The Reputation You Leave Behind

Reflections on reputation building at the Stanford GSB

It feels like only yesterday when I first stepped foot into the Graduate School of Business, pulling my suitcase alongside me as I walked through the “DMZ” and into Jack MacDonald Hall, my new home on Stanford’s campus. Looking back to my notes from those early, first days of orientation, I see pages of scribbled words, my transcribed musings about one question: What do I want to do with my next two years here at the Stanford GSB?

Now, with not even a week until the last day of school remaining, I find myself pondering a related question, What have I done with my last two years?

The Wall of Change at the Stanford GSB

I think about all the classes I took, trips I attended, seminars I watched, and parties I crashed. The late nights spent building DeMarzo’s financial models and the even later in the night heart-to-hearts spread over these two years.

And when all but the most salient memories fade away, long after equations to calculate NPV have been forgotten, what will remain with my classmates will be the impression that I’ve made on them — my reputation.

One of the first photos of me at the Stanford GSB, smiling at the thought of what would be an amazing next two years.

Now, as I begin deciding who I plan to be, plan to stand for, and want to be perceived post the GSB, how do I use this reputation to fulfill these aims?

“Where you go with your reputation, really, truly matters”

Fortunately, this question has been answered by numerous classes of alumni at the GSB who have all previously tread this same path. Three of these alumni, Jeff, Chris, and Kara were able to provide their thoughts about how their reputation continued to play a role in their careers and their advice about how we should manage our own reputations.

1. Jeff Lee, 2017
2. Chris Larsen, 1991
3. Kara Hollis, 2017

From this session, I was able to pull out ten different tidbits of knowledge, lessons, and tips to put into practice as graduation approaches:

1. Until now, most of our careers have been defined by input, hard work, talent, and output. And we’re living in a world now where that’s even less true than ever before. How others vouch for your qualities of trustworthiness and integrity begin to matter so much more.
2. How you leave your job is frequently more important than anything that precedes that exit.
3. You can only manage risk, not uncertainty. You really can’t control a lot of these outcomes. All you can do is control what you put in and try to manage any negative reputational factors are coming from others.
4. Everyone should leave the GSB with the knowledge that you should feel comfortable approaching someone you know if your careers intersect.
5. Be unfailingly gracious and not expect anything other than people’s time, especially if you’re asking for a favor.
6. Coming out of the GSB, don’t stay too tethered to each other right off the bat, especially if you’re trying to start a business or do something really creative; you’ve got to be out in the wilderness for a while.
7. The constraint you put on yourself to find a culture that aligns well with your own ends up making a better career search process because you won’t waste your time on a lot of places.
8. Give your classmates the benefit of the doubt rather than being the one to cast the stone.
9. You’re going to get much more professional advancement from the people on the periphery of your network.
10. Everyone has some negative or not so wonderful trait or part of themselves; the best thing you can do is to control it if you see it and have people who will give you feedback and check you.

Beyond these tips, what resonated with me the most was a story that Jeff told. He contrasted two people he had met throughout his career, both of whom had exited successful unicorn businesses. One of these people felt entitled because of that fact and even opened and closed conversations with that fact — in essence, it became his self-descriptive one-liner. The other person was Yue-Sai Kan, known as the “Oprah of China,” who never flaunted her own successes and lived with one philosophy: “I have never made a cent off someone else’s misery.”

I think about this story of these two individuals and of my own career journey thus far. I think about my classmates and I, realizing that, by pure virtue of the fact that we are all graduating from the Stanford GSB, we are all already wildly successful. I am already living a life beyond what my parents could have imagined for me when they both emigrated from their respective home countries to start anew in the U.S. With these truths in mind, the choice between which of these two reputations I wish to build is crystal clear.