It can be complicated to change your name after getting married. With multiple social media accounts and years of Google search results behind you, it’s often a fraught transition for your personal brand, as I’ve written about previously for HBR. Jess Samuels, who wed in 2013 and took her husband’s name, wrote a detailed blog post about the logistics, including helpful tips like using the website Knowem, which allows you to check whether your preferred new username is available on various networks.

But if it’s challenging to change your name in the Internet era, it’s even more complicated to change your name and your gender­—a situation faced by Jess’s now-husband, Robbie Samuels, when he came out as transgender a decade earlier.

Robbie, whom I profile in my forthcoming book Stand Out, has a two-decade history of professional activism. “Some of my biggest accomplishments in my 20s are still tied to my birth name online,” he said. “I was bummed to lose this online history when I began to use a new name.” But coming out as transgender doesn’t mean you have to give up entirely on your past. Here are three strategies to help you tap into the full power of your personal brand:

Create a team of ambassadors. When Chris Edwards came out as transgender in 1995, he was a young creative executive at an ad agency. “I actually used what I learned from working in advertising to rebrand myself,” he says. Inspired by “evangelism marketing,” in which others spread the word about a product via word-of-mouth, he recruited 12 of his closest friends in various departments at the agency. “Since they would be acting as my brand ambassadors, I really took the time to explain what I was going through, educate them, and then coach them on how to tell others,” he recalls. “I asked them to keep it quiet until after I told the Executive Board. I wanted to be respectful to upper management—it was important that they hear it from me first, and not find out via the gossip mill.” He told leadership one evening at 5 PM, and “then gave my 12 evangelists the green light to start spreading the word. By 11 AM the next morning, my whole agency knew, and by that afternoon, all the other agencies in town knew.” Instead of a long and drawn-out coming out process, Edwards took care of it quickly and controlled the narrative by ensuring that his personally chosen allies spread the word.

Connect your past and present strategically. In an era where we’re constantly recorded and tracked (you can probably find clippings from your high school newspaper online), how do you connect your past identity with the one you’re moving into? As with those getting married, you’ll need to either open up new social media accounts or (where possible and desirable) change your name on existing ones. To counteract the loss of search engine results for your past professional accomplishments, it also pays to double down on your social media presence under your new name.

Some professionals—particularly those who transition later in their careers—may want to follow the example of astronomer Jessica Mink, who came out at 60. “I simply claimed all of my past accomplishments without saying anything about the change, except through a single, vaguely-worded link,” she says. Where questions may arise online, she links to this explanatory page, which begins, “I have not always had the same name and appearance. Here’s why.” She adds, “I’m also ready to answer questions from anybody who asks, which seems to help.” As Edwards notes, other people will treat your transition as less of a big deal if you frame it as a rebranding. “You’re not trying to hide your past; you’re simply evolving from it,” he says. “If there are no juicy secrets for people to uncover, then who cares?”

Embrace the advantages of your new brand. Every transition comes with benefits and drawbacks, and changing gender is no different. The disadvantages of coming out as transgender, such as the lack of legal protection against job discrimination in 32 states, are well known. But if you really want to own your brand, you have to embrace the positive elements.

Chris Edwards, who rose to one of the top positions at his advertising agency, believes that his transition actually set him up for success. He notes, “I was more comfortable in my own skin, which made me more confident, which in turn made me speak up more in meetings and be considered more of a leader.” Mink, a noted astronomer who helped discover the rings of Uranus in 1977, discovered her new ability to make a feminist mark. “This fall, I found myself as the only woman author out of eight on a paper, and it took me a while to realize that it was significant that the only woman was the lead author,” she says. And for Robbie Samuels, who was steeped in progressive activism long before coming out as transgender, his new identity—which meant he was generally perceived as a straight white male—gave him a new frontier in which to make a difference. “I try to always use my privileges…to create opportunities for everyone in the room to contribute more of their full selves,” he says, adding that he became involved in his local chapter of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism. “That’s a major element of my personal brand and may not have been fully realized if I had not had to grapple with this self-discovery as a trans man.”

When you come out as transgender, it may seem like a break with the past is necessary. In many ways, it’s even desirable: finally, a chance to reinvent your personal brand on your own terms. But you don’t have to get rid of everything. The real secret of personal branding is retaining the best parts of your past experience, while simultaneously creating the new identity you envision.