Meeting the Sports Business Mgmt Students
It was my turn in class this week with the SBM students at Algonquin. I was thrilled to see a few students whom I had taught 3 years ago in a Business Skills class when they were in the 2 year Marketing program. Andrea Hutchinson, Warren Hovius, Andy Lancefield, and Graham Pelletier were a few of my very first students at Algonquin. They were stunned to listen to the few stories that I remembered about them from our first class together. I explained that marketing is all about stories and as a marketer I love stories.
We started the class with an overview of the personal branding process will be following over the next few weeks. My first goal was to get them clearly committed and engaged in the process of branding themselves. I had the class stand up. When these students are asked to stand their ‘engagement’ with me changes completely (especially since it’s a laptop class). Their senses intensify, they are engaged on a higher level, and they don’t quite know what I am going to make them do which makes them more vulnerable. My point was that these students need to stand up when it comes to their careers. They need to make a commitment and be engaged. It’s not going to be easy out there and they need to do their homework in order to stand out in a changing market place.
We then started the process of ’self discovery’ or the research phase of our personal branding process. You would never launch a product without research to understand how you are going to position the product. When we are looking at branding a person, it’s important to ‘Dig Deep’ and ask the big questions in order to define their brand. We started by diving into personal values and personality traits; the cornerstones of many personal brands.
Next week, we will continue the process of self discovery and move into the process of crafting their positioning pitches in WhyHire.me.
