Chamber 'Digital festival' Brunch - September 2013

Speaker: Giles Palmer, founder of Brandwatch

blog by Gerry Thompson, Positive Comedy – coaching in presentation and speaking

There was a lot to get from this event; I found Giles an engaging and entertaining speaker who provided highly valuable, universal business lessons.

Brandwatch pioneered the creation of software for monitoring and analysing social media results for its clients, so that they can understand what people are saying and thinking about their company and their services. From a start in 2007, it’s a leader in its field with offices in New York, Chicago, Berlin, Stuttgart – and Brighton.

Being a stand-up comedian, I liked Giles’ humorously self-deprecatory description of the development of the business - describing the process essentially as a ‘series of stumbles’. At 24, Giles characterises himself as having been ‘the most boring and human being in England’, with ‘no skills at all’. But things have changed; he is now ‘boring and one-dimensional, but successful’.

Giles catalogued a number of his classic mistakes, which any business would do well to avoid:

• starting out not knowing what you’re going to do
• when people ask what you do, saying ‘depends’
• building products for single clients, and never re-selling them to anyone else

But ‘you have to make mistakes’. Another big lesson from Giles was the importance of keeping on believing that the business can succeed, in the face of persistent disaster. That – and giving people value for money.

Brandwatch’s work is part of a contemporary process that is a game changer for all businesses. The power of creating information about a company and its services used to be in that company’s hands; now, it’s in the hands of the consumer. This, says Giles, is something we ignore at our peril. Now, Giles is contemplating the ultimate stage of success – starting to look out for ‘an exit strategy’.

In an additional interview, Giles supplied bonus guidance for creating a successful business, presented here in graphic form. Everyone starts out, he says, with the highest of aspirations, but as time passes you’re hit by reality, there are unforeseen problems, and things inevitably get harder. This causes the aspirational quotient to gradually sink. What you must crucially do at each such point, Giles says, is to unilaterally push that youthful outlook back up; this has to come not from outside factors, but from within yourself – it’s all about state of mind.

Actually, I don’t agree that Giles is boring.

Gerry Thompson runs Positive Comedy Training, offering one to one coaching in confident presentation and public speaking.

Gerry is presently offering half-price coaching to new clients who are chamber members.

He is also running a half-day workshop in Brighton on Thursday Dec 5^th; chamber members can book for £60 instead of £70.

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