7 Regrets After 14 Years On LinkedIn
I’ve made some horrific mistakes over the last 14 years, these ones haunt me.
I’ve been using LinkedIn properly for 14 years.
And I’ve made some horrific mistakes.
When I look back, I can see exactly where they cost me. Where I’d be now if I’d done things differently. Where I could have been if I’d just stopped dithering and committed.
These are the seven regrets I have about how I’ve used LinkedIn:
Not picking an audience
Emotional posting
Adding irrelevant people to grow numbers
Posting for engagement, not conversion
Not having enough conversations
Playing it safe
Not owning my lane
If you’re making any of them, stop. I made them so you don’t have to.
1. Not Picking An Audience
This one plagued me for at least 10 years.
I avoided picking an audience because I was afraid. If I went all in on one group and it didn’t work, I’d lose out. So I thought if I appealed to more people, I’d do better.
It cost me massively.
Instead of saying “this is what I do and this is who I do it for”, I tried to keep all the doors open. And keeping too many doors open left me distracted. It messed up my message. It messed up my focus. I’d end up doing things that added nothing to the business because I was hedging.
I preach this from the rooftops now because for 10 years I didn’t do it. I would have been way further ahead if I’d just picked an audience and made everything about them.
My fear of cutting people off actually cost me more than cutting them off ever would have.
Every time a client comes to me now, I tell them: do not make this mistake. Pick an audience. It really matters.
2. Emotional Posting
This is still a problem to this day.
I would only post what I felt. If I wasn’t feeling it, I wouldn’t post. I’ve written a week’s worth of content and then on the day, just binned it because I wasn’t in the mood.
It sounds like creative integrity. It’s actually destructive.
Think about it. We’re all media companies now. We’ve all got a schedule to fill. Imagine if a newspaper said “we’re not feeling it today, so the front page will be blank.” That’s what I was doing.
I’ve also learned that some of my best posts have been things I didn’t invest much in. The ones I over-engineer because I care too much about them? They bomb.
What I do now is have a schedule that goes out like clockwork.
That’s my TV show, my newspaper.
But I also leave space to share what I think when I feel like it. The schedule handles consistency. The spontaneous stuff handles creative expression. That balance took me years to figure out.
3. Adding Irrelevant People To Grow Numbers
I can’t believe I’m telling you this.
Years ago, LinkedIn had a feature where you could upload a spreadsheet of email addresses and send thousands of connection requests at once. We used to have competitions in the office about who could grow their network the fastest.
I’d get 4,000 connections in three or four days. And the amount of irrelevant people I added to my network is embarrassing.
I’m still paying for it now.
There are probably 10,000 people in my network who are completely irrelevant. Systems engineers. People who couldn’t possibly need my help. Nowhere near my ideal client. But I added them because the number looked good.
I’m convinced this has depressed my engagement and visibility. Irrelevant people see my content, skip it because it means nothing to them, and the algorithm takes that as a negative signal.
Seven or eight years later, I’m still cleaning up the mess. That’s how bad it is.
If you’re accepting anyone just to grow your numbers, stop. You’re hurting yourself.
4. Posting For Engagement, Not Conversion
I know the exact formula you can use to blow up your posts every single day. For a long time, I did it.
I did outbound engagement, commenting on people’s posts so they’d come comment on mine. It works, but as soon as you stop, they leave you in the dirt. It’s just a merry-go-round.
I also discovered that highly emotional content gets loads of engagement. I used to love doing it because the high felt so good. My best post got 24 million impressions, 220,000 likes, and about 14,000 comments. It still holds a special place in my heart.
It got me no business.
Didn’t build my brand. Didn’t do anything useful.
Content can become an addiction. Comments feel like approval. It’s nice when people appreciate your work. But the stuff that performs best often doesn’t lead to any business outcome.
A friend of mine does this every day. Insane engagement. He openly tells me he gets zero leads from it.
I did this for years thinking “if I do enough of it, it will flip over into clients.” It doesn’t. If I’d done what I do now 10 years ago, I’d be unstoppable.
5. Not Having Enough Conversations
I neglected this for too long.
I don’t mean pitching. I mean actually talking to people. Deepening connections. Building relationships with the people who can refer you, advocate for you, support you, do business with you.
I put more effort into content than conversations. That was backwards.
Content doesn’t naturally lead to clients. Conversations do.
Now I start five conversations a day on LinkedIn. Every single day. Some go somewhere, some go nowhere. But I always get referrals and opportunities from them. Curtis on my team does the same. JC does the same. Josh does the same. It’s just what we do.
Starting a conversation is not selling. It’s starting a conversation and seeing where it goes. I used to think “I only want to talk to people who want to buy.”
That doesn’t work.
Nobody’s thinking about buying right now. But more conversations create more opportunity.
If I’d set a goal 10 years ago to start five conversations a day, I’d have more money in my pocket now. Business is about relationships, not just content and marketing. I neglected that, and I wish I hadn’t.
6. Playing It Safe
Worrying about what people think. Worrying about looking professional. Worrying about people who don’t even matter having opinions about me.
This dominated me for too long.
I played it so safe with what I said and shared because I didn’t want to rock the boat. Imagine a newspaper saying “we’re going to play it safe with the headlines.” Nobody wants to read that. Nobody cares about that.
I didn’t tell people “if you do that, it’s going to fail.” I’d say “it might not be the best thing.” Why didn’t I just say what I meant?
Maybe it was because I was younger.
Maybe it was the corporate world where you don’t draw attention to yourself.
But I didn’t want to be disliked. And that made people feel nothing about me. Not dislike. Not like. Just indifferent.
That’s the worst thing. People feeling nothing.
When you share your opinions, people who agree are drawn to you. That’s how you build a crowd.
I was so afraid of being disliked that it cost me being liked.
Mashed potato is mashed potato. It’s a side dish. Jalapenos, people either love them or hate them. I was mashed potato for too long.
7. Not Owning My Lane
When I started on LinkedIn, I wasn’t selling LinkedIn help. I was a marketing generalist. Websites, branding, social media content, brochures, print design. All of it.
But people kept asking me about LinkedIn because that was the channel I liked most. We morphed into it gradually.
And I fought it. For years.
I didn’t want to be “the LinkedIn guy” because I’m more than that. I can help with email copy, positioning, messaging. Being labelled as the LinkedIn person felt demeaning. It grated on me.
So I actively fought owning that lane because I felt I was capable of more. I didn’t want to close the door to other things.
That was a mistake.
Look at Liam Neeson. He made his name properly with the Taken films. Since then he’s done variations of the same thing. He’s typecast. And he’s made a fortune from it. He went from supporting actor to major Hollywood star by owning that lane.
Tom Cruise did the same with Mission Impossible. He owns that lane. And because he owns it, he gets to choose what else he does.
I spread myself thin protecting against what might go wrong instead of going all in on what could go right.
I was trying to build a broad base all at once. It doesn’t work. If I’d nailed the LinkedIn thing, owned the social selling thing, I could have built out from there.
The Pattern
All seven of these come from the same place. Protecting against what might go wrong instead of committing to what could go right.
Fear of losing out. Fear of closing doors. Fear of being disliked. Fear of being labelled.
I was so busy hedging that I never fully committed to anything. And that’s probably the biggest regret of all.
I see the same patterns in my clients. When I do, I tell them what I’m telling you now.
I feel many of these same sentiments so happy to read I’m not the only one!