Dan Schawbel: Personal Branding as a Gen-Y'er

I was cruising through Entrepreneur.com, looking for an interesting article to read and write about. I came across an article about Dan Schawbel an incredible, hard working entrepreneur. Schawbel is 27 years old. Being 24, I try to find stories relatable to my demographic and/or experience; It helps me to gain insightful advice from someone similar to me about possible challenges. Schawbel being from my generation, I was very excited to read, “How a Gen-Y’er Launched a Personal Branding Firm” by Young Entrepreneur Council.

Dan Schawbel’s road to entrepreneurship started in 2007 with a blog dedicated to personal branding. That turned into a magazine titled about the subject. His work gained him a job at a business magazine as an “up-and-coming personal branding expert” and a promotion at his full time job to social media specialist (that’s right, he was holding down a full time job, while blogging, running a magazine, and contributing to another publication). All along, Schawbel gained attention within the field of personal branding. In 2009, he wrote Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future. Finally, as of this year, Schawbel turned all of his work into Millennial Branding LLC and quit his full time job.

The article also included Schawbel’s three challenges as an entrepreneur and his solutions to them. The three challenges:

Taking a side business full-time

Clarifying the product offerings

Working efficiently and effectively

While I don’t own a business, Schawbel’s story is very inspiring and helpful. Inspiring because he started as a blogger, he used a free and simple platform to build his own brand. His story is helpful, especially with challenge 2, “clarifying the product offerings”. Schawbel mentioned that his audience was confused as his products increased. As he put it “I had to find a way to create one ‘face’ to the customer". I don’t sell a product; my product is my blog. While I am becoming more consistent in producing posts, I am still in the process of developing this blog’s brand. So, reading about creating one face reminds me that all I do for the blog should fit into one consistent image. This is essential advice applicable to anything or anyone.