Blog
May 16, 2019
Gabriele Horcher, communications scientist, entrepreneur, speaker, bestselling author.
Who are you as a person in your private life, and what do you do professionally?
The boundaries between my private and professional life are fluid. In short, I was born in 1968, am married, love dogs, and am a proud resident of Offenbach. Four out of five working days, I focus on my role as managing director of my communications agency. There are 18 colleagues working with me, and we specialize in business-to-business communication for IT and high-tech companies. I use the other days of the week to advance my second career as a public speaker. My current keynote speech and absolute favorite topic is called: “Overcoming and setting boundaries – artificial intelligence in sales and marketing.” I don’t want to say that I don’t have a private life, but it is very full.
What is your most important belief, or do you have a quote about success?
My most important belief is: “It depends on how you see it.” It depends on how you feel about it. I am free to decide how I assess a situation, whether I want to or have to get angry, whether I let it upset me or whether I can even draw something positive from it. This belief has helped me many times.
What was the biggest “aha” moment in your professional career, or your personal game changer?
I can tell you about two personal game changers. One event happened a long time ago. When I was 12, I saw the now classic film “Pajama for Two” starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson. This film fascinated me—and convinced me that I definitely wanted to have my own agency later on. The film had everything: fun, intrigue, drugs, sex, and in the end, the woman even finds the man of her dreams. With this emotional goal in mind—I didn’t know the hard facts about working in an agency at the time—I chose all my schoolwork, part-time jobs, my studies, and my jobs. In 2000, I founded the Möller Horcher agency with my partner Thomas Möller – and in 2002, I had my own happy ending: my wedding. The second game changer happened not so long ago – just under two years ago. I have been living my dream with my own communications agency for 18 years. I spent 20 years preparing for this dream. So it’s natural to wonder whether that’s all there is to it. Admittedly, my friends and family thought I was crazy when I told them that I wanted to take it one step further and turn my hobby as a public speaker into my future profession. But I see it this way: I still have so much time until I’m 90, and I want to use it wisely. That leaves plenty of time for a second career.
Which values are important to you and why?
Trust is very important to me. Without trust, it is impossible to have a good relationship or work well together. I am not someone who controls or constantly questions. However, I also trust that I will be informed if something is not working.
What is the most important message you want to convey to the world?
It is important to recognize that change is omnipresent. Resisting it makes little sense. Revolutionary changes are even good, because it is not the big that eat the small, but the fast that eat the slow. We would therefore be well advised to set aside time and resources to deal with change. As an original PR agency, we had to decide whether we wanted to offer SM as well. Many PR agencies that resisted this at the time no longer exist today. When it comes to AI in sales and marketing, there is even more urgency to make a decision. To illustrate this, I use the Okland story in my presentation. The true story of a baseball team in the US that didn’t have the money to afford top players. Out of necessity, they decided to sign players based on completely different criteria – selected by an algorithm. This team, which was selected using an algorithm, became the first team ever in the American League to win 20 games in a row. Unfortunately, Oakland was unable to enjoy its success for long. Soon, many other baseball teams adopted the same algorithmic approach, which evened out the advantage. In baseball, there is no turning back. There is no going back for sales and marketing either – only forward! Only those who are first in their industry, niche, or environment will achieve great success! We must respond to changing conditions with changed behavior – or better yet, take action.
How do you deal with mistakes and their consequences?
Well, based on my belief that “it depends on how you look at it,” there are no failures or mistakes. In my 18 years of self-employment—we are currently celebrating our agency’s coming of age—there are new challenges every day. I have learned to treat each challenge individually.
How do you make decisions and what helps you do so?
I make decisions very quickly based on my gut feeling. Generally, it helps me to sleep on it for a night.
Is there a project you are currently passionate about or that you are eager to advance?
Yes! Since 2018, I have been taking one extra day per week every two years to give lectures, thereby handing over more and more responsibility to my colleagues at the agency. I am passionate about ensuring that everyone can approach the topic of change in communication and artificial intelligence in sales and marketing without fear. AI is already changing the way we work, and it will also drastically change communication in the future.
How would you briefly explain the advantages of PIM?
Systems such as PIM (product information management systems), which make this raw data available quickly and easily, are much better suited to the information needs of AIs than brochures or websites, for example. The prerequisite for smooth communication between artificial intelligences is – even more so than today – the rapid availability of accurate, up-to-date, and relevant data. Data is therefore always the basis of AI. If you feed artificial intelligence only with poor data, you can only achieve poor results. True to the motto: garbage in, garbage out. Fortunately, AI also provides support here, helping with the modeling, cleaning, and onboarding of data in PIM or other systems, despite different formats, structures, or terminologies.
What important advice would you like to give our readers?
Last summer, I did something that had been unthinkable for me until then: I jumped out of an airplane. A tandem skydive was never on my list of things I definitely wanted to do. Quite the opposite, in fact. If I had planned the jump, I would have found a thousand excuses not to do it. So why did I jump anyway? I accompanied a friend on his first tandem jump to take photos of the experience. With my big camera, I was allowed to go everywhere: behind the scenes, into the training sessions, right onto the landing area. I saw the euphoric, glowing faces of the people who jumped, and I built up trust in the guides. When someone canceled and a spot opened up, I said, “If I weren’t too heavy, I’d jump too.” It quickly turned out that my weight was still within the tolerance range and the suit even fit me. Without losing face, there was no way out of it. So I jumped, and it was a lot of fun. What I’m trying to say is: From a distance, the topic of artificial intelligence may be as scary for some people as the idea of skydiving is for me. But if I don’t deal with what scares me, I’ll never be able to overcome that fear. So the most important advice for all readers is this: deal with what scares you, and the fear will lose its power.
More about Gabriele Horcher at gabriele-horcher.de.