Bearing in mind you’re 23 years old, right? And I know that people are ages and they’re going to be like, “Izzy, you’re 23. What the hell do you know about anything?” Whether it’s personal branding—and okay, Gen Z has a good reputation for social media knowledge—but what do you know about strategy, branding, like business, and all of that sort of stuff?
You must get that a lot. How are you navigating being in this position of authority considering you’re just 23 years old?
There’s a couple of things there that it comes down to. Now, when I stepped out on my first job, it was a corporate job in my very small hometown. I wasn’t well-networked. I didn’t have contacts because I wasn’t in a big city. I had to go out there and prove myself and prove my identity and persona to people in the world of LinkedIn.
Yes, I made mistakes initially. I think I went viral over a post talking about burnout, which makes me cringe talking about it now, but it’s all part of the journey. It all makes up who we are.
And but It was socializing. It was networking. It was getting in the room with people and being proud of my voice and being proud to stand for who I am. And that’s when If we return back to values, it’s making sure you are proud of who you are and you are strong with the values that you have because, in that way, I’ve been able to talk with people who 19-year-old Izzy, who was working that finance job, would never have imagined speaking to.
And because of that, it’s spiraled and snowballed into referrals, business opportunities, and getting into further rooms with even bigger people.
Now, I will be straight. There has been ageism, but also there hasn’t been, and that’s what I want to dig into for a second.
Now because I’ve seen a lot of ageism when I went onto the LinkedIn scene and started my business. I assumed that I would be subjected to this, that I would be a victim of ageism, and I actually wasn’t as much as I expected. It kind of led to a mindset of me inflicting it on myself and assuming that I was too young or too inexperienced to do these things. That created that incubator of imposter syndrome and a lack of confidence.
In the early days, I actually created that for myself, which is crazy to think about.
But secondly, a lot of the clients that I’ve worked with have seen my personal branding content. They’ve seen the case studies. They’ve seen the results that I’ve created with people, and they’ve looked beyond age.
I don’t put my age on my social media anyway. Around my birthday, you talk about it being your birthday, but I haven’t got my age on my bios because it’s irrelevant at this stage. Whether you’re buying from someone who’s 50 years old or 25 years old, you should be looking at their personal brand from a place of: Can they do the job? Do I like them?
That values conversation comes back to us. So would I work well with them? Is their work ethic mirrored in my own work ethic? Can they actually achieve this result for me?
I think age becomes not even a priority at that point. Maybe that’s because I’ve attracted the right audience. I’ve attracted people that don’t see that, and it’s been fortunate that I’ve not faced many people who have used age as an excuse.
However, I have seen on the platform reels and reels of conversations of “Gen Z don’t know anything,” “Gen Z are too inexperienced,” and “Why are they charging this amount of money for something that they you know haven’t even gone to university or got accredited in?” “Gen Z are bluffing with all these 10K months” and all that lame rags-to-riches and hooky clickbait content.
And It’s almost as if this whole generation, especially in the creative and social media space, has been painted with that same brush.
Now as someone who’s in personal branding and a young entrepreneur in their early 20s, I’ve been unlucky to be painted with that brush because it’s not just one but two demographics of people that are told to stay away from in the social media space.
Sure, I’ve had to stand up for myself and fight for that, but I’ve done that successfully. And It’s because it comes back to me standing for myself, standing up for myself proudly.
Yes, there are people in this space who you’ll very quickly learn are snake oil salesmen. They’re not perhaps to be trusted for the amount you’re investing in, but that doesn’t mean we should paint them all with the same brush.
But you mentioned that it is hard. You’re young, like you said. You’re young, you’re in the personal branding space, and there is a lot of bullshit around it.
I just scroll through any social media network and everyone is on six figures, seven figures, or whatever. It’s like, I’m sorry, but are you really? There’s no proof for it.
Like you said, there are people like that. How do we determine who’s telling the truth and who’s not? Because, like you said, there are these pods and they’re all in it together. And all the ones we’ve discussed this off the record, not naming names, but we know who’s in these pods. They’re people who I used to respect, people who actually are legitimate as well, have great careers, great like experience, and they don’t need to do it.
But they are so sucked in by this desperate need for fame and social validation that they’re joining these pods.
But how do we know who’s actually worthwhile? Some of these people are charging thousands dollar an hour for their consultation, claiming that they’ve done this personal branding and they’ve gone from zero to over a hundred thousand followers in such-and-such amount of time.
People are like, “Wow, this person really knows what they’re doing.” But they don’t know that they’ve bought all their followers, they’re in engagement pods, everything they do is fake, they use AI copy, and all just none of it’s real.
How do people determine what’s real and what’s not?
Two words: social proof.
I completely agree with you. I feel like, in some ways, the very active creators on LinkedIn have become numb to how odd this is—charging that amount of money for an hour of your time and expecting the same result as what this person’s achieved.
They’re not seeing that it wasn’t an hour of their skill that took them there. It was years. They went through a lot of this is me talking about the people who’ve done it authentically and organically. They’ve put the effort in.
A lot of people come to me and go, “How can I get to your position?”
How many hours do you have? Because it’s not going to be a quick success.
I had a client a few years ago who said, “I want to get to 100K followers.”
Why? What is the purpose? Is it that social validation and being seen as the big guy in the space?
There are other ways to claim that validation beyond cheating and shortcuts that are going to effectively hurt your reputation.
There are a lot of people here who, again as you said, have an amazing business, are really skilled individuals with a lot of acumen, but my perception of them has just diminished because I’ve recognized they’re in an engagement pod.
I don’t want to be associated with that individual.
It’s hard because maybe they don’t see that from the outside. They see, “Yeah, I’m really liked. I’m getting validated by thousands of people here. I went viral. Maybe the business is going up.” The business bank account, that is.
But what do people actually think of you?
It’s that social listening that we really need to be in tune with.
So how can we actually find out who’s playing the game and who’s being authentic, organic, and actually safe to work with?
Going back to the social proof thing, it’s really important we look at case studies, results, and the ROI of that activity.
If it’s marketing, we need to see the success and maybe even actually speak to one of their clients. I know a lot of people in the generations above will go and speak to a previous client or an existing client and see what the experience was like.
Yes, it might feel a bit extra to do that, but if you’re willing to spend 10 or 15 grand a year on a specific service plus, then you need to make sure you’re counting your dragons and seeing if this investment is going to be worth your while.
Because ultimately, as business owners, we do have a responsibility to make sure something follows through.
Yes, things as we both know, things can fall apart even though we did all of our due diligence and all that.
How else can we see who is playing the game?
Often, a lot of people going back to the engagement pods, a lot of the same people will be in the comment sections in the first half an hour. AI-generated comments or very short sentences supporting one another. Again, similar trends in content.
There are some people who are in pods not understanding the impact the negative impact of pods on their reputation, who are doing a good job.
There are individuals who are perhaps in a pod unknowingly and not realizing the impact it has on their reputation. They do a good job. They are providing a great service that creates results for people.
But are we just writing them off because they’re in a pod? Is that something they need to be aware of? I don’t know. Perhaps.
Yeah, I think they just don’t know. I think some people are trying to do it innocently. They’re thinking, “I just need to get traction,” and, “I’m so sick of this algorithm.”
There’s always the algorithm or whatever.
But I guess I want to know, what would you attribute your success to? Because you said you’ve grown it solidly and organically over the last three years.
Why have you done so well on LinkedIn?
Again, I’ve had that advantage of being a creative. I think my traits of empathy and creativity are far beyond what a textbook can teach you.
And I think they’re even doing university courses now on how to be an influencer.
Oh my God, I know.
But textbooks and blog articles are only going to get you so far because that’s not unique. It’s a cookie-cutter approach.
You need to obviously delve deeper and understand who you are, what advantages you have, and use them.
If you have a marketing budget to be able to spend on maybe a VA working with you or a podcast studio, I think video is going to be massive in this next year, and high-quality content.
The barrier to entry is low in personal branding, but the barrier to success is high.
Quality conversations and having you know corporate responsibility are going to be massive. In the same way we audit businesses nowadays on what they are doing to help the world, that’s going to be playing a part on people.
Also, being real, no-BS, being trusted, and having those values come to the surface.
For me, what worked was that I did have that advantage of being a creative. I also had time early on in my journey to be networking and getting into those rooms.
I think when if you see personal branding as beyond a digital personal brand and more of a holistic brand—going networking, being in those in-person communities, showing your face, showing up in places, and getting to know people on a more trusted level—they’ll come across you on your social media channels and go, “You know, I really vibed with Sabrina, and I’m going to engage with her because I like this post. It’s relevant to how I feel at the moment.”
“I like the woman that I met the other evening, and I want to support her.”
When you have that bubble of people who you get along with—not because you’re in an engagement group, but because you vibe with them—you will see that surge.
Beyond that, on the digital landscape, I think the quality content is going to be really important. It was for me.
I made mistakes, and maybe my account could be in the 100K-plus range if I was more consistent because I went traveling for six months and my engagement and my content went down.
Yeah.
It’s experimenting, and it’s doing it and returning to your why constantly because there are going to be months where you’re like, “God, I can’t.”
There are going to be times where you don’t want to be posting and far from it, and maybe your pipeline’s full, so yeah, let’s switch off personal branding and marketing for a while.
But that’s going to be so important because you know it’s an evergreen thing.
