306 - Crafting Success: The Role of Storytelling and Listening in Business Growth with The Idea Farm's Emma Jackson

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Emma Jackson, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the creative director of a company called The Idea Farm. —now based in Houston, but it's been in other places, and you're— it's an international organization. You guys are marketing consultants. I looked a little bit— yeah, I looked at your background. Tell us a little bit about your backstory. It's pretty interesting. You've been all over the place.

Sure. So the Idea Farm was originally founded by my late father over 50 years ago. Actually, he was 22 when he founded the business with some friends way back in the day as a traditional advertising and marketing agency. Grew and shrank and went international and adapted to, to his life. And when he passed away in 2019, I actually moved back from New York City where I was living at the time to Kentucky to take over the family business. And that was a pretty big shift because I was working in nonprofit in the international relations and NGO space. However, it wasn't as big of a shift as I thought because everything that I had been doing previously while in policy or nonprofit organizations was centered around storytelling. And at its very core, my father and I were both storytellers. Wow. And so since then, we have taken the Idea Farm. I now have a business partner who's an incredible CEO, and he's been able to focus on the operations and I've focused on the creative. And we've been able to take the Idea Farm into the modern era and to really turn it into a marketing consultancy. To help specifically service-based businesses find and attract their ideal clients through storytelling to build their trust and show their expertise. I love that.

And you're based in Houston now, is that correct? And you've got, but it sounds like you're a hybrid company. You've got people that are working virtually all over the world. Would I be safe in assuming that?

Yes, you will. We've had, we were remote way before remote was cool. So we had, it started out with my parents hiring a team and then they didn't want to lose good people and turns out our work, a lot of that can be done from all over. One of our graphic designers that we've worked with for years, her husband's an amazing— she's from South Carolina, but her husband got an opportunity in Dubai and it's okay, we can do this, take the kids, go. And so we have this team of amazing people and a small headquarters in Houston, but we are all over the US and we have a couple of global employees as well.

What is it that moved you from Kentucky to Houston?

Lifestyle change and ready for the big leagues. So I adore Kentucky and it's, we have a lot of clients and I would say the, this area. So Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, that sort of thing. Part of it was, to be so honest, incredibly superficial. I'm not a winter person. It doesn't suit me well. And, uh, my business partner was in the same boat and we actually both wanted to, we, while we have a remote-based business, you probably know that you grow a business best when you are in person. When you can build an on-the-ground team. And we wanted to be in a thriving city that was really exciting and growing. And we did some research and we were looking into Florida and Texas and a few different other states that are business friendly, that has seen— that have seen a lot of growth in the past several years. And Houston really surprised us. I mean, we had never spent time there. We didn't have any sort of connection, but we did the research and the numbers told us that something really exciting was happening there. And it felt like a grassroots-up approach, whereas a lot of other cities that see booms are coming from top down from massive corporations. This felt like a lot of people working really hard and building businesses from the ground up, and that's exactly what it is. So we took a chance and moved our headquarters to Houston and have seen tremendous growth in just the past year.

Wow, good for you. So what is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to go to work?

I'm super passionate about bringing our clients' visions to life. It is everything. It started when I was a child. When I was a kid, I had probably too much access to the internet at a young age, and I was building websites and designing stuff in elementary school. And it is so cool to work with such talented team members, to have a client come in and to say, this is what we're trying to achieve, or this is what we've been struggling with. And we can, I get to take a creative vision and turn it into revenue growth for our clients. And that is really cool because it's not just design. That's where we hit that sweet spot is we're telling stories that are going to drive revenue, that are going to actually benefit your bottom line, which is a lot of power.

So I saw that you represent a lot of the small businesses and professionals like dentists and doctors and healthcare and other companies like that. How do you help them craft a story that differentiates them from every other dentist or physician out there, or accountant, or whoever?

Absolutely. Yeah. So we work with highly skilled professionals, and they could, like you said, they could be a dentist, they could be, have a roofing company. Our key, our sweet spot is independently owned businesses. So you're not, so many, you would be surprised at how many dentists, how many doctors or companies have been bought out by private equity. Oh yes. Have been bought out by massive corporations. And here's what happens. They degrade the quality of the service that you're getting. It's all about profit. And the people that we work with, they work so hard and they are so passionate about what they do in providing the highest quality care. And usually you can tell this because they're so focused on what they do that they haven't ever thought about marketing. And your— so for us, it's being able to uplift their voices and show that they are— we are selective about the clientele we work with. You really have to be top tier. You have to know your stuff, be doing something different, because then we know we can be authentic. That's at the core of everything we do, and we let their customers tell the stories for them. So I think that's where the biggest power is. How do we uplift their expertise, build trust, show that? And a lot of times it's telling the stories directly from the customers about their experiences.

So you'll go out and talk to customers and get customer stories. 100%. And build that, build those into testimonials and the stories that people can track on the website.

And we have an entire social proof strategy that we've developed that has provided significant returns. I think on average this year we average about 22 to 24% revenue growth for our clients across industries using this strategy.

Wow, wow, amazing. And are you niching in any particular areas? Or are you just people who are just at the top of their game regardless of what they do?

People who are at the top of their game, independent, service-based, and then usually location-based businesses. So you can have multiple locations, but that's our sweet spot. So that falls into healthcare, law, professional services, like plumbing, electrical, all that kind of thing falls into that niche. No peacemakers.

I can say that because I think I'm the only one in the world that does what I do.

No, that's pretty unique. We haven't come across— we haven't come across that yet.

I wouldn't think so. As far as I know, I'm the only one that teaches what I teach. Um, so what do you think it's unique about you, Emma, that you bring to the table that has made all of this work so well for both you and your partner and the— your team and also your clients?

I think I'm gonna have to fall back on what others have shared with me. Because that's a hard question for you to answer no matter how self-aware a person is. I would say what makes me unique is the energy, the positivity, and the drive combination, right? At the Idea Farm, we go deep and we have a high commitment to excellence. We are a premium option for your business. We are a partner. So we're not a vendor. We are here to work with you long-term. To achieve a specific goal. Usually it's revenue-driven or increasing the quality of your clientele to, to better your life, your lifestyle, whatever that may look like. So there are always going to be cheaper services available. Everything that we do needs to be top quality, and I will accept nothing less. So the— our team knows it is— there's this positivity, this energy, this passion behind everything that I do because we want to make sure that we are delivering the best bar none if you work with us.

So when a client approaches you, how do you, what's the process that you take them through?

So we have a pretty comprehensive discovery process. We want to understand your vision for your company, your goals. We want to understand if you know your current numbers and it's okay if you don't, but we just need to know where you're at in that process. Because for us, knowing your numbers is the first key to understanding if you— okay, everyone wants to grow their business, but if you don't know what you're doing now, you don't know the average customer value, you don't know how many customers you're seeing. So we assess, we lay the groundwork, and then when we get the client's vision, we're also getting more detailed. Why does that matter to you? How— if we achieve this goal, how is that going to impact your life? Do you have the current team you need? We become We put on this whole visualization because we want to know what pieces are missing. We want to know what groundwork needs to be laid so that we can make sure that it's a successful plan that we're building.

And, and when you talk about a plan, you're talking about a marketing plan, which could include— which can include a lot of different things. It could be social media, organic. It could be building out a website. And we work in conjunction.

We don't just Because I think that's where the consultancy comes in. We don't just hyperfocus on marketing because if we're just totally isolated and a lot of companies do this, they say, that's not our job. It stops there. Then you're missing the business owner and the executive team isn't getting what they need. We're going to say, these are the pieces that we've observed that we see, and you may not want to hear it, but it may, may be crucial to success. Like we're driving a lot of people to your site. They're not converting. Let's find out why. Maybe it's the wait times when they call. If they're waiting too long and people are dropping off, they're not even getting to a human being. Maybe you don't have a, a staff that's as trained to meet them. Maybe it's actually a price discrepancy. Your competitors are offering— we dive in farther than just marketing because otherwise, even if it's the best marketing campaign in the world, if people are dropping out of the funnel, you're not going to continue working with a company. It just, it's— It's not sustainable. Right. So that's what we do with that in-depth partnership. Wow. Interesting.

Let's talk about listening for a second. Obviously, listening is important. Tell me how you became a good listener.

I don't know that I'm there yet. I think I am working on it. So I have always been incredibly talkative and some might see a little bit on the ADHD kind of spectrum. And when I get excited, I can't help myself. I came from a family of interrupters, chronic interrupters, right? So coming into a leadership position over the past 5 years, that is something that I consistently work at every day. Usually it involves taking a breath, counting seconds before I reply, well, sitting on my hands if I, because I sometimes just wanna, and it, it never comes from a bad place. It always comes from an excited place. But I would say I'm still working on it.

So you get really excited and you, and all of a sudden ideas are popping in your head and you can, you're like a little 2-year-old can barely sit still, right? You say, oh man, I got to think about this, and oh, what about that? No, what about that? Yes. And why is it that you are learning to discipline yourself? I think that would be the right word. Discipline yourself in the way that you are listening, as opposed to just exploding with all this stuff that's going on inside yourself.

Well, I have noticed that You could have the best ideas in the world, but if you don't let people know they feel heard, there you go, they are not going to be receptive to what you've shared, and you're not going to be able to build a strong relationship. So that's the key.

You touched on something that is not well known but incredibly powerful once you learn it, and that is that everybody has a deep need to be heard and validated. And that is an experience very few people get. Think about your life. How many times has somebody really deeply heard you and validated you personally?

When it happens, you remember it.

You— that's right. And so not very often, huh? Yeah. And it's true in both personal relationships as well as in professional relationships. And that is the secret to listening. It's what I call Type 2 listening, when your agenda is not on asking questions to get information for yourself or for your team so that you can deliver a service. It's— your agenda is to make sure that the speaker feels heard and validated from the speaker's frame of reference.

And that is when it doesn't come naturally. I will say that's taken quite a bit of work. When I first started working with my business partner, who's our CEO, He has, he, we walked through this together. We did a bunch of scenarios because I am a problem solver at heart and I'm brimming with ideas. He said, yeah, he said, you can get to that. But in the first meeting, when you're first meeting with someone, listen, I want you to just take all the information in. It is, it was so hard for me to learn, but has become the most powerful tool because we're not making assumptions. We are actually understanding. Understanding the core of what you are looking for, what matters to you.

Critical. And this is a problem a lot of people have. Don't feel bad that it's not something that comes easy. It is actually very easy to do, but the skill is counterintuitive and counternormative. And so it's not— as far as I know, I'm the only one that teaches this skill.

Um, but what made you get into listening and like this, yeah.

Yeah, so I was a trial lawyer for 22 years. I went back to school mid-career in the late '90s and earned my master's degree in peacemaking and conflict studies and became, I decided to leave the practice of law to become a peacemaker and mediator. And I was getting paid big dollars to help these massive organizations or wealthy people, wealthy families deal with internal conflict where people would rather shoot each other with AK-47s than sit at the table and talk to each other. I had no clue how to get people calmed down until 2005 when I had an epiphany and I discovered that you listen to the feelings and the emotions, not the words. And then in 2007, a brain scanning study came out of UCLA, out of Matthew Lieberman's lab, that showed why it is that listening to emotions— the technique is called affect labeling— why doing that actually changes the brain and how we process information. And so I started using it and saw miraculous results. That led to the Prison to Peace Project, which I co-founded in 2010 with my colleague Laurel Kaufer. And we're still going. I'm not as active as I was, but for 10 years, from 2010 until the pandemic, I was working in maximum security prisons, training life inmates how to stop prison violence by listening others into existence. By validating feelings. And every prison we went into— now we're all over the world— every prison we went into, within a year, completely quiet. It's amazing. And that led to my fourth book, De-Escalate: How to Calm an Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less, which became a bestseller, and now it's in 5 languages.

And that's how it all happened. I think that's so valuable for any business owner, anyone in business, when you're dealing with not only is it just incredibly stressful to run a business and manage a team for yourself, but also you're dealing with clients and customers and people. And no matter what, no matter how good you are, how kind you are, how great your systems are, everyone is going to encounter someone who gets angry, someone who gets upset, who cannot control themselves, or they're frustrated, right? Or they're frustrated, and their frustrations could be entirely valid. Man, is it— or not— man, is it hard to deal with.

And it is, it is, you know, so simple once you learn it. It's like a life-transforming skill. And so to your point, one of the reasons why people jump to problem solving— you got all these ideas popping up, but underneath that is anxiety.

Oh yeah, I want everyone— I have learned that. I'm like, I just want everyone to be chill. We're good, we're gonna get this solved. So it's actually selfish. That's exactly right. Yes.

And so when we engage in early problem solving, we're actually emotionally invalidating the person that we're listening to because we're trying to soothe our own anxiety. If you just do what I tell you to do, you won't feel frustrated anymore, and that'll make me feel better.

Instead of being like, it's okay for you to feel frustrated.

You are frustrated. Oh, Emma, you are really pissed off. You're frustrated, you're angry, you feel completely disrespected, you don't feel heard. You feel unappreciated and unsupported, and you're worried and concerned and a little scared, and this whole thing really offends you, and you're sad and upset and miserable and depressed. And at the bottom, you feel completely abandoned and rejected and betrayed and all alone and unloved and unlovable.

Thank goodness that's not true for me, but That's so— Wow, that's powerful.

That's right. And you could feel how you settled when I did that. It's your brain. We're working on your brain when we do that. And now you wouldn't do that with a client necessarily, but with the clients are gonna come in and they're gonna be frustrated and they're gonna feel confused and they're gonna be upset and anxious and worried. And all you do is just acknowledge where they're at. Oh yeah.

And once you do that— What we've seen is that marketing can be a highly technical industry. And I think one of the first things we say is, that's okay. You do not need to be an expert. If there's anything we say or do that you don't understand, let us know and we're going to walk you through it. We want to make sure that you feel good about it because we've seen that people will come in and maybe they had a really bad experience with another company that threw around technical jargon just to destroy my name, making a decision, you know? And so they'll come in and, okay, and you can tell there's this defensiveness because they don't trust yet and maybe they don't understand and they're afraid of being taken advantage of. And if you can just say, okay, let's talk about that. What, what matters the most to you? Let's break this down. You're— it's just, yeah, it's just having a real human interaction. That's it. Which can be— it can be uncomfortable to wade into those waters, especially when someone comes at you and you're just like, whoa, where is this coming from? But that could have nothing to do with you. It could have— it never has anything to do with you. Past experiences or whatever it is. And it's about how do you bring them back down into the moment? Hey, we're here for you. We're gonna work with this together. Yeah.

And imagine being able, that's so cool. Exactly. And being, imagine listening to that client and being able to calm them down with internally, you're calm, you're confident, and you're compassionate, and you're able to just, and you know exactly what to say and how to say it. You know exactly what's gonna happen and you have absolutely no worry. That you're gonna— that anything weird is going to happen because you've seen this happen so many times before that you know exactly what to say and how to say it. Powerful tool. That's what listening is all about. Wow, that's what listening is.

That's pretty incredible. I'm definitely going to want to talk more about, about your strategies and, and how they're implemented, especially across business. Yeah, we can talk about that.

So where's the company going? Yeah, he's been around. You've taken it, you resurrected it from a family business. Found a business partner, moved to Houston. Now you're working all over the world. You've got people all over the world and clients all over the world. Now, where do you— and you're still pretty young— where do you see this thing going?

So my business partner and I are both very ambitious. We want to build a— we want to build an empire. And what that means is we want to— I think it's always— it's a hard combination to scale a business and keep the same quality and service and dedication to customers. So we've been working very hard to build a structure that allows us to scale while still providing personalized attention, the best quality service that we can provide. And so for us, it's, that's one of the things that we're looking at and that could look like acquiring different verticals of marketing, going so slowly. We have really nailed down what we do and we do it so well in digital advertising and websites and we just want to serve more clients. But then on top of that, we've noticed that there are businesses still really need print services, in-house social media, and there are areas that are gaps that we would love to be able to fill for our clients. And so for us, it's where we could go is, is up and out. And so we are taking one step at a time, which is let's take what we have that we're doing really well and let's just expand it. Let's bring it to more businesses that are our ideal client type. And then in the next 5 years, we're also going to start filling those gaps. So the areas that we, the things we don't do, how can we bring those in and keep the same idea farm quality so that we can provide, fill a gap for our clients?

Your business is all about people internally. How do you find the right people to share the vision that are employees, not business owners, and are motivated to give the kind of service that you're talking about?

Yeah. So here's what's wild is it's not as hard as you would think if you are building a culture of a business that people want to be a part of. And, um, when you're building a business that is passionate and interesting and allows people to be creative and use their brains, and people want to be a part of something that's growing. People want to be a part of something that's exciting. They love that we work with lots of different kinds of businesses. So every day is different. So to be honest with you, when we put out a job post, we get so many applicants. And it's also how we tell that story and how this is what we're all about. We're also very authentic about what the Idea Farm is. And I think that story resonates with a lot of people. Not everyone wants to work at a massive corporation where you have this one specific super tiny role. Every day is the exact same. A lot of people want something that's different where they're challenged. And creative, and there are a lot of really creative people out there. And so for us, there are certain things that we want where we want in-person people, but a lot of it can be done, like we said, from anywhere. And then it's show me that you're the most talented, that you're, you're the most passionate, and that you have a good culture fit. And that's what works for us.

That's how you do it. Wow. So you got, you're on the ride, aren't you?

Yeah, it's, it is the most exciting and completely unexpected turn that I could never have imagined. But it is so nice because we are learning every day. And I know now how I have the tiniest sense of perspective after almost 6 years. I realize how little I know and how much more there is to know. And I know I've had a huge head start because I started at 22. And I started with— it was the hardest way possible. I had no transition. I had no training. I had no, no mentor. I had no back—

like, no MBA, no No leadership. No MBA.

No. And it, I learned by making mistakes. I learned by real, seeing the real impact of decisions that were made. And now we're, the best thing that we're doing is we're hiring people that are smarter, that are wiser, that have been around for a lot longer. And we're finally in a position to be able to, we have this young, youthful energy about us and we have tons of ideas. But now we're starting to pair that with true, tried and true experts.

And that is so exciting. Wow. Good for you. And that shows a lot of wisdom on your, you and your partner's side that you could say, I know what I don't know. Who, who can we hire that knows a lot more than we do? Oh yes.

Oh yes. Good for you. Yeah.

That's where we're going. Wow. It's, you're obviously really excited about it and passionate. Yeah. So it shows like a laser, blasting through you.

I just can't imagine doing anything that I wasn't passionate about.

Yeah, exactly. Um, one more question, I'll let you go. What's one thing, Emma, about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

I am— I mean, maybe this is written across my face, but I'm a huge travel lover, and very specifically travel and not just being a tourist. So I, any chance I get long-term travel, I like to go places and live there for a month at a time. And I really like adventurous, relatively remote places. So at different times in our business, when I have had the latitude to do so, I've been running the business from a, next to a waterfall in Costa Rica in the jungle, but there was a Wi-Fi hotspot and, you know, I could take a Zoom call and I've, you know, lived in Thailand and I've gotten to spend time, you know, living in Guatemala and. It— I just have this complete passion and desire to travel the world and see this planet. So it's— that can be hard to do with managing growing a business, right? So that's, that's the balance that I'm finding. But no, I'm a totally just adventure seeker at heart.

Wow, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you, it was lovely to talk with you. You're welcome.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode share this episode on social media. Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Thumbs up. Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.