Kristian Alomá, PhD, is the Founder and CEO of Threadline, a brand-building agency. He is also a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School Center for Nonprofit Management, where he teaches branding for nonprofits, donor stewardship, storytelling, digital fundraising, and behavior design. With over two decades of experience applying narrative psychology, identity, and behavioral economics to marketing and market research, Kristian has helped some of the world’s largest brands, including Coca-Cola, Harley Davidson, and FedEx, improve their narratives. He is also the author of Start with the Story: Brand-Building in a Narrative Economy.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [2:11] What is a narrative economy?
- [3:55] How starting with a brand story helps companies understand their customers
- [13:15] The importance of developing your unique value proposition (UVP)
- [16:31] Identifying the customer’s role in your brand story
- [22:56] Seven elements of the customer relationship
- [30:30] How to leverage reach campaigns to build customer relationships
- [36:23] Strategies for defining and conveying your brand story
- [45:33] Why marketing makes Kristian Alomá angry
- [50:56] Kristian shares ethical marketing tactics
- [56:04] Kristian’s upbringing as a first-generation American
- [1:07:52] How Kristian improves his personal life
In this episode…
Advertising and marketing have poor reputations for deceiving customers, often stemming from brands that position themselves as the heroes of their campaigns to manipulate consumers into making purchases. In an economy that relies on stories to make sense of experiences, consumers are the primary drivers. How can you craft a brand story that strengthens your customer relationships?
According to behavioral marketer Kristian Alomá, every brand-customer relationship must begin with a story encapsulating your unique value proposition (UVP). To identify your UVP, it’s essential to define your target audience’s main struggle, your solution to the problem, your company’s objective, and the reward customers receive from engaging with you. However, the UVP should only form the basis for your story rather than dictate how it’s conveyed to consumers. Instead, you should view your organization from the customer’s perspective, informing your approach to storytelling and services.
Tune in to this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast as William Harris chats with Kristian Alomá, the Founder and CEO of Threadline, about building a brand story to foster authentic customer relationships. Kristian explains the seven elements of a customer-brand relationship, how to market ethically, and the significance of the narrative economy in brand building.
Resources mentioned in this episode
- William Harris on LinkedIn
- Elumynt
- Kristian Alomá: Website | LinkedIn
- Threadline
- “Marketing to Mindstates: Behavior Design for DTC Ecommerce With Will Leach” on the Up Arrow Podcast
- Will Leach on LinkedIn
- Marketing to Mindstates: The Practical Guide to Applying Behavior Design to Research and Marketing by Will Leach
- Start with the Story: Brand-Building in a Narrative Economy by Kristian A. Alomá, PhD
Quotable Moments
- "The narrative economy is about how we buy things to tell stories about ourselves."
- "If we don't understand that as businesses, we're missing out on a huge part of the relationship we have with our customers."
- "It's not just about what we're doing to customers; what if this was my son seeing this?"
- "Are we measuring the value of our customers based on how much they spend this quarter or in a lifetime?"
- "Trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too."
Action Steps
- Start by defining your brand's narrative using the STORY acronym: This allows for a strategic foundation for brand communication, directly addressing customers' needs and positioning the brand for success.
- Focus on building empathy within your organization for customers: Empathy drives ethical marketing practices, helping to prevent manipulative tactics and fostering genuine customer connections.
- Collect and share customer stories as testimonials: Authentic stories from satisfied customers act as powerful endorsements and can persuade new customers more effectively than traditional advertising.
- Personalize customer experiences by considering the depth of their relationship with the brand: Using the relationship facets framework, brands can tailor experiences to deepen customer engagement and loyalty over time.
- Commit to continued learning and personal growth, both for self-improvement and to bring fresh perspectives into the business: Pursuing activities like learning new skills or languages can enhance cognitive function, creativity, and adaptability, which are invaluable in business leadership.
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.
Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.
To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:00
Music. Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.
William Harris 0:15
Hey everyone. I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and beyond, as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Really excited about the guest today, Kristian Alomá. Kristian is a best selling author and marketing expert specializing in the application of the social sciences to enhance customer relationships. Over his two decade career, he has helped some of the world's largest brands, including Coke, FedEx, Harley Davidson, and more, improve their narratives by drawing on his expertise in narrative psychology, identity and behavioral economics. Kristian draws on his two decades of experience in marketing and market research, as well as his academic work exploring consumer psychology, identity and narrative Kristian, I've read your book. I have it right here. I'm very excited to talk about this with you and so many other things. Thanks for joining me on the show.
Kristian Alomá 1:03
Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about it as well.
William Harris 1:07
Yeah, I want to give a shout out to Will Leach, previous guest on the show as well. He's the author of marketing the mind states. He is the one who introduced us. So thank you very much. Will,
Kristian Alomá 1:16
yeah, and he is the one who inspired me to write that book when he published. So thank you. Will that part
William Harris 1:23
I didn't know about, so that's good. I like that. We're gonna get into talking about what this all means, starting with the story, narrative, economy. There's a lot that I want to dig into before we do. I want to announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that i pod recently. You can learn more on the website@Elumynt.com which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com. That said onto the good stuff like I said, Okay, this book right here, which I've been able to read through most of I did not get through every page, but the it's start with a story brand building in a narrative economy. Yeah, let's start there. What is a narrative economy? What do you mean by that?
Kristian Alomá 2:11
Yeah, you know, the narrative economy, from our perspective, is, well, it kind of begins, really ultimately, with narrative psychology, right? What we have started to realize in the social sciences is people make sense of the world by the way they create stories about the world. We make meaning out of our experiences, our behaviors, our relationships by basically like crafting and revising stories. And the same thing happens with brands, right? We engage with brands, with organizations, with services and products, and we make sense of that engagement by creating a story, right? Do I think I'm creative, and so I buy Apple? Do I think I'm generous? Do I support this nonprofit or this charity? Do I think I'm an athlete, so I buy Nike and Adidas and things like that, right? And what we started to realize is people don't just buy products or engage with services for the rational thing it provides. They do so because it helps them tell a story about themselves, and that's the narrative economy. We buy things to tell stories, and if we don't understand that as businesses, as brand managers, as marketers, then we're missing out, like a huge part of kind of the relationship we have with our customers
William Harris 3:21
that's very interesting. And I do see that that there's like even stories that I tell about myself or that others do, and that's wild to think about. I'm excited to dig into that. We're gonna get there in a minute too, before we get too, too deep into the science of this. And we're gonna get into tactics. We're gonna get into philosophies. Let's start with a couple of case studies about how understanding this, understanding, starting with the story, has helped some brands. There are a couple that you had mentioned to me, Lula Lu was one. How has this helped Lula Lu?
Kristian Alomá 3:55
So we looked at, and there's sort of a case study on Lula Lu to understand their relationship with their customers. And you know, one of the things when you look you look at what customers are dealing with when it comes to the lingerie and bra and intimate apparel, this is sort of the category Lula Lu works in, is they recognize that the big sort of struggle that a lot of women face is the majority of bras or bra manufacturers are designing bras for women with larger cup sizes, right? And then they just basically size that down, like they're just using the kind of the ratio box on PowerPoint, right? And they're like, Oh, you got a big cup size. We're going to shrink that down. Same bra, just smaller, and that's meant to be for you. And what we found, or what they find, right, is that doesn't really fit women with smaller cup sizes, it doesn't sort of naturally, sort of fit the way and make them feel good about themselves. And so Lula Lu said, Okay, if that's the struggle, and we know women want to sort of have this story about confidence and comfort and and sort of the sense that they are wearing clothes that were designed for them. As a woman with small breasts. It's Lula Lu said we're gonna start there, right? That's what our brand is gonna be about. And so they produce almost exclusively bras designed for women with, I think, like double A through B at the most, sort of cup sizes. And they also build a relationship around their brand about empowering women of all kinds, right, regardless of your cup size. And sort of just really, kind of highlighting those stories, because their brand, the story that they help women tell, is about what it means to be a woman, about being, you know, a successful mom or a successful professional, or both at the same time, right? And and so they sort of have created this brand that is more than bras to their customers. They created a brand that sort of is about empowerment and confidence.
William Harris 5:42
Yeah, it's going a layer deeper than just about, yeah, I see this in advertising all the time, where people will talk about the features, right? So, hey, we'll highlight this. We'll highlight this. This is going beyond the features of this being designed for them, but like, the story of how this feels to have been designed for them,
Kristian Alomá 5:57
absolutely. I mean, another one we look at is when you compare, for example, like Burger King to McDonald's. Both of them are burger restaurants, right? Fast food, sugar restaurants. But, you know, just sort of inherently, one is built for families and one is built for college kids, right? Because you go to a McDonald's and the inside is designed to be as clean as possible, as comfortable as possible. There's like, family sized tables, there's, of course, the play place and things like that. But even their food, right? I mean, the existence of Happy Meals is, of course, an obvious one, but think about their cheeseburgers. Their cheeseburgers are sort of envelopes, right? They're sort of self sealing burgers, which is a very clean thing to eat when you're passing burgers back to the kids in the back of the car. Right now, Burger King, which has also really high quality burgers, real pieces of lettuce and tomato, like whole pieces, if you will, on their burgers. Imagine passing a whopper back to your kid in the back seat and having that just end up all over the car. It's just not designed for them. And so they both recognize that there is an audience in the world that is sort of wanting to tell a story of being a good mom, a fun mom, or a good dad, and a fun dad, one that sort of has these treats that they can offer them. And another story out there about, I'm a, you know, late night college kid that's just looking for a solid meal to eat after the bars, right? Or or after the football game or what have you. And they can kind of create that story for each one
William Harris 7:20
of them. Yeah. So this is the positive side. This is how telling the story, starting with the story, can help. What about the flip side? Is there an example where you can say there was a brand that maybe didn't follow that advice and it worked out poorly for them?
Kristian Alomá 7:37
Yeah, a couple I can probably share. You know. One is so there's always the sort of absence of story, which isn't necessarily doing it wrong, it's just not doing it. And the problem with that is you'll likely get customers, but they're not going to really sort of build a relationship, or build a relationship you want to build with them. But when you do it wrong, there's a couple of things that can happen. One is, you place yourself as the hero of the story, right? And you don't let your customer be the hero of the story. The one of my favorite examples I've seen in the marketplace was years ago. Now, this is probably six or so years ago, I think, in the midst of a lot of social unrest in North America, right around racial protests and sort of equity protests and gender protests, and gender protests, all these sort of different things that were happening around the country. And Pepsi put out a campaign that essentially, sort of featured a protest, right? And it featured Kendall Jenner in that sort of campaign. And there's this sort of protest going by, and Kendall Jenner kind of got swept up into this march or this protest. And it's, of course, one of the happiest protests you'll ever see. And Kendall Jenner is there, and everyone's gorgeous, and there's buckets of ice cold Pepsi around, as you know, protests often do, and they come up to a line of riot officers, and again, friendly, right, the most friendly riot officers you'll ever see, of course, because it's in a commercial. And they sort of stop, and, you know, the one side is playing music and chanting, and the other side is standing there very stoically, just sort of saying, you can't pass. And Kendall Jenner has this moment where she grabs a Pepsi from the container, walks across the sort of picket line, and hands one of the riot officers a Pepsi, and all of a sudden he smiles, and everybody's dancing. Social justice is solved. Peace on Earth, all these sorts of things, right? That campaign got panned by audiences all over the world, and especially, of course, in North America Online, because it sort of basically put Pepsi as the hero of this story, right? And a really sort of important story happening in America at the time all of this sort of social unrest and protest and Riot, and said, Hey, all you guys needed was a Pepsi, right? Then we wouldn't have all these issues. Sure. Flip that over, right? And, and, and you can see how if you are placing yourself in the as the hero of the story, you don't make room for your customers stories. And that's what's really sort of critical about that, is that it is the narrative economy, and they're the drivers of the economy, the consumers, right? I. Now, the other side, we worked with a brand many years ago, or in my previous life, worked with a brand called Honest Tea, which many people probably recognize and familiarize and Honest Tea was known for its high quality, like authentic tea product, right? You shook the bottle and you saw tea leaves sort of stirring around in there, and it didn't look artificially colored. It looked like the sediment was a good thing. Yeah, right, yeah. It had this real sort of authenticity to it. And I remember actually being in a session with their senior leadership, and I said, hey, no matter what you do, whatever you do, don't make soda. And the entire executive board started laughing at me, because I didn't realize at the time, two weeks later, they're about to launch honesty soda. Oh no. Now, you know, big companies make decisions that sometimes I can't control, of course, but I do feel somewhat vindicated by the fact that the soda eventually failed. Honesty eventually sort of had to close up shop and wrap up production. Because I think for me, the sort of point of that is there was a clear story they had in the marketplace, a clear story they could help their customers tell, and they kind of walked away from that. They attempted the best, right? It was meant to be more authentic, soda, organic soda, pure soda, that sort of stuff. But it was still such a dramatic shift from who they were that it was hard for their customers to reconcile that story. I think
William Harris 11:21
that's wild, because it I almost wonder if this is a timing thing too. I don't know when that took place, but we've seen a surge in, let's just say, more authentic sodas like ollie pop and stuff like that, and they've done very, very well. Yeah. Do you think how much of this was timing versus story as well? Because it's like if they told that story today would have worked better for them. I think so.
Kristian Alomá 11:43
Actually, I think climbing is part of it, right? And this was again, years ago, maybe a decade ago or so. And so, if they had tackled that story now, it may have been a very sort of different place overall, and it may also have been part of you know, how they leveraged their tea story to tell their soda story, right? One of the things about that is that it's not just beverages. It's tea itself has a special ritual around it that soda doesn't, right? Soda is used for different reasons. It feels different ways, right? It's it tends to be more celebratory or more sort of an indulgence or a reward, whereas tea tends to be sort of a moment of meditation, right? A moment of rejuvenation, if you will. So it's hard to say, but I do think that the context is critical to stories, right? Context defines meaning more than anything else, and so knowing the context of that story is also absolutely key. Yeah.
William Harris 12:37
I mean, I'm thinking about stories in general, and you know, if you introduce a character that doesn't show up until chapter eight, but you introduce them in chapter two, it can completely just derail the rest of the theme of the story, like they couldn't show up until chapter eight. And so to that point, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. So let's talk a little bit more about, like, some of the philosophy and what you've got here. One of the things you talked about when I was looking through this was developing your own UVP here. Why is the UVP and important? And where do you differentiate from? Like, okay, the UVP is a good start, but don't print that. Take it. Take it here. Yeah,
Kristian Alomá 13:15
yeah. You know, for us, and the way we sort of talk about the UVP is, is really sort of, how do you define what your story is, right? And and we sort of kind of provide an acronym, obviously enough, that is the story as an acronym. And it's about defining the struggle in the marketplace, the tool or technology that you address or that you leverage, the objective of your organization, the rewards that your customer gets when they use that, and then the yearning, or the sort of the bigger, sort of emotional benefit of engaging and going through this experience. Now we tell organizations define that and hold on to that. That does not become sort of what you tell necessarily directly your customers. That is the narrative that filters everything you talk about, everything you share with them. And it's about mapping that out that really sort of clearly defines, sort of, and this is where it fits, or is sort of related to the uvps. Is, you know, your net, your unique value proposition, of course, is sort of that, like special benefit that you provide, right? What we try to tell folks is, step back and think about the special relationship that you can have with this customer. And that's what the story framework lets you do. It lets you look at how our UVP helps us build a special relationship, helps us sort of do something that other organizations can't, because unfortunately, as unique as we think our VPS are, right, it's just a matter of time till the next guy comes along and does something similar or cheaper, right? But what's very difficult to break is the relationships that you have with your customers is, is the perception they have of the way you do that unique value proposition. And that's what's really sort of special, you know? We and the thing is, as. As human beings, we know this, right? Like, just because, you know, my wife sees someone that is technically more handsome than I am, she's not gonna run off, right? Like, sure, we have a long term loyal relationship that is deeper than just the things that I do. It's about how I do it, the history we have, the relationship that I have, and the trust that we've built in all of that. So, you know, UVP is a really sort of important thing to kind of define early on in an organization. But I always think you've got to push further to say, how does this help me sort of impact a relationship? How does it help me build a relationship? How does it help me deepen a relationship that I have?
William Harris 15:33
It it reminds me of a quote from Jeffrey getamer. He's got some sales books that I really appreciate it. But on the one page, he says, All things being equal, people will do business with their friends. Yes. And he flipped the page says, All things being not quite so equal, people will still do business with their friends. And I like that, because that's the point where it's like, maybe your friend's not as good as this other person, but it's your friend. Maybe they're a little bit more expensive, but it's your friend, and as much as you can shift that relationship from a brand perspective, that helps, kind of like you, what you were saying, where I want to go with this, though, is, let's jump back into the hero part of this. And so it's like you, you had mentioned, like a hero is a type of relationship, um, you called out to me, and I think you talked about it in your book as well. Who plays the hero then? So Pepsi won. Pepsi played the hero. That didn't work out for them, because they're not supposed to be here in this story. So who plays the hero? And how do you make that happen? Yeah,
Kristian Alomá 16:31
it's really about, we call it centering your customer, right? Centering the hero in the story. And so we always say, when it comes to thinking about your brand, your customer is the hero, not your brand and and that's always the place to start. Now, that isn't to say you shouldn't talk about your organization and talk about your product and your benefits and all that sort of stuff, but you do have to think, how do I change their story for the better? How do I address some need, some desire, some consequence that they're facing with my product or my service, right? You gotta, you have to always be sort of thinking about my organization from the perspective of the customers that we serve, rather than thinking about your customers from the perspective of your organization. And the difference, even though that feels relatively sort of minor, the difference is dramatic, right? When I'm thinking about my customers from the perspective of my business, it's like a home builder I worked with years ago who used to call the people that purchased the homes they custom built millions and millions of dollars to build these homes. They would describe them as occupants, right? Sure, a cold way to think about the people that are investing millions of dollars in your business. Now you flip that around, and we worked with them, and we helped them sort of understand, hey, these are your these are who these people are, and this is what's happening, and the way you impact their lives, right? And home, of course, home buying is a dramatically, sort of emotional category. They started to realize, Oh, these are these are homeowners. These are families, right? These are people. And it's that sort of subtle shift that changes the way you write content, the way you design sites, the way you develop services, the way you come out with new innovations on those services, right? Because you're orienting around them rather than around yourself. You know, the printing business was sort of classic for this. They used to sort of draw money out of the paper tray in order to invest in putting more features into the software on printers right. And it used to get to the point where, like, you could edit photos on the little, tiny screen of your printer. No one wanted to. Of course you could. And we did research with people who purchase printers, and they said, You know, I would be, I'd spend eight, nine months on a project, and the first time I would print it, it was like this idea was being born into the world right through the printer. And where does that idea land on a cheap paper trade that often falls off and lets on my paper fall to the ground, right? Sure, if they were thinking about their brand through the perspective of the customer. They would have put all the money in that tray. They would have gold plated that tray if they needed to, right? Because they're you have to think of it from their perspective in order to sort of build a relationship that is sort of one that is successful for for both them and you as an organization.
William Harris 19:17
Yeah, I like that. You're taking this into the idea of designing the products even with the customer being the hero in mind too. Not just like designing your marketing to be that way, oh, design the product that way and then let the marketing come in. It reminds me of a story, which is in your book. It's also in some other books. It's a really fun one, but the cake mix one, right? Which I don't remember who that was. I think it was baby Betty Crocker, but they released the cake and it was like, everything, I don't even know, like, Jeff had water to it. It's like, yeah, people didn't like it. They didn't like this because they didn't feel like they were actually making a cake. And so what did they do? Right?
Kristian Alomá 19:49
And again, this is another one that's context based, right? It's sure, instant bake cake mix, right? Instant made cake cake mix. It was, I believe, if I recall accurately, now, it was. Hillsbury or Betty Crocker. I'm sorry, I think it was Betty Crocker, but either way, it was a major Baking Company. They wanted to make cake making easier, right? And they had the science to do, so where all you literally had to do was add water and you would have the mix that you just poured into a pan and baked. Now, this was back in, I think, in the 50s, right? And at that time, unfortunately, a lot of sort of the value of mothers was invested in how much time they spent preparing meals and preparing things, right? And so it became this thing where, if all I'm doing is adding water, am I really baking? And if I'm not really baking. Do I really love my family? Right? That was the story that was sort of unfolding from that example, right? Because grandma mixed this from scratch. Grandma loved us, right? If I'm just adding water, what does that say to my family? And so that's what they had to do. They had to sort of look at and say, Okay, well, what does it take for someone to consider themselves baking here, right? And it just needed some ingredients. I think it was the special sort of numbers, like three ingredients that need to come together to make it feel like you're actually producing the thing. You're making the thing, and you're investing love and time and energy into that. And then it becomes something that is acceptable for these mothers now, again, that context right nowadays, that's like pretty standard people see a regular cake mix. Maybe they want it even simpler nowadays, and it's still seen as love, but at that time, that was a huge deal for them to sort of figure out, what kind of story does our cake mix let these mothers tell to their families? And fortunately, it wasn't a story that they wanted. Yeah, now
William Harris 21:44
we don't need any ingredients. We could just 3d print it, and everybody feels fine exactly.
Kristian Alomá 21:48
I just hit the three button on the microwave, and I've got a cake. And it reminds me there's one campaign that actually really kind of hit on that concept in the 80s. I think it was when I was growing up, and it was a rice it was Rice Krispies, and it was about making rice krispies. I think that's what it was. And this campaign used to show how easy it was to make this rice krispies sort of treat for their families. But it was so easy that what they showed in the campaign was the mom would then, like, Sprinkle flour on her face to make it look like she had been doing all this work in the kitchen, right? So that when she came out, it was like, Look how much time I spent for you all. Isn't this wonderful? But the secret was, nobody knew it was actually so easy. So they kind of knew it, right? They were sort of time playing on that kind of concept and just sort of flipped it around for the times I
William Harris 22:36
like that. So hero is one of the relationships, or at least, you know, that's part of how we got into this, but you actually have a whole like relationship framework. I don't know if framework is the right word for it, but this is what your dissertation was on. And I think you identified what, like seven elements of a relationship. What are, what are those elements of a relationship, and how do they apply to what we're doing?
Kristian Alomá 22:56
Yeah, no, this is a really, sort of great question. And you know, it's ultimately what we sort of tried to figure out was it, my whole proposal was that brands are relationships, right? That's what, you know, there's all these different definitions out there in the world about what a brand is, but what it really comes down to is a brand is a relationship. It's a relationship between your organization and the consumer. So no one really owns the relationship, right? There isn't someone who can be like, Oh, I've done X, Y and Z. So now it's this kind of brand. It's I've done X, Y and Z. Let's wait to see how the customers respond. That's going to tell us what our brand is overall and so, so in doing that, what I wanted to kind of really kind of unpack was, well, what if we looked at Brands through the lens of relational psychology, right through lens of interpersonal relationships. And what I identified and sort of tried to whittle down were sort of it is, I think it's seven facets, or eight facets, technically, of a relationship, to help us understand how deep that relationship is. And it ends up with seven potential relationships, or levels of relationship that you can have with a person. So it goes from, how frequently do you interact with them, right, typically, high frequency interactions lead to deeper relationships. You know, like the people you're interacting with, most you have a deeper relationship. Then, you know, maybe the UPS guy who only comes by every now and then, right? How deep is the interaction, right? How much of an impact is that interaction sort of or what role does it play in your life? You know, so your brand of toilet paper may not feel like that deep of an interaction, even if it's an intimate space, compared to the brand of menstruation products that you're using. Sure that's going to be a really sort of depth. Has depth to it, the impact on your life. So does my relationship with your organization or your service or your product, like, really change things for me? So like Apple for me, I'm an Apple fanboy, I'll admit that. But like, Apple is throughout my whole life, right? So I wear the watch, I wear the phone. I use Apple fitness. I. I could get Apple car in my old car, I would all these sorts of things. So it has an impact on my life dramatically. How long have you been in a relationship? Length of relationship is, sort of, was the thing that came out of my dissertation work is, you know, the longer a person has a relationship with you, the more integrated it is into their identity overall. But also just, there's history there, right? There's, there's depth of time. Now, that length is also relative, if you're in a young industry or a young category, and you've been there from the beginning, that may only be two years, and that's going to demonstrate a decent bit of length compared to someone who's been in a category that's been around for 20 years, right? So that length is relative, you know, is there a community, right? You think about like Harley Davidson. There's a community of Harley Davidson writers, right? You they nod at each other on the highways, things like that. So what kind of community is around your brand? What kind of reciprocity is there in the relationship? Do they expect you to take care of them when they need it? Right? You know, those like brands that were sort of famous for service sort of really hit on this. Like, even if I brought in a tire, they would give me my money back. Even though that story ended up being untrue, they always wanted to take care of the customer at the end. And then, are there shared characteristics, right? Do you consider yourself sort of edgy, and this brand is edgy as well, and vice versa. And how much is that shared, and also shared values, which really was something that is kind of newer in brand relationships than it used to be, where, like, people want to know that a brand supports their sense of values around equality or around immigration or around, you know, gun control, things like that. They they're sometimes they're looking to see those sort of shared set of values. And when you assess all of those, I kind of described it as, like, you know, when I was growing up, you always saw those, like relationship quizzes and like Vogue magazine and things like that. I set it up in the book to basically be the same way. If you answer these questions, you can kind of understand the relationships that you have with your customers. And when you do, you can basically have sort of the basic level, which is what I call the familiar stranger. Like, they know you exist, but they don't know you at all, like, like the guy that walks his dog in my neighborhood. I I know I see him weekly, walking his dog. I've never talked to him. I know he says, I give him the neighborly suburban wave that you do in suburbs, and that's about it. He's a familiar stranger to me all the way down to what I call the Platonic soulmate, right? This is like the person who gets you. They understand you. They're like you. You have weddings themed around it sometimes, right? You know people I again Harley Davidson, which is just one of those brands that really hits on all of it, right? You see people buried with their Harley Davidsons, right? Like a platonic soulmate overall, and so, so those are sort of the relationships that you can kind of really map out. And not only map out, you can both understand where you are now, but once you understand those facets of relationships, you can then see what you need to improve on and focus on that right. Like, do you? Do you can you figure out if they can use you more often, if you can be a sort of a more meaningful part of their life, have a greater impact in their life, or build a community around, you know, Mini Cooper car owners or what have you right? What can you do to sort of strengthen that relationship? And you don't necessarily have to be platonic soulmate to be a really great brand, but even just moving up a little bit improves revenue, improves stock price by dramatic amounts.
William Harris 28:23
If you saw me getting distracted for a brief moment, it was because I also had to get out. You know, I'm also an Apple fanboy, yes, yeah. Do you have, are you that Apple fanboy?
Kristian Alomá 28:34
We should have done this interview with our vision pro headsets on and just did it in the in the cloud, essentially follow up,
William Harris 28:40
follow up interview, yeah, exactly. So talking about the different tactics with these relationships, one of the things that I would call out that is a very practical thing for brands to do in the DTC space, we deal with advertising. And so you'll find that a lot of times, after you've purchased something from a brand, especially a DC brand, yeah, the immediate next day, you're going to see ads for more things to purchase from that brand. That's the extent of the relationship building that has happened with that. Now, sometimes they're doing a good job, and they maybe will have an email that went out that was really nice, and they will have, you know, in the packaging, it will be really great. And they'll have things that are going to build up the relationship there, but they forget that before any of those things are there, before they've read that email, before they have received the package, to understand that you want to build a relationship with them, you hit them with another advertisement to buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, something more. Yeah, yeah. And so I would, I would encourage brands. One of the things that we like to look at is put a small amount of your budget. This doesn't need to be a lot, because, if you're still small, this is a very small amount of customers. Let's say that it's 1000 100,000 whatever that number is. You can add those to meta and to other advertising platforms, and you can do a reach campaign. So reach campaign, let's say the C. Pm to reach somebody in your purchase campaign, if it's optimized for purchases $20 but the CPM in your reach campaign might be $2 to reach those people, that's all you need to do, and make sure that the ad that you have there is something that deepens the relationship with them, romance them a little bit. This could be talking about why the purchase they just made really is the best purchase they could have made because of how you're helping out the community, or because of how this tells that story, like whatever that can do to take that now into a deeper relationship, to
Kristian Alomá 30:30
completely agree, and I would even kind of push that further. You know, one of the things that I really love, there's a brand that I've been engaged with now for, gosh, probably the majority of my adult life, since I was this is now, I guess 20 years. I think approaching 20 years, about the length of my marriage, which is going to be 20 years next year. Called you need a budget, right? Ynab.com I think, is the sort of website. And one of the things I loved about their approach was they began treating me like a customer. Before I was a customer, they there, it's a Finance Management website like personal finance, budgeting and tracking and all that kind of stuff. And the first thing that they did, the first thing that got me to them, was they published a free ebook that explained their strategies for budget management, and said, even if you can't afford to buy us yet, which is what you would expect for someone looking for a budget management platform, right? Here's our approach so that you can hopefully get to the point where you can afford to use us, right? And I read their ebook and basically replicated their whole platform using Excel on my own, and for the first time, that platform got me debt free, and for the first time, then I upgraded and became been their customer for 20 years now. And when I became their customer, what happened? They are sending me tutorials about budget management, right? It's not about buy the next service they have, or the add on or upgrade or what have you, though those come out as well, right? But it's, it's constantly about what, how much more value can they provide me as a customer? Because what they're thinking about is, I want to keep you for life. I want to, I want to be in this relationship for as long as possible, because I know that even if you don't buy today, or even if you bought yesterday and you're not ready to buy again for another year, I want to be there in a year when you're ready to buy again. And it is you probably know the cost per acquisition and cost per awareness far better than I do, because that's not my space directly. It likely doesn't cost them a ton to have that blog post published that tells me how to handle vacation budgeting when I'm trying to budget for a year, right? It is incredible how many times I have ended up telling other people like I am right now about that platform, right? I myself have probably generated $100,000 for them in revenue off of people and friends that I've
William Harris 32:50
gotten up. I love that. What about brands that are trying too hard to create this relationship? What are things that are just don't do this or, you know, this is taking it too far to being the creepy relationship.
Kristian Alomá 33:07
Yeah, it's there. I'm trying to think of a couple of examples that have done that. And you know, for me right now, it's, it's meta, broadly, sure, it's kind of doing that a little bit. So I'm an Instagram browser, right? I don't post that much anymore, all that kind of stuff, but they just keep feeding me threads, yes, that they want
William Harris 33:30
me to click on. And if there's a thread that your friend posted that you might be interested, right? And I'm like, I
Kristian Alomá 33:35
don't, I'm not on threads for a reason, right? Like I'm, I'm literally on Instagram because I like the like, I, you know, threads, obviously, is like their counter to Twitter or x, right now, right? I'm not on X, because X, to me, is chaos, right? Like, it's just, it's just not where I want to be. It's overwhelming, it's it's depressing, it's gloomy, all that kind of stuff. I am intentionally on Instagram, like, I wish it gave me the feature to say, Turn off suggesting threads, because I see it, and sometimes it looks like a really interesting approach, and I click on it, and either it like, takes me just to the app store to download the app so I can look at the thread, or if I'm looking at it in a browser, that's the only way it works. It'll take me to then that link in the browser, and it's awful, like, I don't, I don't, I don't need you in all parts of my life, right? I I'm really happy with this spot. I'm looking at all the ads you feed me on Instagram. I'm clicking on bunches. I see my data sometimes, and I'm like, Look at all these ads I've clicked on, right? So I know I'm doing the work I need to do to deserve a free app and Instagram, please stop asking me to do everything else, right? It's, it's that sort of thing that, for me, at least, it's like you have to recognize that goes back to that depth of the relationship. In some cases, the customer doesn't want you to be any deeper. And if you're pushing into that, then you're going to start to sort of feel and remember when we define relationships, and obviously in a commercial space, we want to have these sort of really positive relationships. But relationships come in all shapes and sizes. We have abusive relationships. Are addictive relationships, unhealthy relationships, right? How many people do you know have talked about the fact that they're addicted to Facebook, or they're addicted to Twitter, they're addicted to Instagram? That's not a great way to describe a relationship, even if it's obviously sort of a profitable way to describe it, it's not going to be what helps you last. And that's why you're seeing now. And I'm really sort of surprised to see so many alternatives trying to provide, you know, a sort of different way to engage in social media, right? There's, I think, the spill app, which focuses on sort of more black experiences. There's, of course, you know, threads, and it's counter to x, but you see some of those other ones. What is it like? Not Megalodon? Is it Megalodon? It might be mega something
William Harris 35:43
like that mammoth. Yeah, there's blue sky, yeah, there is, like, a there's a few
Kristian Alomá 35:50
thing, yeah, you know, having like, their benefit is that they aren't, like, treating you like, basically a data point that they can just exploit, sure, and, and that's, that's what happens is folks sort of turn you into something that's exploitative. Essentially,
William Harris 36:08
we've talked a lot about the importance of having that story, telling the right story, developing that relate, right relationship. But how do you identify what your story is or should be as a brand? Yeah.
Kristian Alomá 36:23
So there's a couple of ways, and some of it is about how I define and talk about stories. There's a little bit of a nuance to begin with. When I talk about defining your brand story, or that story acronym that I was talking about, that's your narrative I described it. That's like the bigger picture, strategic sort of perspective. When I say then you figure out how to tell that story. That's the communications that come out of that. And the difference for me is, if you ever watch like a Pixar movie, you'll and if you've ever watched a Pixar movie with kids, with young people, you'll notice you laugh at parts of the movie and they laugh at parts of the movie. Very rarely are you laughing at the same parts of the movie or for the same reason over sure and and the reason I use that example is you can have a single brand, a single sort of narrative, and tell multiple stories to each of your audiences. So the Pixar like Shrek is about, you know, sort of the fact that love always wins, right? That's like the big narrative of Shrek, but you see that as an adult, and the kids kind of see that as well, but you can also tell that story with the notebook When Harry Met Sally, right? Like all these different movies that are very different from Shrek all have that same narrative. They're all very different stories. And so what I often sort of recommend folks do is build your narrative First, take time to do that, and then start looking at the stories that your audience is telling and the stories that are relevant to your audience, entertaining to your audience, engaging to your audience, that sort of helps move them through that relationship together. And typically, that's one stories about me, two, listening to stories about them, and then three, sharing stories about the two of us together, right? That's like the path of a traditional sort of relationship. When you first meet someone, you go on that first date, the first thing that you're doing is you're telling them about yourself and they're telling them about your themselves, right? And you're just exchanging stories, but then you get to a point where those stories merge and it becomes our stories, right? So there are very few stories I can tell now that don't include the rest of my family and vice versa. But when I first started dating my wife, I was just basically telling her about, oh, that crazy time in college I did x, or, you know what it was like at work today for me and things like that, but now those stories are sort of fully merged, and it's hard to separate them. And that sort of is where you can get to with those loyal customers, those loyal relationships that you have.
William Harris 38:50
Yeah, I like that. One of the things that you had told me it was either in person or in the book. I don't remember which one, was start collecting stories, right? So if you're a brand that's maybe younger, and you maybe aren't at a point where you can actually hire Kristian to do this, although I would say, like, right, don't forget that that's an option. But if you're not quite there yet, read the book and then start collecting stories. How does that help? By collecting stories, and what kind of stories should they be collecting?
Kristian Alomá 39:15
Yeah, you know, I was just telling this to a group at a workshop last night collect stories, because the the stories your customers are telling are what really defines your relationship with them. And when you collect those stories, what what the social science tell us and what advertising research tells us is testimonials are still the most powerful form of influence that we have. Totally human beings are most influenced by people who are like them, typically their closest friends and family. But even if it's just someone else, who's a suburban dad is on this commercial talking about a lawn mower they chose, right? I'm gonna be like, Yeah, I'm a suburban dad and I've got a lawn right? And so I'm gonna have this sort of immediate connection. So when we collect those stories, obviously there. The benefit of collecting them for feedback and product development and all that sort of stuff. But if you can collect those stories about the impact they've made on people's lives, the transformation they've gone through, the outcome of using your product or service, and you can then share those stories back, and if you can do so with permission, you know and share them like identified, or you can anonymize them and share them back out to the sort of the rest of the world you're ultimately teaching the new customers or the young customers. Here's what you could expect in a relationship with us, right? It's, it's like having your friend endorse you on a blind date. You kind of immediately begin with some credibility, because they've seen other people satisfied with your experience? Yeah,
William Harris 40:43
I like to think about it as whenever we talk about this back from, let's say, the link building days of SEO, I would always explain to people the idea of the different types of links that you're getting and not necessarily paying for links, just to clarify, but the way that you're trying to acquire links, and you're publishing different content to it with the hope of getting a link from these other sources. Is there's one that comes from, like the sheer amount of links. If Google, back when Google cared a lot more about that, if you had 100 links versus one link, that sheer amount carried some weight, even if it was lower Domain Authority links, then there's the very, very important links. And so it's like you get a link from the Wall Street. From the Wall Street Journal. You might have one link, but it's the Wall Street Journal, and it matters a lot. And so Google says that carries a lot of weight. And then there was the contextual ones, where, let's say that you were talking about a recipe a link from the Wall Street Journal not as relevant very, very authoritative, but it's not as relevant versus if it's coming from some other websites that are very relevant. So I think that there's like, this blend, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So there's this blend of these, and an example that I have of an ad recently that decimated every other ad in this account and was the best performing ad for it. To your point, when we're talking about, like, the testimonials in the let's just even call out influencers. It was a mom in her 50s who put this, this together. She is barely on social media as it is, and it was just her, just explaining how she uses the product and doing it. She is She is not somebody who typically, she is not an influencer. She is not somebody who is on one of those platforms like billow or something where they're trying to become influencers. Maybe they only have 5000 followers, but they're like, hey, I want to, I want to charge for making content. So they're just pumping out a bunch of stuff like this. This was a mom who has never been asked to do anything like this. Just heartfeltly sharing what's in this has crushed all the other ads in this particular ad account. And this is a we're spending a good amount of money on this $200 million brand. And I think the reason why influencer worked so well in the beginning is because it wasn't saturated in that way. Now, because it has become saturated, it loses some of that. But I think there's still when you see this come from the right person who isn't constantly just hocking product after product after product, it still carries a lot of weight in that absolutely, yeah, you
Kristian Alomá 43:11
know. And I think what's important about that example, and to your point, just, you know, the shift in the impact I think influencers have had is the human mind is very good at picking up nuance, right, like identifying if this is authentic or not, and that sort of thing. And, and, you know, the sort of social interaction was one of the best ways we exchanged information. And I mean, even just trusted relationships, trust was a thing that was about reputation, which is about what other people would say about you. So you could begin on the good foot with trust, if someone who trusted you said, this guy's pretty good, and they could kind of share that trust. Now, I think if I were to sort of a very kind of, you know, kind of Monday morning kind of analysis of what has sort of happened with the influencer industry, is when influencers first really sort of took off. We sort of saw them as really sort of authentic individuals, kind of telling stories, even if they were, in some cases promoted, they were at least sort of the sense that, like, you know, they're choosing the product, and they're trying to be as honest as possible, even in their promotion, that sort of thing. But to your point, because it got so flooded, and because we got so used to influencers, we learned how to tell that nuance apart. Even better, we kind of taught ourselves to sort of sort through the kind of paid influencer versus the quote, unquote unpaid influencer, or just basically the average Joe who's just sharing their perspectives on this product and and like, there's, you know, ways, like, often very subtle ways, we're like, oh, yeah, that is that's not a person that does this. This is a person that is just talking about their experience overall. I mean, I see it in the Amazon Video Reviews things like that. I can tell pretty quickly who's here just reviewing it because they're going to get a couple pennies for reviewing it, and who's here that's reviewing because they love. Whatever this thing was, right? And that's the one I'm looking for, right? I mean, that's the same thing in Google. I will, like, scroll through the first few pages sometimes, because I want to avoid the algorithm and see if I can find that average Joe with a blog of 10 followers who talked about this thing, and see what they think. Totally
William Harris 45:18
agree with you. There's one more thing that I want to call out on the professional side. And then professional side, and then I want to get into the personal side. Um, in your book, the very first line in your book, in the introduction, says, marketing makes me angry.
Kristian Alomá 45:33
Why it does? You know so many reasons. I mean, for one, one of the things that I think many of us know is the advertising industry. The marketing industry is one of the least trusted industries in the world, right? People think, I know. People think we're trying. We're lying to them all the time, right? And, and I don't blame them. I It's because a lot of people are, yeah, a lot of people totally are right, and, and, and for me, though, that can sometimes be the the perspective of just, you know, self promotion, which can sometimes just be seen as, you know, aggrand aggrandizing, or dramatic, or what have you, embellishing, if you will, which is okay, I think there's room for that. We if I think I'm a really great one, I'm going to tell my clients I'm really great at this, right? And this, right? And I might not have an official metric that sort of tells me that, but I think I'm pretty good. My clients think I'm pretty good. That's what I'm going to say, right? But what I've seen, and especially in the last 15 to 20 years as the social sciences have become a big part of marketing, as we've talked about behavioral economics and and behavior design and things like that, is we have started to leverage those insights to manipulate consumers, right? So you know that one of the big ones, right? The reason we have three sizes of most options is because most of the time we are psychologically biased to choose the one in the middle, right. And so what do some companies do? They create a ridiculous size bigger than what they want you to buy, just so it becomes the middle one, right? Sure. And so you sort of see these things that sort of happen that manipulate folks into, hey, do you ever just, what is it? My the one I hate is when dads are presented in commercials as like bumbling idiots that don't know how to share of their kids. And what are they doing? They're trying to make dads feel inferior so that, you know, you buy a product that can make it so that you're don't have to worry about your husband, you know, losing the kids somewhere, things like that, when women are made to feel ugly, so that they buy better makeup, or they buy different outfits or different clothing. And that's a huge issue on the social media platforms right now, and especially with the self confidence levels of young women in their teens and tweens. So it's those sorts of things where I'm like, I see those campaigns where they are using the insights that I have studied right, insights that I have shared, to manipulate a person into buying something, into signing up for something, into engaging with something. Right? My favorite when you look on the apps and you know the the big thing now is you see these ads for like this app, and they feature this video of a game, but that's not actually the game, right? It's, it's, it's just a video to get you to click, and it's actually something very different, that, to me, is manipulation, and that's why people don't trust honest, authentic companies out there that are trying to do the best thing for them, and so you have to sort of push harder. You have to tell these better stories, because people are sort of starting relationships with most brands and most businesses in a deficit. They expect you to give them more than they're going to give you, right off the bat, right and and the reason is, we are such a manipulative industry. Now, if you look at it the other way, and you say, okay, rather than manipulation, what if we could help these people sort of make meaningful changes in their lives? You know, get really sort of powerful, meaningful rewards from using our services solve major issues in their lives that help them sort of find greater, sort of moments of relaxation, or greater sense of connection with their family, whatever it may be, when we focus on sort of doing that, on offering that to them, we actually build relationships with them that are going to be much healthier, much more positive and last longer than the ones that feel as though they're constantly betraying their customers. And that, to me, is why marketing makes me angry so often, but why? I also think there's so much potential for the marketing industry to do so much more, not just more, but more good in the world, right, to make an impact on the world that is truly sort of positive, because we are as marketers of all kinds, whether you're in B to B. Or B to C, or you're in, you know, online digital sales, or you're in billboards, wherever it may be, we are in people's lives far more than just about anyone else, right. There is probably not a moment in your life, from when you wake up to you go to sleep that you are not interacting, looking at or near a brand in some way. And so what do we do with all of that privilege, right? I think we have to have a greater sense of responsibility around the way we treat these customers and the way we build our brand.
William Harris 50:28
It's so good, it's so good. It's also so hard. There's, there's constant demands for performance, right? Yeah. And, and if you, if you know how to do a magic trick, you're like sleight of hand. It's, it's so easy to fall into that trap. How? What are some practical ways that we could do a better job of being ethical in the way that we go about marketing? Yeah,
Kristian Alomá 50:56
you know, it's, it is tough, and it's, it's, it's going, I mean, and I want to say most brands aren't necessarily out there to maliciously manipulate customers. Ultimately, I think it's about starting from the top down and from the inside out and saying, Okay, what does our leadership care about in this organization? Do we are we measuring and penalizing our organization on quarterly sales, annual sales, or five year sales, lifetime sales, right? Are we? Are we measuring the value of our customers based on how much they spend this quarter or how much they spend in a lifetime overall? The longer we can sort of take those views of things, the less likely we're going to be pressured into a manipulative tactic that gets them to act right now, but may not necessarily ensure their stability for the long term. And that's why you see so much turnover in marketing, right? CMOS getting replaced so often, campaign heads getting replaced so often, because they come in, they do a thing that they think is right for the quarter, but then three quarters later, all those customers are gone, right? So that's that sort of is one thing. The other thing is just about like taking a step back to say, Okay, I often use the would I be pissed if someone did this to me? Or would I be pissed if someone did this to my child? Right? When I sort of project myself out of myself and into something else, right? And even those, those are sort of my own relationships. But I sort of say, Okay, this isn't about what I'm doing to a customer. What if this was my son at them, seeing them, right? When we sort of personalize the customer, when we really clearly sort of empathize with the customer, we are much less likely to want to take advantage of them overall. So that's why I think, like I'm in technically, the market research industry, the insights industry, and I consider it such a sort of a privileged role, because so many marketers very rarely actually, tangibly, physically see their customers. They see numbers, they see profiles online. They don't see an actual person. And the role of insights is to bring that person into the organization, not just for hey, here's who they are, so you can write a better campaign or develop a better product or come up with a better service, but also here's who they are, so you can build empathy for them as an engineer, as as a marketer, as a CMO, and that's that's probably at the heart of building an ethical and responsible brand
William Harris 53:24
you mentioned about especially your kid, and that one hit me the most. I like that. There's a song by John Foreman called somebody's baby. He goes, she's somebody's baby, somebody's baby girl, and she's somebody's baby still. And I like this. And he's, there's, there's actually, like, a, really, he starts talking about how this, this lady is homeless, and she's probably strung out on drugs. And then he goes on, she's somebody's baby, she's somebody's baby girl, yeah. And the thing that I like about that is, I, I've got three girls. My youngest is eight, and even now, at eight, a lot of our friends are like, Oh, we don't play with toys. We want makeup. We're just like, wait for some reason these eight year olds believe this lie that they're not pretty enough without makeup, or fancy enough, or whatever this might be. And so I can see the point of what you're saying, where let's even go beyond the eight year old. The reality is like the 40 year old. She's also still somebody's baby girl. There's still, like, potentially, a mom and a dad who are like, oh, I want my baby girl to still feel beautiful. She doesn't need that. And so thinking about how that is manipulative to a kid can help you maybe better understand how that is towards an adult. I think that's a really good call up
Kristian Alomá 54:43
years ago when my son Well, years ago, six years ago, when my son was 10, he told me advertising, or he said, It's called Marketing. Ads the best way to annoy people into buying your stuff, right? That was his perspective. Could at 10, right? Sure. And this is a generation. They weren't raised with televisions. They didn't get Netflix till they were older, like or even with Netflix, they weren't getting commercials very often. But he already knew what traditional advertising felt like and and it was about just basically annoying the person, till they do it. And, I mean, we all see it, right? How many times you go to read a newspaper article online and the drop down ad covers up half of it. There's a pop up playing of the being a video pops in the middle, shifts all the content. And I just want to see the ingredients. Yeah, you're just like, reading an article in like, the a box the size of a matchbox, just like scrolling through that between all the ads, I mean it, we don't think about our customer as often as I think we should in designing these things.
William Harris 55:46
Yeah, so moving from our kids to you as a kid, let's go into the personal side of who is Kristian Alomá. You're first generation American. Yeah, tell me a little bit more about your childhood and how you think has helped shape you to be who you are. Yeah, so
Kristian Alomá 56:04
I am. My family is Caribbean. My mother is Jamaican, my father's Cuban, and they were both teachers in Jamaica before moving to South Florida, where I was born. And it was, you know, sort of the kind of story of, you know, wanting to sort of make a kind of a better future for their kids, right, looking for opportunities that they we wouldn't have had, necessarily, growing up in Jamaica at the time. And so that meant they both were looking for jobs teaching. It took a while for them to do that. My father was a security guard, and he was awful at that. He he loved to bake, and so he started a bakery and a catering business, and so he was doing that. So there was always, there was always a job, right? I remember joking with like, my friends, the my job. I started working when I was old enough to look over the counter of my father's sandwich shop and hand people cookies for 50 cents, right? That's when I started working, and when they would pay me, I would take the quarters and run down to the arcade in the mall and play that and then come back and do it again, basically, right? And so what was always sort of, there was ownership, business, ownership, entrepreneurship, right? And, and, and really, sort of entrepreneurship. And kind of, it's before the.com era, which was like starting a business in a community that served the community right? Entrepreneurship nowadays is ultimately, sort of oftentimes about tech startups and exit plans and all that stuff. But this was like small business ownership that was about building legacy and about building sort of a foundation in the business. So I always saw that happening in my in growing up, right like even when they became teachers, there was still the sandwich shop and still the catering business and and all these sorts of things. And so I always knew I wanted to sort of do something like that, but I was not a chef or a baker by any means, and I loved business, but I also loved the creative arts. I loved performing and I loved theater and I loved writing, and so advertising was like the perfect mix for me. I was like, Oh, it takes creativity and applies like a business model over it, and that was really appealing to me. And so that's what started my career down, sort of into the marketing space. But I still always had that itch to be like, I want to define this for myself. I don't want to sort of be beholden to someone else or operating someone else's sort of frameworks or our models. And so finally, you know, I'd gotten my PhD. I was about to finish my PhD, and started my company called Threadline and and, it was that was seven years ago, I think, to this point, and it was this really sort of interesting moment I had, because I was like, Okay, I'm doing this thing that I've seen my family do for so long in a different scale, in a different space, in a different sort of platform. And the question to me became, how do I do it with the same sense of community and authenticity and care that my father put into the cakes in the in the bakery, my grandfather put into the service that when customers would come in and you'd be pouring them coffee and serving them sandwiches, you know, it was a family affair back then, and they all really cared about the people that came in. And so how do I do that in a consulting business, right? And in a business where you talk to other founders and other owners, and the main conversation is, how much did you grow last year, and how much are you growing this year? I'm like, how happy are your customers? Right? Like, what how many? How many customers came back? That's what I want to know. Like, what are they saying about you overall? Because for me, as long as I'm paying the mortgage and saving for college for the kids, like, that's enough. I don't I don't need to sort of have an exit plan and become, you know, a Boston Consulting Group of market research or anything like that. I just want to do a really good job and provide value to my clients. And it was in sort of going through that and doing that, and there was, I had this really sort of interesting moment, because my grandparents passed away, and. We had, like, their stuff in the house and whatnot. And I was visiting my parents back in South Florida, and I found this box in storage, and it was this small box with like, red and white stripes, and on the cover it said Phil's socks on it, like in a branded logo thing. And I asked my father about it, and he said, Well, when my grandparents were in Jamaica, they owned a clothing store, like a clothing manufacturing they made clothing, and one of the things they made was socks. And my grandmother, whose name was Philomena, her name became the brand of socks that they made. It was Phil's very cool overall. And so this, like sock box, because I guess socks were sold in boxes back then. This is, you know, the 60s, I guess this sort of beautiful looking, kind of retro sock spot. Sock box was the first brand of my family. And here I am now basically running an agency that helps build brands, right and and so it was just like full circle back to my Jamaican, Lebanese grandmother of sort of being the first brand of our family. And I sort of picked that mantle back up and and sort of kind of kept going. And that, again, was sort of where it all started, where this sort of sense of not just running a business, and that was running a business that does market research, but how I run this business is what's sort of
William Harris 1:01:18
most important to me. That's a wild story, and what a legacy. That's really cool, that your grandma started this business and sold that you're talking about cakes. I can't help but now say this made me hungry. So no, want something yum? Would you get that? If I say that, if you want what? Want? Yum.
Kristian Alomá 1:01:41
You want. Something you want? Yeah, right,
William Harris 1:01:45
yeah. Jamaican from hungry, man,
Kristian Alomá 1:01:47
there you go. That's right. Says, I mean, I don't know if you have background Jamaica, but I mean, if we need to co switch this interview
William Harris 1:01:55
into Jamaican, you'll, you'll beat me pretty quickly. I've been to Jamaica. Buddy of mine was from Jamaican, so I used to have him teach me all kinds of things, just so I could sound a little more authentic. Yeah, it
Kristian Alomá 1:02:07
You have to get sanaki on Saltfish and, you know. And really do it up, right, you know? But, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I do miss the accent. I miss, I miss Jamaicans in general. There aren't a ton of chickens in Chicago area compared to South Florida, of course. But yeah, we try to go back. And we want to take the kids back more, so that they can kind of get exposed to that, because there's, it's a beautiful island, and we used to go every summer when I was a kid and and so, you know, I was surprised hearing it come out of your mouth. I'm not gonna lie. So it took me a moment to kind of catch what you were saying there for a sec. But no, that's okay. My code switched back into it. So,
William Harris 1:02:48
yeah, well, and then you took it way further than I can go. There's you talked about how you like, you know, the arts and everything too. One of the poems I always like asking people, like, if there's a quote and you're like, not necessarily a quote that I love to live by. That I love to live by, but a poem. Yeah, the poem that you brought up was if by Rudyard Kipling, right, yeah. Take me through a little bit of this poem. You don't need to recite it unless you have this part of it that you want to recite. But like, Why do you love this poem? Why is this a poem that you live by?
Kristian Alomá 1:03:20
So if the poem itself is is one that my mother gave me a copy of when I graduated college, and if you don't know the poem, it's a poem that goes through a series of ifs essentially, and in the end, says, if you've overcome all of these things, then you will be a man, my son. And so it was this sort of like crossing of a threshold that my mother kind of connoted to me and and the things that were so, so powerful about it and that I still carry with me today. And there's sort of, I think, four key lines, but there's a, I mean, it's a beautiful poem from start to finish, but one is, if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same, which talks about whether you're having a great deal of success or you're failing, which all of us are going to do. Do you just keep going? Right? Are those two things are the same? They're imposters in our lives. It's not about whether you're triumphing or you're having a disaster in your life at that time. It's about the way you're sort of living through that life. So that line always sticks with me, if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same, and then the other one that actually have on my little bulletin board over here as well was is really sort of about my own sense of self confidence in running a business. Because if you want to test your resilience and mental health, start a business, right? Like you want to test your sense of confidence, start a business. And the line says, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too, right? So if you can believe in yourself well enough, but also not sort of ignore the feedback that you get. From the world around you that is sort of what success really is. That sort of is how you kind of navigate the world in a really successful way. So that poem is, is a poem that I sort of, I reread probably once a year at least, I share, sometimes with my coworkers at, you know, annual meetings and things like that, because it's one that I think is, is one that is really about sort of resilience and and, and confidence and, and just sort of authenticity, essentially in in being who you are.
William Harris 1:05:28
I got goosebumps when you read that second line, especially because, as an entrepreneur myself, it's like, oh, man, so true. Yeah, that's good. What about what's something that makes you cringe? In general, there anything that you're just like, I don't think we need this product. It's dumb, or this, yeah,
Kristian Alomá 1:05:52
I mean, the cringiest thing for me. So there's something that makes me physically cringe, which is nail files. I just can't stand them.
William Harris 1:05:59
I hate I can't either that is interesting. Like, yes, my family
Kristian Alomá 1:06:03
knows to not nail file around me, you know, that sort of thing. But
William Harris 1:06:10
misophonia, are you that way with any other sounds? No, no, I
Kristian Alomá 1:06:13
don't just sound, yeah, just that way. And it's almost like I can feel the sound. Yeah, it's sort of a different level for some reason. So nail files, I guess, is the biggest thing for me at the moment. Yeah, you know, every now and then I'm like, Oh God, do we even need some of these social media platforms, right? Destroying our lives and stuff
William Harris 1:06:35
like Mastodon, that was the other one we were trying to think of. That was it just came I've been
Kristian Alomá 1:06:40
playing Fortnite a lot, and mega Ladon is one of the characters in Fortnite recently. So that was on my head. And my daughter loves sharks, and so there's the megadon Shark. Yeah, yeah. So that one, gosh, I can't think if there's any others that I have seen recently, and I'm like, why does that exist? I I'm probably in the era of my life now, according to my children, where I am the cringe.
William Harris 1:07:04
So you wear short socks. Things
Kristian Alomá 1:07:07
that I do are cringe. Yeah, I wear ankle socks. I pause before videos begin, to make sure it's recording, you know, things like that, I write BRB, I guess so I'm doing the cringe things now, so I am the cringe.
William Harris 1:07:23
That's funny. That's good. One of the things that I really like talking about with people is how they're up arrowing their personal life. And I use up arrow because it's a mathematical thing about taking numbers way bigger than exponentiation, yeah, but it's just the idea. It's like, how are you methodically trying to improve your personal life. I know that you're trying to do that with your business. And business, you set quarterly goals and all these rocks and roadmaps. Are there things in your personal life that you are intentionally trying to improve absolutely
Kristian Alomá 1:07:52
and a couple of things, and I try to sort of build streaks, basically, behavior. And actually, I think I use an app called streaks as well to sort of try them. And the ones that I'm sort of focused on most, gosh, how many years ago? It's probably like three or four years ago. I a few buddies and I had, like, a mini book club, and we read Shackleton, which is a story about an Arctic adventurer who managed to rescue all of the crewmates on his ship from when they were stuck in the ice. But one of the things, the reason that story can be told is because they kept a diary.
William Harris 1:08:32
And yeah, I was gonna say that's a real one. That's not a native story. That's a real story,
Kristian Alomá 1:08:35
yeah, for sure. And so they kept a diary. You know, all of them actually kept diaries, like pretty much daily. And after I read that, I started just keeping a diary, a digital one in my phone. So every night, before bed, I do that, and I'm probably I've been doing that now I think I've had like 2000 consistent entries, basically, overall. So how many every years that is? It's like six, maybe five years, or something like that. But so there's that one I try to journal every day. I started trying to just write something creative every day, right? And it's oftentimes really crappy poetry, to be honest, but I'm just like, I just want the exercise of doing it. I When I finished my PhD work, and I finished the my company became a B Corp, and that was a big of a process. And so I promised myself, when that was done, I would start learning piano. So I'm learning piano through there's an online app that you can hook up to a keyboard and sort of go through that. So I'm learning that, and I'm the two hands doing different things. Has always been a real struggle. Like, I've always kind of known how to play, like, you know, Deck the Halls of my right hand, sure, but now you're like, getting into like, two handed play, and it's, it's, I'm feeling my brain rewire, essentially, yeah, and then my family, as a family, were big Duolingo users, and so, like, my kids are learning German. I think right now I'm a master Spanish. I speak Spanish, but I'm not, like, you know. Whatever the highest level of fluency is. So I'm like, trying to improve that. My wife has been learning Dutch, which is like a language that isn't, like a massive language, so doesn't even have a ton of resources. And so I learned that a little bit with her as well, and and, you know, so I'm always like trying to do something like that, obviously, exercise. And, you know, I'm at the age now where it's like, it really does catch up the things that my parents say, like, it's true. I can't not exercise if I want to, basically just feel good. So I'm trying to, like, keep exercising. And we actually just started last week a family competition to see who closes our rings the most number of times over the next month. Very cool. And whoever does gets to choose, like a weekend adventure, basically. And I think I'm in second place at the moment. My wife is dominating, nice as she does,
William Harris 1:10:50
but that's your, yeah. I mean, that's a whole lot of things you're being very intentional about, all of which I like. Also love. Duolingo, the one that I'm going through right now is Italian, but I've gone through a lot of those. I love learning languages. I like that you've got the poetry, though consistently. I I love poetry. I've written lots of poems over the years, but I haven't written a poem in a while, but I almost I'm gonna swap some poems. I'm gonna send you some stuff. I want you to send me some of your stuff. I think it'd be fun to read. Yeah, the one I'd say this is the, probably the most recent one I wrote, and it's maybe even a decade ago. But it was about, I like incorporating some really different things. So this one is about a disease called bovine spongiform encephalopathy. So it was Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy is a disease that afflicted my dear friend Kathy in humans. It's called Kreis felt Jacob's disease, and it's not something you get from carrots or peas. So I was trying to write one just because, oh, man, that's fantastic.
Kristian Alomá 1:11:48
I love that. Yeah, we well, we should start a marketing poetry club. I think I like it. Just start exchanging stuff
William Harris 1:11:56
Kristian. It's been absolutely amazing talking to you. I feel like I've learned a lot and connected with you. If there's any way that people want to work with you or follow you? What's the best way for them to get in touch and stay in touch?
Kristian Alomá 1:12:07
Yeah. I mean, they can find Threadline on the web@threadlinebranding.com They can find me on the web as an author at kristianAlomá.com otherwise, the best way to just directly communicate with me is probably through LinkedIn, like, connect with me. I'll accept the connection, and we can start a conversation and go from there. And otherwise, the book is available@kristianAlomá.com or all the booksellers online. Essentially, you can get it just about anywhere, as well as audiobooks. So if my voice did not irritate you, you can listen to me read the book as well.
William Harris 1:12:39
You did your own audio for it
Kristian Alomá 1:12:40
audio. Yeah, that's cool learning experience, because there's if most of us hate the sound of our own voice, we just have to listen to yourself speak for a day. And so, yeah, I did that as
William Harris 1:12:53
well. That's pretty cool. Well, Kristian, I really appreciate you coming on, sharing your time, sharing your wisdom with us.
Kristian Alomá 1:12:58
Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.
William Harris 1:13:00
Yeah, thank you everyone for tuning. In hope you have a great rest of your day. Rest of your day.
Outro 1:13:04
Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.