Comments on "Brand Yourself"
Last week I had the opportunity of reading the Xanedu article Brand Yourself by Ann Brown. This article was insightful in the business field as well as in just about all other professional fields.
I agree one hundred percent with the article’s idea of choosing a relatively narrow field and excelling in it. I also agree with building a reputation and a certain style in your work in order to have patrons recommend you as the man (or woman) for a particular job. This idea is supported if one looks at the examples provided by the article where those that build reputations and specialize in their fields end up being very successful. This idea is also supported if one observes professions in life in general such as the medical field where the doctors or dentists who specialize in a certain type of procedure are much more successful than those who practice general medicine or dentistry. I believe that this is one of the reasons that the MBA curriculum has many different concentrations such as business finance, entrepreneurship, marketing, and information systems so that managers will be more effective in their respective fields.
Raffi Pounardjian
Rxp70@case.edu
http://blog.case.edu/raffi.pounardjian
Comments
Posted by: Eugene Roytberg
Posted on: October 9, 2005 04:51 PM
I was reading your blog, and I would like to say that I agree with all the points that you mentioned. I especially would like to add onto one of them. You said that you agreed with the reputation part of branding your self, and I just wanted to give an example of how important that is. My example originates from the Enron scandal. The accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, which audited the books for Enron failed to bring their cheating ways to light. Once Enron was exposed for the fraudulent book keeping methods that Andrew Fastow used, Arthur Andersen’s reputation was ruined. And so were the reputations of all the major players in the firm as well. Now that their reputation is scared, they can no longer find work like they once could. You see, many times in business, someone’s reputation is all that they can bring to the table.
Although the branding yourself article took a more positive approach to building ones reputation, it must still not be over seen the negative factors that can occur from a poor reputation as well. Once again, I agree that you need to build a positive reputation in order to be recommended in one’s line of work.