43 — Leaning Into Discomfort, Empathy, & Comprehensive Insights

Lenny: 00:00:10

Hello everybody, this is Lenny Murphy, welcome to another edition of the GreenBook Podcast. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to spend it with us. And as usual by ‘us,’ I’m not talking about myself, but we actually do have a guest. And unlike many of these podcasts, this is someone that I have never talked to before. So, I am just as excited about this as you are to get to know Rob Volpe, CEO of Ignite 360. Rob, welcome.

Rob: 00:00:42

Lenny, thank you so much. It’s great to meet you and it’s great to be here.

Lenny: 00:00:47

Well, as I always say, let’s see if you think that when we’re done.

Rob: 00:00:53

I’m sure it’s going to be amazing.

Lenny: 00:00:56

[laugh]. Well, now you’re really setting the bar high, Rob. So Rob, you reached out to me on LinkedIn and suggested, if I recall correctly, that we should have a conversation about empathy. And I thought, you know, that is definitely a topic that is not discussed, certainly not on the podcast, and probably not in the market research industry as a whole very often. So, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and lead into why you suggested that topic?

Rob: 00:01:25

Absolutely. So, yeah. So hi, I’m Rob Volpe, CEO and founder of Ignite 360. We’re a full-service qual and quant firm. Got started though in the qualitative space and doing a lot of real deep-dive building empathy connections between our clients and their consumers and helping bring all of that to life through storytelling and whatnot.

Lenny: 00:03:14

See now, I’m thinking as you’re talking about that, lately for some reason, a lot of the guests, we’ve all been talking about nonconscious measurement and understanding unconscious drives and behavior, et cetera, et cetera. And I don’t think I ever thought about it until this moment that empathy is a dimension of that, but so often—research always runs into the challenge of creating scale, right? The industrialization of research, right? It’s just part of the business models and how big businesses become big businesses. And so, that navigation towards utilizing technology to understand emotions is logical and it’s part of that process, but it doesn’t create empathy. It

Rob: 00:04:50

No, I think that’s a great observation and that’s one of the challenges. There’s an empathy crisis going on in our society and for a lot of different reasons, but one of them, the way it plays out in the insights space is that addiction to the data. And not really—and yeah, you’re understanding it on an intellectual level, but you’re not connecting to it. And the empathy is about that connection. And one of the steps—actually, I’m glad you were telling that about understanding one of our—the fourth step in the five steps is, ‘integrate into understanding.’

Lenny: 00:08:35

That is—that’s fascinating. There’s actually a lot going through my head that we could go for a whole lot longer than I think we have [laugh] to explore. Can you give an example from a business perspective for listeners on the power of empathy to unlock business success? You know, some example of how this was deployed? Because it let me actually back up for a second before you answer that.

Rob: 00:09:59

Yeah, absolutely. So, empathy—and this is another thing that people don’t understand about empathy—empathy isn’t the end results, you know? It’s like, “Okay, I’ve got empathy. Now, what?” You know, I understand where you’re coming from, but if you don’t actually apply it and use it, it’s—I’m not going to say it’s meaningless; it’s important, but it not going to have the positive outcome, it’s not going to the strength that empathy can deliver, the magnification will be lost.

Lenny: 00:13:35

So, [unintelligible 00:13:36] leads to another thing. We talk a lot about, you know, storytelling as the way to create engagement and activation within insights. What is the role of empathy in developing those stories that are impactful? Because I suspect that there’s a pretty significant role based on what you just—[laugh] the anecdote you just shared.

Rob: 00:14:00

There absolutely is. And, you know, I’ve written a couple of thought pieces and talks specifically with insights people, like, you have to do double duty. You’re not just having insight—or having empathy with the consumer, the people that you’re doing research with, but you’re having to turn around and also have empathy with your stakeholders—your marketers, your R&D, whoever—and help them then get that empathy to the consumer as well. So, you’re sitting in the middle of all of this and you’re having to do double or triple duty.

Lenny: 00:15:57

I’ve had this thing in the back of my mind for a little while now on what does the framework for insights look like in the future, right? And when I visualize it, part of it is this hub that has all these data flows that are coming in, right, where there is no paucity of data available, to your point. The who, what, when, where, how, we’ve got that in spades—

, Tell Me [More] About That:: 00:17:43

Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time. Yes, I talk about some of the empathy crisis and what’s happening. I definitely go into the five steps to empathy, but they’re organized, each section of the book has my own experiences when I’ve been challenged to be empathetic. And it’s through research projects that I’ve been on.

Lenny: 00:23:16

Yeah. Boy, we could go all types of places with that and I totally, totally get it. So, I was ha—speaking of empathy—so I was having a conversation with my 13-year-old daughter, and as you now know and our listeners know, we recently moved to the middle of nowhere Kentucky, right? So, [laugh] we live now live on a farm. And it’s a big massive change, which we just jumped into headfirst.

Rob: 00:25:43

Yeah, well, thank you for bringing it up and I’m grateful that you have that awareness and are expressing it. And it is a challenge. And there’s a lot of different things. Our relationship to technology itself is something that has hindered or dampened—atrophied—our empathy muscles, you know? And then social media on top of it. So, think about those as two very distinct things.

Lenny: 00:30:32

Mmm. Thank you. That’s powerful. And I love that last bit of the courage to choose. So, I think that’s an important principle to keep as well. So, conscious of time—we’ve run over from our schedule that we had—we’ve talked about the book. Where can people find the book?

Rob: 00:30:50

The book is available in hardcover, ebook, and I narrated the audiobook, and it’s wherever people prefer to buy books. So, you know, all the audio platforms, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your local independent bookstore, they all have it or can get it for you very easily. So, I hope people go and check it out. And then they can also learn more at Ignite 360’s website, which is ignite-360.com. And then I invite people to find me on social media, Rob Volpe, V-O-L-P-E, or empathy_activist on Instagram and [unintelligible 00:31:25] and some of the other places.

Lenny: 00:31:27

Oh, that’s great. And I think I have a sneaking suspicion that our listeners particularly will have an opportunity to engage with you in other ways across the GreenBook platform. So, we’ll chat about that later. Because this is an important topic. We are in the business of understanding humans. I am gravely concerned that we don’t—we must keep humans in the center of that—

Rob: 00:31:54

Yeah. I talk about human behavior instead of consumer behavior. I mean, that’s—it is humans. And behind all of that data that you see, you know, if 97% of your customers are doing something, well, out of 100 people, that’s 97 people. There are real people that are there and we need to understand who they are and see them and respect them and meet their needs, understand that ‘why.’

Lenny: 00:32:20

Yep, yep. Could not agree more. Rob, thank you. This was—it was a great conversation, at least I hope our listeners think so. It was for me. There a few times I’ve actually started tear up a little bit. So, I’m glad that we don’t have video deployed on this for [laugh] everybody.

Rob: 00:32:56

Thank you. And thanks for having me on and the courage to talk about all of this. I really appreciate it.

Lenny: 00:33:03

[laugh]. Well, I think I just kind of fell into it. But here we are. So, we did it. So [laugh].

Rob: 00:33:08

We made it through.

Lenny: 00:33:17

Oh, I’m a big baby. Speaking of, ‘see you,’ we took the kids to go see Avatar 2 this weekend, right, and of course, that’s the thing the Na’vi, ‘I see you.’ You know, I was—there were a few points I was just sobbing. And it’s like, “God what—[sigh] God, I’m such a baby.” But—so [laugh].

Rob: 00:33:34

It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful thing. A friend—I’ve been dealing with grief quite a bit lately through some personal losses, and one of my friends, she—my par—so I lost my grandma, who was 104 years old. But I got to be there with her when she passed. And it was amazing, amazing experience.

Lenny: 00:34:40

That’s true. And deepest condolences on the loss.

Rob: 00:34:48

Oh, um yeah. She was a force of nature. A really amazing, amazing, inspiring woman.

Lenny: 00:34:55

Oh, that’s amazing. Well, may her memory be a blessing. Sounds like it already is.

Rob: 00:35:00

Oh, definitely is. Thank you.

Lenny: 00:35:02

Okay. All right on that note, before we hop on to something else because [laugh]—

Rob: 00:35:37

Thank you, Lenny. It’s been a pleasure to be here.