Personal Branding Mistakes to Avoid in Your 20s

5 things I would have done differently for my personal brand to make life easier for my future professional self. 

To sum up my professional career during my 20s, I was working as a Marketing Manager for an iconic organisation in South Australia. I worked in another job in fashion for fun on the weekends, and I completed three formal post-high school qualifications, including an MBA. 

Even as a Marketing Manager focused on branding and in-house personal brands day in and day out, it didn’t occur to me to build my own personal brand as well. 

If I could redo my 20s, with the knowledge of what I’ve learned since, and knowing I still have so much more to learn, here are the mistakes I made and what I would have done differently in personal branding:

1. Neglecting LinkedIn

While I now post actively on LinkedIn, my life on LinkedIn didn’t start this way. I was a LinkedIn late-bloomer by a long shot. Living and breathing branding, social media and marketing all day for work, the last thing I wanted to do was spend my spare time building my personal brand. I believed the world’s largest professional platform was better saved for the industry ‘experts’. Which leads me to my next mistake.

2. Waiting to be an ‘expert’

As the saying goes, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. Don’t aim to be an expert; aim to learn out loud. Embrace opportunities to get in the room with people who have more knowledge than you do. The real experts won’t call themselves experts - you’ll just know. Be a student of these people. You are who you spend your time with. Don’t wait to be an expert before you put your personal brand out there.

3. Not starting a YouTube channel and a Podcast earlier

I would love to declare that I always wanted to have a YouTube channel and podcast, but my limiting beliefs held me back from starting it earlier. It’s a much more romanticised idea than reality.  In reality, it was not my limiting beliefs but my limiting thinking  - much more concerning, in my view -  that held me back from building my personal brand online earlier. The idea of having a podcast or a YouTube channel wasn’t even on my radar at all in my 20s. 

Even still in my early 30s, I remember taking a course and when it came to the section covering starting your own podcast, I decided this was a safe time to tune out after a long week of highly intensive learning. I remember tuning in only to think, ‘there is absolutely no way I am ever having a podcast, so I don’t need to know this’. As I write this, I’m now 80+ episodes into my podcast and YouTube channel.

YouTube is the new TV. It is the number one streaming platform in total TV viewership. Podcasting and podcast listening are also increasingly on the rise. 

While not everyone achieves mass success on YouTube and podcasting, for some, it’s a full-time job. It has given Gen Zers the freedom and flexibility that they crave instead of working a traditional 9-5. Don’t get to your 30s wishing you had started 10 years earlier. Get to your 30s with a 10-year head start. Whether you see direct commercial success from YouTube or your podcast at all or not, it still adds to your professional brand, as I discussed in my previous blog, The Power of Podcasting for Your Professional Brand.

4. Rethinking formal degrees 

I don’t believe in regrets. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and you can learn something from every experience. However, if I could redo my 20s, I’d rethink my steadfast focus on formal education. I would have shifted some of those many hours spent preparing academic papers, centred on academic standards and principles, to more modern-day investments, like YouTube and podcasting, as just one example.  

Degrees undoubtedly add to your professional value proposition on your resume when you are pursuing a traditional career, especially when you are just starting your career. But, looking back, I could have also diversified some of my professional personal brand investments, and thought outside the box with a more future-focused view. 

5. Not having a clear vision 

I recently read ‘Anna: The Biography’ by Amy Odell, which chronicles the ambitious climb of one of the world’s most culturally influential figures - American Vogue Editor-in-Chief, Anna Wintour. What struck me was how earlier on, Anna was aware of her career goals. She describes at a very young age her father telling her to complete an application, asking for her career objective, to highlight that she wanted to be Editor-in-Chief of Vogue. Whether it was actually Anna’s goal or her father’s, putting pen to paper appeared to make it predestined.

Later in her career, when she finally sat opposite the reigning Vogue Editor-in-Chief and was asked what job she wanted, she boldly replied hers. She wasn’t even working for Vogue at the time, but again wasn’t shy about proactively manifesting her most ambitious career goals.

I appreciate that not everyone in their 20s knows what they want to do as their ultimate career ambition. I certainly didn’t. But perhaps more of us should try. Use your 20s to start on the path you are destined for. It likely still won’t be a straight one, and you’ll find new goals along the way, but set the intention so that every move we make manifests more toward that direction.  Your personal brand is not just how you present yourself and your social media. It’s about making the most of your unique value. To find your professional purpose. 

If you’re reading this as a 20-something, don’t make the same personal branding mistakes I did. Start now, so you don’t have to look back in 10 years and wish you had started earlier.  As they say, youth is wasted on the young. Don’t waste the opportunities your 20s present for your professional development.