Are you building your brand or someone else's?

In my serialized fashion novel, Off the Record, we meet Jessica from House of Harlan and her alias, Sam from La Mode. In my own fashion career, I was Aliza from DKNY.

See what I did there? Not a last name in sight.

I call it Last Name Syndrome, a phrase I coined and wrote about in both Leave Your Mark and On Brand. It happens when your professional identity becomes so intertwined with a powerful company that you effectively drop your last name for theirs, and it starts to feel like your own.

You introduce yourself as where you work, and immediately inherit the brand’s credibility. People return your calls and invitations arrive.

It is intoxicating because the attention feels personal.

But how much of that power belongs to you?

Working for a powerful brand is not a mistake. It can be an extraordinary career accelerator. You gain experience, relationships, knowledge, and opportunities that might otherwise take years to develop.

The danger is assuming the company’s reputation has permanently transferred to you.

Your title belongs to the company. The contacts may have started as the company’s contacts. That invitation to speak at a conference might be arriving because of the logo in your email signature. Even the audience you have built may be more attached to what you represent than to who you are.

But what happens when you leave? Do the calls stop? The invitations may go to your replacement. People who once needed something from you suddenly become much harder to reach.

That is when you discover whether you spent those years building a reputation of your own or simply helping someone else build theirs.

Last Name Syndrome can happen in every industry. You may be a lawyer from a prestigious firm, an editor from a famous publication, an executive from a global company, or the trusted right-hand to a powerful founder. The affiliation creates instant credibility, but borrowed credibility comes with an expiration date.

Your job is to convert it into something you can take with you.

The goal is not to reject access or become cynical about powerful affiliations. It is to make sure that what you gain from them continues to belong to you.

Here’s how: