Your reputation is your most valuable asset

Your reputation is the most valuable asset in your “portfolio”. And your reputation is also the proxy for your future earnings.

Reputation is a simple construct, built on two ideas:

Ability: What you can do.

Reliability: What you actually do.

If you are not doing what you say you will (or could) be doing, your reputation will be the limiting factor of your life or career.

Use Proof of Work to earn your reputation

Reputation through differentiation is how we create an edge in any market, and it's even more true on the internet. In an environment of infinite noise and distraction, specificity wins.

Specific proof of work is the unlock: If you can show the outside world that you are not just talking but have proof of what you can deliver you are on the right track. This includes:

• Online testimonials, reviews
• Writers: blog posts, Designers: portfolio, Marketers: Analytics charts
• Templates you use in your daily practice (only people who do the work can create templates that can be used in real life by others)
• Artifacts of your client work (for service businesses): websites, social graphics etc.

Reputation built on proof of work is the closest thing to professional invincibility that exists.

Your proof of work builds equity over time

In a digital-first business, your "storefront" is decentralized across the platforms you use to build and communicate with your network. Every post and tweet, every email, every video, every podcast is an investment vehicle that generates equity after you take it to market.

If it never gets to market, no equity for you. Your equity in the market represents the collective value assigned to you by people consuming your message.

And ‘collective value assigned’ literally equates to your reputation. So treat your reputation for what it is: Your most valuable asset.