REPUTATION

REPUTATION

Many years ago I began asking the question, "Why is it that some people are more successful than me?"

I started reading and studying authors like Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Zig Ziglar, Dr. Wayne Dyer, and Robert Schuller. They told me “You probably have more talent and ability than you could use in one hundred lifetimes. You have all the intelligence you need, right now, plus the ability to learn any subject you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself. In the real world of Possibility there are way less limits than you think on what you can be, do, and have. But you do have to transcend the limits you accept from your own mind.”

That answer comforted and challenged me, as it does, I guess a lot of people. We are living in another of those fast-moving, turbulent, disruptive, and unpredictable times in human history. This kind of rapid change often causes those affected to become distracted, unsure, insecure, and demotivated. As a result some just slow down, sit around, and accomplish very little.

It is simple. Your success is based on what you do, the results you get, and how quickly and efficiently you achieve those results. It is not based on what you say, wish, hope, or intend to do at some time in the future. Success is only based on what you are doing right now in this moment. As Henry Ford said, "You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do." Unfortunately, we seem to have acquired a generation of false leaders who missed that oneTHE MOST VALUABLE ASSET
What is an group's most valuable asset? According to the Harvard Business School, it is its reputation. A company's most valuable asset is what people say about the company, and its products and services, to other customers or potential customers.

Well, that made sense to me at the time I first heard it. My Dad set huge store by what people said about him, and he brought me up to feel the same way. But then I discovered behind all that Me-generation entrepreneurial flummery a thriving industry involved in constructing and marketing reputations for their clients that, in some cases preceded the client actually doing anything remotely resembling what their artificial reputations were lauding them for. The Eighties and since are littered with the burnt-out corpses of companies, corporations, politicians and their pimps, stockbrokers, bankers, financial advisers, drug peddlers and small-time shysters who go the way of all who manufacture a reputation rather than go to the time and trouble of growing and earning a reputation. They forgot Henry Ford said, "You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do." Current politicians please take note.

The Brian Tracy's (from whom I've pinched the idea for this article), Peta Credlins and Jill Botterills of this world still come down from Mt. Sinai proclaiming “Reputation is Everything” and offer to sell you one for a fee. But because technology, information, and customer tastes are changing rapidly, products and services are changing faster than ever before. Think about companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google. They started well, but got lost in the stampede they started. Their reputations were so excellently crafted and deployed that people queued up for days to get the latest issue of the products and services they offer. Now the public is slowly waking up to discover that they're no longer living up to their hype. They're not delivering. We've been duped.GETTING THINGS DONE
How do reputations evolve? They start when you, consciously or otherwise, form a vision and a plan. Proactive gamers go out and find enough people who also want it, making commitments to those people, and keeping your commitments, no matter what the cost. That's how real reputations emerge. If you skip any one of those ingredients, you still get a reputation – just a different one.

Ultimately, reputation is secondary result of something you've built that is far more important -- Character. Reputation is merely what other people think you are; character is what you really are. Your reputation is a wrapping that others lay on you -- character is the person you have to live with 24/7

The most important part of your personal character is your ability to start and complete important tasks, to get things done, to be true to your intention, and to be known for speed and dependability. In the present climate, anybody who delivers what they commit to, on budget and on time, stands out from the crowd. This will do more to make your happiness, health, success, and wealth than any other facet of your reputation that you can connive to conjure.