and views.” Amber Atherton is the Founder and CEO of Zyper, a company dedicated to connecting the real users of real products to create a real community. It’s a process that leverages the oldest marketing tactic in the book – honest word-of-month – and is based entirely on two key values that can define an organization inside and out: transparency and trust. ---  Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney. The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.