This week I joined a roundtable discussion with a marketing professor here at Penn State. I wanted to share my experience with the information discussed because they gave me a different perspective on myself. The main focus of the presentation was how to create a "personal brand". Similar to a company brand, a personal brand is what impression you leave on a person after being mentioned. So I want to know, what would be your personal brand?

There are a lot of factors that can play into this decision, and it is not something that can be established overnight. It is something that is built upon and progressively thought about over time in order to give yourself an idea of where you want to be. A simple example of this can be "When I leave the room, I want people to discuss the positive perspective I brought to the table and how I work hard to contribute to the task at hand." If you have this goal in mind, then focus your mindset on portraying these traits in everyday encounters with others.

In any marketing class, a very common topic is the SWOT analysis, which is the evaluation of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in a company. The speaker built on this commonly used technique and applied it to herself, weighing each section differently. She posed the question, "Well, why don't we evaluate ourselves the same way?" By looking at these different aspects of our being we can determine what areas of our lives need improvement in order to become the person we've longed to be. The person we want others to see as well.

This doesn't mean to portray yourself as someone that you are not—it's always important to stay true to who you are—but it's to help you separate yourself from others and grow as a person. The people around you will remember these traits, so make it something you want to be remembered by.