You are responsible for protecting your brand. It’s up to you to ensure that your values are steadfast and firm, as they will be tested.
Your brand is created over many years and inevitably follows you throughout your life.
Therefore, it’s critically important that you protect your reputation over time. Check-in with those around you to understand what your reputation is: the perceptible reputation and view of others.
We Create Our Own Brand
Our brand, that is, what and how we wish to be seen and positioned, must be a creation of our own doing.
A brand is built up over our entire lifetime and can take only a moment to be lost.
Because our reputation is everything, it needs to be guarded. Your reputation is the only thing that people cannot take away from you.
It’s imperative that you think about what your brand and reputation mean to you and how easily and quickly you can lose them.
Protect Your Reputation
It can take one strike for you to lose your reputation and damage your brand. A reputation takes a lifetime to build and a moment to destroy.
If you’re on social media, be careful how you use it. Don't be foolish enough to put something on social media that can come back and bite you some years into the future.
I don't need to give you all the examples of those iconic individuals who have had a great reputation but due to poor judgement have found their brand damaged and their reputation tarnished. Trying to secure that and grab it back is incredibly difficult.
Some of the icons in this world today, such as Roger Federer, are good examples of building a great reputation and brand. He's been very careful to protect what he's done and how he's done it - apart from the fact that he's a great tennis player.
Always be vigilant and be aware of the types of activities and judgments you make that could damage your brand and cause you grief. These will in turn affect your reputation.
Brand Relevance
Relevance is an imperative aspect of your brand. From when you are born until you die, it’s a journey throughout your life and across different aspects of your life.
The importance of maintaining your relevance is critical as you need to ensure that many people in different quarters will have a different perception of you.
You will only have a short period of time in which to maintain your relevance and enhance your reputation.
If you can’t achieve and maintain relevance, you’ll become stranded.
Managing your reputation will maintain your relevance. You can do this by knowing your values and living them – this means making decisions on what you do, how you do it and who you work with every day.
It’s easy to spot someone who is not clear about their values as there is a significant difference between what they say and do, and you don’t want to be aligned with people like this.
Key Takeaways
It’s important to take the time to think about what your brand and reputation mean to you. Also, consider how quick and easy it can be to lose them.
Your brand is what you put out into the world, but your reputation is how people perceive you and your brand.
With things like social media, it’s very easy to make one wrong move that hurts your reputation and does a large amount of damage to your brand.
If you look after your reputation, you will be able to maintain your relevance. Live out your values authentically every day, in all that you do.