Whoβs Actually Defining Your Reputation
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I was on a call recently with a business owner who is planning for major growth this year.
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I had researched him and felt like his online presence wasnβt strong enough currently to support the growth. Not in the high-trust market he was in. I asked him: βWhen prospects Google you, what do they find?β
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He didnβt even pause.
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βI donβt worry about that. They donβt Google me.β
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hadnβt expected such a bold statement - which I completely disagreed with.
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I pushed back. "I think they probably do. Everyone researches everyone now. Itβs part of their buying process.β
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After that first interaction with your brand, what do you think they're doing?
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They're searching for you.
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And now they're not just Googling, they're asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc
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Look, I get it. Your online presence might not be your top priority right now. Maybe you've got bigger fires to put out.
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But don't tell yourself it's not happening.
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Because it is.
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Before they get to the bottom of your funnel, they're researching you.
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And if you're aware of that but still letting it slide... you're outsourcing control of something that belongs to you.
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Same way I think about Tesla's full self-driving.
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I trust it completely. Use it every day.
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I let it navigate from point A to point B. That's what it's built for: execution.
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But I don't let it decide where I'm going or when Iβm going. I don't let it choose my destinations or control my schedule.
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It keeps me safe for the 30 minutes it's driving me somewhere. But that doesnβt mean I turn over the other 23 and a half hours a day to it.
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There's a difference between trusting something to handle a task and giving it control over your identity.
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Same thing with your reputation.
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You can let systems distribute your story. But you can't let them define it.
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What happens if leadership doesn't own the narrative? Systems will fill the gap.
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And systems don't optimize for truth. They optimize for patterns, for what's easiest to reconcile.
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That means AI repeating outdated information. Google confusing you with someone who shares your name (this has happened to me).
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Prospects finding enough misalignment that they just move on.
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When that happens, opportunities die before you ever know they exist.
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As a leader, you own your narrative.
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Youβre responsible for what the world thinks about you.
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You canβt control what the systems repeat when someone searches your name.
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But you can control what you put out there for the systems to consume, which feeds what they repeat.
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That's yours to define, not something you hand off to whoever or whatever fills the space.
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And right now, whether you're paying attention or not, that first layer of due diligence is happening in Google and ChatGPT.
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Your prospects are doing research on you. Even if you tell yourself they're not.
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To my knowledge, Jason Barnard knows more about this than anyone in the world.
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He joined me on the podcast this week to discuss this exact problem.
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Jason's spent years studying the gap between what leaders think their reputation is and what Google and AI actually say when prospects are doing their due diligence.
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He works with CEOs and founders to close that gap. To make sure the machines tell the truth about who they are, what they've built, and why they're credible.
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He's seen what it costs when leaders abdicate this responsibility. And he's seen what becomes possible when you take ownership of it.
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