In January 2024, I joined Alex on The Push Forward Podcast for a conversation about personal branding, my move from diplomacy into entrepreneurship and what happens when the person behind the work becomes publicly visible.
At the time, personal branding was the language I used for much of my work. Looking back, one part of the conversation stands out for a different reason: we talked about diplomats, politicians and the particular complexity of being a person who is also representing something larger than themselves.
From London and Diplomacy to Entrepreneurship
The conversation covered my background in London and my experience in diplomacy before I entered entrepreneurship and eventually founded Boss Diplomat.
That transition looked, from the outside, like a significant change of profession. But many of the questions that interested me in diplomacy followed me into the work that came afterwards: how people communicate, how they are interpreted, how context changes meaning and what happens when different audiences encounter the same person.
Public Figures Are Not Only Representing Themselves
One of the more interesting parts of the interview was our discussion about politicians and government officials.
A person operating in public office is not encountered only as an individual. Their words, behaviour, presentation and decisions may also be interpreted through the government, institution, country or office they represent. Different audiences can therefore read the same person through very different contexts.
In 2024, I was approaching that conversation through the language of personal branding. Today, I would describe the underlying territory more broadly: public identity, perception, context and the signals people use to make sense of someone operating under visibility.
Visibility Changes the Number of People Interpreting You
The interview also explored visibility. At the time, much of that discussion focused on entrepreneurs who were almost invisible inside their own businesses.
The larger principle has stayed with me. As visibility increases, so does the number of people interpreting what they see. Those people do not all arrive with the same information, expectations, cultural references or relationship to you.
That makes understanding how you are being received different from simply deciding what you want to communicate.
Before I Had Today's Language
I don't want to rewrite an old interview and pretend I was describing my work in 2024 exactly as I would describe it today. I wasn't. My work was still firmly rooted in personal branding, and much of the conversation reflects that period.
But professional evolution leaves clues.
My interest in public figures, interpretation, visibility and the tension between the individual and the role they represent was already there. The language and methodology would become more precise later.
This conversation with The Push Forward Podcast captures one of those earlier points in the journey.
