Speaking at Brighton AI - My First Attempt at Public Speaking

I had the honour of being asked to speak at Brighton AI this week, and it was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure. It was my very first attempt at public speaking, and I was heavily distracted by the trembling microphone in my hand!

The only other time I’ve stood on a stage was for stand-up comedy (a story in itself), and that time I completely blanked out and have no memory of the event at all. This time, I think I was about 50% less scared - but growing is about doing the scary thing, right?

Anyway, if you didn’t catch it - or want to know what I was supposed to say - here it is.

Hi, I’m Sophie, co-founder of Inkie.

Before we get going, a little heads up. Last year, Simon and I thought we should probably get some public speaking training in preparation for events like this. We looked into courses and workshops, and found a stand-up comedy course that was cheaper… and in a pub. So of course we signed up. We figured if you can do stand-up, you can do public speaking, right?

When Simon comes on next, you’ll understand why I gave you a warning… he’s not had much of a chance to deliver any comedy material since, and so you may well be on the receiving end of some puns and dad jokes.]

But back to Inkie.

Around two years ago, I’d been working in marketing and copywriting for small businesses for over 20 years, and my job had increasingly become copy and pasting. Repetitive tasks, sourcing images, coming up with fresh ideas for blogs and socials, and working out what came where in the month - it would take me two days just to pull it all together.

I love working with small businesses and start-ups, and so I made myself as affordable as possible, but still, many struggled to pay for it. Agencies would charge thousands a month, which meant bigger businesses had greater opportunity to reach customers - and it just wasn’t fair. But I could see how the same content could be reused.

Blogs could become social posts. Newsletters could link back to blogs. And if you set a theme at the start of the month, your followers knew what was coming.

I kept thinking that a clever formula and the right tech could do all of this for me.

After one complaining session too many, Simon just said: “The tech has caught up with you, and I can build something that automates all of this.”

He started building me a system and, at some point, we realised - what we’d built was way too good to keep to ourselves. Every small business could benefit from this.

What makes Inkie different is the onboarding.

In journalism, copywriting, and marketing, the key is always to get the good stuff into the story: the client’s passion, their purpose, why they do what they do, what makes them unique, how they felt a need for something that they then solved. Because that’s what connects with customers.

If people feel understood - if their needs and struggles are being answered - they’re far more likely to trust you and go on to be a customer. Getting that juicy info from the customer into Inkie, without me there to tease it out, was the next challenge.

And I think my years of mothering my neurodiverse teenagers put me in good stead for getting AI to ask the right questions.

Too much information, and they get overwhelmed and forget what you said first.Ask something they don’t know the answer to, and you risk them making stuff up.And don’t ever expect them to admit they got something wrong - they’ll just act like they got it right in the first place, and you’re left frustrated… with a teenager, or with AI!

We landed on four onboarding steps.

You chat to our Inkie AI, and it asks you questions about your business. If you give a superficial answer, it will push for more. But if you’ve already done the work and know your business inside and out, you can copy and paste to complete it quickly.

The four steps are:

• Branding, including your tone of voice

• Business info - your people and products

• Your ideal customer

• Your marketing preferences

• 
  

Once Inkie has that, and you connect your socials and your website, you arrive at the Content Timeline. At the start of the month you can add details like offers, sales, events, or new products. And then the magic happens. Daily social posts with royalty-free images.Weekly blogs that build your SEO.Newsletters ready to go.

You can check them, edit them, add your own images or videos - and then Inkie posts everything on your behalf, at the right time, in the right place.

The Business Builder

The other side of the business is the Business Builder - and this is why we’ve just received innovation funding.Part of my story is being a single mum and starting my first business at 20. It was a disaster. I was ripped off, people gatekept information, and I was told I couldn’t do things. I’m determined no-one else should face that.

So using the same technology as the marketing platform, the Business Builder takes you through every step of setting up in business. It explains things. It teaches you how to do things yourself. And for those starting out in the benefits trap, it gives you everything you need to show your work coach that you’re ‘gainfully employed’ - giving you a 12-month runway to build your business, instead of wasting time applying for jobs you don’t want and aren’t your passion.

And part of the funding is to make Inkie totally accessible. Instead of typing, you can just speak to Inkie. No writing needed.

My hope is that this will be rolled out in job centres, encouraging a new wave of entrepreneurs - because I really believe the world is richer when everyone follows their purpose.

Thank you for listening - and for reading. xxx