What's the first thing you do after you meet someone?

a) Invite them out to lunch?

b) Send them an e-mail?

c) Google them to find out what they're about?

Michelle Jordan bets that most people choose "c."

Jordan is a "reputation manager," a term she believes she coined about five years ago for consultants like her who help people restore or rehabilitate their reputations. Sometimes the task is to establish a good reputation before anything negative appears.
"Lots of people think they are living beneath the celebrity radar screen," she says, because they are not the parents of Paris Hilton, for example. But with the increasingly active use of the Internet by recruiters, prospective employers, the boards of cooperative apartments, kidnappers, college admissions officers and all kinds of clubs and thugs, not to mention the Russian mafia, a bad online report can be devastating, even if untrue. And the victims range far afield from Hollywood celebrities and politicians. Anyone with wealth and influence can be a target.

One business executive contacted Jordan because stories all over the Internet claimed that he had committed dozens of forgeries. What was not reported was that all charges against him had been dropped and his own lawsuit was gaining traction. Still, he was unable to get his daughter accepted at the schools she wanted to attend. Years ago, notoriety simply disappeared. "Now it lives forever online," Jordan said. "If you do have something come up, you have to act very quickly."

Jordan founded Jordan LLC in 1998 in Newport Beach, Calif., to help CEOs, senior executives and other leaders with strategic communication needs, she says. "The firm specializes in issue and reputation management." She also deals with crisis communication for companies and individuals.

Five years ago, Jordan conducted a workshop on reputation management at a conference for family offices. She asked: "How many of you have faced a situation with your family where something embarrassing-maybe true or maybe not-has been spread around in the news to your detriment?" One or two hands cautiously went up, (or just flips of the wrist).

But after the session, several people pulled her aside. They wanted to know: "How do we protect ourselves? How do we establish a reputation? How do we rebuild it?" From there, Jordan says, "it just kind of rolled."

When Jordan gets a new client, she sits down with him to develop a strategy. "I really need to understand what their objective is and what the problem is and then put the pieces in place to help them achieve it." Often, if a client tells her what he wants to accomplish, she can help him do it. She says that sometimes enhancing the reputation of someone or of a foundation presents an opportunity to advance the agenda.

Jordan considers risk assessment to be the third leg of the wealth stool along with wealth management and legacy. But wealthy people are only slowly catching on to it. Even if a client reports that life is absolutely fine following some crisis, Jordan continues to monitor the reputation on a quarterly basis.

Sometimes her client has no presence on the Internet at all and wants to establish a good one. "Perhaps he could enhance his reputation by becoming a member of a certain board. Or maybe he wants to produce white papers in his areas of philanthropic interest," she says.

David Ascher, who developed RepuMinders with his partner Sabrina Merage to help clients clean up their Internet reputations, says, "If you have no online presence, that doesn't protect you." Indeed, anything that is said about you moves to position one. If it is negative, there is no positive news to offset it. "It doesn't have anything to do with what's true," Ascher said. "We help people control what the Web knows about them. We have successfully transformed profiles for dozens of folks."

Jordan says her perfect client would come to her and say something like this: "I am in this situation because I have had financial good fortune. My objective would be to make sure that the reputation I have and the legacy I leave is for putting this fortune to good use." Or perhaps: "I want to protect my family from undue scrutiny and to ensure that my reputation is always part of the risk assessment I have." More often, though, she gets clients who say: "Help! Look what's being said about me. It's not fair."

Jordan says she would love to be challenged to rehabilitate a reputation that has been damaged, such as that of Lindsay Lohan or Tiger Woods. "But with celebrities, so many people have their hands out," she says. "A ton of people work on reputation management and a ton of people do it badly." Jordan says she is lucky in that she has always been on the side of the angels. "I don't think you can make a bad person good. But it's how we communicate the truth that makes such a big difference," she says.
When Jordan got a new client who was targeted in a lawsuit, she turned to RepuMinders to help clean up his Internet reputation. Ascher, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, and Merage, who is a second-generation member of a family office, run a firm called Transom Family Services. Ascher also runs a consulting company for corporations.

The two were asked by their family office clients to develop a reputation management service. When they did a survey of clients to ask what they needed, the reputation management was at the top of the list along with "conflict-free advice." So the two developed RepuMinders. Surveys show that when Internet users search on Google, they rarely go past the first or second page of references. One of the things that RepuMinders does is move the damaging item from page 1 to page 6, Ascher says. The two have a tech team of eight who work globally, as well as a staff of writers.

Jordan offers several tips on what affluent families should consider:

Agree that the family's reputation is a valuable asset that can impact both wealth preservation and legacy. Treat it as such.

Include "reputation risk" as part of the regular risk analysis and management meeting. Find out from family members about important family events such as marriages, divorces, new business and philanthropic endeavors.

Conduct an Internet audit on key family members. Check their online profiles for listings or postings on search engines, social media sites, news media sites, blogs and so forth.

Learn about social networks and photo and video sites. Find out which sites young family members are using, what is being posted and with whom they are "chatting." Remind everyone that anything posted on these sites becomes a matter of public record.

Set up a "family crisis team," that can respond to events. You might include two or three family members, the estate planning attorney, a family office advisor and a communications professional. Carry the list and the phone numbers with you.

Consider some type of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to resolve family disputes. If you can keep the information out of the courts, you can help keep the media and the public from it. ADR ensures the confidentiality of even the most sensitive or explosive issues.

Set up a simple crisis plan and tell all family members. Decide who will be the family spokesman and have that person get media training.

With a professional, find opportunities to enhance your family's name and reputation. "A strategic approach to public recognition, both in offline media and online media can shine a beacon on important values and principles," Jordan says.

Jordan believes that helping high-net-worth families and individuals protect their reputation for future generations is part of wealth management. "While we may be hesitant to tell clients how to raise their children or live their lives, it has been and remains our duty to help them preserve their wealth and legacies. In the Internet age, this takes on a special challenge," she says.

Mary Rowland can be reached at [email protected]. She has been a business and personal finance journalist for 30 years and has written two books for financial advisors: Best Practices and In Search of the Perfect Model.