Future Moves with Emma Sexton, Founder of the Inside Out Community
It feels like 2024 so far has been a year of two very different quarters for many. After a very VERY slow start, Q2 has been full of energy and momentum and picking up all of the projects that seemed so scarce in Q1. It’s been an important reminder to us that no matter how much we plan and how proactive we are, sometimes the rug will get pulled and the only thing you can do is go with it. Hope you’re all heading into the start of summer where you want to be and with the opportunity to have a bit of downtime at some point to take stock and reflect.
For anyone new to the party, Future Moves is here to ask business leaders and experts all the big questions on brand-building for tomorrow's world. Brought to you by us, Jess + Nat, award-winning founders of brand consultancy, Mac+Moore.
Let’s dive in…
Emma Sexton, Founder of the Inside Out Community
💫 Is creativity business critical in today's world?
💫 Does having an in-house creative team give a business a competitive advantage?
💫 Why growing a community is more than just a follower count
When thinking about an expert in the creative landscape to answer these questions we looked no further than the brilliant Emma Sexton. Always ahead of the curve she set up her remote-first creative agency 10 years ago and has worked with world-renowned clients such as Google and Snapchat alongside becoming one of the first agencies to be BCorp Accredited. She’s now championing In-House creativity alongside her advisory work via her Inside Out Community and awards.
Oh… and she is also a highly valued business advisor to a brand consultancy you may have heard of called Mac+Moore!
Jess: Welcome to Future Moves Emma! Tell us a little about your journey so far
Emma: I am a creative entrepreneur at heart, but I started my life out as a brand designer. I ran the brand design agency Hands Down! for 10 years, and I definitely used creative and design thinking to my advantage to build a successful business as I love the creativity that comes with entrepreneurship. I now have another business which is a community for in-house creative leaders and we want to give them everything they need to have influence and persuasion within their businesses. We also have an awards program and a membership offering for them and then we're building out training and mentoring and all sorts of other services. Ultimately, I see them as playing a role in putting creativity to the highest levels of business.
Jess: To make the jump from designer to entrepreneur did it require you to move from being a specialist to generalist?
Emma: I can certainly identify with being a generalist. I've been somebody who finds it quite easy to turn my hand to new things and create new skills. However, I am definitely trying to double down and be less of a generalist now. I'm really obsessed with flywheels and I think the danger of being a generalist is you never create a flywheel. And I can certainly look back at my previous agency and I perhaps didn't move myself forward in such a smart, focused way. You can only really create a flywheel if you're repeatedly doing something similar and getting better at it. So it's definitely beneficial to be a generalist, as I think it helps you explore and see what you might enjoy and what you might be good at. But I do think there's real value in doubling down or at least tightening up your generalism to the areas where you really do feel like you could do well at.
Jess: What made you want to focus on In-House design and creativity? What was the opportunity?
Emma: I think we're in a different landscape now and I've always been an in-house champion. This is something that I've been watching for a long time. What I can see is we're in the fourth wave of enhancing creativity, in terms of where in-house started and where in-house is going. And I think that the fourth wave started around about 2020 with the pandemic. Brands started to realise that they had to move fast. Now as soon as you launch a business and you're on the internet, you're on a global stage, which is amazing. But then how do you differentiate yourself? Brand becomes the only way you can differentiate. You need to find customers to be a sustainable and growing business and you need to be able to attract and pull them towards you. Creativity is how you create the emotional connection and how you create that moment with customers. Now we've got so many channels, you really need somebody to own those creative outputs and agencies just can't get close enough to the business to be able to join up all those touch points.
Jess: Where do you see the role of agencies in the future?
Emma: Agencies have a place but it's a different relationship now. It just makes sense to have an in-house team, not just for cost, but because they're going to know your business better than anybody else. I think the time now is for real specialists, people who are really geeking out on something that they're really passionate about. So be ‘spiky’ and ‘spoky’ and then you can galvanize your network, your black book of talent to deliver projects. So I think it's very exciting for smaller boutique agencies in particular.
Jess: Do you think business leaders understand how business-critical creativity and brand building is?
Emma: Yes, I think we have a big knowledge gap in the business world and I really noticed this as an entrepreneur. You know, I have read untold business books and I feel very lucky that I've come from a branding background. I've had design skills, I've been able to hack together a website and put together sales decks, but in every business book I had, none of them tell me what the value of creativity and design is, and how to deliver on that. And I think we have a real disconnect at the minute in terms of design education. It doesn't help creatives think about commercial creativity and I think commercial creativity and art are very muddied waters and we really need to separate out and distinguish the two.
Jess: Are there any brands using creativity and brand as a competitor advantage?
Emma: I think that some CEOs get it, there've been some very successful startups like Airbnb where they've had designers as part of the founding team. If you look at Airbnb, brand storytelling has been integral to its success and having cut through. So I feel like there's a new generation of businesses that understand the role of brand and creativity.
Jess: You’re now building an In-House membership community. What are the learnings so far?
Emma: I think once you've built a business, when you approach another business, you know how important it is to really just keep speaking to your customers. So really, the business has been organic and it's come out of a need and what I've done is really test an MVP and do as much as I can, but as little as I can to move the business on each stage. You might have milestones but really, it's been born out of an organic process.
Jess: What would you say are the crucial elements of creating a successful community?
Emma: Well, I think community is a big word. And we have to look at the differences because there are people who will say they have a community on Instagram and that's not a community that's an audience or a network. So we are definitely building a proper community in terms of our members engaging with each other directly. There is a lot of trust and credibility that you have to build in terms of the foundations to get people to be in. So I think it's one of those things that's slow, but it's a flywheel because once you test it and you get the first people on board and right, it starts to take on a life of its own. We are getting momentum in a way that I never had with my agency at all.
How We Move Forward
A book, podcast or cultural movement that's made you think differently?
A book called Reinventing Organisations as I’ve been really fascinated in the future of work and how and how human behaviour and new technology show how it’s possible to run businesses differently. My ambition has always been to create workplaces where people can thrive and I just feel that there are an awful lot of people who are not thriving at work when they could be.
Which future technology (or application of existing tech) are you optimistic for?
I’m really interested in how we are going to use voice more. When I think about how much I type when I could be using speech instead. Voice technology also gives us a reason to get out from in front of our screens.
Your hope for creativity in the future?
Businesses getting genuinely excited about brand. I guarantee that brand will inject a different energy and untapped creativity into your business.
Who do you follow online for ideas, inspiration + advice?
I’m obsessed with Emma Grede. She is at the forefront of brand and very modern businesses that use brand building to their advantage. She’s so unapologetic about what she’s good at and how she shows up.
One word to describe your hope for the future
Radical
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