Why I rebuilt my brand before rewriting my CV

Leaving a permanent role that had given me a great deal in career growth and professional development was a serious decision, but the right one. With no team, no title, just me and my laptop, the early weeks were quieter than I expected.

Sitting in that quiet, the question that surfaced was the obvious one. Who am I, and what do I want next?

My brain kicked into gear, ambition and opportunity took over, and the work of defining what came next began. What followed has been one of the most energising and clarifying periods of my career.

Before I looked for a new role, I rebuilt my brand from the ground up. And in doing so, I learned something I now bring to every firm I work with: your brand is the story other people tell about you when you’re not in the room.

Starting with honesty, not polish.

The temptation when you’re between roles is to reach straight for the CV, tighten the LinkedIn profile, and start firing off applications. I resisted that. I suspected it wouldn’t work, and I needed to get clear on something more fundamental first: what did I want to be known for next?

My background is unusual. I qualified as an accountant, moved into finance, then made a deliberate pivot into marketing because I could see the gap. Most marketing teams lacked commercial fluency, and most commercial teams didn’t understand how to build competitive advantage through brand. That combination became my edge.

When I started redefining my personal brand, I began reconnecting with my network. I’ve always said, "my network is my net-worth", and this has never been truer. I sought out old colleagues, associates, friends and mentors. I’ve always stayed in touch, but this became a proactive part of my daily routine. Over the years, I’ve also been fortunate to have some incredible mentors, so it was great to seek out feedback, guidance and have a sounding board from people I trusted.

LinkedIn became a daily place of work, and I was keen to learn. I sought out experts on how to use it well and worked with an AI coach who helped me think through workflows.

The work was about mapping the gap between how I saw myself and how others experienced me. I needed to understand what I wanted to be known for, the people I wanted to reach, and the work I could offer that others genuinely couldn’t.

The answers shaped everything that came next. I built a profile that reflects who I was and who I wanted to become. More than that, it sharpened my sense of the kind of work I want to do next and the type of organisation I want to do it with.

I wasn’t only redefining the Emma Hardiman brand. I was also defining where that brand would feel most useful. My intuition was on high alert, and the more I explored the market, the more finely tuned it became.

Getting out of the house, and into the room.

One of the most important things I did during this period sounds old-fashioned. I showed up, in person, a lot. Events, conferences, workshops, roundtables. I still go, in fact. Not to collect business cards or work the room in the transactional sense, but because I genuinely wanted to learn from people thinking hard about the future of financial services, marketing, and AI.

What I didn’t fully anticipate was how much that presence would compound. Each conversation became a chance to test how I talked about myself, and each panel became a prompt to sharpen my point of view. By the end of an event, I had a better read on where the room was, and where I was relative to it. Sometimes ahead of it.

Your brand lives in every interaction, not just the formal ones. The small things, like how you listen and the questions you ask, build up over time.

LinkedIn as a thinking space.

I approached LinkedIn differently during this period. The platform became a place to think out loud, write about what I was learning, share perspectives on the industry, and engage genuinely with other people’s ideas. Outreach was a large part of the strategy too.

The growth was slow. What I built instead was a clearer sense, from people I respected, that they knew what I stood for. I started to own the intersection I had always occupied: commercial rigour and marketing strategy, written in a way that felt authentic rather than performed for an audience or pitched to the algorithm.

Personal branding done well is about clarity. It is finding the language for what you already are, and making sure the right people can see it.

The AI learning curve.

Becoming a student again wasn’t part of the plan, but it became essential. I threw myself into learning about AI, working through what it meant for marketing strategy and for the kind of CMO support wealth management firms will need in the years ahead. It shifted how I think about content, data, and the shape of senior marketing leadership now.

I have gone from asking Claude which posts perform well to coding with AI in environments like Codex, Cursor and Antigravity, holding my work in Obsidian, and deploying small tools through Vercel and GitHub. What emerges are workflows and data portals that deliver market analysis and audience insights faster than I could have done before.

What emerged was a new dimension to my professional identity. I became someone who builds for what is coming, with the credibility of what came before. That is a different story to tell in a first conversation with a potential client.

The fractional pivot.

As my network rebuilt and conversations deepened, the gap I could fill became clear. Many wealth management and financial services firms need senior marketing leadership that is board-level and commercially accountable, but they don’t need, or can’t yet justify, a full-time CMO.

I’d lived inside those firms for two decades, at Charles Stanley, Coutts, RBS, BNY Mellon and Aviva Investors. I understood the pressures of regulated marketing and the board’s commercial expectations. I understood how to translate between the numbers and the narrative in a way that most marketers cannot.

That insight became the foundation of my fractional CMO business. A sharper expression of my experience, applied where it is most needed.

What I know now that I didn’t before.

Rebuilding a personal brand is not always a comfortable process. It takes courage to ask for honest feedback and to sit with the gap between who you are now and who you want to be next. It takes patience to keep showing up before the results are visible.

It is worth it. The doors that open are part of it, but the process itself is the bigger reward. You come out the other side knowing what you stand for and the story you want to tell.

If you are in the middle of your own personal rebrand right now, that is my honest advice. Don’t reach for the polish too soon. Do the work first. Say yes to learning, feedback, and every opportunity that comes your way.