Featured in Valiant CEO: From Diplomacy to Public Identity
In December 2023, I was featured in Valiant CEO Magazine in an interview about the story behind Boss Diplomat, my transition from diplomacy and the work I was doing with business owners at the time.
Reading it back now is interesting because I was still describing much of my work through the language of personal branding. But underneath that language were questions I would eventually become far more interested in: What do people see when they encounter you? What do they associate with you? And does the person they experience match the person you believe you are showing them?
From Diplomacy to Boss Diplomat
The interview explored how Boss Diplomat grew from my earlier work in diplomacy and my experience through Grassroot Diplomat, where my world involved international affairs, public figures and helping people communicate across very different audiences and environments.
When I later moved into entrepreneurship, I initially translated much of that experience into personal branding. I was interested in the person behind the business: their story, their presence, what made them recognizable and how other people understood them.
At the time, I didn't yet describe that as public identity.
The Question Hiding Inside the Branding Work
One idea from the Valiant CEO conversation stands out particularly clearly in hindsight: what people see online should match the person they encounter in real life.
In 2023, I was discussing that as a personal-branding problem. Today, I can see the larger question underneath it.
There can be a gap between what we think we are communicating and what somebody else actually receives.
That gap isn't limited to websites or social media. People form impressions from our language, behaviour, stories, decisions, presence and repeated patterns. They build a picture from the evidence available to them, whether or not it matches the picture we carry of ourselves.
Some Professional Interests Follow You
My work has changed considerably since this interview was published. The services changed. The language changed. The Fairy BOSSmother Show evolved. Eventually, the Human Brand X-Ray gave me a much more precise way to apply the observational work that had been developing underneath it all.
But I don't want to rewrite the archive and pretend I had today's framework in 2023. I didn't.
What I did have was a persistent interest in perception: how someone is seen, what makes them recognizable, what others notice and what happens when the external picture doesn't quite match the internal one.
The Valiant CEO interview is a useful snapshot of that thinking while it was still taking shape.
Looking Back
There is something useful about leaving evidence of professional evolution intact. Careers rarely arrive fully formed. Sometimes the terminology comes years after the instinct.
In this interview, I was calling it personal branding.
Looking back, I can see I was already asking questions about public identity.
READ THE VALIANT CEO INTERVIEW → https://valiantceo.com/talyn-rahman-figueroa-boss-diplomat/
