Peer Effect

Revolutionising Local Marketing and Creating a Shared Vision, with Alex Nocifera

• James Johnson • Season 3 • Episode 18

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Imagine a simple observation in a Starbucks queue changing the trajectory of your entire career.

In this episode of Peer Effect, we delve into the mind of Alex Nocifera. Alex's entrepreneurial journey started back in 2005, with the inception of his first venture, Ripple TV. 

Almost 20 years and four tech companies later, Alex is now leading LOMA, pioneering new ways to integrate digital strategies into physical locations to redefine customer engagement.

Together, we explore:

  • How Alex's approach to local advertising has reshaped multi-location brand interactions.
  • Techniques for assembling and nurturing a team that shares your vision and drives business forward.
  • Alex shares his strategies for balancing innovation with practical execution to ensure business resilience and growth.

For more practical insights, follow Alex Nocifera on LinkedIn!

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Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com


Speaker 1:

Is your startup designed to weather any storm? The key might just be in the places you least expect. Today, on Peer Effect, we're diving into the transformative world of local marketing with Alex Nosofera, founder and CEO of Loma. Alex's approach to integrating digital strategies into physical locations is redefining customer engagement and sales for multi-unit brands globally. If it's your first time tuning in, I'm James Johnson and I coach Series A plus founders to take back control so they can take their business further and live a great life. You're listening to Peer Effect, the podcast that fuels you with new ideas and inspiration through interviews with founders and experts who've made it happen. I think the other thing is, as a founder, you're giving so much energy to those around you Over time. You're an energy deficit and the only people that can really refuel you are, I think, other founders, because they're the only one who really get what you're going through.

Speaker 2:

Right, it's true, it really is true. Yeah, I mean, and it's such a gnarly rough ride. The undulations and the ups and the downs are just so constant and continuous that you just sometimes need a little refresher, a constant refresher of like oh yeah, I got this right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for everyone else. It's kind of like definitely first world problems Poor you, you've got a big successful business, god your life sucks. World problems poor you, you've got a big successful business, god your life sucks. So, uh, most places like it's kind of the origin story of your origin story and so the origin story of the business sure you know, I have been in los angeles for almost 25 years and, um, I'm originally from phoenix, arizona.

Speaker 2:

I moved out here after college for work. There was a. It was a great opportunity for a company based out of Silicon Valley that was opening up their LA office and that company had a big successful outcome in 2001, before, kind of, the market crashed in the second half of the year. And I don't know, I was a low man on the totem pole in that company. I was just in business development and, in essence, you know, I think, actually playing a pretty meaningful role and, like now that I think about it as an entrepreneur, I was a sales guy on the front lines, in essence contributing to this top line story.

Speaker 2:

And I don't think a lot of people realize in the startup community, even if you're a low man, every inch of growth and development are massive to a company of that stage and size. Either way, something gave me the confidence that I could start my own company, and this was 2005. At this point I was waiting in line at a Starbucks and this was before everyone's holding a smartphone, rudely staring at the smartphone, and I just sort of observed there was a line out the door, everything sort of the stars aligned in that. The cost of plasmas were coming down, they were becoming more readily available, thinner form factors all this Having grown up in Phoenix. The outdoor advertising world, for whatever reason, was sort of centered in Phoenix, like at the time CBS outdoor clear channel based in Phoenix, and so we had some friends of the family who were higher level executives at these companies and I had overheard at some point some family outing or something that outdoor was gonna go digital okay. So, just like, like, all of a sudden waiting in line at a Starbucks, plasma screens coming down in cost.

Speaker 2:

Then the distributed internet was happening and at the time, if you remember, they used to have these. They called them the CDMA wireless cards. You'd put it into your laptop and it would pick up a signal and then you could, you know, email and browse, et cetera. And it would pick up a signal and then you could email and browse, etc. Well, that light bulb created a company called Ripple TV and that was the first company that I had started and it was a TV network for retail that when you went inside a store and you were waiting, the brand you were in the retail environment you were in in this case a Starbucks would have a TV network that was localized and the concept was all about local context. In this case, with me in Los Angeles, I was like it would be great to have, like, the traffic report there, because, again, we didn't have smartphones then, and it would be great to know what the stock market was doing, what the surf report was for that area in Los Angeles. So all this like local content. And then the content was the real sort of origination and local.

Speaker 2:

But what got born out of that was really a three tiered advertising model. We'd sell local ads to real estate agents, art galleries, car dealerships, et cetera, regional ads and national ads, once you've built up enough critical mass and audience. And that journey, you know, I was fortunate to raise capital, institutional capital, from really tier one venture capital funds Trinity Ventures and DFJ, which is now Threshold and we were successful in achieving building a big distribution network. We had Seattle's Best, which was owned by Starbucks. We had Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. We had Jack in the Box, burger King. We had signed up over 15,000 locations, all branded, and that was our distribution. That was the way we were going to build a big audience. That was how I became an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2:

And that was a big part of the pitch to the retail distribution side of the business, which was let us build you a TV network that will customize, personalize to your demographic that you're serving. It'll help operations take some heat off the time it takes to make products and that was why we were so successful in signing up 15,000 storefronts in Ripple TV's journey.

Speaker 1:

So what is a unique, hard-won insight that you would share with other founders, and what's the story behind it?

Speaker 2:

I mean acquiring good talent. Keeping good talent to me is by far, but by far, the hardest variable in the formula of being an entrepreneur. I mean, in order to recruit talent, you've got to sell your vision. You've got to sell a confidence and a conviction that you're building something that they want to join you in this journey. That's, without question, going to be very hard until it gets not hard right. So, locking arms with other individuals who might not always have an alignment on how to get to that that achieved path, but by far to me, talent acquisition and talent retention is the most challenging.

Speaker 2:

Talent acquisition and talent retention is the most challenging. You don't have the metrics, you don't have the textbook answers, you don't have the perfect definitions of product market fit. You know your business isn't a pure spreadsheet just yet. You know it's all about vision, it's all about the future and I think that's very hard to align with other individuals on a path. And I think the most important advice always is to really be up front with those expectations that these are forecasts, these are assumptions. I'll explain how I got to this assumption, but remember it's an assumption. But remember it's an assumption. You know when you're dealing with other people's time and financial security and role.

Speaker 1:

In comes ego and in comes, you know, liability and all these important things and I think that's what makes the talent variable so challenging when you go in as an entrepreneur the talent variable so challenging and when you go in as an entrepreneur, is there a particular person or instance that really brought this home to you, or how you craft this pitch to people?

Speaker 2:

well, I, I feel like I've been so lucky to have worked with such like insanely smart, wonderful people. I mean, I, I feel like the number is pretty large at this point. I'll tell you a real time one. Brett Campbell was a customer from a company, field Day, which is still up and running. I'm the chairman of that company but when I was CEO, brett was one of our first big customers. He was the vice president of field marketing at Tropical Smoothie and Brett and I just very much aligned on a vision for what local awareness and local marketing could yield for a brand's benefit. And that relationship started five plus years ago. You know, we always sort of stayed in contact.

Speaker 2:

And then a couple of years ago I reached out to Brett with my current company, loma, and went to Brett and said, you know, before Loma became Loma and started asking him as a customer constituent the voice of the customer, you know, kind of peppering him with questions.

Speaker 2:

The voice of the customer, you know kind of peppering them with questions. You know it was little I had known at that point. It was sort of unintentionally interviewing as sort of a co-founder, you know, just sort of feeling out philosophically, feeling out family situation Would he be capable of doing a startup and then at some point, I think that the intersect connected and it was like hey, brett, you want to go build this company with me? And you know that was sort of a co-founding conversation and that that that was, in essence, my indirect recruitment of his talent, his experience, and now I feel very lucky to have him as a uh, as a co-founder on this journey for Loma. And I think the importance, jj, of what you're going towards is just like the alignment of timing, the alignment of stage, the alignment of mission. We have a direct alignment on those things and I think that's what makes?

Speaker 2:

us good teammates at the end of the day and I think if you can find that at front and expectation with your teammates, it should go better than most. It's'm always going to go great, but it's I mean.

Speaker 1:

I think your batting average will be higher in those scenarios where you set the right expectations up front and is it fair to say that if you can sort of get ahead of your hiring, needs almost be looking for your next key hire before you are actively looking for them?

Speaker 2:

I mean, I'm always thinking about the next hire.

Speaker 2:

Just you know if it's growth, who can help us acquire new customers?

Speaker 2:

Who can you know two ends of growth, who can help land new logos and new relationships, and then who can help our customers succeed and grow new logos and new relationships, and then who can help our customers succeed and grow, you know? So this sort of like you know, sort of traditional business development profile and then more of a customer success profile, but both have sort of a massive impact on our growth trajectory in the coming years, and so those are two roles I'm always thinking about. And then, on the development side, always thinking about you know, what ends of the stack do we need help on? Yeah, so I think there's always, I feel like the three areas that you've always got to be. They never can go off Talent, investors and customers. Right, you just can never turn those three constituents off, and I feel like I probably in my earlier years, would pull back on some as I pushed forward on some, but the reality is you've got to stay steady, always on with all three of those constituents.

Speaker 1:

And what does always on look like, let's say, let's say the, take the talent constituency, because that's what we're looking at, what does practically always on look like. If you were to say to other founders try this.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is probably my most uncomfortable area. It's just, you really truly have to be networking a lot. Every single time I go to a network event, I resist, I kick and scream and then when I come home I say I'm glad I did that because I met someone new. I met, you know, I met someone who knows someone I've got. I got to meet, I got some perspective on a problem. I learned about a new book. Got to meet, I got some perspective on a problem. I learned about a new book.

Speaker 1:

Uh, you know just, there's always something good that comes out of interacting with this like ecosystem of ours I think a lot of founders, once you get past series a, there's maybe you've got more of a team around you to get stuff done, but there's certainly the sense of is it really work like? Is networking work if your head's not down, if you're not in the business? This idea of just allowing yourself the space to be on the business, to be outside the business and recognizing that because all three of those things customers, investors, people that's largely an external focus rather than internal one that's a good, it's a really good point and I think that's right.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I feel like you know, I I remember one of my investors early on. He felt it was inefficient on us being out there externally so much and so often and my position around that was that the upside and the downside like there was much more upside that was presented versus the downside of maybe losing an hour that we could be doing something else more, you know, sort of productive. I feel like, again, in the spirit of balance you know the team, you've got to have someone have more of an internal focus that we're getting the productivity and the efficiencies and the time maximization out of our out of our base, out of our employee base, and then, at the same time, on the external perspective, we're continuing to fill the pipeline with those three constituents. We're adding new talent, customers and investor prospects.

Speaker 2:

I think the investor prospects is one that I'll forever be sort of bad at, in the sense of that's one that you're really truly supposed to be always doing. You should always be raising money in some sense. Even if you're not raising money and I struggle with that one. For sure, my gears go when I have like a real storyline, and so you create this narrative in a fundraising capacity of like, look, we're going to go out and raise five million bucks on this growth path, that where we get to a 10 million in annualized revenue, and it becomes this like story and you take that story and you go talk to people. Instead, you should always have a story to talk to people about and that's, you know, the general disruption of what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

Um, and I think that's a that's. It's very hard for me. That still remains very hard to me. I'm usually going and talking to investors when I need to raise money, but that's the wrong answer. The reality is, us entrepreneurs need to be talking to investors all the time, just so that, once you do go to a formal fundraise, they know who you are. They know already about the product, all the traction and the progress you've made since the last time you checked in etc. So definitely advice I need to give myself on being out there more often on the investor front.

Speaker 1:

I think the great thing is there's always so much advice we can keep on giving ourselves right yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, you know, I think at this age and stage I feel like I can. I'll be my harshest critique at this point. I mean I feel like I know what I'm good at and know what I'm not good at, but I definitely that's one that I need pinned up in front of me everywhere I go, just like always be raising, you know, always be raising, you know, always be talking to investors. I think authenticity, when you have a deep conviction around a problem, you know I think you're going to get exposed. If it's not that the lack of depth will get exposed at some point. I mean, you can, you can narrate your way around it at first, but at some point, unless you have the depth of the problem, the sort of breadth of the constituent in pain. So what you're building for I don't care if it's a consumer product or a business-to-business type product the thing I have a lot of confidence in is one as an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2:

I have stayed in the same lane for two decades now. I have gone deep on offline commerce, in essence, and you know. So I feel like, when the term gets thrown around, as a serial entrepreneur. Yes, I love the startup journey. I love the zero to 60. I love the talent, the experience, the journey, but what I feel strong about from an external, especially on the growth side, is just a real deep conviction and authenticity around the problem that you're solving.

Speaker 2:

And I do meet with lots of entrepreneurs. When I hear someone just kind of have a whims of an idea and it's a good idea I still struggle. My worry is what goes up fast, comes down fast. You know, take your time. You know I mean the more data, the more hits I'm meaning slap downs, losses, failures. It's just building stronger tissue on a product or a service that you're creating to solve a problem. So I think it's not the answer anyone likes to hear in today's society, which is not the quick answer, it's not the quick solve, it's more of the play long on the problem that you're solving.

Speaker 1:

So does that mean in some ways you feel like you say you've been doing the same problem for 20 years? It's almost like you've been through multiple startups, multiple versions of the same startup and you're solving the same problem, but in very different ways each time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, you know, in offline commerce, particular to my tenure as an entrepreneur, offline commerce is this massively fragmented world. I mean, in the United States there's three and a half million storefronts physical brick and mortar storefronts and you know, company one was we leveraged those storefronts, we leveraged their real estate, in essence to build an audience network that we sold to three dimensions of tight buyers big, national, regional and local buyers. The value to this offline commerce brand was to help them monetize their real estate because they were getting a revenue share of that advertising. Create a better experience.

Speaker 2:

One of the challenges we saw with our ad revenue and this was at a larger, more systemic shift in the advertising world was the term. Attribution was really starting to cook at that point and we were a digital billboard for the most part. It wasn't TV, you weren't planted on a couch, it know, it wasn't like this one-to-one long-term experience. It was more, more pass by and ad buyers were asking for attributable evidence and I was just like, well, that's funny, I mean that's, that's pretty crazy. How are you going to really know? You know it's just about awareness. But either way, I I company number two sort of swung to the other end and I was like you know what I'm doing mobile advertising where I could tell you if someone clicks on your ad and I could tell you if someone shares it and I could tell you if someone likes it, and so it was a very different take. On the offline commerce, we targeted brands with stores and the whole pitch was like. Pitch was like we're going to take your message and just nuke a mobile audience nearby a store across all these different you know. You know at the time it was display ads on browsers and this would be again before in-app ads, but it was a different problem, but for the same constituent. And then company. Number three is live and it's insanely different. Which is field day is a marketplace of 1099 workers that do local marketing tasks. So, jj, I, you know, a field day ambassador could take a gift, a flyer, some marketing collateral to your business to try to build awareness for a product or service. But we use humans as the last mile delivery mechanism and they're 1099 workers. It's a lot of moms, it's a lot of students and they make a great hourly wage and we've got about 7,000 live brand ambassadors throughout the United States. But again, we help brands with storefronts deliver last mile awareness.

Speaker 2:

And then my fourth company here today is Loma, lomaplatformcom, and we, I guess, took this amalgamation of all the things we've learned over the years, took this amalgamation of all the things we've learned over the years and we said let's build software that lets them sort of command control centrally to say you know, I've got this local budget that focuses on every storefront that I operate. Let me spend money across different channels. Maybe those ambassadors would be one of the channels, maybe I want to run a billboard, maybe I want to run some direct mail, maybe I want to buy an ad on Snapchat or Meta or Nextdoor. And so it has this marketplace. Loma's agnostic. We're not in the media business, we're just a platform that sits between brands and all these local channels on ways to reach audiences. So it's sort of this amalg of the learnings over these years. They've all been very years but varied. They've all been very different but focused on the same constituent.

Speaker 2:

So I know this constituent well, I know their world's really hard because of this fragmentation, lack of systems, and I would say the real root problem that I think is underlying in all four companies is the lack of attribution, and that's what Loma is trying to solve and the lack of attribution.

Speaker 2:

And that's what loan was trying to solve. And the lack of attribution would say hey, if I, if I bought ads in your area of london and tried to generate traffic inside this storefront, it's very hard to attribute what worked and drove jj to go into this storefront. It's very hard so it's near impossible. The reality is that you can tell if you had more transactions, higher ticket averages and, in essence, sales went up or down during a certain time period, so you could do some analysis of where you spent money during this time period versus that time period and do some controlled testing. It's a long-winded way of saying the journey has evolved the solution, but remain the same on the same constituent. Journey has evolved the solution but remain the same on the same constituent um. So I just feel like again there's a deep, authentic, empathetic understanding of this person in pain and it sounds like.

Speaker 1:

So you've got to really like that constituent and understand to want to spend 20 years in as well, this idea of this authenticity and conviction and being in it for long term, not rushing it. So there must be enjoyment in there as well, this kind of conviction plus enjoyment yeah, or sickness, right, I mean.

Speaker 2:

No, I'm kidding, you know, I, I, I would say I, I think, as you ask that, and it's like look, do I in spirit of empathy, do I empathize with this underdog? Because the underdog here is a marketer at an offline commerce brand and the marketer, I feel like, has been a bit hamstrung. They haven't had the systems, they don't have the resources and support. Why? Because they've never really been able to tell the truth on how their marketing decisions yielded results. And between companies, one and two.

Speaker 2:

I spent time at a brand based here in Los Angeles by the name of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. They're pretty prevalent in London and they were such wonderful people, smart, and I just remember really learning firsthand that there's someone in charge of real estate and they're, I kind of feel like, the most important people because they're going to pick where you're going to put your, your locations, to generate revenue, and the real estate component of that is so wildly complex. It's like densities of demographics, the way traffic patterns flow, the number of parking spots, the size of the actual place of business, and there's all these factors, and so I felt like that constituent was in this room, then the head of operations which feels like even though the real estate is the most impactful, but the most important is the head of operations, which feels like, like, even though the real estate is the most impactful, but the most important is the head of operations that if you can't hire great staff inside these stores and create a positive customer experience, that you're doomed okay.

Speaker 2:

And then there's this marketing person, so you have, like, the the head of real estate, the head of operations and the head of marketing, and I know when it and I know when it goes right they all raise their hand and says because it was my marketing, it was because of my operations, or it's because of the real estate we selected.

Speaker 2:

But when it goes wrong, they were all pointing at each other of like, oh, you didn't market it right or operate right, or this is a bad location. But here's the truth the marketing gets cut first all the time, so they're the highest churn role in these type organizations and it's really, again, lack of systems, lack of attributable evidence and lack of resources. So I do feel like my 20 I don't necessarily know if it's it's the likability or enjoyment of like my interactions with this constituent. It's truly the like. I feel something in me as, like fellow underdogs, that they need help in making them the longest tenured average executives inside these organizations and I I, uh, I feel like we're getting there I'm curious what do you think gave you that sort of association, sympathy for these underdogs?

Speaker 2:

you know, I guess I, you know, when you're the middle child and you know you just would, uh, have a brother who's five years older and you know you get thrown around like a rag doll, I think you've got a little bit of an underdog in you. Um, I, I don't know, I joked that it was a sickness, but like it when I tell you they're the highest churn role, that doesn't make our job easier. You know, we'll definitely. I can't tell you the number of times we've started to build a relationship with JJ and then JJ's gone and then you've got to.

Speaker 2:

You know, you, in the enterprise world, you know that's, it's, it's not good because the new person comes in with their own playbook. You've got to reset a bunch of stuff and um, and so I, I, I, I don't know, I think it's. You know, I, I uh, definitely love an underdog story. Those are my favorite books and those are my favorite movies and I feel like maybe at some point I'll look back in my journey as an entrepreneur and I'll I'll, I'll have achieved, like, this goal of making them a longer tenured executive inside these organizations. I feel like we had an impact on that underdog story and our own underdog story.

Speaker 1:

In today's episode with Alex Nosifera, we dove into how balancing innovation and practical action is crucial for entrepreneurs. Alex highlighted the need for a clear vision that's backed by a solid plan, as well as the importance of understanding your business niche deeply. He also underscored the role of a dependable team in sustaining growth and how keeping strong industry connections and being adaptable are key to navigating the ups and downs of business. Tune in next week to explore more practical insights, stories and lessons from founders and experts who have already walked the path and learned the hard lessons, so you don't have to.

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