Episode Transcript
Kristin: You're listening to the Channel Mastery podcast where business leaders in outdoor recreation learn what's working today to reach, engage, and convert their target audiences on the channels they prefer. My name is Kristin Carpenter, and I'm your host and the founder of Verde Brand Communications, the presenting sponsor of Channel Mastery.
Tune in every week here on Channel Mastery to learn how to earn your consumers' attention and how to build the all-important emotional connection to your specialty brand. Thanks for listening, and subscribe today.
Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Channel Mastery podcast. I have been working on landing this guest for so long, and she is finally here with us today. Welcome to the show, Alison Tetrick.
Alison: Party. I bring the party.
Kristin: Yes, you do. It is so great to have you on today. Here we are at the very start of December, the close of an absolutely gigantic year for you.
First of all, congratulations on everything professionally and personally that you have lived through, lived with, and grown with this year. You're beaming. It's so wonderful to see.
Alison: It's been a hard year, but it's also been miraculous with so many huge highlights of love, laughter, and community, so I'm very blessed.
Kristin: That's a perfect way to put it. In this show, we talk about a lot of things. Number one, we talk about understanding our consumer and building those communities around our brands. You really have such a thoughtful approach to this.
We're going to share all of your handles in the show notes here today, which everybody will be able to see. I was really excited to have you come on and talk about a number of topics ranging from the Tour de France Femmes to talking about the state of influencers and athletes and really just as we're heading into a new year with a lot of uncertainty and probably a lot of opportunity if we're willing to take some calculated risks as both creators and brands, a lot of great things ahead.
With that, I would love it if you could just give a little bit of an introduction on yourself and some background, and then we can get right into the meat of the conversation.
Alison: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited. We have known each other for several years and worked in multiple different capacities in PR and marketing as an athlete and with some of my clients throughout the years. It's always a pleasure.
I'm Alison Tetrick. I'm a professional cyclist. I started racing back in 2009. My grandfather got me into the sport at the age of 60, so folks that are listening, it's never too late. He was an incredible role model in my life. I'm a biochemistry major, a Master of Science in Clinical Psychology, and a traumatic brain injury survivor.
As I was racing all around the world at the highest levels, I maintained a career in women's cycling at that time and still struggled to make enough money, but we're getting much better now, which Kris and I will definitely touch on in a bit.
I maintained a career, but it turns out you can actually work in the lab as a biochemist while traveling and racing for Team USA, so I ended up in marketing advocacy and biotechnology for a company called Amgen, which did sponsor the Amgen Tour of California. I know our paths crossed there as well.
Then, I found gravel after doing all that, so I now work a lot in the steel biotechnology space and endurance sports space, and then race and try to just advocate for equality, fun, and health on bikes as well as innovation in our beautiful industry.
Kristin: It is such a beautiful industry and community. One thing I have to say about you is you lift people up. We're following you on Twitter. Again, we will share all of the great things that you're involved in, but you're doing so many things from an advocacy standpoint and you don't call yourself out for it a lot. You just do it. It's who you are. I feel like that's why community just rallies around you and grows.
We're going to get into a lot of that today because you stepped into such an exciting leadership and high-visibility role around women's cycling this year specifically on THEMOVE podcast. Can you talk with us a little bit about how that all came together and some of the things you were thinking about when you were making that decision?
I was delighted to see it, but I know that there were probably a lot of careful things that you've thought about going into that. Looking at the opportunity that Lance Armstrong gave you on his show and the reach that he has, I love how you show up. You just are literally a force on that show. Tell us about that whole experience, and then we'll get into some of the other exciting aspects of that.
Alison: My husband definitely probably is a little scared of my force sometimes because I knock things off the table like a house cat. I'm just a force of nature in the house. Good thing he cleans up after me.
With cycling though, to back that up just a bit, I have this phrase I use if anyone will take video snippets later. I'm a very expressive person, I have a lot of passion, and I'm a bit of a tornado at times and also very laser-focused at others. Cycling is my expression. I say bikes are my expression and good thing I like expressing myself. That's taken me all over the world with the launch of gravel and winning all these gravel races.
I have known Lance for a long time. He can be polarizing. I understand that. However, the platform to showcase women's cycling, to me, I was so excited to be able to not only work on the project with Zwift to come up with this whole New Rules campaign and #watchthefemmes.
We can dive into that in a second, which I'm just super excited about, but this was women's cycling like no one's seen it in a very long time if ever, and it was showcased gloriously. For me to be able to tell the stories of the athlete, increase fandom for women's cycling, and bring viewers that have only known the Tour de France being a bunch of dudes racing around to being something so much bigger and everybody is doing it was very powerful for me and an incredible opportunity to showcase something I love, support women's cycling, and give it to an audience that might not have watched it previously on one of the world's biggest stages we've ever had.
Kristin: Absolutely. I thought the way that the three of you orchestrated the shows was fabulous. Can you talk a little bit about how you prepared for that? How did the three of you come together? I'm really curious about that.
Also, I just want to give a shout-out to Lance Armstrong. I listen to all of his content. I think he does a really good job. You can almost hear a sense of nervousness in his voice when he first started to introduce you to his community and his audience, but then you two have such great chemistry that it really just immediately was a fit. I feel like that was a big part of growing a fandom into his huge audience.
It really took a lot of courage for you to just go in exactly as you are, and I really just have a lot of admiration for him for trusting you to be exactly who you are. It really just was a perfect fit. It was great.
Alison: Thank you so much. It did take a lot of courage. I did call some very pinnacle partners of mine to make sure this was all great. It is on a great platform, which showcases what I love and how I can get more women and equality in our sport, so that was really important.
I'm just unapologetically me. I would like to apologize, but I can't. Lance and I bicker back and forth. I think he likes my husband more than me, but my husband's much safer. But if I'm not on my game, he will definitely be like, come on now. I'm like, oh, but somebody on the Internet said this. I'm scared. He'll be like, just be you.
He's very encouraging to own my own truth and who I am even if we bicker like we're 12 years old. That is our dynamic. Mari Holden is our other co-host on the show. Mari was actually my team director at one point, an Olympic medalist, and a world champion in cycling. She's incredible. She's just the point of reason.
Kristin: She was the grounding force, yes.
Alison: If anyone's interested in watching THEMOVE and last year, the eight stages of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, we were mixing up where we should sit because at first, we're like, Lance, sit in the middle. Oh, no, I should lead it. Then eventually, we're like, Mari needs to sit in the middle and separate Lance and me. It's good energy, but it's funny. If we're too close to each other, we're poking and hitting.
Kristin: But I thought that the insights that you all brought were super complimentary. I learned a ton. I will tell you, the best part for me—and I'm fangirling here—was your passion. You were literally wearing your emotion on your sleeve, and I literally could get a little teary right now. There were so many moments during the coverage valley where I was just watching and experiencing you see this dynamic transformation happen in this community that you love globally.
You know these cyclists so well. You're talking about them and giving us little snippets of who they are as people, how incredibly talented they are, and how they have to work super hard to be there and hold jobs down until recently, et cetera. I felt all of that. I felt it in the audio and in the video. That alone was just a blessing and a gift. The way you all put that show together felt amazing.
Honestly, I'm a huge fan of Lance's content and all that he's doing, but there were a few moments where I was like, how is this going to work? I know he must have a largely male audience. It was just so gratifying to see you be able to come through, be you, and make that emotional connection happen for all of us—male, female, or however you identify. You could not not feel the emotion that you are bringing to your role on that stage. It was awesome.
Alison: Thank you so much. I did cry—for those listening—a few times because these were women that were my teammates and I've raced against my whole career and am still racing. Just to watch this iconic race happening, I was so excited because this is what we're building to.
It's only going to get better, Kristin. It's just going to keep building. We're at this pinnacle point. Thank you for bringing me on the podcast for this reason, but if we keep talking about it and keep doing this, #watchthefemmes. That's where we go into, Watching the Femmes.
I worked with Zwift on creating that hashtag, so I'm very proud of that in my outside-of-cycling roles, but it's just about the more people watch women's sports, the more women win. That segues into not only cycling but also professionally, careers, politically, and everything. The more we cheer on women, watch, and show up for each other every day, the more women win. That's super exciting to me.
Kristin: As a person who's been a media practitioner and now on the side of the marketing and branding that I do, I will say before I was on the marketing side, I was a journalist and pitching stories to VeloNews. Hearing over and over again, sorry, we just don't get the readership, at that time, it was print—so long ago—I do feel like we finally turned the tide.
A lot of athletes in recent years have been saying, we need visibility. Honestly, when you look at the last couple of years to now, you all were right. It was literally about getting the attention and camera time. I know we're not totally there yet, but I will say that that's a huge reason why this big page has turned.
The world stage is here finally. We've finally got equal airtime in Zwift actually with a four-year agreement to sponsor this event. We're making this happen, and I feel like it's just such an exciting time. For a first-year event to be that successful though, come on, you've been in this role a long time. You must be a little bit stoked and surprised that it was this smashing success that it was.
Alison: For companies, CEOs, thought leaders, and leadership listening, it takes companies to actually believe, invest, and execute. Kudos to Zwift for not only putting the dollars in for this commitment but also carrying it through and making it a noteworthy campaign with these New Rules.
It's different from the Tour de France additions that I have raced in the past. It had all the coverage that we needed, give or take. There's always room for improvement, there's always going to be naysayers, and we always can get better, but that's life. We perform better but with Zwift saying, hey, we're showing up for years, not only the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. We're making this the real thing. This is about New Rules. The first rule is #watchthefemmes.
Like we said, the more we watch, the more women win. Keeping it fun and showing camaraderie is what a good business is too. Enjoy your job and show what's the story behind this perfect-looking thing and then how bike racing is evolving. Bike racing doesn't have to be just one color and one body type. It can be women and however you identify everywhere. Bike racing is evolving, so rethink how you think what cycling looks like.
Then, to the athletes, these athletes are showing up like you and everybody listening to this show up every day, which is actually really hard. To show up is hard, but then you need to ride. The entire sport depends on it because it does. We need to ride hard and show that just like fun, banter racing, it's super combative and like what women's cycling is. It doesn't have to be men's cycling, but it's a beautiful display.
Like we talked about at the beginning in I like to express myself, it's a beautiful expression of our sport. It can be unique, fun, vivacious, raw, feisty, and everything you want, but it's just really exciting to see.
Back to what you're saying with people that didn't invest in it, we love companies. I do race for Specialized currently. I love it when companies put dollars behind what they're saying, not just say it. It's like with Zwift as well where visibility is viability.
You and I have been saying this for years, but somebody can't tell me women's cycling isn't as interesting as other forms of cycling if they can't watch it. Why I got so emotional on the podcast is because I've been in those races. I have risked my life and limb for $20,000, $30,000, or whatever it is but not worth my life. Racing on these roads is glamorous and so fun. By glamorous, being super not, but it's what I wanted to do. That's not an apology, but if no one can see it, it goes back to that visibility is viability. I think that's where companies need to circle back to.
Kristin: They know this inherently, Ali. You know it as much as I do. They know that people are wired to love stories. They have to see themselves in this story. There's a lot there in terms of, I've watched men's level racing for years and years and years, and I still get emotionally attached to that, but it was just like discovering a whole different, equally impressive, and exciting dynamic with this event and also being so proud of the world stage.
A little side note, in the first Paris-Roubaix with Lizzie Diegnan, my daughter came upstairs right at the moment she crossed the line. She's like, Mom, what's wrong? I was crying. I was like, come here and watch this. She's not really into watching this stuff, but she just looked at my computer, looked at me, and back at the computer. I was like, you don't even know what a big deal this is. This is a watershed moment. You're literally walking up to see this woman cross the finish line with bloody hands, red fingernails, and class on a bike. It was just the best.
That's what I wanted more of in the Tour de France Femmes that you brought to life for us and in your commentary and everything that Zwift did to bring it to life. It felt even more powerful than that every day. It was so cool.
Anyway, I just love it. I know we're gushing about this, but there is actually a huge amount of reverse engineering that went into making this happen. It was a huge undertaking and very well thought out. It was super credible because I think a lot of people were like, 8 days, why not 21? It was a hard-ass event. Watching this suffering that happened every day was amazing. I just can't wait to see what's going to happen next.
Can you give us a little bit of a sneak peek? They just revealed the route. You've talked with us about the New Rules. I love seeing the activations and creativity at Zwift. It's awesome to hear you're part of that, but part of the inspiration today for everyone listening is this was a heavy lift. What's the next trick? How do you top this?
Alison: You have to make it have longevity. You have to do it again. I don't even know if it has to exceed expectations, but you need to make it a consistent form and pillar in our sport and industry. That'd be my first step.
We've done a lot of good evolution, I guess, in women's cycling with minimum pay if you're on a Woman's World Tour team. There's also now maternity leave, which is shocking and had never occurred before. These women who were racing were scared to want a family because they would lose their paycheck.
Things are getting buffered in where you're watching athletes that had said prior to this Tour de France that they were retiring, and now they're staying longer because they're getting paid better and they have security for maternity leave or other injuries, which I think is really amazing. Then, with Zwift's help here, we're setting a precedent that women can have these pillars of cycling with glorious coverage and advertising.
We were talking about fandom, which I think your listeners are interested in. You guys already know it and it's a word that gets thrown out a lot, but something that I really wanted to focus on with THEMOVE was not just talk about we love Annemiek, we all knew she was going to win, she's an amazing athlete, kudos, and boomstick all the way but also tells stories about other athletes that are domestiques and working.
You're not the CEO of your own company without this whole team behind you that is making what you do look successful, so if we create those stories and show that authenticity, vulnerability, and who these people are, I think that will increase our sports. That is how we do it because we watch football both now because we got soccer going on and football, but you don't all just pay attention to the quarterback all the time.
How do we keep telling those stories in cycling? I think cycling does actually a pretty poor job of it, but we're getting a little better because we understand that there are so many personalities and amazing people in the sport that can really promote your products, promote this sport, get more people on bikes, et cetera. That's where it's going.
It's really exciting to keep increasing equality in pay and equality in participation. I don't think it has to be necessarily equal distances like you said. I've talked to a lot of the athletes. Most people don't need it because a lot of us express our sport the way we want.
Kristin: One thing that just popped into my head is the men's Tour de France focuses a lot—and so does the Giro and [...]—on the location, wine, and food. The Femmes brought people more so than that. That actually is something where the tail can't wag the dog with what the men are doing.
Alison: That's so good. I love it.
Kristin: I watch probably too much of it.
Alison: I watch every single second of it. I'd gotten married four days before, so I watched it a lot. You're so right. It's so much about the people, but so many of the people that just tuned in to the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift this year don't know the players yet, and they got to meet them. Isn't that beautiful?
By the end of THEMOVE, Lance is like, oh, where's my girl Cecilie? I had him obsessed with Cecilie because I'm obsessed with her.
Kristin: I am too.
Alison: She's the cutest. He's suddenly like, oh, where's our girl? That's fandom right there. He cared about her even if it's the eighth place, winning, or crashing.
That's what you want. You want to meet the players, and those players inspire the next generation because it's very cliché, but if you can't see it, you can't be it. You want to see it.
Kristin: Absolutely. We're going to have all the links, but if you're looking at the New Rules and the splash page that you sent me, the photoshoots and everything are 1000% about these women. When you're tuning in, you're watching different vignettes as the race is unfolding around these women.
You're looking at all of them, and they look so approachable and they look so like us. Many years younger than I am, but the way that they're marketing it is genius. I really also have to say that one of the moments that I saw on Twitter that made me almost cry is Marion Rousse. I just think she's so amazing as a sportscaster and former cyclist herself, but the shot of her out of the top of the sunroof leading the start of the race, I can even say that that was one of the most powerful short videos I've ever seen in my life.
Alison: I know. She's incredible.
Kristin: She went big. Have you gotten to meet her yet?
Alison: I raced against her. She raced for France when I was racing over there. We're about the same age, and her partner is Julian Alaphilippe, by the way.
As far as Zwift's marketing campaign, brilliant. I've been super excited, so I just want to give a quick little shout-out to Kate Veronneau. She runs this side of Zwift so impeccably, gets to travel around, and makes sure everything's in its right place, but this is her heart and soul, for a strong woman and female leader to show up and be there every day.
Props to her to make sure it was about the women. We can present her ideas but for her to make sure it happens and executes is amazing. You should probably have her on the podcast.
Kristin: I would love to. Also, she did this without a blueprint. That's the part that blows my mind. She also launched an omni channel for the first time. This isn't a 100-year-old event, so I just feel like the whole thing was groundbreaking. It was a true pioneer effort by so many people. I couldn't stop. I couldn't wait to get you on and I can't stop talking about it. I apologize.
We do have other things that are tied to this to talk about that are really important, but really, at the end of the day, for anybody listening today, whether you're a CEO, a sales leader, a marketing person, whatever your role is, or an athlete, this is a testimony to being able to launch something at a pretty precarious time economically and globally that really turned out to be successful, and it felt very consumer-centric.
One of the other things I want to say is it was absolutely so heartening to see people showing up physically every day at the stages. That was something that we couldn't have predicted but boy did it bring a lot too because that fandom in Europe is really amazing to see.
Anyway, I feel like more coverage on this is needed even from a business analysis standpoint or a marketing campaign standpoint because what was done here was truly groundbreaking. It really was.
Hats off and a big thank you to you and all of the other journalists who covered it as well as Zwift and everybody who got behind this, which is just very exciting.
Knowing all of this and knowing you've been at the ground central around all of this, let's talk a little bit about this crazy year that we're getting ready to jump into, 2023.
Alison: How is it 2023 yet?
Kristin: I have no idea. Everybody loves to talk about the great acceleration of COVID, and for God's sake, it's true. Everything is just moving at lightning speed.
You've been on many sides now of this equation. You've been a pro athlete, a pioneer in gravel, and a broadcaster. You have your own brand and you've also held this amazing career as you've said through the whole thing. You have a lot of different dimensions and you're also just very prolific in terms of building a community online.
I think you have a lot to share in terms of what you're expecting through all the incredible insane changes that are happening in Q4 2022 around social media and where communities are gathering. I'd love to just have you cannonball into that.
Alison: I'm just jumping in the deep end here. I didn't mean to be a social media influencer or a specialty in that at all. I am trained in biochemistry.
For those listening, I am much too gregarious to sit in a lab, so I think I just broke out of the lab and found bike racing. As we look at this year and into the next year, there's a lot of unrest politically and socially. We're in a recession, finances and home prices change every day, and it's really stressful. We've been seeing that now for over two years—we don't know what's happening—or possibly much longer, which may not be new.
Personally, I'm an athlete, dare I say an influencer but I guess I have to, as well as managing social media content creations for really big billion-dollar companies. That's my other hustle.
I can do this strategic thinking, but when we look every day, we can be very frustrated because there are a lot of changing in social media landscapes. It changes day to day. I don't even know if we want to start with Twitter because it looks like doomsday all the time, but I still love Twitter.
Kristin: Let's start with Twitter. Here we are, December 1st of 2022. If you've been living under a rock, Elon Musk has entered the building. Tell us where you are with Twitter because you have the best Twitter feed. You're the reason I'm on Twitter. I just love following you.
Alison: Twitter for me is just like a rift unfortunately to all the news things. It was and probably still is because I think I follow reputable news sources. It is where I get my news.
Then, I just banter with friends and find funny jokes and trends. But I'm a millennial, so TikTok seems just a little hard for me to do, and I don't really want to be dancing in a mirror. It's exhausting.
You can follow me on TikTok. I've posted once, and I think it's just a picture. I don't know how that works. But Twitter is a really cool platform for banter, sharing stories, and commentating. Then, once we hit 2016, the toilet bowl was going, but my basis is I keep it positive. I'm ignoring whatever dumpster fire is going on at the moment.
I'm going to stay present there. I have faith that it'll stay. It has a specific demographic. It's interesting for brands because it's very easy to share on Twitter and retweet. You don't even have to say anything.
Then, I do just these little smug, funny, one-liners, my friends say, which is like, I'd like to know what their dog just did. No Picture, no art, just words. I like words.
Kristin: I do love it too. It's fun.
Alison: We'll see what happens with Twitter. In my demographic, not a lot of athletes are very active there. They usually use it as a segue platform for other social media outlets they're using, but it's there, there's an audience, and it's super fun.
I think it's fun to do comments and engage in banter. People get to see it. Like you're saying, it's about the people. It's a fun way where if you comment back and somebody follows you, they can see you commenting to me. That's a fun dialogue, I guess. It's pretty cool.
Kristin: It is. It's a hub. You are working with brands. Are they pulling back at all, are they waiting and seeing, or are they still going like gangbusters with Twitter?
Alison: Most brands don't require me to do anything on Twitter. I post on my own free will because I love it. That's why you probably like my Twitter because my Twitter is just very much me talking about how my husband doesn't like me to swivel chairs because he thinks I'm going to launch myself into outer space. Or just snarky things like, why is this gravel race only for men and no women are invited? Or I just do one-liners.
Then, Instagram requires me to have a cute picture. It's all Meta-owned now and the algorithm, which then we can dive into because that's a whole thing.
Kristin: Let's go.
Alison: I think what we're dealing with now is as these big conglomerate companies are melding different social media platforms, the younger generation is looking like we were talking about the Atlantic article today that came out. It's like Instagram is now ick. It's Atlantic, so give it a little grace there.
I love Instagram as well. It's much different though. I'm learning now that I don't need to post every day. I used to have to post every day to gain followers. Now I'm noticing the algorithm. Since it got acquired by Meta, it's changed.
For athletes and influencers, it's about strategic planning here. We are in a recession or whatever and the market is supersaturated as well, so there are a lot of influencers out there that are getting paid.
If you're listening and you're paying for influencers, you got to figure out what you want. Do you want to go for the mega person, or do you want to do a bunch of micro-influencers that have higher engagement?
Instagram is beautiful, but personally, this might be polarizing, but I wish it just went back to pictures. The Reels are exhausting, but if I don't post a Reel, my friends don't get to see my feed. I have 70,000 friends on Instagram. My actual friends don't get to see my feed, so I have to post a Reel every now and then.
Kristin: That is frustrating. We were talking before we hit record about staying true to building your audience and how you built your community. How do you actually get around that?
Alison: I think I've done it relatively successfully, but as a company and as an individual athlete influencer—I think this stands true for all parties involved—it's to understand what you want.
I have looked at some posts recently that have super high engagement. That doesn't mean likes. It means engagement. Engagement is genuine. It's not a bought engagement. It's not DM me for something.
If you can do something on your platform that you choose, enjoy, increases engagement, and is actually giving something back to your community and you can then take something from your community or enjoy that they're appreciating what you're posting, that is where you're winning because that's where you're converting sales, introducing a new product, and increasing brand awareness.
Right now, what I'm noticing on Instagram is that it doesn't mean likes. But engagement, I've seen being quite good if you frame it right. It goes back into that strategic planning.
We all have this. If you're an influencer, an athlete, or a company with a mission and vision statement, you go back to who you are and own your truth. Who are you if you're insert-company-here? Lifetime Fitness. If you're specialized, Patagonia. I don't know, I'm just dropping names.
Go back to who you are and then ask yourself, are you owning your truth? Are you being authentic? Are you being vulnerable? Tell stories. Then, if that aligns with your mission and vision, I think you're doing a good job.
We do need to stay agile though. My second point is just to stay agile in how this landscape is evolving. Look at what happens in the Super Bowl commercial. People pay all this money in Super Bowl commercials, the lights go out, and then Oreo or something does one tweet, and it just [...].
It's just being aware and staying agile but then saying who you are and showcasing that because that's beautiful. I think right now more than ever, we are entering a social media climate where people just want truth, authenticity, and beauty of who you are, who I am, and who they are. We want somewhere safe to go to have dialogue and to see beautiful expressions.
Kristin: It makes me worry, Ali, about the ownership of some of the platforms because I think that that's the spirit that you've built your community, and many other people have too. Also, I feel like you belong.
Hey, we share support for this person, event, or brand. It's a key part of who we are in terms of how we spend our evenings, weekends, and free time engrossing ourselves in our passions. But when I think about the way that they're running their algorithms and trying to make monetary gains because these are not nonprofit businesses that we're talking about, it feels to me like we're turning a page where it might be more challenging.
As a person who's really worked hard to create a great following, are you worried at all about the algorithm changing and how you can access your people?
Alison: I am concerned, but ultimately, going back to owning my truth, if I am doing the best I can, I don't want to have to play around that because I have enough life stresses which should not be social media. We have a world where we want to keep the climate nice. I want to ride my bicycle and inspire more women to get on bikes. That's why I've now been playing around with taking a couple of days off. I feel like the engagement even increased than before.
It doesn't worry me because the solution will present itself to reach that community. However, I did get a message from a dear friend that I work with a lot and collaborate with who's amazing. He's like, dude, why don't I see your stories anymore? I was like, I see your stories. I guess I like you better than you like me. It is weird.
It's hard. If my paycheck does depend on some of this reach and engagement, that's where I would be challenged, though we look at engagement, how companies interact with influencers and athletes, and then what that ROI is. Also, we didn't really sign up for this but to also give each side of the equation a little grace in there because it's really stressful to present yourself a certain way on the Internet with a bunch of Internet trolls or people with no names that just tell you you're blah, blah, blah and then your company expecting you to do this.
It's hard on both companies because we need ROI. You have to report back to your manager and your KPIs, and then the athlete sometimes just wants to go and shred. That's what we talked about.
This last thing we hadn't talked about was just with athletes. Some of them aren't great at social media, and that's fine. They have an art and that is how they express their art. It might not be into making just super rad YouTubes.
Kristin: I love that you said that because we want to discover these creators and how they create and have it be authentic to their brand. Something that you really wanted to make sure we talked about today and it almost is a little bit of coaching is staying true to your brand, whether that's you as a person or a brand that you really care about or work for. I really do agree with you. I think the solution presents itself when you have that there.
Alison: I do. I also think brands have a great opportunity to provide resources to help an athlete if that's what they want. We have a videographer. What would you like to do? This is our budget for this project. And then vice versa. But when you're looking at budgets, you not only just sponsor or pay an athlete for a post, but maybe you pay for projects that they're passionate about. That's how you get out their true self and their expression of their sport where maybe they don't have to act. They're actually just being raw, vulnerable, shredding, or whatever.
To tie up our social media, it's changing every day. It's just like the Hawaii volcano right now. There are all sorts of magma going everywhere, but what happens is if you stay authentic and back to your mission, value, what you want to do, and how you open up yourself to share that story, it could be quirky, dry, funny, or tear-jerking, but that's how you showcase your business through your athletes. Your athletes will feel comfortable doing that as well if it aligns. Then, just be agile with how this social media whole space changes. Do you agree?
Kristin: Yes, absolutely. I think everybody has gotten a Ph.D. in being nimble and agile in the last three years, so let's put our experience to work.
Alison: I don't think I've sworn on this podcast yet. I'm doing great.
Kristin: I am too. I know. It's not like I have a rule against that, but I'm proud of us for staying true.
Alison: We are doing great, Kristin. We are winning the day and we're going to see each other, which is exciting.
Kristin: It's good. I really feel like you're opening up here to maybe share a few of your important projects that you'd like to have everybody learn about and hopefully follow. We're going to provide all the ways to do that in the notes as I said, but tell us what you're doing going into 2023 besides shredding, enjoying riding your bike, and getting more women on bikes. Tell us about some of the projects you have going on.
Alison: I don't really say shred. I just call it riding. I am just super excited to be in this space. I fell into it in a beautiful way, which you can never change for the world. You never knew when you took that left turn that you would end up here. But I'm very proud to be in the science and endurance sports space. I love storytelling. My husband and I started an LLC. It's my job. It's his job to manage me. He has a full-time job, so it's exhausting for him.
During COVID when people were making sourdough bread and latte art—which I'm very jealous of as I'm not that good at those things—we started an LLC to raise money to get more diversity, equality, and women and girls on bikes. We have a scholarship program.
It started out by selling bandanas and has grown much more, so stay tuned on our website as it's getting a lot larger. But behind the scenes at the moment, we've awarded over $20,000 of scholarships just selling bandanas. Who would have thought? Thank you. You bought some bandanas today.
Kristin: I did. They're super cute. Give us the link really quick, and then I'll put it in the show notes.
Alison: Just google Alison Tetrick bandanas.
Kristin: And you will find it.
Alison: You will, but there are other ways you can get involved. We've done several scholarships there to NorCal. High School Cycling League was our first one to their GRIT Program, but it's girls riding together. I've gone out in camps with the girls and I thought I could mentor which I have.
I was at Sea Otter this last year, Kristin, and some of my scholarship recipients were winning the mountain bike race at Sea Otter, which was so cool. Wearing the bandana and CamelBak gave them swag. They have bladders and hydration packs. Specialized gave them kits. All my sponsors came in and gave basically five for the first round we did, but it was super cool to see here at Sea Otter. I'm crossing the Tire Bridge. She's like, this looks like Ali. I'm like, how was your race? She's like, I won. I was like, you did?
Racing bikes as you all know is super exclusive. It's a very high level of entry, so it's about getting more kids and more girls on bikes, increasing the opportunity for people to get involved in our stereo-elitist sport, and having a safe place for people to be.
We've expanded that and worked with Outride as well as the Life Time Foundation. We did a project with them, Unbound, and raised money there. Then to counteract that, we also, we did a scholarship program and funded a bunch of kids to race bikes in Emporia, Kansas where Unbound is actually held, so it was super cool.
Kristin: That's amazing. I love that. It's full circle because that was a very important point of entry for you in gravel.
Alison: Unbound was where I started gravel. I got my 1000 Mile Club this year. I am so proud of that. Kristi Moen, you worked with her quite a bit. I said once that she married me, and then I realized that people thought she actually married me and I was like, no, she officiated my wedding. We're close over here.
Kristin: She's a true path burner. She is very courageous. There is only one Kristi Moen.
Alison: I know. To follow us, you can follow me on social media. It's pretty easy. My name is Alison Tetrick. The same platform on everything, but just think about as a brand how to support people that support you, find your community, and cultivate that community. There are content, performance, community, and so many different aspects that a company can go.
Then, just going back to the overall purpose and building that purpose into your plan not only does better for the world, which makes me happy to do what I do. If I ride a bike, I feel like I'm pedaling with a purpose. If I showcase a brand, I make sure I believe in that brand, and they believe in me.
Kristin: Honestly, there are a lot of evergreen tenets that you're talking about here. I always love to think we're these special snowflakes in outdoor recreation. We choose to be in this industry. We're not raking in the cash working in these industries. We're working in these industries and in this business community because we love what we do and we're with people who love what they do. When we bring new people in, we get to experience the joy of falling in love with it all over again.
Even though everything is like a whirling dervish in a blender all around us and it makes it hard to budget and plan, I love what you're bringing up. It's the evergreen tenets of what make these passion-driven industries and communities. I think if we can stay true to that, we can figure out all the WTF in terms of the platforms.
Alison: WTF is Watch the Femmes.
Kristin: Yes, there you go.
Alison: Just remember that your presence is your power.
Kristin: I love that. Being truly present is something people can sense through your content. That's great.
Thank you so much. Do you have anything else you want to add before we wrap up here today? I knew this was going to be great. I was having a pretty difficult, busy week after the holiday, and this has just been an uplifting, awesome experience. I hope our listeners have the same experience. Thank you so much for bringing the joy, levity, and power that you have, Alison. It's wonderful.
Alison: This is just a very powerful community that we are building and continue to build and support. It's just about giving yourself grace. We all talk about suffering, grit, and all that BS, but it's also about grace. I think sometimes we glorify the trudge more than we acknowledge the beautiful space we get to be in and share these stories and meet like-minded individuals. I'm just super happy to be here. Thank you, Kristin.
Kristin: Thank you, and more to come with Ali in 2023. We can't wait to see it. Thank you so much. It was just wonderful to have you here today.
Alison: Thank you.
Kristin: If you liked this episode of the Channel Mastery podcast, please help more business leaders find this resource by going to iTunes and leaving us with a positive review and also sharing it with a friend or a colleague. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you to Verde Brand Communications for being our presenting sponsor. Check us out at verdepr.com.
