During China’s War of three kingdoms (ad. 207 – 265), the great general Chuko Liang also known as the sleeping dragon lead the force of Shu Kingdom. There was this time he dispatched hi vast army to a distant camp while he rested in a small town with a small amount of soldiers. His enemy Sima Yi heard of this and took 150,000 troops to attack. Hearing this Chuko Liang ordered his soldiers to drop the flags at the gate and leave their post leaving the gate wide open. He then sat on the most visible part on top of the wall burning incense, chanting and playing the flute alone. When Sima Yi reached the gate with his vast army he recognized the man sitting alone on the wall as Chuko Liang, rather than attacking straight up he told his army to retreat because he feared it could be one of the many traps set by the sleeping dragon. You could call Sima Yi foolish or stupid for not attacking, but he was acting based on his past experience. He had fought with Chuko so many times and has lost a lot of those battles due to the sleeping dragon cunning nature. Chuko Liang has built a reputation so good that even when the odds did not favor him he still won.
I term reputation to be almost everything in every sphere, area, or field of life. Most times people are always scared to try something new, they most times depend on other peoples experience or would I say the reputation of that product before taking the so called bold step. Imagine a bad product spreading good words about its goods just to have a good reputation. It bad yes, but I would surely sell at the first instance because of its reputation. That’s the power of reputation it gives others a view of what is not more or less exaggerating. A solid Reputation increase your presence and exaggerates your strength without having to spend much energy. Most times your present success depends on your past success. How well you did you solved the last task would enable people to trust you for the next one.
To create a solid reputation you first need to be known for something. Royce rolls are known for their luxurious cars, Ferrari for their fast cars, KFC for their tasty crispy chicken, and the Chinese for their hardworking nature and so on. The funny truth is that even when they perform below par people do not really notice or don’t complain because they are biased or just blinded by reputation. The point is that create a visible unique standard and stick to it to the end, it would surely build a quality reputation for you. Publicity when building your reputation. Publicly define your nature so everyone would know you for what you are
Reputation is one treasure that one should carefully collected. Once you have chosen the reputation to build whether good or bad, should be definitely good though. Guard and protect it with all you got. Don’t let yourself or anyone trash your reputation it should be considered sacred as it would go a long way in keeping you up or bringing you down. As they say it’s easier to destroy than to build. Never forget reputation is the corner stone for power, through reputation alone you can intimidate and win.
