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By:

Divyaa Advaani 

2 November 2024 at 8:58:38 am

Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not....

Your First Impression Is Delegated

A prospective partner called your office last week. You do not know his name. You were not told he called. The phone rang four times before it was answered, he was asked to repeat himself, and he was promised a callback that arrived two days later as a message with no greeting. He formed an opinion of you in under three minutes. You were not in the room, and you will never know that opinion existed. Most founders believe their personal brand begins when they walk into a meeting. It does not. It begins at the first point of contact, and in any business of real size, that point is almost never the founder. It is the assistant who manages your calendar. The sales executive who sends the first proposal. The person who handles your WhatsApp, the receptionist, the coordinator who confirms the meeting. These people speak for you every day, in your name, using your reputation, and most of them have never been told what that reputation is supposed to feel like. Many are loyal, hardworking and capable. That is not the issue. The issue is that nobody ever showed them what a first impression of this founder should feel like. Here is what a prospective client experiences. They do not separate you from your team. They cannot. To them, the speed of a reply is how seriously you take them. The tone of the first email is the tone of your leadership. A proposal with a spelling error, a late response, a careless "will check and let you know" becomes evidence about the person at the top. If this is how the organisation presents itself while trying to win my business, they reason, this is how it will treat me once I have signed. And they never tell you. They simply go quiet. The deal that stalls after a promising first call. The partner who becomes "busy". The client who chooses a competitor and offers a reason that has nothing to do with the real one. Across a year, that is every enquiry that stalled, every proposal left unanswered, every introduction that never became a meeting. This is a personal brand problem, not a staffing one. A founder can spend years refining how they present in a room and still lose the room before they enter it, because the impression was formed by someone else, in a conversation the founder was never part of and never heard about. The founders who avoid this are not the ones with the most polished staff. They are the ones who have made their brand legible to the people around them. Their team knows how the founder speaks, what the business stands for, what warmth looks like in a reply, how a delay should be explained and how a client should feel in the first thirty seconds. The team is not following a script. They are carrying a standard, because someone took the time to define it. When did you last experience your own business the way a stranger does? Not a test call arranged with your team's knowledge. A real one. Send a first enquiry from a number nobody recognises. Notice how long it takes to be answered, what the tone is, and whether you would want to do business with whoever replied. Then ask yourself honestly whether that person sounds like you, and whether you would be proud to be represented that way. If the answer is uncomfortable, it is worth acting on now. Every week of that experience is a week someone forms a verdict about you without your knowledge. Your personal brand is not only what you say. It is everything said on your behalf. If you have a suspicion about how your business is being experienced before you ever walk in, that suspicion deserves a direct, focused brand consultation, not a casual chat. Book yours 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.)

The cultural and political manifestation of RSS vision

Writer: Abhijit Mulye
Abhijit Mulye
Apr 17
2 min read

Mumbai: The recent address by former RSS Sarkaryavah Suresh aka ‘Bhaiyaji’ Joshi in Mumbai offers more than just a philosophical reflection on the concept of ‘Rashtrabhav’; it serves as a contemporary blueprint for the ideological transformation India has undergone over the past few years.


As the nation navigates its post-centenary transition of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the lines between the organization’s foundational directives and the state’s policy framework have become increasingly blurred, signaling a shift from mere political governance to a deep-seated “rebuilding” of the national psyche. Joshi’s emphasis that India has always been a nation and that “Hindu” remains its eternal national identity provides the necessary context for the government’s recent efforts to move beyond the legalistic definitions of citizenship toward a more profound, identity-driven sense of belonging.


This ideological advancement is perhaps most visible in the state’s recalibration of power. Joshi’s distinction between Indian strength and the “aggressive and destructive” nature of other global powers is a direct mirror of India’s burgeoning “Vishwaguru” narrative. In recent years, India has sought to project a model of leadership defined by cooperation and coordination rather than hegemonistic expansion.


Fixed Framework

By invoking the original thinking of Shri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, and Swatantryaveer Savarkar, the RSS framework suggests that India’s rise is not an imitation of Western dominance but a restoration of an indigenous, virtuous power. This is reflected in the way the current administration frames its global outreach, emphasizing “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (the world is one family) while simultaneously fortifying its domestic defense and economic self-reliance through initiatives like “Aatmanirbhar Bharat”.


The practical application of Joshi’s “four ways of Dharma” also provides a lens through which to view recent social and administrative shifts. The emphasis on “Achar Dharma” (civil conduct) and “Samaj Dharma” (social conduct) has increasingly manifested in state-led campaigns that prioritize “duties” over “rights,” such as the “Kartavya Path” initiative. By framing social harmony and national conduct as spiritual and moral obligations rather than just legal compliances, the state is effectively operationalizing the RSS’s goal of instilling “Rashtrabhav” in the citizenry.


Central Pillar

Joshi’s description of the demolition of the Babri structure as an act of national restoration—rather than a religious conflict—reflects a broader effort to decolonize the Indian mind and reclaim historical dignity. This ideological directive has been consistently advanced through the legal and cultural consecration of the Ram Mandir, the renaming of colonial-era cities, and the overhaul of the Indian penal code to remove colonial vestiges. By framing these actions as the “prime duty” of every person with a sense of belonging to the nation, the ideological core of the RSS has successfully moved from the periphery of social discourse to the very center of India’s legislative and executive agenda.

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