The best success comes to those who put consistent and deliberate ef fort into their brand and career. Most of us know investing in our education and job experience is necessary and will pay off. But what about our personal brand?

What is a personal brand?

Your personal brand is more than just your reputation or what people perceive. It’s about the legacy you want to leave behind. It opens doors for you through relationships, hard work, and trust.

Why does it matter?

You already have a personal brand and will build on it as you progress through your career. The question is whether you want to control and develop it with intention or let it be what it will be? Taking the reins of your personal brand empowers you to shape your career trajectory and life choices.

What can I do to build it?

You can be consistent, diligent, and intentional through those things you control. Here are some examples:

Volunteering: Spend your spare time giving back to the community in areas that align with your values and the per sonal brand you want to build. This can help you develop new skills and expe riences and show others what you care about and what you’re capable of.

Working: Ideally, you’ll find an organization that reinforces your purpose and values, but in the early days, that may be tricky to find. Whether or not they are perfectly in sync, you can go the extra mile, volunteer, learn, and grow in areas aligned with and contributing to your personal brand. There’s always a way to build relationships and step up.

Training: Training others on what you know or writing about it can help build creditability and expertise. Seek oppor tunities to write, train, or help in areas you want to be associated with or learn more about.

You can set your personal brand and then refine it. As you change and develop, you can reinvent yourself. If you tie your brand to your values, those values will be fluid, and you’ll have the consistency that supports change.

It is critical to success to put in the work and make the hard decisions about your values, what you want to achieve, your purpose, and how you want to be known. If it feels overwhelming, start with easy passions. Lean into those, and you’ll find your way and build a personal brand that aligns before long.

As a future CPA, there are so many places to start. While personal brands are not just technical, they are an easy and natural place to start when you are young and starting out in your career. Here are a few areas in which to set goals, find mentors, step up, learn more, and get involved:

• IFRS and technical accounting
• Tax
• ESG
• Technology
• Industry expertise
• Small and medium business
• Data

About the Author

Jamie always knew she wanted it all: a husband, kids, and an important job. Her biggest lesson to date was learning you can have it all, but you can’t do it all yourself, so she’s surrounded herself with an epic team and family and friends to keep the dream alive.