When Dr. Busch came and talked to my business class he told us about the importance of personal branding. Personal branding it is used to give you an understanding of yourself and the ability to tell others about your strengths and values. He told us to ask our selves what differentiates me from the crowd, what makes me different? When we get out into the business world we have to know who we are and what our strengths are. So in Dr. Busch’s speech he explained that we have to add value to our relationships through knowing our selves, and capitalizing on the things that we are best at. He said, “You need to cultivate a deep understanding of yourself.” In the process of finding myself I have taken a strengths finders test online that pointed out to me my top 5 skills that make me who I am and showcase my assets as a potential employee.

My top 5 strengths were:

1. Belief

2. Developer

3. Includer

4. Positivity

5. Empathy

While I search to better understand myself as a whole I plan on following Dr. Busch’s instructions and asking my friends, family, and mentors what qualities they see most in me.

            Until then I plan on looking at my life and putting into perspective where I can use my top 5 strengths to help me stand out and be unique in my own way. In Dr. Busch’s lecture he showed us a formula, it was:

 

TALENT + INVESTMENT= STRENGTH

 

Our talents are the things that come naturally to us; our predispositions, and then you add investment, which is time, and effort that we put into developing our talents. Once we do that we develop strengths that we can easily use to our advantage on a daily basis to make us better employees who are driven and know what areas they excel in. Dr. Busch shared this quote with us, “There is opportunity in the world, so if you have ambition and smarts you can rise to the top.” (Drucker, 2005) In sharing this with us, Dr. Busch was able to explain that there will always be opportunities for us to be successful, but the only way to achieve that success is to have “ambition and smarts” as the quote states above. Without it there is nothing driving us to truly be successful.

            In conclusion I can understand that Dr. Busch’s main goal in his speech was to push us as students to try and understand to complexity of ourselves. He wants us to discover our talents and find out what people count on us to do in tough situations. This is in no means an easy task but I am excited to uncover my strengths and values and to use them to help me become as successful as I possibly can become. “We are CEO’s of our own companies: ME Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be had marketer for the brand called YOU!” (Peters, 1997) The most challenging business we will ever have to start in our lives is the company called ME, and that’s exactly what I plan to do. Although this is the path to understanding myself, I’m not the best person to identify who I am. Our own personal image is sometimes not what we think it is. So I will reach out to others who care about me and I will be able to truly see who I am, what my values are, and what are my strengths. While branding myself I will focus on my strengths and be known for them everywhere I go.