Have you ever faced a turning point in life? In an instant, what was there before is gone, and the future is suddenly uncertain. Maybe you knew it was time for a change and chose it for yourself, or maybe the change was forced on you.
Now what?
In our case, the professional lives we had built disappeared, virtually overnight, and we were faced with this ultimate choice.
It was time for self-assessment. What we had done working together before was no longer an option. Our financial future was at stake.
We looked at each other and realized that we still had a special expertise to offer, which we had never provided as a service before. We could take all the things we've done for ourselves as individuals, all the information we've learned, all the mentorship we've received, and most importantly, all the things we're passionate about and build something again.
Related: How to make a living from his expertise
As we began to focus on the future and rebuild, we realized we still had something no one could ever take away.
We still had our reputation. We still had the trust of a lot of people who believed in us because they had seen us delivering results and doing things right for a very long time.
We want the same to be true for you, because building a business is n is not as valuable as building a reputation. Your reputation is everything, and we're here to help you master the equation behind it. But first you need to understand what is really at stake when it comes to your reputation in your career or in business.
A lack of earnings or income is not your biggest problem; a lack of reputation is your biggest problem. In our daily life, we are constantly trying to find ways to earn more money. But in this frantic pursuit of revenue, revenue, or profit, we too often forget what has the most long-term value:our reputation.
Reputation precedes revenue.
If you focus on building an indestructible reputation, you will find that sooner or later income and income always appear. But if you only focus on increasing revenue, you will find that sooner or later the quality of your reputation goes down.
And the reason is simple:those who focus on building a great reputation always deal people the right way. They take care of the customers. They appreciate their colleagues. They honor their commitments. They respect competitors. They do the right thing even when it's not easy for them.
Conversely, people who focus solely on revenue growth put profitability on people, treat customers like numbers, and reduce the necessary changes and investments that would improve their products and services for those who use them. They begin to think that team members are expendable. They begin to make decisions about what is more practical instead of what is necessary. And where they really get into trouble is when they start doing what's easy instead of what's right. These people always lose in the long run because they compromise the cornerstone of a unique competitive advantage:reputation.
So how exactly do you build a great reputation?
It's something you we and the team of our new company, Brand Builders Group, research, study and practice. Brand Builders Group may be one of the only true personal branding companies in existence today. We only work with individuals, not companies. We just tag people. Why? Because the story of our team is one where everything we had built was taken away. Anything but one thing that people can't take away. And what we found is a simple construct to calculate the strength of any reputation. We call it the Reputation Formula and it works like this:
Results x Reach =Reputation
Ask yourself what results have you achieved in your own life? What results have you helped your clients or colleagues achieve?
The results speak for themselves; and results are more powerful than awards or titles because they are objective, factual and unbiased. That's why some of the most successful people in the world expect to be paid not for their time or effort, but for their results. Because results are the ultimate litmus test and measure of success that cuts through the noise and speaks clearly to who is capable and who isn't.
So again, what results have you achieved in your life? What deliverables have you provided to your clients or in your past work? What impacts have manifested directly as a by-product of your good work?
These are your results, and the results are indisputable.
Now let's move on to the next part of the equation:Reach. Although the results can be positive or negative, the reach cannot be zero or greater. You cannot have a negative reach. In a world dominated by social media and online audiences, the impact of zero reach is one of the worst pains you can endure in today's business landscape.
To date, the concept of reach is still largely undervalued by the majority of professionals. Most of us live with the old mindset that it's our company's job to make sure people find us – or even worse, it's the customer's job to find us! No. It's your job to make sure customers find you. You live in a YouEconomy world where you are directly empowered to create your own personal brand and direct reach like never before. It's a world of solopreneurs, independent contractors and independent salespeople, consultants, freelancers and do-it-yourselfers. So you need to make sure the story of your results and abilities has reach — you need to get your story heard.
This is a personal branded gold rush. We believe people follow people more than they follow businesses. People listen to people more than they listen to businesses. You will never hear an interview with a company in the media – it's true, only people are interviewed. This is the age of people and people are now businesses in their own right.
But first you have to realize that if someone doesn't know you, they can't do business with you. Your "range" is your problem. It's a problem you need to worry about and it's a problem you need to own. Your audience is something you should be passionate about building.
So ask yourself how many people do you have direct access to? How many people can you immediately message? Specifically, how many people are on your mailing list? What about your social media profiles? Your blog? Your podcast? If you don't have any or all of the above, and you're not actively trying to expand your reach on each of these channels, you're not doing everything you could.
The number of people and potential partners that your message reaches is within your reach. Big results and big reach equals a big reputation. But at the end of the day, what matters most is not just the size of the reputation, but rather the quality of the reputation.
Trust:The Reputation X-Factor
Although the scope is something that can be expanded with a bit of knowledge and execution, and the results are a testament to your skills and work ethic, your ultimate success is more a matter of personal character. So when it comes to how you treat people, how you talk to people, and how you interact with people, always put people first.
In the long run, your focus on reputation as a higher priority than revenue will set you apart from your competitors and make you stand out in a crowded market. However, if you choose to put revenue first, you'll likely be successful in the short term, but over time, customers will fade, revenue will dwindle, and your reputation will be worthless.
It doesn't matter if you're a business executive. business, commission salesperson, high profile entrepreneur, mommy blogger, or any other position, you should never sacrifice your earning reputation. You should never lose the trust people have in you so you can cash in on another dollar. But unfortunately, people do it all the time. They compromise their values to make money.
Invest in your positive reputation and it will pay dividends. In our case, our reputation meant everything when we needed it most.
You can never predict when change will come, but you can predict your ability to respond to it head-on based on your results, ability to reach other people with this message and the trust others have in you.
Related: Choosing the Goal-Oriented Leader
