You Already Have a Brand. You Call It Your Reputation.

It's your most valuable business asset. So why isn't it in your business plan?

A great meal can stay with you for a lifetime.

It's why food is one of my great passions. Not just the eating of it exactly. The memories it creates. Which is why I can remember a meal from over twenty years ago like it was yesterday.

That dinner was at Le Bernardin in New York, at a table full of chefs, including my sister and brother-in-law.

I can still recall the dishes, the tastes, the flavors, this wonderfully weird thing called the geoduck clam, pronounced gooey-duck, the conversations, and the laughter.

A reputation you can say in one sentence

All these years later, Le Bernardin is still competing at the very top of its game.

Four stars from The New York Times across six reviews since 1986. It has never lost one. No other restaurant has held that rating that long. Three Michelin stars every year since 2005.

Why?

Ask anyone who knows. They'll tell you in one sentence.

No one does fish better than Le Bernardin.

Their reputation is the mastery of the art of seafood.

And keeping focus on that excellence and that reputation is what drives Eric Ripert, the executive chef, and the business.

Reputation and brand are the same, one word apart

He's describing a reputation. He calls it identity. He calls it a brand.

In my love of words, I always start with the dictionary. So I looked it up.

Because even after decades in branding, it's smart to check your definitions.

That's the same idea, one word apart.

Your reputation is not yours

Now read the first one again. Generally held. Held by other people.

Which means this. Your reputation is about you. But it isn't yours. It's what other people say about you, in rooms you'll never enter and conversations you'll never hear.

That's what makes it trustworthy. You didn't write it. Somebody else did.

It's also what makes it uncomfortable.

Reputation is the only thing you own that someone else keeps for you.

Which is why your brand was never a logo, a color palette, or an ad campaign. Your brand is the reputation other people hold about you.

You build it in words, actions, and stories

Now the second word. Asset.

That word is everything. An asset is something of value. And value grows.

I came up through finance at Procter & Gamble, where I learned a brand is not a creative exercise. It's a business asset. Built right, it's one of the highest-return investments you'll ever make.

So if your reputation is your most valuable business asset, and your brand is the same thing by another name, why isn't it one of the biggest priorities in your business plan?

And even though you don't get to say it, you can build it daily in words, actions, and stories that lead to a stronger reputation and results.

She was known for the wrong sentence

I worked with a director whose career was moving, just slowly. She was watching others in the company build greater momentum and start to pass her.

I talked with her. I interviewed her management. I had an idea what was causing it.

So I asked her what she was best known for.

"That's easy. I'm the one you can rely on to get the project done, no matter what."

That's impressive, I said. But what do you want to be known for?

The answer came fast. "I want to be known as the leader who delivers the strategy and the bigger results."

That clarity made it easy. Then we worked with her to build that reputation in her words, her actions, and her stories.

"I get the project done. And I deliver the strategy that drives the bigger results."

That new reputation changed her view of herself. Then her management's view of her. And her career took off.

You already have a brand. You call it your reputation.

You have a reputation right now. Today.

You likely didn't write it. Others have done it for you.

And it's being said in rooms you'll never enter, about work you'll never hear discussed, deciding things nobody will tell you about.

So the question was never whether you have a brand. You have one. You call it your reputation.

The question is whether you'll build it, and whether it's in your business plan and career.