From the desk of Rob Brown July 2016:
The Reputation Vault is an additional online resource that gives you access to all those extras that I couldn't fit into this book. It's a resource that comprises of 26 Manifestos written to compliment this book in key areas. Together, you have the perfect blueprint to help you develop your personal brand, enhance your reputation to ensure you stand out in your field, and have a successful career.
I've called them manifestos. While this is usually a word for political documents, manifestos are also seen as powerful catalysts for action. They state views, intentions, beliefs and suggestions. For the purpose of building your reputation they give you checklists, tips and strategies to flesh out many areas of the book.
They are shown here in the order that they are referenced in the book. To access The Reputation Vault, go to www.theRobBrown.com/Rep-Vault and enter your name and email. If prompted for a password please enter the eighth word of the third paragraph in Chapter 3, followed by the page number.
All are just a few pages long and no more than a 30-minute read. Perfect professional development for that commute, departure lounge or boring meeting!
Dives into that subtle blend of gravitas, temperament, inner strength, credibility, charisma and skills that get you viewed as a player and a peer of the top people. If you want to be seen as a peer of senior influential people, you have to talk their talk and walk their walk. That needs corporate executive presence!
Raising your reputational game by building up your weaknesses is old-world thinking. What's clear now is that the best way to clear water between you and your rivals is to focus on your strengths. This manifesto covers exactly what strengths are, how you identify them and how to exploit them for your reputational advantage!
Finding out what people say about you can do wonders for improving yourself. Otherwise how do you know what you're good at or what to improve. Soliciting critical and honest feedback in the right way can identify your strengths and blind spots. Peer appraisal is a powerful feedback mechanism for building a world-class, stand-out reputation!
So you meet a ‘demi-god’ or VIP. Unless they're so taken with you that they hire you right there on the spot, you're probably going to need to sustain that connection. This guide will help show you ways to follow up or keep in touch after you've met some of these interesting people. When done right, they'll remember you, refer you and perhaps even recruit you!
Ever wondered what makes someone a thought leader? What do they do? What are the benefits of being a thought leader? Could you be one? Read about how to turn ideas into success and replicate what these special people do. Thought leadership creates authority status, and that's what makes you stand out!
Trying to get what you want out of a sale, an opportunity, or a person can be difficult when you don't know exactly what to say. A power script is simply the right thing said at the right time to the right person in the right way to elicit a particular result. It's a must for critical conversations when much is at stake!
Nobody wants to sound big-headed or arrogant. Even with an army of advocates, you must learn the art of self-promotion or ethical bragging. This manifesto gives you tips and scripts for selling yourself without sounding like you're boasting. Remember some of your bestselling OF you will be done BY you. Being able to sell yourself at the right moment in time is vital if you want to be successful!
How strong is your online reputation? In this online world, you can't ignore the power of the internet, social media and mobile to shape and enhance your profile – if people can't locate you online, then they may as well not be able to locate you at all. Your impact is limited if you are brilliant but anonymous. Well-kept secrets don't tend to change the world!
Giving back is a pathway to success in your field. People will remember you for giving back, returning favours and making contributions. It will make people want to help you and pitch you on the same level as them. This quality, when properly harnessed, allows you to engage with the demi-gods and influencers in your space!
Content is so important to your authority status. It's the way you disseminate your ideas, opinions and philosophies. It gives you presence and credibility. This guide helps you form a content creation strategy that gets you out there with power presence!
The ability to stay focused, do ‘deep work’ and stay on task is what separates the good from the great. In the midst of distractions, interruptions and impositions, you must protect your most precious of resources: time. That means saying ‘no’ to a range of favours and requests. This manifesto gives you a selection of strategies and scripts to do exactly that!
Like empathy, trust is a vital cornerstone of influence. When people trust you, they are more likely to refer you, endorse you and listen to you. Trust means people will buy you and also sell you. Trust is also essential to profitable relationships. This manifesto gives you a ton of great tips on building trust into your key relationships and interactions!
If you ask many famous people or influential leaders how they made their way to the top, more than a few say ‘luck’. If you think luck is something you can't control, you're wrong. Whether you call it serendipity, chance, blessings or good fortune, luck plays its part in opening doors and creating chance encounters. This manifesto gives you tips on being more lucky and attracting more good things into your life!
A contra deal is a ‘you help me – I help you’ arrangement. It's the purest of ways to trade something you've got for something you need. Whether it's influence, resources, introductions, time or advice, your imagination and ability to trade up is one of the most effective ways to accelerate your reputation and leverage your network. And this manifesto shows you how!
When it comes to your network, how do you decide who is useful and who isn't? There are various ways to classify and calibrate your network. You have strong ties and weak ties, and not knowing which to keep and which to ditch can seriously hold you back. This manifesto will give you a way to evaluate who's good to keep and who needs to go!
Sponsors are your ultimate career advocates. The right sponsor can almost walk you into the boardroom. They are certainly capable of giving you that extra springboard leap that you need to propel your career forward. This manifesto shows you how to exploit their reputation and connections for promotions, pay rises, book deals and a range of other personal goals!
Your own carefully crafted Personal Board of Advisors (PBA) is a must for maximum leverage of your networking and reputational assets. In today's complex and uncertain world, no one mentor or advisor is enough. You need input from a range of experts to ensure you get the right experience, wisdom, insight, ideas, perspective and resources. This manifesto fleshes out the strategies in the book to help you recruit your own PBA for maximum career advancement!
It's well known that high-quality impactful and insightful questions can open doors to greatness. But what makes a great question? What are the best ones to ask? This manifesto is a really useful guide to shaping and asking higher-quality questions that will bring you respect, reputation and opportunities!
Everyone has some kind of ambition, but writing down your goals and revisiting them frequently is the only way to keep your goals in sight. It's all about habit and good practice – read this one if you feel this is something you struggle with. You'll get some great insight into the latest thinking on setting goals, as well as why some goals are achieved and some aren't!
Meetings are a feature of modern corporate and professional life. Everyone is an opportunity to make or break your reputation. Sitting quietly in a meeting will do little to enhance your good name. That's why this manifesto is written especially to help you ‘boss’ these everyday gatherings for maximum impact!
The phone remains a formidable relationship and reputation building weapon. In the mobile age, almost everyone is at the end of a phone. Yet many people struggle to speak with impact over the phone. This manifesto will help you improve your telephone manner, leave better voicemail messages and get much more from your phone conversations!
It's inevitable that you'll develop a few bad habits and make a few wrong decisions in your career. Yet without the perspective and accountability of others, we can get too close and blindsided by all we do. Allowing others to hold you accountable means you'll stay on track, improve your productivity and achieve your goals with greater success. This manifesto gives you those accountability secrets!
Do you know how to make your boss look good? Everyone likes someone that makes him or her look and feel good, why should your boss be any different? It's not a case of being the office suck-up – there are subtle ways to enhance your reputation and ‘promotability’ by making your boss see how great it is that you are in his or her team. What better way to build your reputation than to have the top dog praise you to others!
You learn through your mistakes, but part of making those mistakes is also receiving feedback. If you take criticism well, and even solicit it from others, then great. If you don't seek it out and act on it, then you'll struggle to push on, overcome weaknesses and achieve high performance. This manifesto shows you how to put right your wrongs and let people know that they were right to tell you!
Choosing who is the right person for the job and the right job for the right person is an important aspect of leadership and career advancement. This manifesto gives you powerful delegation tips to help you empower others, lower your workload and build your reputation!
It's so easy to waste two hours in the morning sorting your email or post. We all run the risk of getting distracted every time the phone rings. Good systems and processes can prevent this from damaging your productivity. It's simply working smarter, and this manifesto gives you lots of top tips to achieve it. When you get more done, you'll naturally enhance your reputation and make more time to raise your profile!
Good habits are vital in achieving your reputational goals. You can harness your habits for advancement and productivity, or let your habits control you. This manifesto will show you exactly what habits are, how they work and how to use them to accelerate your career and leadership goals!