Rick Denton (00:20)
Hey there, CX Passport listeners. Today's guest has a background that doesn't show up on this pod very often. Alyssa Nolte built her career on consumer psychology and behavior research. Things like eye tracking, presidential campaign advertising, the science of what moves people from curious to committed to coming back. She now runs Ology Collective, where she helps companies understand how their customers actually buy, not how they assume.

their customers buy. And if you've seen her on LinkedIn, you know she also holds the self-proclaimed title of notorious plant killer, which says something about how she thinks about attracting the right people into her world. Alyssa, welcome to CX Passport.

Alyssa Nolte (01:07)
I am beyond excited to be here.

Rick Denton (01:09)
Yes, and I needed just from the very beginning mention. I was a guest on Alyssa's podcast, which will be in the show notes of this one. If you don't know it, get yourself over to Alyssa's podcast immediately because it is a fantastic show. I had a blast being a guest and there's a lot of great other episodes as well. Alyssa, consumer psychology, eye tracking, presidential campaigns. I gotta tell you, I simply do not get into those topics in CX Passport very often and it's an unusual path into the commercial world.

What surprised you most about how businesses actually think about buyer behavior?

Alyssa Nolte (01:44)
I think what surprised me is that we all have a really hard time of stepping out of our own experiences. We make assumptions, we build things, we get used to these acronyms and these words that we use and we forget that our buyers do not care at all about any of that. They will never think about you as much as you think about yourself.

Rick Denton (01:50)
Hmm.

that last part, the jargon part, right, is certainly part of it. Regardless of the industry, whether it is a hotel, an airline, or the restaurant that you're going to, there's a jargon that exists. But that idea of we as customers just really aren't thinking about the brand that much. Why do you think brands fall into that trap of assuming the customer really, really cares about that brand?

Alyssa Nolte (02:35)
When you're surrounded by people who feel and think and act the same way that you do, it's a self-reinforcing cycle, right? It's no different than if you grow up in small town Iowa where I'm from, where the butter cow at the state fair and corn becomes the center of our universe. I will think about corn more than anyone who has ever lived in Texas, for example. I guarantee you have thought about corn more than you have ever thought about corn. And...

Rick Denton (02:40)
Mm.

Ha ha!

I bet so.

Alyssa Nolte (03:02)
That's because I live in a self-reinforcing cycle where it is what's discussed, it is what's talked about, it's what drives our economy, and it's the center of our world because it's the center of how we make money here in Iowa. It is no different inside of your business. So no matter how hard you try to step out, you will always care more about that business. And it is really, really hard for us to say to ourselves, to our team, hey, the customer actually does not care at all about our business. They only care about themselves.

The way we feel about our brand is the way they feel about themselves. So the only way to create experiences that are for your customer is to separate yourself from the things that you care about and work really hard to be empathetic to what your customer cares about.

Rick Denton (03:48)
So what are some tactical ways that a company or forget a company, companies really are just collections of individual humans. So what's a way that that individual human inside that ecosystem that's here and all about corn, how can they step out of that corn infused world?

Alyssa Nolte (04:04)
you need to literally step out of that world, right? So the best way for me to describe it is if I grow up in Iowa and all I think about is corn, the best thing I can do is go to a big city and experience an entirely different ecosystem. We have to find ways to exit our own echo chambers. And that's one of the reasons I had you on my podcast, because I normally talk to salespeople and I normally talk to people who work in marketing. But the only way for me to think through a

Rick Denton (04:16)
Mm.

Alyssa Nolte (04:33)
total customer experience is to talk to people who don't think and breathe and live the world that I live. So talk to people who work in HR and think about employee experience. Talk to people who work in completely different industries. One of my best conversations came from someone who does digital marketing for blue collar roles in Australia. And it has nothing to do with my business. I've never met this person before, but they had such different perspectives that

Rick Denton (04:56)
No.

Alyssa Nolte (05:01)
When I stepped outside of my own experiences, I was able to connect, okay, this is how this applies to me. This changed my perspective. That lifelong learner approach has to be the way we approach everything if we wanna be successful.

Rick Denton (05:13)
Mm-hmm.

Is there, huh, is there something about our Western approach to productivity? And I'm really stepping out on a limb here. I'm not sure where we're going with this, but there's something about productivity and efficiency, which has been a huge part of my career back in the past. Is that a barrier to some of the things you're talking about of stepping out and getting that new input?

Alyssa Nolte (05:43)
I think absolutely. I had someone that I used to work with who would get very upset if the team wasn't quote unquote maxed at all times, right? If you're not a hundred percent productive, then therefore what are we even doing here? And I would argue that we need our teams at all times to be no more than 80 % maxed because we need 20 % of our time for curiosity and wonder and re-imagining and reconnecting. And if you're only ever focused on

Rick Denton (05:51)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (06:11)
what is right in front of your nose, you will never look up and see the horizon of all of these things coming at you and the connections that you could make. I also think that we need to find ways to allow people's personal passions to come into the workplace. The things that I have learned from, you know, in my very limited free time, I coach a high school dance team. So I have anywhere between, like, I think right now I have 30 something girls between ages eighth grade and 12th grade.

Rick Denton (06:25)
Hmm.

huh.

Alyssa Nolte (06:39)
The number of leadership lessons that I learned dealing with teenage girls in a highly dramatic environment, working with their parents, working with the admin for the school, ordering costumes, dealing with all of these things, all of those apply directly to my work and it has made me a better researcher and a better business owner. But I wouldn't have those lessons if I didn't give myself the free space to go do that, that quote unquote distraction.

Rick Denton (06:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Boy, that's a great example. And I say this as my daughter who is now approaching her senior year of college. Some of her greatest lessons actually came when she was in her high school drill team. She's a pretty drama-free person. So she was the one similar to what you're observing the drama, helping navigate the drama, helping others through the drama, and actually has provided an incredible amount of fodder for the papers that she writes in her sociology major that she will be graduating with.

I want to, let's take that input that you're talking about, all of these, not just the business world, but everything that you're bringing into it. We talked about that idea of customers that are starting with, I'm interested. Okay, I like the brand. Ooh, I'm buying. To that idea, I'm buying again. In that sequence, where are you seeing companies really fall down most frequently and why? Why are they continuing to allow that fall down to happen?

Alyssa Nolte (08:00)
We have, for better or for worse, created departments inside of our companies. We have the marketing department, we have the sales department, we have the delivery or service department, whatever you're thinking about. We think of them as individual groups of people that have individual groups of leaders that have individual KPIs. However, our customers do not think of it that way. They don't think to themselves, I bought this software from the sales team, so I get this experience. And now,

Rick Denton (08:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (08:28)
I had this experience at a convention, so I got that experience. And then I'm gonna actually buy the product and I'm gonna do the onboarding. So this is a new experience. For them, there's almost like an equation that happens. it's like the effort to value equation is how I like to think of it is over time, value is ⁓ a renewing resource. Every single day you have to renew that value for the customer and it goes back to zero.

Rick Denton (08:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Alyssa Nolte (08:57)
You're working your way back every single day to deliver value. However, effort compounds. So as your customer goes through this process, every time they have to work a little harder than they want to, to work with you, to use your product, to work with your sales team, that builds up. And at some point, the effort that they put in is going to outweigh the value that they experience. And you don't get to compound the value. You have to rebuild it every single day. And so we've created these siloed experiences out of

Rick Denton (09:12)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alyssa Nolte (09:26)
hierarchical necessity, but the customers don't think of it that way. And so when they go from marketing and they get promised something and then they hear something different from sales, and then it's a totally different experience on the onboarding, we have to think of it as a full experiential life cycle or customers will say, well, the promises that were made were not kept and so therefore I'm gonna move on because there's a million other options out there.

Rick Denton (09:28)
Mm-hmm.

You

Right. That, you heard me chuckle, right, when you said the marketing department promises, and I think all of us have gotten, you know, the silly example of if you look at the fast food burger in the commercial, all of us know, you're never going to see that fast food burger in reality if you were to, God forbid, go to one of those places. So.

Alyssa Nolte (10:14)
And

even if you did, you wouldn't want to eat it because I had a marketing professor whose son did those commercials. He made those burgers. He brought one in. Those burgers are actually like dipped in resin. So they're not real. Like none of it's real. They've been painted. They've been airbrushed. What you are being shown is not real on purpose.

Rick Denton (10:22)
yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, glue. Yeah. Yeah.

Ooh, okay, so let's stay right there because we're talking about advertising. Heck, we talked about presidential elections and campaigns and all of that. There's a really fine line between motivating someone and manipulating them. So given your research background, how do you think about that line between those two worlds and how do you help clients stay on the right side of that?

Alyssa Nolte (10:59)
This might be the Midwest in me, but I try to avoid the manipulation side of it at all costs because at some point that comes back to bite you. Right. So we try to help our clients figure out how do we tell a story that is the most authentic to the reality that our customers are going to experience framed in a way that speaks the language of the customer. For the most part, the companies that are successful are not going out of their way to say, all right, how do we screw the customer today?

Rick Denton (11:05)
Good.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (11:29)
Right? For the most part, won't, but for the most part, yes, we all start out again, for the most part, with good intentions of wanting to bring something to the world. We've invented something, we've created something, we built something. There is a reason that this company got started, because it's a lot easier to just go work for somebody else. So we were here for a reason.

Rick Denton (11:31)
Well, but yeah, I'll give you the for the most part, but all of us are in the back of our minds going, hmm, yeah.

Alyssa Nolte (11:53)
And we are trying to find a way to tell that story in the way that resonates and that makes sense. And so we help bridge the gap between the story that you want to tell and the story that customers are ready to hear and try to make sure that that translation is as correct and authentic as possible.

Rick Denton (12:06)
Mm-hmm.

You mentioned the customer and so you can see the pause listeners is because the wheels are spinning right now. And I'm thinking about the conversation that you and I had on your podcast and how a lot of what we experience as customers is actually our own fault because we allow things or we vote with our wallets and directions that are in the opposition of what our, our, our words say. Do let's go back to that fast food example.

Do we as customers shoulder some blame in allowing ourselves to be manipulated when we still continue engaging with a brand that is communicating X but delivering Y?

Alyssa Nolte (12:50)
I think that one of the biggest things that we have to worry about as consumers is there seems to be, and maybe this is not a new trend, maybe I'm just starting to pay attention, but there seems to be a little bit of missing critical thinking when it comes to our advertising and all of our experiences. Like I was just talking to someone recently who said, ⁓ well, I fired my financial advisor because ChatGPT told me to do so. And I'm like, okay, well, like, have we thought about...

what's really going on there and how we're going through that process. Like we're not really thinking through things. So one person advertises that it's the best burger you've ever had and it's beautiful and it's luscious and it's gonna be the greatest experience you've ever had. And then we say to ourselves, obviously why would a company ever lie to me about that? Why would they ever inflate their goals there? If you walk down any street in New York City, you see that everybody is the best cup of coffee in town.

Rick Denton (13:32)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Hey.

Alyssa Nolte (13:47)
And so like we have to be thinking

critically of like, okay, we can't all be the best. So therefore we have to ask ourselves if not, but not everybody can be the best and also taste is subjective. We need to say to ourselves, what do I define as the consumer as the best cup of coffee for me? And what is that criteria and how do I go forward? But instead, a lot of us are just sitting back and saying, well, they must be the best cup of coffee in town. And then we're disappointed when we don't get the experience we

Rick Denton (14:01)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (14:16)
wanted, well we didn't take the time to critically think what best means for me personally.

Rick Denton (14:29)
Well, Alyssa, that's so important, that idea of just the individual definition inside of a customer. Companies have that same struggle because all of us as customers have sort of individual perspectives. I gotta say, you made me chuck a little bit with the coffee example, because even though you and I are recording this in May, you immediately brought me to one of my favorite Christmas movies, which is Elf and how he celebrated the best cup of coffee in the world. And I hope those of y'all that know Elf had a similar smile as you went through this in the middle of the year.

Listen, I want to take a little break here. Let's step down to the first class lounge. We'll move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your

Alyssa Nolte (15:06)
so I love London. I think it's a beautiful city. I love the history and weirdly I love the people. I think that like they're just there's something about particularly London that

Rick Denton (15:15)
Ha!

So for all of my London listeners, love that. Weirdly, I love the people. I would love to get to know a little bit more about that. What about going the other direction? What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Alyssa Nolte (15:35)
Well, I'm going to go ahead and say we are headed to Hawaii this summer with my will be 11 year old when we get there and my seven year old daughter. It has been on our list for a while and it is quite the haul from Iowa. There's a lot of flights involved, but it has been on our list for a while. So we are headed there at the end of July and we are beyond excited. If if it's something I don't have both currently, I would love to go to Japan. That's my next my next goal.

Rick Denton (15:48)
Yeah!

Ooh, that's cool.

Ooh, okay, well

you know what? When you're in Hawaii, just kind of, instead of coming home, just keep going west.

Alyssa Nolte (16:06)
I tried to tell my husband that and he goes, we have jobs and people who depend on us so we have to go back. And I'm like, unfair. I know, right? Maybe you do. Let's speak for yourself, my guy.

Rick Denton (16:14)
Do we? Let's push on that a little bit, yeah. That's right.

Well, realize each individual ticket. So, know, if Alyssa's heading west, you know, suddenly you walk to a different gate and the rest of the family looks at you where you're going. Just get on the plane and don't say a word. Alyssa, what is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Alyssa Nolte (16:29)
I do book the flights, so like what are they gonna do, you know?

goodness. Okay, I love anything rice based. ⁓ I will like I always tell people I will live in a rice based culture and be perfectly happy. I could eat rice every day all day.

Rick Denton (16:38)
Mmm, ⁓

which is perhaps almost like criminal to speak in such a corn based society that you're in. Like you're almost saying you're a bit of a heretic there, but I too love my rice.

Alyssa Nolte (16:53)
It is, yeah. Yeah, I'm supposed to say

I'm supposed to mainline butter and only steak and also we are the bacon capital of the world so I probably should have said bacon but maybe I've just had too much of it over the last 30 something years.

Rick Denton (17:00)
Hahaha!

Hehehehehe

I like

that main line butter. trust me, there's been times in my life that I feel like that's exactly what I'm doing. What about the other way? What were you forced to eat growing up, but you hated as a kid?

Alyssa Nolte (17:21)
I am not a fan of fish. don't like... Okay, here's the weird thing about me. This is one of the quirks. I don't like cooked fish. I do not... could not... I can't eat it. I do not like the taste of it. It's the smell. I like sushi though. I'll eat sushi just fine. So anyway, cooked fish.

Rick Denton (17:30)
Okay.

All right.

Not the oddest ⁓ position to take there. I could see that. The freshness versus some of the fishiness comes out. no. I can see that. Alyssa, sadly it is time for us to leave the lounge. What is one travel item, not including your phone, not including your passport, that you will not leave home without?

Alyssa Nolte (17:42)
Yeah. It's just the smell. The fishy smell to me is not my jam.

Hmm, that's a really tough one because one I live and die by this stupid little technology brick that I carry everywhere. Okay, I will not leave home without a notebook.

Rick Denton (18:06)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa, the notebook, the note taking, is that to be able to keep those ideas flowing, what's the notebook for?

Alyssa Nolte (18:27)
Anytime I have, I find myself, anytime I'm in like a transition time, I have all of these incredible ideas that if I don't write them down, I won't capture them. And actually there's real like science and psychology behind that. ⁓ There's something that's happening to us now that a lot of us work from home. We don't have what they call clearance time. And that's why good ideas come to you in the shower and when you're brushing your teeth, because your brain is actually clearing.

Rick Denton (18:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Alyssa Nolte (18:53)
And it used to happen to all of us when we would drive and do that transition from home to the office. And so now that we don't have this clearance time, we're losing out on some of our best connections and ideas.

Rick Denton (18:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. you taking it that step further, well, step further or step backwards, depending on your perspective of physically writing it into a notebook. Most of my ideas get jammed into my phone. And I got to tell you, it's sort of out of sight, out of mind. I've outsourced my brain to that device. Whereas if I were writing it, yeah, yeah, once those alerts, yeah, absolutely.

Alyssa Nolte (19:19)
And I get distracted. I get distracted because it's

so much more fun to scroll on TikTok than write things down. But, you know, like that's where the best ideas come from.

Rick Denton (19:27)
Of course.

Well, let's stay in a, I guess a social media-esque space with that. The Notorious Plant Killer on LinkedIn. I love that. You came up with this creative idea and then it turned into something that actually pulled people in. What are you learning about the authenticity of that? How does that inspire what you're seeing and understanding customer experience?

Alyssa Nolte (19:54)
I can't take full credit for it. I had someone come on my podcast and his LinkedIn like tagline is something like, should have played Quidditch for England or something like that. And he came on the show. Yes. Yeah. He came on the show. You know exactly who I'm talking about. So he came on the show. He was one of my first like 10 podcast guests, like back when I was a baby podcaster and you know, embarrassingly awkward behind a microphone.

Rick Denton (20:06)
I saw that dude. I have no idea who you're talking about, but I know exactly what that is. my gosh. Yeah.

Alyssa Nolte (20:20)
⁓ And so he came on the show and I asked him about it and I said, okay, tell me about this because everyone else's LinkedIn bio says, know, job title at company and then a little bracket that says X and then lists all the cool companies that you've worked for that have, you know, the gravitas that you're trying to attach yourself to. And I said, why do you have this instead of what everyone else has? And he says, we have spent so much time.

Rick Denton (20:36)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (20:46)
stepping forward with our credentials, which could disappear at a moment's notice. You could lose your job. You could go a different direction. You could decide to no longer work in sales and now you're going to, you know, be a tour guide in Bali. All of those things become your identity and then you lose them and you shed them and then they're lost, number one. Number two, he goes, I get more messages a week from having this as my headline.

Rick Denton (20:51)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (21:14)
because people relate to it, they find interest in it, they know, okay, this guy likes Harry Potter, I also like Harry Potter. And for better or for worse, whether we are voting, buying, or looking for a romantic partner, we are looking for the people who are like us, who feel relatable. And so at that moment, I got off that podcast and I said, okay, what is something that is a fun quirk about me that I could put out there that other people might relate to? And so I looked around at the dead aloe plant.

Rick Denton (21:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (21:44)
over on my windowsill. And by the way, I was part of like a subscription service called Plants You Can't Kill, and I definitely proved them wrong. So, exactly. So after I looked around, I said, you know what? I like the idea of being an notorious plant killer. I think that's hilarious. Changed my LinkedIn that day. I probably get three to five messages a week that is either from someone commiserating that they are also a plant killer or offering me plant care tips in my inbox.

Rick Denton (21:53)
Hold my beer.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (22:13)
We can start relationships as people, as human beings that maybe have a business transaction someday. Maybe they end up in being something that I want for my business and that's why I'm on LinkedIn. But you know what? At the end of the day, no matter if you're B2B, B2C or some combination of both, people buy from people and we are human beings making decisions and I'd much rather buy from someone I like.

Rick Denton (22:40)
Okay, so a lot of the authenticity. I want to buy from someone who's like me. I sense who they really are as opposed to the corporate title that a lot of us began our LinkedIn worlds with. Once that gets discovered though as an effective tool for engagement, then it starts to run the risk of jumping the shark. How can someone embrace that truly authentically and

basically weed out and sense those that are using it as simply an engagement tool rather than this is who I am.

Alyssa Nolte (23:18)
There's always gonna be people who are going to take something that is authentic and turn it around and turn it into something completely inauthentic, right? But it's no different than the conversation that we had about the silos and the departments in working with our brands. If you, for example, said, ⁓ Alyssa, I'm also a notorious plant killer. And then you discover that over time of getting to know me that I actually have a degree in horticulture, would you not be so upset by that finding?

Rick Denton (23:25)
Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Yeah.

Alyssa Nolte (23:47)
Would

you not start to say, I can't trust this woman to do anything and start cutting me out of your life? So I think we in order to, and again, maybe this is the Midwest in me, but I go into relationships assuming that people have generally good intent, that I am going to find someone who is genuinely authentic. And then when I am, if, when and if I am proven otherwise, then I drop that person. The number of LinkedIn messages that I get, cause I'll accept your request. Most of the time I will be like, yeah, sure, cool.

Rick Denton (23:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alyssa Nolte (24:16)
The minute you pitch slap me in my inbox, I'm like, block, you are done. I am not doing this. Also, if I get one more voice note sent to my LinkedIn inbox, I'm gonna lose it. I don't even listen to my husband's voice notes. Stop sending me voice notes, but I digress.

Rick Denton (24:31)
Preach,

amen on all fronts. Yeah, that idea of that some will use it to manipulate, and I love that. That's almost like how a brand, a brand that disappoints but then recovers can get a higher stead in someone's, the customer's mind. The reverse is true that a brand that really violates your trust. Once they've broken your trust and there's a couple of brands that I fired truly at that trust level, it's going to take an act of God to get me back to them.

because once trust is gone, forget about it. I want to talk about your podcast. I was honored to be asked to be on it. Thank you for allowing me. But the growth signal, it has this great idea behind it. It had exponential growth too. The fact that you have created 140 plus episodes in the first year blows this podcast host mind. You've had a lot of conversations to learn from.

What are you taking from those conversations and you feed back into your buyer behavior research?

Alyssa Nolte (25:35)
look at every conversation I have, including this one, other people's podcasts, podcasts that I go on podcasts that I listen to. We are not a monolith and everything that we can learn from other people will change my perspective. Like we talked on my podcast a little bit about your new venture and the new podcast that you're doing, Loud Quiet. I think about that not only as an experience that I can learn from and something that I have to look forward to someday.

Rick Denton (25:54)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (26:05)
But thinking about that immediately started me thinking about our customers in the different stages of life that we're in and how that impacts how we make decisions. So me, a mom of two, basically just running an Uber service for my children from their various activities. I think about ultimate convenience. What can I do quickly? How can I get to a quick decision? I do not have time to think about this. Cut, cut, cut, right to the chase.

Rick Denton (26:05)
Mm-hmm.

Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (26:28)
Whereas someone in a different life stage who has a little more time to be retrospective, who has a longer term experience, you guys are moving into this loud quiet. The way that you experience the world is completely different than the way that I do. so learning from how we experience the world might change our relationships with how we communicate, the pace that we work at, or simply the way we position something for our customers. And so we have to be thinking about all of those conversations.

Rick Denton (26:41)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (26:55)
of where our customer is, where they are in their life cycle, and where they are generally in life.

Rick Denton (27:01)
that's so good. And y'all, again, I stress, this is one that you want to listen to. So the the link to the growth signal will be in the show notes. Alyssa, you came up with this interesting quirk to it, or to me, it's a quirk. I shouldn't even call it that. It's actually the the route, the how you go about it. And it is you ask a guest for their hot take. And that informs the entire episode. I am blown away not only by the creativity of the idea, but the

conversational and improvisational ability that you take from that moment and the richness that you get out of those conversations. It's absolutely worth a listen listeners for sure. That's something that podcasting really can, it gets in our ears. You know, we talk about podcast is that unique connection to someone because it's in the ears. You called it an authentic brand connection tool. Now from a consumer psychology perspective,

Explain why the format works, and could you talk about where brands have often gotten this concept of a podcast wrong?

Alyssa Nolte (28:04)
So when I started my very first podcast was in March of 2024, I think if I'm thinking back to it. It was called Taking Back Monday was the very first one. And it is in a little hiatus right now. I'm hoping to bring it back. But I was in a corporate environment, discovered that I have no business being there. I'm an entrepreneur and meant to go do, you know, to move fast and break things. And so I started this podcast where I knew that in today's world,

Rick Denton (28:27)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (28:34)
we are seeing a huge rise of founder led or leader led marketing in which the person behind the steering wheel of the business is just as important as what the business does and who they serve. And so I said, okay, if I'm gonna build a business in this environment, I need to get really comfortable existing behind a microphone and shouting into the void. And I was really nervous to...

Rick Denton (28:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (29:02)
to do that, to stare into the camera and have opinions and thoughts. And so I started the podcast as a way to force myself to practice, to have conversations with strangers on the internet and to have the courage to actually post them. So I brought people on the show to talk about something that I was interested in, which was leadership and post-corporate life and what it meant to take back Monday because I was coming out of a work slump, I'll call it. So this was like,

Rick Denton (29:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (29:32)
like therapy meets forced practice and accountability. And so I built that podcast over time. And then I discovered that while I loved these conversations, I needed to now pivot into something that drove my business forward. So I created the growth signal where I could talk about things that I wanted to be known for. One of them, I think he was my third podcast guest and his whole thing was in order to be successful, you need to know what you want to be known for and you need to cultivate a circle of people.

Rick Denton (29:33)
Yeah, right.

Hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (30:01)
who know what that is and are willing to speak on your behalf. And so I was trying to figure out what do I wanna be known for? And so you said it perfectly at the beginning, I wanna be known as the person who helps you go from curious to committed. I loved that phrasing. And so I started to have this conversation on the growth signal with people from all different industries and all different departments and all different experiences who think about the customer in any way, whether that's marketing, sales.

Rick Denton (30:04)
Hmm

Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Nolte (30:31)
customer experience, delivery, customer service, wherever you sit on the spectrum. And I wanted to have these conversations about what does it mean to create committed customers and build relationships that are moving into the future, especially when half the time you're talking to an AI chat bot and they're not really people, they're just facsimiles of people. And so these conversations are all about what does it mean to be a company.

Rick Denton (30:48)
Right.

Alyssa Nolte (30:59)
that retains its humanity as we move into this post-human only experience.

Rick Denton (31:07)
We're gonna end it right there. That is perfect. I love the origin story of you and podcasting and the reason why you have brought that podcasting into your business today and being known for that idea of going from curious to committed and to being committed again as we develop repeat buyers. If folks wanted to get to know a little bit more about you, Alyssa, what's the best way for them to learn more?

Alyssa Nolte (31:29)
Well, you can always find me on LinkedIn. Again, search Alyssa Nolte. You'll find the Notorious Plant Killer. You will know I am the right Alyssa Nolte. You can also find me on Substack. I write under Alyssa likes to talk. And then of course, my website, AlyssaNolte.com.

Rick Denton (31:31)
you

Ha

Awesome, I will get all of that into the show notes there. this has been a fun one for me because it's been centered around a theme and yet somewhat ranging into different spaces as well, which is how I love my travel journeys to be. And I love CX Passport conversations to be that same way. Alyssa, thank you for being on CX Passport.

Alyssa Nolte (32:00)
Thank you for having me.