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How Accounting Leaders Build Visibility and Trust

Episode 2 • 9th July 2026 • The INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast • INSIDE Public Accounting

Rob Brown (: 00:04

Here's a question for you. You're really good at what you do. Perhaps you're even excellent. You show up, you hit your deadlines, you don't make mistakes, your clients trust you, your partner's colleagues, they rely on you. So why are more people talking about you? Why are people less qualified than you getting promoted, getting the clients, getting into the rooms that matter, getting the interesting work and the cool projects? Well, the answer's probably not your technical ability. It's more likely to be your visibility.

And for a lot of brilliant accounting professionals, the gap is costing you a lot more than you realize.

Welcome to the Inside Public Accounting Podcast. I am Rob Brown going solo today. This is a bonus episode in our series on rewriting the story of accounting. And this conversation is personal for me because it's about you. It's not just about the profession. A few years ago, I wrote this book, Build Your Reputation, and the strapline was grow your personal brand for career and business success.

You can buy it on Amazon if you want to, but I'm giving you the skinny on it right here. We're talking about personal branding, what it actually is, what it costs you not to have one, what you can practically do about it. And what if personal branding isn't for people like you? Because we're in an accounting world, aren't we? And when I talk about personal branding, you probably think of Instagram influencers and throwing yourself all over LinkedIn and I'm proud to announce and we're really great at this. And it doesn't sit well with a lot of accounting professionals.

But let's hit that myth head on. In episode one of this series, Chelsea Summers and I talked about the perception gap, which is the story that profession tells about itself in accounting rather than the reality of what accountants actually do. And that gap is costing the accounting profession lots of talent and perhaps the next generation of leaders because we can all be telling a better story. So we're drilling down here into the personal version of that problem that lives inside your own career.

Because most accounting professionals were trained on a simple belief get the qualification, get the CPA, get the chartered accountancy, do the work, master the craft, the opportunities will follow, the partnerships will follow, the money will follow. And that belief's not wrong. It's just incomplete. And the gap between what's true and what's complete is where these careers stall. Because there's lots more in play than technical proficiency. If I was given this title

To this podcast, I would say the invisible career killer, why being good at your job is no longer enough. So it it's a little bit scary, but I I want you to feel comfortable with the idea of a personal brand when we get to the end of this bonus episode. The people that advance the fastest in this profession, whatever advance looks like for you, it could be it doesn't have to be a route to the top. It could be

The flexible work that you want, the schedule that you want, the clients that you want, the routine that you want, the opportunities that you want, work on your terms, some autonomy, some flexibility. So that's what I mean by advanced. The people that can trade career capital for those kind of openings are the ones that have a strong personal brand. They're not always the most technically gifted people in the room. They're the ones who are known, they're trusted, and they're visible. They're the ones whose name comes up.

When someone asks who should we talk to about this? And this distinction I keep coming back to with reputation, it's what people say about you when you're not in the room. And personal brand is what you give them to make sure they think and say those things when you're not in the room. And accounting professionals work hard on their reputation and their technical proficiency, but they don't do it with intentionality in terms of building a personal brand that feeds that reputation. And that's

what I'm trying to get at with this episode because this invisibility is costing you. It it's not an abstract thing. It costs you decisions. It costs you promotions, partnerships, referrals, recommendations, introductions to those clients that would value exactly what you offer. It plays to life's popularity contest. We're at the behest of other people's choices, people choose you to marry, to go out with, to date, to hire

To put on certain projects, to put you in charge of certain things, to go with you and not somebody else. We're always at the mercy of other people's choices. So what makes them choose you above and beyond all of the other choices? That's something to think about because there are factors at play here. When a potential client or a new hire searches for you and finds nothing, that's a signal. This costs you before you're in the room with them. People will get hired.

Because their name comes up and yours doesn't. It's not because they're better, it's because they're more visible. So invisibility is hurting your career and visibility becomes a strategy for survival and even opportunity. And it costs you inside your own phone too. I'm not exclusively talking about external visibility here. Think about inside your own phone, depending on how big it is, but if the only people that know how good you are are the ones that work directly alongside you, then your circle of influence is small.

Your influence effectively stops at the edge of your immediate relationships and connections. So you become essential to a small circle and invisible to the wider conversation. So when I wrote this book, the pattern kept repeating itself. Professionals who manage how they're perceived build more career capital, attract better opportunities, they stay relevant for longer. Not by playing games and being out there, but

By understanding that reputation is a process or a system, you can run it deliberately or you can leave it to chance. And we don't want to leave it to chance. We don't want to be at the mercy of other people's choices if they're making the wrong choices. A lot of accountants are brilliant but anonymous. The accounting profession is full of technically super smart people that are unknown outside their immediate circle. And in a world where AI is compressing technical advantage.

Consolidation is homogenizing these firms' brands. Anonymity is a risk to you, to your firm. When people need what you do, what's going to make them think of you first, above and beyond all of their other choices? And I know you're thinking, I'm not an accountant. Personal brand is is for consultants and coaches and and influencers and trainers and podcasters and people like that, people who are comfortable talking about themselves, not for accounting professionals like me.

It's not for people whose job is to be rigorous, precise, behind the scenes, risk averse, advising, trusted. And I get that instinct, but it's wrong. Personal brands, it's got nothing to do with personality type. Some of the most powerful professional brands I've seen belonging to very quiet, introverted people who have never sought attention. But what they did was become clear, authoritative, declarative.

There was clarity about what they stood for, about what they knew at depth, about whom they served best, about the kind of work they do, the things they enjoy doing, what they think about the issues that matter to the people that matter. Their owned narratives. They put stuff out there, they shared things. It it didn't have to be about them, but it could be about their thinking. So don't get clarity mixed with introvert, extrovert. It's not. You can be both.

Yes, accountants are trained for precision, but these skills transfer. And if you are risk averse, fine. I I get there's a rejection in putting yourself out there. It's in our DNA, isn't it? The risk of building a personal brand is feeling exposed. You put out that post that nobody engages with and you take it personally. You you have a perspective that someone disagrees with. And you look at the one disagreeing comment rather than the five comments that back it. And that risk is real. I'll

Maybe come back to that. But there is a risk in playing it safe. The risk of not building a personal brand is irrelevance. It's an invisible erosion. It doesn't announce itself. It shows up when the promotion goes to somebody else, or you don't get that phone call, or you don't get considered, or you got you don't get the terms of employment or the deal, the agreement, the contract that you wanted. The clients choose a competitor you've not heard of. They hire

a a firm that they felt they already knew the leadership of and they didn't know you enough. And this is subtle. It's slow. It's quiet. It's compounding. It happens when you don't even realise it. And the profession, as we're establishing on this series, it already has a story problem, an image problem in accounting. We hit that in episode one. People responsible for that are the leaders inside the profession.

Which is all of us because we all lead, we all influence people. Even the most introverted people will influence ten thousand others in their lifetime. So the people that show up and tell a better story about themselves, about their firm, i it's not marketing. It is a kind of personal marketing, but it's not institutional marketing. Individual human voices that people trust, that's what we need these days. People do trust personal brands more than they trust corporate and company brands.

And if you're in any kind of leadership role, you especially need this. If you're a partner, managing partner, founder, board level, a firm leader, owner, or you want to be any of those things, the stakes are higher for you because your visibility shapes the culture inside the firm and the reputation of your firm outside. We've done a lot of stuff on this podcast before on the cultural shift and the way that culture

Is a reflection of you and your values. People don't follow job titles. They follow leaders they can see and hear and understand and relate to. And when your team read about your thoughts on the profession, about the firm's direction, about what you value, about what you go on with, they make better decisions. They feel less uncertain. They stay. They become part of that narrative, part of that vision. They build familiarity, friendliness, trust with you.

And let's talk about AI for the moment because it's sh reshaping the profession, particularly the junior roles.

We're in a knowledge economy and AI is pulling the rug from under that. It's undermining the whole information economy that we live in. Add to that private equity. That capital changing ownership structures, the consolidation that's smashing firms together, nobody knows quite who's in charge. Your people need more signal and strength and leadership than ever before. Even at your your manager, middle manager level.

These leaders who communicate clearly and consistently are the ones that hold culture together while everything else is going crazy around them. We know many of you listen to this podcast on the go, driving to work, working out, even doing chores. Now you can get CPE credit for that time. With Earmark, you can earn free NASBA approved CPE for listening to the Inside Public Accounting Podcast. After you listen to an episode, take a quiz and your certificate will be ready. Earmark has courses for everyone in your firm.

From staff to partners. Get started today at earmark.app or download the free app on the app store. I see your profile as instrumental to helping you and the firm. Because it's a recruiting asset. Think of the talent out there that are looking for a place to live. A client trust signal, because clients are looking for a place to live. It's a market positioning tool. People want clarity on.

Where the best firms are to go, where they should be placed in their business. Candidates are choosing between firms that feel like an a known quantity because they've got to know their leaders, or the firm feels anonymous and it's hiding behind a logo and a brand. So the clients, the talent, your peers out there, the professional business community, these relationships and reputations matter. And they want to know the people that are advising them. We know that people leave.

Companies and firms because of a bad boss, more often than not. It's a sour relationship. It's gone wrong somewhere with the people. And if you're a leader, your LinkedIn profile is often more important to the firm's external reputation than the firm's own website because it's the real human in the loop. That's the real point of view that people take advantage of, that people look at. And AI is making this urgent and not optional.

Because it's it's coming for the parts of the profession that used to be the foundation of our authority, technical mastery, speed to the right answer, breadth of knowledge across the rules. These used to create a hierarchy, a distance. It justified seniority, it positioned you as a trusted advisor. That's changing really fast. A twenty two year old with the right tools on their phone already has access to more technical accounting information than a a twenty year partner has.

From a decade ago. AI doesn't make this expertise worthless. It just makes this expertise insufficient on its own as a differentiator in the job market, in the client market. What AI cannot replicate is judgment, trust, relationship, navigating complex, multi-people, messy scenarios. That's where you have an advantage. And that credibility.

comes from being known as somebody whose perspective is worth seeking out. This is what your personal brand projects and protects. This technical layer of authority gets compressed with AI and the human layer has to be more deliberately built, more clearly communicated. The leaders like you who thrive in the next few years are not going to be the ones who work the hardest on you the most. They're going to be the ones who are trusted the most and visible the most and made sure the right people know why.

So, as I wrap this up, what are you actually going to do about this? Hopefully, I've convinced you to be more intentional, purposeful, mindful of your reputation and of your personal brand. And of not relying on your job role or title or the firm to build that for you. You've got to do it yourself. So let's get practical. I know you're busy. You don't need a content calendar. You don't need a social media profile. You just need a starting point. So

In your quiet GPT or clawed moments, insert the AI of your choice, but you can get it to coach you on this. You still have to ask people on this, but think about what you want to be known for. It's not everything that you're good at, but one, two, maybe three themes, three territories, three topics where your expertise, your experience, your genuine point of view come together. These things that really light you up.

There's things that you get excited about, that you care about, that you're particularly good at, that you find easy, that other people find difficult. And if someone in your market said, I need to speak to the person who really understands X, what is X? That's your lane. You pick it and you stay in it. Yes, you can do other things. And it might involve a certain niche, a sector, a vertical, a kind of person that you serve. But first decide what you want to be known for. What kind of things do you want to

be speaking about or asked to speak about or invited to podcast about or be writing about or thinking about. Second, start with LinkedIn. It's not ideal. It's not the perfect platform. There are a lot of things I don't like about LinkedIn. But for accounting professionals, it's the most professional, the most relevant place that your clients, your recruitment targets, your peers, your profession's key voices

This is where they mostly spend their time. Not on Instagram, not on TikTok. That's a social thing. Not on X, not on Facebook. One post a week on LinkedIn with a genuine perspective beats five tweets that say nothing. You don't need to be prolific. You don't need to post selfies of yourself. You just need to be consistent and worth reading. And if it interests you, it's going to interest some other people. So what does that look like practically?

Share what you're observing in your market. Look at the news and make a comment on it. Name a pattern that you're seeing across client conversations. Talk about your conversation of the week, your deal of the week, your win of the week, your celebration of the week, your lesson learned of the week. Take a position on something that's actually been debated in the profession. You don't have to be controversial. You don't need to have a view, but you've got opinions. And you can comment on what others are saying. So this is a third thing you can do. So

Let's just recap. First, decide what you want to be known for. Second, start with LinkedIn. Third, think about some topics. What other people are saying. Just have to be your topics, but your opinions, your insights, your viewpoints, your perspectives. This is really important. It gets underestimated. When you comment thoughtfully on a post from a senior voice in the profession and add in something they didn't say or making a counterpoint.

Connecting their point to something you've already seen. You're building a presence in a conversation that already has an audience and you're doing it as a PO, you're not doing it as a broadcaster. So you can pick stuff that people are already working on and comment on that. Another thing you can do is curate content. So you bring in cool stuff from other places. It's not necessarily your original thinking, but you are original in synthesis.

So you might bring things together, or you might look at three posts on the same thing, or a deal that's been done, and you get three different perspectives. Or you find five things that people get wrong in trying to keep independent in a private equity world. Whatever it is, I'm making this up, but you know best. And speaking to that, fourth reputation is a factor of networking. It's knowing and being known. So this involves you.

Getting out there a bit, showing up at some events, not all the events, but we want the selective presence of someone who's clearly in demand, that carries a little bit of weight, more than someone that just appears everywhere. You're gonna be selective, you're gonna be high status. You might not need to speak or be on a panel, but it's just showing up and having the right kind of conversations. And then five, I'd encourage you not to be vague and general and bland and safe, but be specific if you can, because

The people that build a strong personal brand with real authority, they share things that that they feel like it comes from somewhere, from real life observations, from patterns they've noticed, things they've learned, things that surprise them. It doesn't have to be confidential. You don't have to reveal any secrets, but it's what separates a credible voice from the noise. Look.

Personal brand counts. If you want to be anonymous, that's fine. If you want to be a well kept secret, that's fine. If you want to be in a dark room and just do your accounting stuff and work with the people that you work with, that's fine. But we're in a crazy world right now and we are fighting all kinds of forces out there to be relevant, to be informed. Don't worry about rejection. If somebody disagrees or criticizes or or if you say something what you regret, I promise you it'll be forgotten about next week.

It'll appear in someone's feed and then boom, it'll be gone. But the risk of saying something controversial is much lower than people expect because content that lands is insightful. It can be a little bit edgy, a little bit provocative, but it's it's the post that names something true that everyone else is thinking. It draws agreement, not fire. You can be edgy and vibrant and out there, but you can also echo what a lot of people are thinking.

There's good stuff there. There's stuff inside you that should be out there. You don't mind a little bit of put pushback. You're a really smart person. In a professional context, thoughtful disagreement is a signal that you've said something worth engaging with. But it's not failure. It's traction. It's engagement. And don't worry about tumbleweed. You you punch something, nobody responds. The silence feels like proof that you made a mistake. But no, it doesn't matter that people will see it.

It doesn't matter that they don't make a comment on it or they don't engage. Just keep putting it out there. Pledge to do a post a week for three months. What's that gonna do? I've spoken to leaders who who said they've hired someone because of a post that got twelve likes. I've had clients saying they chose to reach out because of something they read six months ago on LinkedIn. The ROI is almost always invisible. It's subtle. It's

It's delayed a lot of the time. The tumbleweed doesn't tell you to stop, it tells you to keep going. So the story this profession tells about itself is rewritten one person at a time, one story at a time. It's not through campaigns and brochures. It's through individual human voices like yours that show up, they say something true, they do it consistently, that people start to know who they're hearing from, they know what you're about. You don't have to become a different person.

You don't have to do it every day or build an audience of thousands. You just have to be clear on what you want to be known for and start showing up in the right places with some genuine perspective and let that compound over time. I interview a few leaders every month and we turn that interview, that fireside chat, into video clips and snippets and thought leadership pieces. It comes out of their own art and it's amazing what they do in that interview situation. Look, as I leave you.

You want to be respected in your marketplace and you want to be known by the right people. You've got to build a personal brand. It's a starting point here. Hopefully, we've stimulated you to do something. This is the Inside Public Accounting Podcast. I'm Rob Brown and Chelsea Summers and I are going be back in future episodes. But actually, I'm doing a an interview with Alex Schomero at the AI CPA in the next episode to talk about what's happening in the talent pipeline and what the students and candidates.

Are actually looking for and what these firms can do about it. And that conversation directly ties to everything we've covered today because the leaders who attract the next generation are the ones those candidates feel they already know because they've got a personal brand. Thanks for sharing the show. Thanks for watching, listening on platforms of your choice. We will see you next time on the Inside Public Accounting Podcast.

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2. How Accounting Leaders Build Visibility and Trust