Whenever I begin working with a client we always start at the same spot: What is your legacy? This is an incredibly tough question to answer, but if you can’t then you have to question why you’re doing what you’re doing, or selling what you’re selling.

What is my “legacy”?

Your legacy is the after-glow of someone’s experience with you or your product. It’s what they’re going to tell their friends about you; it’s the comments they’ll leave in a review on Yelp or your Facebook page, or anywhere else online. Just hope they post it somewhere that you can see it so you know what they’re saying!

Your legacy is ultimately your brand because your brand is NOT what you say about it – it’s what OTHERS say about it. What other people say is 4 times more valuable and impactful than what you say about yourself. Why? Because before someone makes a decision to purchase a service or product, they typically do some research and they always, always do research among those closest to them (or less close, by asking friends on Facebook). These people that are talking about you are the ones that will carry your legacy forward, and will sway the minds of those near them. If they post publicly, like on things like Tripadvisor.com or Yelp, they can significantly influence a whole pile of people they don’t even know.

How to control your legacy

So here’s the conundrum: you don’t actually “control” your legacy directly. You can’t make people say something or do something to promote you. So what do you do?

You consistently deliver amazing, mind-blowingly wonderful and incredible service or products 100% of the time. Not 95%, and not just mediocre experiences or products. If you think you can skate by with an average product or service and hope that no one notices, your legacy will not be one you’d be proud of.

Consistency is key. There can be no wavering. You have to live and breathe what you do, seek ways to improve it, be a better teammate, deliver a better presentation, or better yet, construct a system whereby you can do something differently from your competitors. As you know, I work with a ton of real estate professionals and they all struggle with this legacy because they feel like real estate is a commodity. The real estate process may be, just like it is in a lot of other industries, but YOU (yeah, I’m lookin’ at YOU babe!) are NOT a commodity.

Build your legacy

Think hard about what you’d like someone else to say about you. Then think about what you’d have to do to make that happen. You’ll find your path is clear, or will become clear, the more defined you get at expressing that legacy that you wish to leave behind.

-Rebecca

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About author:

Rebecca has been in Marketing for over 12 years now. She has worked at all sorts of companies – large public ones, small private ones, medium sized firms and now she works for herself. She specializes in training companies to use social media intelligently, so they can use it to grow their business, get found in social and Google searches and integrate their online and offline marketing strategies. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook

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