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"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live," said Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

It is most important for an entrepreneur to be surrounded by a network of trust.

If your customers trust you, then even if things don't always go smoothly they will stick with you. If your staff trust you, then even when things are tough they will stay with you. And if your investors trust you, you can raise financing regardless of the current economic climate.

In fact, many of the entrepreneurs I know are finding it easier to raise finance today then ever before. They have built up a record of delivering returns to shareholders and now those same shareholders trust the entrepreneurs they know more than they trust the stock and property markets.

Today's global financial crisis can be traced directly back to a lack of trust between financial institutions; a lack of trust both in their ability to pay back loans and in the value of their assets.

As we have seen in the US and increasingly in Europe, the value of certain assets such as property has a nasty tendency to go down as well as up.

An interesting thing about a global downturn such as the one we are in is that the lack of trust begins to permeate throughout the whole system, and good companies as well as bad get tarred with the same brush. This creates opportunities for the alert entrepreneur.

As Richard Branson says, "I like to expand my way out of a crisis." That means looking for opportunities whilst everyone else is looking the other way. It is a brave individual who talks about expansion whilst everyone else is talking about retrenchment and, again, it comes down to trusting your own ability

Trust in yourself, or confidence, is the ultimate form of trust.

For an entrepreneur, although it might get shaken from time to time, self-confidence is fundamental to success and is built by accomplishment and preparedness.

Even if you don't have the confidence to start a new business in a downturn, at very least start building a network of individuals around you that can help you build accomplishments, however small, because when the economy recovers you will be ideally positioned to make the most of it.

As Mark Twain once commented, "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."

Callum Laing is founder and owner of several businesses with a presence in six countries. In his spare time, he runs XL Thailand, part of the world's largest network of social entrepreneurs. He can be contacted at callum.nation@mobyelite.com.