Welcome to Issue 76 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about storytelling, brand building and how to navigate the need to be online. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.) (Miss past issues? Read those here.)
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Hello Reader,

My parents are in purgatory.

Actually, they’re in Alabama, where they’ve been for nearly 30 years. But they might not be there for much longer. Or maybe they will.

My stepdad wants to sell their lived-in, spacious home to downsize and move closer to my brother, a doctor, and his wife, a nurse, who could take care of him in his final years.

My mom, who turns 80 next year, doesn’t really know what she wants. But moving closer to my brother in Virginia doesn’t feel like the right answer.

California, where I live with my two kids—their only grandkids, I might add—has never even been in the running, despite how hard I’ve tried.

It’s too expensive and too liberal, according to my stepdad. And my mom, to an extent, agrees. But she’d be willing to make it work to be near me and her granddaughters. He is the one I have to convince.

But anytime I try to make the case that all kinds of people across income brackets make it work—that there are nice homes in affordable towns with plenty of curmudgeonly conservatives like himself—it’s a nonstarter. The idea gets shut down before I can make a real argument or present any proof.

So on a recent trip back home, I tried a different approach.

I told my stepdad I was considering another investment property. Something small that I could fix up, rent out and let appreciate.

Then I shared a USA Today article I came across listing this little-known town in wine country that was named one of the best, most affordable places to retire.

I mentioned that if money is the biggest barrier to being close, maybe I could help, and it would benefit both of us.

He just looked at me, finished his glass of wine, said California wasn’t in the cards and went to bed. I followed shortly after, wondering if my trick had worked.

The next day, over coffee, my stepdad said he wanted to talk.

“I just had an idea,” he said. “What if you helped us buy a place and we rented it from you? It would be an investment for you and make California a possibility for us.”

“Brilliant,” I responded. “Where did you come up with that idea?”

“I just have good ideas sometimes,” he said with a chuckle.

He does. We all do. And most of the time, we’re borrowing them from someone else.

A Good Trick

If you’ve ever been in any kind of relationship with a narcissist, you know that no idea is a good idea unless it comes from them first.

If you want to keep the peace with these prickly personalities and also be heard, you have to inception the idea, allow them to believe they thought of it first, and always swallow your pride.

Now, my stepdad isn’t a narcissist. He’s just stubborn man from a different generation who’s firmly set in his ways. But somehow I’ve found myself under employment, in partnership or in friendship with one too many people who need every idea to be theirs. And I’ve had to learn how to navigate them without losing my mind.

My greatest discovery is that most of them just suffer from a serious case of cryptomnesia.

What is cryptomnesia? So glad you asked.

Cryptomnesia is a memory bias that occurs when a forgotten memory returns to your consciousness and is mistakenly believed to be a brand-new, original thought. In other words, it’s that thing when you hear something that changes the way you think or behave and you believe you came up with it.

I believe narcissists do this most of the time. But we all do it some of the time.

Of course, the idea that “our” ideas are not ours at all—that they’re a combination of all the existing ideas we’ve absorbed throughout our lives—isn’t in any way a new concept. It’s something many writers, thinkers, artists and creatives have articulated throughout time.

The formation of new ideas cobbled together from other ideas is mostly an unconscious process that has the distinct downside of allowing us to forget the original source. While the main point, message or idea sticks, where it came from does not.

Unless (and here’s where I’m trying to inception you into doing what I want) the source is embedded within the idea.

If your personal experience is the story used to deliver a life-changing message, you are much more likely to be credited and remembered as the source of it.

Because most people don’t remember who said it. But they do remember who it happened to.

A Good Problem

In the Marginalian’s exploration of unconscious plagiarism, Maria Parapova points out that the growth of the web, particularly the social web, has led to a much faster flow of ideas between originator and recipient. And shortly after a seemingly novel idea is aired, it’s quickly absorbed into the collective consciousness.

“Under these conditions, cryptomnesia invariably becomes our collective creative pathology,” she writes.

I’m not here to argue whether or not that’s a good, bad or neutral thing to happen for creativity, original thinking or good ideas.

I’m just here to argue that it raises the stakes for anyone who wants to be known for their ideas.

And it’s one of the biggest reason why using your original experiences—the only things no one can replicate exactly—to spread your idea worth spreading and become associated with the thing you’re trying to teach, influence or inspire, is non-negotiable for becoming known, trusted and remembered.

If you want the best chance of owning space in someone’s mind, you have to embed your story in the why of your work. You have to help people understand what you do and how you help by illustrating how you got there.

Because while your idea might not be entirely original, your experience is harder to borrow.

A Good Takeaway

It’s gotten easier not to take any credit for my ideas with my stepdad or the narcissists I'm forced to keep close because the tradeoff is well worth it for me.

But that’s not the tradeoff most of us want to make with our work.

If you’re a founder, consultant, coach or writer, you need the idea to land and you also need people to remember where it came from.

And the faster ideas move, the harder that gets. An insight you post on Monday is someone else’s hot take by Friday, and a few weeks later it’s an AI-generated answer with every traceable fingerprint sanded off.

Your insight is never going to be completely protectable or novel. Someone, somewhere has probably arrived at the same conclusion.

But again, the way you got there is entirely yours. And with your story woven in, the insight has a better chance of sticking itself to you.

If you think about it, an idea without a source is in its own kind of purgatory. It’s everywhere and it belongs to no one. Your story is how it finds its way home.

My poor parents are still in purgatory. But your ideas don’t have to be.

A Few Good Resources

1. ​LinkedIn released a report on how the algorithm works in 2026. No surprises here for me, just wanted to point out that personal stories get higher engagement and reach.
2. Want to talk about this stuff in person? The waitlist for my 2027 New Narratives Retreat in California is officially open. Get the details, get on the list, and be the first to secure a spot.
3. Are you a journalist or former journalists? This one's for you.

Hope you have a good one,
Renee