Do you have a Personal Brand?

Rosseau Lake College loosely defines a Personal Brand as how someone talks about you when you are not around. An apt social description for peer-pressured teens who may or may not see this commodified label as a marketing notion that comes from the world of public relations:

The Complete Guide to Building your Personal Brand

In the above website, a Personal Brand is described as “what separates you from everyone else in the world” and “how you want to live your professional and personal life”. While the irony of a private school with a collective uniform policy promoting stark individualism is not lost on me, what is clear about students growing up in today’s social media-soaked landscape is they must cultivate and present numerous versions of themselves both in the digital world and the real one. How they manage this pressure and develop the tools and mindsets to navigate such delicate communication is one of the latest and most important roles in education.

A common saying is one should not mix business with pleasure, but I wonder if the next generation will learn to successfully mix business with passion. This Entrepreneurial Mindset is one of the main Personal Brand Pathways that Rosseau Lake College is trying to cultivate in all of its senior students with the courses they select on their way to graduation.

Entrepreneurship + Communication & Design + Environmentalism

Taken separately, any of these pathways into post-secondary can lead to success and a potential future career. Taken together, however, and a powerful Personal Brand forms, a unique ethical vision of the world as demonstrated by current thought-leaders (Elon Musk) and business disrupters (Uber).

Rosseau Lake College has always stood for self-improvement through knowledge (scientia auget vires). While the knowledge component has certainly changed in definition over the years, what has not changed is the importance of challenging the distinct self through the acquisition of knowledge: Competence, Confidence, and Character are the resulting core values which have defined our schooling and permeate all areas of student life. We hold these standards as beacons of betterment, trusting in the notion that it truly takes all three to achieve success in school as well as in life.

DISCOVERY DAYS, continues our rich tradition of challenging the best of self through change. We feel this unique holistic program will give each graduate an advantage in the post-secondary application process as well as developing future workplace and life skills to help strongly develop each and every student’s personal brand.

4 thoughts on “Do you have a Personal Brand?

  1. I love your comment on social media and students having to generate more than one version of themselves. It seems to be a struggle across the board for them. Guiding them through this tough time and working on forming better communication is so important! If you find any ideas, please send them my way!

  2. I love that step one of personal branding is “Setting Your Values”. This is so important to the work I’m doing at my school with our student leaders; in fact, my colleague Vanessa Wade did a great exercise to have the Prefect group develop shared values – it was totally worth it as we go back to them often throughout the year. For the first time ever, we had our clubs leaders develop a mission statement for their clubs. Another reflective exercise that has proved so valuable for us.

    How might we extend this further to all of our students?

    Thanks for this,
    garth.

  3. This was a great read, thanks Eric. Sorry I missed it until now. Students in the blended Careers course I am teaching are just embarking on their ePortfolios so I am glad I (finally) caught this post!
    The Getting Smart article was particularly helpful in contextualizing the work around personal branding. The resource we use for personal branding is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alqt7pIbp_o
    One question that has emerged in my class around personal branding is “How can you have personal brand while still being authentic?”. The personal brand website you shared definitely helps me in guiding my students’ thinking on this question.

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