Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to UMAI Marketing. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alison, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

I feel most, if not all, of the greatest moments in my life came from taking a risk. I was raised to be super independent, but I am lucky enough to have a strong family that I know will always have my back, so I’m fortunate to have a wider capacity to take risks.

The risks I remember growing up were small things, like making my own clothes and wearing my creations to Middle School. I created what I called “wrist warmers,” which were like the 80s hit, ankle warmers, but for your wrists… I wore them in 90+ degree weather and was adamant that they looked “cool.”

A turning point for me was after I graduated college and started my first “big girl desk job.” I decided that this wasn’t the life for me, and on a whim, after seeing the Hang Son Doong caves in Vietnam inside National Geographic, I moved to Vietnam without a job or place to stay. I definitely cried at one point during the 24 hours of travel time once I realized what I had done. But, as things tend to do, it all worked out.

While living in Saigon, I met an incredible group of entrepreneurs who were integral to my personal and business development. I traveled the world, dabbled in my own small businesses, and worked for some incredibly brilliant people during that time.

Taking this risk—to move across the world and try new and strange things without family and friends—has helped me feel secure in forging my own path and not letting fear win throughout my life.

I truly believe that there is always good on the other side of hard, especially with the right perspective:)

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My partner, Karin, and I started UMAI Marketing in 2018. Karin had been working in Social Media with CPG brands here in Austin, like Nulo Pet Food and Vital Farms Egg, and had recently been let go as a result of mass lay-offs. The CPG community here in Austin is very tight-knit, so folks in the industry quickly heard that Karin was available, and the very next day she already had her first client. (This little anecdote is just more proof that good is always right on the other side of hard times!).

I had just moved back to Austin, working as a Director of Marketing for an eCommerce education company. I had built up a team in Vietnam, and we wanted to continue to expand in the States. I was feeling discouraged, as I knew I had hit my ceiling at my current company, and I wasn’t sure what my next move would be. Funnily enough, the universe heard my frustrations, as very soon, Karin called and asked if I wanted to join forces. And that’s how UMAI Marketing was created.

UMAI provides services and education to CPG brands. It’s our mission to help CPG founders and operators, at any stage, get the help they need to reach their goals. For younger brands, we have a marketing course and digital products to help get them to a stage where they can hire help. And for more mature brands, we have an expert team of content creators, copywriters, graphic designers, media buyers and strategists to creatively tell brands stories and provide growth.

Our bread and butter is email marketing, advertising, and social media, as these 3 channels create a scalable foundation that every CPG brand needs. We create the strategy and content, soup to nuts, and call ourselves “boutique” as we become an integral part of the brands we serve.

And now, with how the digital landscape is changing with AI and how the financial landscape has also changed, we are now an agency and tech company. We’re committed to creating tools that solve our clients’ problems in an affordable way. We’re excited to announce our first product, Otrera, to the world! Otrera harnesses the ability of AI to lower brands’ cost-per-bid when advertising on Amazon. It beats agency pricing and returns every time.

Otrera is just the first of many products we’ll be rolling out this year. Stay tuned for more!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Upon inception, we decided to do as much as possible for our community. Creating a CPG business is not easy, and there is no roadmap for success. So, we gave away as much as possible to our audience via mini-courses, webinars, and content. As well as taught classes for organizations like SKU and The Naturally Network. We took as many influential people out to coffee as possible in our first few years and even produced a podcast to start conversations with people who would otherwise not give us the time of day. It is still a core value in our company to give back as much as possible to our clients, partners, team, and those in our community, and I think this has helped our reputation immensely.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Communication, trust, and creative freedom.

In our agency, the structure feels more like a collaboration and less like a hierarchy. We communicate openly and honestly with our team because we respect them, and expect the same back from them. We care about their well-being and consistently ask questions about how members feel about their work-life balance, if they need support, how we can help them set up for a true, non-stressed vacation, etc. We have policies like unlimited vacation days at our agency, as we know that giving people that freedom produces better results. The bottom line is that we trust our team immensely.

When we have measured team and individual goals, but allow team members to have creative freedom and choose how and what to spend their time on each day, management becomes pretty easy. Or maybe we’ve just gotten lucky with our hires. ;)!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://umaimarketing.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/umaimarketing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/core3inspiration/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/umaimarketing/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGKuJnIOX_6AVvV3FrgV0rg
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sbQXZkoV4fLur3XQBPSqw
  https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/umai-social-circle/id1527610263