Featured on The Connect Network TV Miami: Why We Struggle to See Ourselves Clearly

In February 2024, I joined Stichiz and Sandi Glandt on The Connect Network TV in Miami for a conversation about my journey from diplomacy into the work I was building through Boss Diplomat.

At the time, I was still describing much of that work through the language of personal branding. Looking back at the conversation now, one idea stands out because it has remained central to my work ever since: we are often too close to ourselves to see what other people can see.

What Happens When You're Too Close to Yourself?

During the interview, we talked about a problem I was seeing among founders and entrepreneurs: they often struggled to recognize what was interesting, distinctive or meaningful about themselves because they were living inside their own story.

The experiences that feel ordinary to you may be the very things another person notices. The qualities you barely think about may be the ones somebody else remembers. And when you have years of context about who you are, it can be surprisingly difficult to experience yourself the way somebody encountering you for the first time does.

That is why an outside perspective can be so revealing.

From Diplomacy to Understanding How People Are Experienced

The interview also gave me an opportunity to talk about my earlier career in diplomacy and my move from London to the United States.

At that stage, I described diplomacy as having taught me the importance of connection and respect. Those years also meant working in environments where people, institutions, cultures, language and relationships could all affect how something was interpreted.

I did not yet have the language I use for my work today. But the habit of paying attention to how people are experienced from the outside had already followed me into Boss Diplomat.

Your Own Story Rarely Feels Remarkable From the Inside

One of the strange things about knowing yourself well is that your own history becomes normal to you.

You remember the whole journey. Other people encounter fragments. They hear a particular story, notice a particular behaviour, remember a phrase or connect several details that you never thought belonged together.

That difference between what feels obvious to us and what becomes visible to somebody else would eventually become a much bigger part of my work.

An Earlier Chapter of Boss Diplomat

This interview captures Boss Diplomat at a particular point in its evolution. I was talking about personal branding, entrepreneurship and visibility, while beginning to articulate something I would become increasingly interested in: the difficulty of seeing ourselves from outside ourselves.

My work has changed considerably since this conversation. The question underneath it has stayed remarkably persistent.

What are other people seeing that you can't see because you're standing too close?