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By:

Divyaa Advaani 

2 November 2024 at 8:58:38 am

The Follow-Up You Skipped

The meeting went well. Everyone agreed on that. He was articulate, confident, well prepared. He read the room perfectly, asked the right questions, left a strong impression. People exchanged cards. There were warm handshakes and genuine smiles. The kind of first meeting that feels like the beginning of something real. And then nothing. No email. No message. No acknowledgement that the conversation had ever happened. Days passed. Then a week. The impression he had worked so carefully to create...

The Follow-Up You Skipped

The meeting went well. Everyone agreed on that. He was articulate, confident, well prepared. He read the room perfectly, asked the right questions, left a strong impression. People exchanged cards. There were warm handshakes and genuine smiles. The kind of first meeting that feels like the beginning of something real. And then nothing. No email. No message. No acknowledgement that the conversation had ever happened. Days passed. Then a week. The impression he had worked so carefully to create began to quietly unravel — not because of anything he said in the room, but because of everything he failed to do after leaving it. This is one of the most common and costliest personal brand mistakes I observe in accomplished founders. Not the dramatic failures. The invisible ones. The follow-up that never came. Most founders understand the importance of the first impression. They prepare for it, invest in it, obsess over it. The handshake, the introduction, the pitch these receive enormous attention. And then the meeting ends and the attention goes with it. What happens next the email sent within twenty-four hours, the specific reference to something discussed, the simple act of saying "it was genuinely good to meet you" is treated as optional. A nicety. Something to get to when there is time. There is never time. And that silence communicates something to everyone on the other side of it. Think about the last significant meeting you had. A potential client, a collaborator, a connection that felt genuinely promising. Did you follow up? Within twenty-four hours? With something specific enough to show that you were actually present in the conversation not just physically in the room? Or did you return to the business of your day and tell yourself you would get to it later? Because here is what the person on the other side experienced. They left the meeting with a positive impression. They may have even spoken about you to someone else — told a peer about this founder they had just met, someone worth knowing. And then the silence arrived. And with it, a quiet internal conversation that went something like this: maybe they were not as interested as they seemed. Maybe I read it wrong. Maybe they do this with everyone. The recalibration is never announced. It simply happens. And the version of you that existed in their mind before the silence is never quite the same after it. The person who seemed so impressive in the room revealed, through their absence, exactly how they operate when nobody is watching them perform. A personal brand is not built only in the moments of visible effort. It is built in the moments of invisible effort the follow-up nobody sees you send, the thank you note nobody required, the specific detail that tells the other person you were genuinely listening. These are the moments that separate the founders who are remembered from the ones who were merely impressive. The irony is that follow-up requires almost no time. A well-crafted message takes three minutes. What it communicates takes far longer to build through any other means. It signals attention, care, professionalism and genuine interest all in a single act that most people cannot be bothered to perform. And for a founder at a serious level where every relationship has compounding potential, where reputation travels faster than any introduction the cost of that silence is never just one missed connection. It is the conversations that never happened. The referrals that went elsewhere. The collaborations that went to someone who simply took three minutes to say it was a pleasure, and here is why. Your brand lives in those three minutes. Not in the meeting itself. In what you choose to do or not do after it ends. If this landed somewhere specific for you, a Founder Brand Audit is a focused consultation call where we examine exactly what your brand is communicating in every room, and in every silence after it. This is the beginning of a specific investment in yourself. Five slots open each week. Book your call here: https://www.calendly.com/divyaaadvaani/founder-brand-audit Divyaa Advaani, Personal Branding Strategist (The author is a personal branding expert. She has clients from 14+ countries. Views personal.)

BMC auctioning three land parcels to raise funds, says Aaditya

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

Aaditya

Mumbai: Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray on Thursday alleged Mumbai’s civic body had decided to auction three land parcels to raise funds and make up for the “loot” of the metropolis by the Eknath Shinde government.


The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which is being run by an administrator now, has decided to auction the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Mandi (Market), the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) Malabar Hill Receiving Station and the Worli Asphalt Plant, Thackeray pointed out.


“The sale of Mumbai is being done by the Eknath Shinde regime to benefit its favourite builders and contractors,” he alleged.


A criminal investigation will be conducted into the matter after the Maha Vikas Aghadi government comes to power, Thackeray added.


“So on one end, they looted the BMC and Mumbai and gave the money to their favourite contractors. Now, by auctioning these iconic and important land parcels, the BMC will be left without both funds and plots,” the Shiv Sena (UBT) leader and former state minister claimed.


When Shiv Sena started controlling the BMC in 1997, its finances were in deficit but by 2022 his party turned around the fiscal health of the civic body, Thackeray said.


Alleging that the Shinde government wants to drive Kolis and fisherfolk out of Mumbai, he said, “We will oppose this. It has to remain and be made into a fish market, and (should be) in the ownership of the BMC.”


Aaditya puppet for urban naxals: Shelar

Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP ) Mumbai chief Ashish Shelar has called Uddhav Thackeray’s son and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray as a puppet for urban naxals after former’s comments on the Dharavi Redevelopment project and has also challenged him for a debate.

Ashish Shelar said that the project is a necessity and a priority project, adding that Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and Congressleader Varsha Gaikwad are peddling lies.

Aaditya Thackeray seems to have become the spokesperson of urban Naxals. Without studying the subject (Dharavi) in detail, Aaditya Thackeray is speaking like an ignorant. I have seen that these people have been trying to set a narrative regarding Dharavi and the re-development work,” Ashish Shelar said.

He challenged Aaditya Thackeray and Varsha Gaikwad in a debate on the Dharavi Redevelopment Project.

“Uddhav ji and the people of his party – Aaditya Thackeray and Varsha Gaikwad have started this false narrative regarding Dharavi. I openly challenge Aaditya for a debate. I want to ask him that 70 per cent of the homes in the Dharavi Redevelopment Project will go to Marathi people, Muslims and Dalits. It is their rightful home, so why are they putting roadblocks by creating a false narrative?”

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