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.