The Most Expensive Sentence In Business

I don't care what people think is one of the most expensive lies you can tell yourself. What people think about you is actually your asset. You should treat it like one. And I actually remember Goldman learning that the hard way during the financial crisis. They weren't the primary villain of the collapse, actually. It was like Countrywide and predatory mortgage originators. They were writing these terrible loans at scale, not Goldman. So why did Goldman get absolutely destroyed in the court of public opinion? Because they were really bad at one thing. They let other people write their narrative and they let it be wrong. And it cost them billions in reputations and relationships and deals that probably never happened. And talent, you know, that went elsewhere. Your version? Yeah, maybe it's not billions at this point, but it's just as real. If people carry a story about you, deserved or not, that you're unreliable, difficult, someone who cuts corners, the introductions that could have changed your life, well, they don't even get made because nobody's going to announce that they're not going to do something big for you. So the opportunity just goes to somebody else. Yeah. Your reputation is an asset, and like any asset, it either compounds or it's gonna decay depending on how much attention you pay to it.