Creating Superfans Podcast Episode 210: Lauren Teague

Brittany Hodak [00:00:02]:

Hello, and welcome to the Creating Superfans podcast where you learn how to turn your customers and employees into superfans. I’m your host, Brittany Hodak, and I’m a speaker, author, and entrepreneur obsessed with all things customer experience. Here’s the thing. We’re living in an experienced economy right now, and regardless of the size or age of your company or even the products or services you’re selling, one thing’s for sure. If your customers aren’t telling their friends about you, you’re in trouble. If you wanna create super fans, being great is no longer good enough. You’ve got to be super. This is the show that teaches you how.

Brittany Hodak [00:00:48]:

Today’s guest is something of a super fan’s doppelganger. Like me, Lauren Teague is obsessed with fandom And how it can act as a business lever for customer and employee experience. She was the original social media lead for the PGA Tour Where she pioneered brand new fan engagement on Twitter and set the standard for all social media platforms today. Since then, she has spent more than 15 years optimizing fan engagement in sports, b to b, b to c, health care, higher ed, and several other industries. She’s also the founder of Fan Wagon, an online marketplace for sports and college fans to buy and resell beloved apparel. I had the pleasure of joining her on her brand of fan show, and now I’m excited to welcome her here. In today’s episode, we chat about the evolution of fan engagement on social media, how to harness your customers’ voice through your content, and the many ways AI can multiply your social assets and help you run your business more efficiently. Before we welcome Lauren, let’s hear a quick word from today’s sponsor.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:52]:

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Brittany Hodak [00:02:51]:

Lauren, thank you for coming on the show. I’m so excited to have you here today.

Lauren Teague [00:02:55]:

I am so happy to return the favor, Britney. It’s An honor to be on Creating Superfans.

Brittany Hodak [00:03:01]:

Yes. And, you know, I love when you meet somebody that you’re like, Wait. How do you have the exact same philosophies as me, yet our backgrounds are completely different, And we look at the world in some ways in a very different way. So I as I mentioned in the introduction, you’ve got a podcast, Brand A Fan Show, Which I was excited to be on, but I love the philosophies that you have about why brands need to harness the power a fandom. So why don’t you tell me a little bit about your background, your take on why fandom matters, and what you, you know, consider to be your large contribution right now happening in this sort of space of of brands and fandom.

Lauren Teague [00:03:48]:

Yeah. So my, career background, I’ve always been drawn to sports. So from, like, a young girl, you know, what is the thing that I like to do when I was, like, 5 or 6? Like, I remember watching, like, NBA finals because the Portland Trail Blazers were playing in them, you know, that kind of thing. So I’ve always been drawn to sports. And so when I was in high school trying to figure out where I was gonna go to college and what I might wanna do, My mom just asked. She said, what? Like, who has a great job? Who do you see out in the world and you think that might be something you wanna do? And I Was flipping probably through NBC on NBA or NBA on NBC. And I just remember seeing Hannah Storm behind the desk, and I was like, she has a great job. Like, That sounds like a lot of fun, to be able to, like, be knowledgeable and be a woman in sports and and be part of that.

Lauren Teague [00:04:40]:

So as a sophomore, a junior in high school, I started, you know, writing maybe early emails to the sports desks here in Portland, Oregon, and just trying to kind of immerse myself in what that what that looks like. So I did some actual, like, visitations on set. You know, in high school, I found college programs and started applying to, like, journalism, broadcasting, that kind of thing. So I’ve always just been drawn to like sports and comms and journal and storytelling and this whole this whole part. Fast forward, I went to Northern Arizona. I did do sports production For our live newscast, I got in front of the camera experience. I got a lot of behind the camera experience, which was great, intern for the Portland Trail Blazers. And then when I came out of school, it took me about 18 months, but I ended up, being the 1st ever social media and fan engagement employee At the PGA Tour.

Lauren Teague [00:05:32]:

So back in 2008, you can you can kind of imagine what social media looks like at those parts. We didn’t have a Twitter account, so I got to start the first one. One of the first ones in all of, like, sports. We didn’t really have a Facebook page. Got to build that from scratch. Didn’t have a YouTube channel, spent a lot of time building that, and also doing a lot of copyright and takedown requests, which I have to now apologize for for all the people who followed us in golf. So I kinda got to build from the ground up, but that fan engagement piece meant I was also receiving all the emails from people. So 3, 400 times a I’m weak.

Lauren Teague [00:06:07]:

I’m emailing people back and forth, getting their feedback, kind of compiling it and chewing that with the leadership, Taking our our fan engagement, that was happening on these social platforms, kind of as golf Twitter built up, and kind of modeling that inside the organization, teaching players how to tweet and what the difference was between an at sign and a hashtag, bringing that knowledge into, our Corporate meetings in the and around the boardroom tables, going out and working with tournaments. So I got to kind of do that For a really amazing brand, from the get go, and I spent 7 seasons at the PGA Tour. And somewhere between college and and the tour and As I’ve gone all along, I’ve just had this hypothesis that, it didn’t matter to me if you were like a b to b brand or b to c brand or both like the PGA Tour, very much a B2B brand, very much a B2C brand. But I kind of saw my contributions Different ways, we could be a brand to fan. You can build fans amongst your business partners, right, and the people that work with you. You can build fans obviously with your customers and those who tune in or buy or, you know, support you in some way. So I had to always just kind of coined it in my head, like, we’re doing brand to fan work. And so, I’ve I’ve always just had that mentality of, like, I’ve I’ve thought about the audience.

Lauren Teague [00:07:32]:

I’ve thought about their journeys. I thought about the messaging side. I blame the PR degree. Right? I’ve thought about what it means to be a fan and how that relationship is built. And so, this past year, I just went all in on that, and I just took that little voice that was in my head and put it on paper and put it in a podcast And started building models and IP around, the brand to fan approach. So it’s just kind of my first Stop like really putting that out there in the world this year, and I’m so excited that I did. So, I’m a little bit behind you as far as the Creating Super Fans, my book is not, not being written yet, but someday.

Brittany Hodak [00:08:14]:

Well, it will be written someday. And in the meantime, I know I love your podcast. I think everybody who likes this show will love your podcast. And, you know, I really when I first heard you say brand a fan, I was like, Oh, that’s good. Because what comes to my mind when you talk about, yes, your b to b, yes, your b to c, you know, your your b to b to c, it doesn’t matter. We are living in a time where brands have many audiences, And we need to be able to engage them simultaneously because no longer can we separate things out by channel and say, well, you know, we’re gonna reach This audience here, we’re gonna reach that audience there. The Internet means that you are constantly telling your story, talking about who you are, And you have people from many different groups that will be accessing that. You know? I think about, you know, this is this is, like, a fun example because it’s, because it’s entertainment, but think about Dolly Parton.

Brittany Hodak [00:09:16]:

My grandmother loves Dolly Parton. She loves and the Dolly that she sees in her mind is, like, in her twenties, on the Porter Wagner show, like, you know, the girl singer, as my grandma would probably say, Loves, loves, loves her some Dolly I love Dolly. I’ve been, you know, so privileged to get to work with Dolly multiple times over my career. I’m looking at a a plaque right over here of liner notes that I wrote for for one of Dolly’s albums, which was the 2nd or 3rd time that we got to work together, which was just incredible. My son, Who is 6, knows Dolly as aunt Dolly who sent some books in the mail because of Imagination Library. Right? She for anybody who who has a child in your life that doesn’t know this, you can enroll them into Dolly’s imagination library, and they will get a book in the mail totally for free, every single month from when they’re born to when they turn 5. So by the time they’re ready to start kindergarten, they’ve got 60 books of, you know, Everything you need to know before you you go to kindergarten.

Brittany Hodak [00:10:16]:

So somebody like Dolly who has done countless things and is beloved by so many different groups of people for different reasons based on different things about her is able to manage online reputation, which means that, like, whatever your brand is, however many different audiences you’re serving, there is a way to do it, and I think your brand to fan mantra is such a great way to think about it because you’re your brand and out there is an individual fan, not like millions of fans that are all, like, homogeneous and the same, but a fan and what is your brand doing to connect to that fan, Xyngular.

Lauren Teague [00:11:00]:

Yeah. I’ll take a your example a step further. I was building audience affinity maps with, a group of public relations, professionals from school board or school districts across the state. Right. So and I was doing the pre call with their, with their organizers. And I was like, okay. I explained the the process of of going through, like, an audience affinity map, which is, my take on kind of a customer journey map. Right, and it involves kind of thinking both about the customer or the fan and their stages of fandom, their relationship with your brand, and what they’re actually, like, doing in the moment, what they’re thinking about and asking in the moment, and and also how they feel.

Lauren Teague [00:11:43]:

Once we kinda put ourselves in that character, then we can then write a really strong messaging map for each fan at each stage to address even the feelings that they have. So when we were doing this prework, I was like, just just give me your stakeholders. Like, who are your most important audiences? Britney, they came up with, like, 12 different stakeholders that they’re in communication with daily, weekly, on a regular basis for these Every single school district, the communicators, of that school district, and it’s everything from the teachers to the union presidents, to the school board members themselves, to the the community who doesn’t have kids in school but are voting on bonds and and school board members and things like that, and how you message to, like, a parent of an incoming kindergartner versus how you message to a parent of a junior and senior in high school And what they need from you and how emotionally connected they are to their needs. And that is just you’re right. It’s like we have to actually think of this on an individual level. And are we creating the right experience, the right touch point, sending the right message, and even showing up to reflect their emotional state, I think, is really, really important. And so that’s kind of the work that I’ve gotten To to do with, you know, these smaller organizations up to some of the, as we call them at convince and convert, the most interesting brands in the world. But the frameworks that you use at the Grand Ol Opry or at Cabela’s or with Cisco marketing, You know, we can apply those to a lot of almost every business.

Lauren Teague [00:13:24]:

They just maybe don’t need the same level of sophistication, And that’s why I think, like, your model, Super, s u p e r, is so great and then my brand of fan model. I’m I’m even still trying to, like, pack it down a little bit so that it’s just so simple. We can, you know, we can apply it to to almost anybody. Yeah. And I think One of

Brittany Hodak [00:13:44]:

the things that I run into when I do so I call it intentional experience design. That’s sort of my take on on journey mapping. So intentional experience design, affinity mapping. I don’t know if you run into this a lot, but when I’m working with somebody, and it could be It could be a solopreneur. It could be, an insurance agent or a real estate agent or a mortgage broker. And when I start to ask questions about the journey, they revert back to, like, oh, well, this is the department that does this or this is the department that does that, and I have to Constantly say, no. We’re gonna step back because we’re thinking as the fan right now. We’re thinking as the customer, and a customer doesn’t see departments.

Brittany Hodak [00:14:26]:

Mhmm. A customer doesn’t See, oh, like, now this is going into this different system or somebody else is being tasked with this as a KPI. Like, they see a brand, And so the need to create an experience that is cohesive across every single touch point for that brand is something that I think even though, You know, people like me and you have been out there shouting it from the rooftops. There are still a lot of companies that are so siloed and so inward looking with their metrics that they’re missing the forest for the trees.

Lauren Teague [00:14:57]:

Yeah. Yep. I’ve I have that line too in my, customer journey talk and it is you know, no matter who touches it in your organization, somebody on the outside, they only see your logo. They only see your branded hashtag. They don’t know that it was Johnny in customer service or Sally in sales whose job it is to do this thing. Like, They just see it’s from you, and so that makes it’s it’s pretty hard when an organization is so siloed. And so probably like you, When we get a chance to go in and kind of sit down with that group. Right? Like, it’s like, bring in Johnny, bring in Sally, bring in anyone who has a touch point or a like, That understands the customer experience at this moment, bring them into the room.

Lauren Teague [00:15:41]:

Let’s, like, break that all down and and really put it on paper because I don’t know very many organizations that from the top actually understand, you know, what that what that hierarchy and what that overall fan experience does come out to

Brittany Hodak [00:15:56]:

be. Yeah, because it’s, you know, everyone is in the experience department as I like to say. At any given time, anyone can be the chief experience officer of your company. So, Lauren, I know it’s been, gosh, what, 15 years since you started at the PGA, but something that I think is so fascinating is There aren’t a lot of people who were in a role where they got to define, Decide, build what they wanted the social and digital experience to be for their brand. Like you said, you came in, in a time where A lot of social platforms didn’t exist. A lot of them maybe existed but hadn’t, ever fallen under the direction of someone who was bringing a sense of intentionality to what do we want the digital customer experience to be, what do we want the social experience with our brand to be. And I think A lot of people who are running small businesses have not had that intentionality. So even though we’re 15 years later, they may be saying, You know, even though I’ve had an Instagram for a few years or even though, you know, I’ve got my website, I have some things that I do, I’ve never been intentional about creating a digital version of the experience people have when they’re with me in person.

Brittany Hodak [00:17:11]:

Yep. So I want you to kinda take me back, take me through Some of the things that you were very bullish about, very intentional about designing that You still see parallels for small business owners or even midsized business owners who are still refining The social and digital strategies they have for their customers today.

Lauren Teague [00:17:34]:

Yeah. I I I knew this, but I didn’t really realize now that I’m coming full circle as an Entrepreneur myself. I’ve never actually worked for someone else since, like, my professional career started, outside of so, you know, like outside of retail and and wine bars and golf carts, but I’ve never worked in a business In a role that’s predefined. I’ve always kind of come in and started a role. So whether that was, like, the very first, media company that I worked in at a college, Obviously, going to the PGA tour, even when I went to see it convince and convert, I kinda was like, okay. What does a strategist do here? And they’re like, You you’re you. Right? So, like, kind of all the things all the time, I’m always building what that looks like, what that feels like, and so that part Is I feel like now really now that I’m, you know, more than 15 years into my whole career, like, that feels like unique and and and something to do. But I remember going back, like, at PGA Tour.

Lauren Teague [00:18:32]:

So put yourself in this fan in in, like, kind of this fan experience. I loved the tour. It was my dream job, And I got there at 23. So I moved across the country with, like, 6 FedEx boxes, pretty much everything I could pack, in in an airplane and my golf clubs. Right? And so I came in as a fan of what I thought I knew about the tour, what I kind of what I knew about the players and and what that was. And So there were 2 things that were really important to me was, like, 1, try new things. Right? We didn’t know what social media was going to turn out to be, but in 2008, At least the organization had the foresight to say, like, we’re gonna need someone to be here to grow with this part. So kudos to them for hiring someone who is probably not Who you would think would be the voice of the PGA tour online authentically, a 20 something year old, you know, female who was like a 10, you know, a 10 handicap at the time.

Lauren Teague [00:19:27]:

You know, for me to to authentically have that voice, and present, I knew I had to do it not from a player necessarily, but from a fan perspective. And what does it look like to bring fans inside the ropes? So we tried a lot of things. Like, 3 weeks into my brand new job, I got invited to a meeting with the Players Championship, tournament team. So the tournament director, The marketing people, the corporate partnership people, and the Players Championship is like the gold standard, PGA Tour events. It’s the one Near major that the PGA Tour owns and operates. They don’t own any of the other majors. So this is like their shining star. It’s yeah.

Lauren Teague [00:20:12]:

For a lot of reasons, they’re shining stars. So they’re like, what can we do to be young and edgy and, like, reach more people like you? I I think they use the word millennials. Maybe they use gen y. I don’t know. So, you know, but I’m like, okay. Well, let’s try Twitter. Okay. What’s that? Well, Twitter in April of 2008, like, the MTV VMAs were using Twitter, like, kind of from an event side and some people were using Twitter, but it hadn’t been adopted at all by, like, sports and, and certainly not events.

Lauren Teague [00:20:46]:

So I had to have some conversations about, like, how we’re not gonna ruin the brand by Tweeting by doing live Twitter on, social media. We’re not we’re not gonna risk anything with your partners.

Brittany Hodak [00:20:59]:

You’re not out. TV viewership. Nobody’s, like, following along for your live tweets.

Lauren Teague [00:21:03]:

Exactly. Like I mean, this is at a time when, like, literally no one could have a cell phone on the golf course, and I didn’t have like, I had a flip phone, Britney. Like, it’s not like I was gonna be, like, creating rich media from the golf course in 2008, but we Did get started.

Brittany Hodak [00:21:18]:

Blackberry in 2008. Oh my gosh. That was so long ago. Yeah.

Lauren Teague [00:21:21]:

Right? I mean, like, I could take pictures. I could upload them to to TwittPic, and then it would, like, put a link into the tweet so you could, like, click on a link and see the photo. So, I mean, these are, like, the very early days, but we didn’t Stop trying, and we were the 1st sporting event, like, to go live on Twitter. I have a, like, one of the original Twitter shirts that they I I remember emailing Twitter, like, hey. Guess what what we’re doing for the players championship? And they’re like, I mean, I sent it to, like, info at twitter.com. Right? And, like, there’s probably 15 employees. And, like, You know, 6 weeks later, I get back, like, thanks so much. That was so cool with, like, a t shirt.

Lauren Teague [00:21:55]:

So, you know, that That was kind of that first part was, like, just keep trying. So every time a new channel or a new opportunity, like, I PM ed a Facebook app that was a game, Like in 2010, 2011, and we released a game that was like a companion to, the tournaments every week and, like, just kind of all this really fun stuff, but I never took I never lost the the fan experience part from that. So I would, If there was a tournament nearby, before I was actually working said tournaments from the media center, I was driving to them. I was attending. I was walking outside the ropes. I was Listening to fans, I was trying to figure out what their experience was so that I could add to it from wherever we were. Because I spent far more time Tweeting and posting from my couch, like, real time updates about what was happening on the golf tournament on the weekends, than I ever did in, like, in a media center or from inside the ropes just because golf happens, like, 45 weeks a year. Right? I they weren’t gonna send out their social media person that much.

Lauren Teague [00:23:00]:

So, until content became everybody’s job, I just wanted to harness, like, what the fan wants from that kind of different point of view. Wait. What could we do that was different than TV or any other or even live streaming? When we a lot of really cool things especially early like, in those early days.

Brittany Hodak [00:23:21]:

What are some of the things you’re most proud of trying That maybe people thought were, like, wacky off the wall ideas, but you just trusted your gut as a fan.

Lauren Teague [00:23:30]:

I think so 1, we did a couple things that were pretty cool then. One was we did some live coverage, from, like, the that complimented our live at coverage. So live at was, like, we would take 2 or 3 holes and stream them online so People online could watch like every player come through those holes and a few times, we actually went out on the tournament and we would do live Twitter coverage, that complimented complimented. So you might see 1 hole on the video stream from the front 9, but you could get live tweets from what was happening In the on the front 9 of that tournament. It was a little excessive, a little over, but we if people are like, can you go follow x y z player, You know, for a 3 holes, we we could because we are out there, and so we could we could share that. We could share kind of the things that will never get caught on TV, the small interactions and that kind of like AT and T Pebble Beach, I was out walking with Bill Murray, as a group one time, and I caught him, you know, just watched him interact with the crowd in a different way that you will you will never see on TV. It’ll never show up in, like, one of his interviews, but I was watching him interact with the crowd and, like, eat cookies that someone had offered him and and interact with the military students that were there, and, you know, and that kind of thing, and I I love that. And the other one was when command centers became really big, for a little while and it was the kind of the social listening command center, We actually put that on our wish list.

Lauren Teague [00:25:00]:

We had a wish list of things that we asked our sales team to go consider rather than the sales team Bringing us like a sponsor to do something that was not something that we wanted to do or do we didn’t think reflected the fan experience very well. We built a wish list and said if you can if you have someone interested in activating on social, here’s, like, our top 5 or top 10 things that we would like to do if we had the dollars to do it. One of those was to build a social command center, at a major tournament and so that we could bring in. And so we did that with IZOD at the masters in 2013, and I went up there for 3 or 4 days, and we had our own command center for social media so we could do that. We hosted players, and we did interviews from there. And we did a Wednesday night or Wednesday night live show on Google Hangouts. This is old. Right? We had just gotten a pair of Google Google Glass.

Lauren Teague [00:25:54]:

So we are, like, putting them on players, we were interviewing, and I produced a 4 camera Google Hangout, for, like, an hour long show that somewhere lives on YouTube somewhere. I’m convinced it still lives there, but we had a red carpet cam. Notice. Yeah. We had a, yeah, red carpet cam. We had 2 hosts that were sports radio DJs from, like, Kentucky. We had, Another social guy from the tour, doing player interviews. We had, like, a Google Glass cam that was roaming around.

Lauren Teague [00:26:24]:

It was nuts, But it was awesome. It was awesome to kind of, like, how often do you get to see inside of a Maxim IZOD party Wednesday night at the masters, right, before the tournament starts? Like, never. So these things were just really fun to, like, say, like, could we try it? Could we do it? And we did. So but I think that’s also extended to, like, when I’ve worked with other brands, like, Like, what kind of activations could we do that really actually matter to the fans, not just to your partner? Because your partner’s buying in to do something that actually reaches people, not just looks cool.

Brittany Hodak [00:27:01]:

Right. It goes back to that same, like, b to b to c, like, brand to fan, not brand to sponsor.

Lauren Teague [00:27:07]:

Yeah.

Brittany Hodak [00:27:08]:

So clearly, you had a ton of really great content ideas when you were working, with the PGA. And one of the things that I know you talk about now that has helped so many people is your content multiplication magic system. And I would love for you to talk a little bit about what that is because, again, I know a lot of people that are listening to this show may struggle to think, well, Who would be a fan of me? Like, what could I post about? What’s content that somebody would care about for what I do in my job as a wealth manager or an actuator That’s not a job. Actuary. What tell us a little bit about the content multiplication magic system and why everybody should know about it in their business.

Lauren Teague [00:27:49]:

Oh, thank you. So Content Multiplication Magic came out of just kind of the need for me as I was creating a podcast and putting that out into the world in 2023, For me to kind of maximize my time in what I could squeeze out of every single episode. When working as a content strategist And a social media strategist for the last 9 years or so. 2 things become really evident. 1, we’re creating a ton of content that is That nobody pays attention to because we think we have to feed the beast. 2, because we created so much content and there are lots of creators or Speakers or thought leaders or brands who have had blogs and social media channels into such and such for for a decade or more. Right, we have like this wealth of content already there. So I started using AI probably before the beginning of the year but certainly when I was starting to podcasts together.

Lauren Teague [00:28:45]:

So I was using like ChatGPT and trying to like optimize my prompts. And how do I get a whole podcast transcript into chat gpt so that it can help me build, like, just help me kind of extract things like titles and show notes and and, like, and make this content Happen faster. So, we’ve gotten it to a part as a spot where I can do I can extract a month’s worth of content From any single podcast episode, and I can do it in less than a day’s time. So it’s using, like, using 1 tool to help cut video and cut it in different ways. Right? So I use Pictory to do that. I use Cast Magic to cut my or not cut, but Extract some of the the key parts, and I’m using my own prompts and my own content. And so, like, some of those ethics things I feel pretty okay with because it’s My stuff, and we’re just and I don’t ever, like, copy and paste. It’s always got my eyes on it, when we put out show notes or the LinkedIn newsletter or the email newsletter or whatever.

Lauren Teague [00:29:46]:

And so, basically, it’s my experience of using AI, and how to take okay. If I can do it with a podcast episode, can I do it with a keynote? Can I do it with a, a quick video? Can I do it with how else can I use AI to kind of help generate and multiply the content and refresh the Content that we have? So if you have an affinity map or a messaging map, and you know that your audiences need it in different ways, and you have that piece And, like, 6 years ago, don’t go rewrite that, like, refresh it. And you can also use AI to say, like, pull out for this audience, Pull out the 3 key things that somebody might need. So I actually wrote a whole new talk on that. I I was talking to Jay Baer about it when I was, Pulling it up because I was explaining to my process, and I I was like, Jay, like, I think I really wanna show people how they can take a piece of content and and atomize like we’ve been saying all along And how easy that is with, content. He’s like, yeah. You so many people need that. Right? Like, you need to go teach that.

Lauren Teague [00:30:45]:

So I have a course, like, so it’s on demand on my site, but I’ve also been doing that presentation for marketers, all year and people love it. But in true, like, fashion, I’m I’m providing them, like, a framework on how content gets made and then, like, we’ll multiply the magic with the AI. So it’s like that part will never go away. Right? Like, how content really should get made is a framework that you can use indefinitely no matter what the tools look like. We can just start to apply these tools that consistently change to, like, help us get there. So it’s kind of like a Tricky talk because I get to teach what I want, and then they get AI on the back. And then that’s what they want, peep but people love it.

Brittany Hodak [00:31:26]:

Well and I think, At least my philosophy of AI is AI is not going to replace people, but people who use AI 100% will replace people who do not and jobs. And there is no excuse for not using technology that allows you to be more productive or serve your customers better if it exists right now. And Gus, like, where you go.

Lauren Teague [00:31:53]:

And what I found is that, like, I’m not replacing I’m not taking away time from my participation. I’m just because content gets made faster, I get those 20 minutes or 30 minutes back to go be actually present in my LinkedIn news feed. So I’m liking and I’m commenting and I’m like reposting things more often. I can spend more time in threads and figure out if it’s gonna stick. I can, you know, I get to actually be more social on social media because the content is created faster. And so that’s not an exchange of it’s an exchange of value, but I’m not losing, like, the time. Right? Like, I I feel like I’m way more productive and way more present, and that’s how I wanna show up in those platforms.

Brittany Hodak [00:32:36]:

Yeah. And that’s really the beauty of of of any tool, but AI is the one that people are talking about right now and and how it can help us rearrange the way that we spend our time to provide as much value as possible. And one of the things that we haven’t talked about yet that I wanna get to and I would imagine AI allows for you to have more time to allocate to this is Fan Wagon. Talk a little bit about Fan Wagon, what it is, why you’re so excited about it, and what we can expect to see in the future.

Lauren Teague [00:33:05]:

Yeah. I hinted earlier. I was talking about my entrepreneurial endeavors. So somewhere in the pandemic, as we had more time on our hands and we were spending more time, you know, cleaning out our Kids closets and our own closets and that kind of thing. Thank you, Marie Kondo. To, I realized that I still had the Same problem, which was what do I do with the sports jerseys and shirts and things that my kids were outgrowing because they represented teams that weren’t that don’t live around us. Right? So, I live in Portland, Oregon. My husband is from the DFW area.

Lauren Teague [00:33:40]:

His favorite team in the world is the Dallas Stars. We have, like, every single jersey, like, size, like, 6 months to 10 years, right, for the Dallas Stars and and hats and sweater and scarves and and the whole like. So, like, Like, what do I do with these things? I live in Portland. Well, I just kind of realized there’s probably a better way to to exchange these and, like, try to throw them up on eBay. I don’t I don’t use eBay. Mercari, Poshmark, these aren’t, like, really well suited for that. And I was like, how hard could it be to build a marketplace? Fast forward about

Brittany Hodak [00:34:13]:

How hard is it, Lauren? Yeah.

Lauren Teague [00:34:14]:

How hard is it found out?

Brittany Hodak [00:34:15]:

Let me ask you in hindsight. How hard

Lauren Teague [00:34:17]:

is it? Maybe a little harder than I thought. However, so we built Fanwagon. It’s fanwagn.com to be the home for 2nd fan fashion. What the tipping point for me, like and, again, this goes back to, like, the messaging and motivation side is, like, okay. That would be cool to do. And then I realized the tipping point for me, Hook that I couldn’t ignore is I hate throwing away clothes, full stop, holy socks, like dirty underwear, like, You know, whatever it is, like, to throw it away actually gives me the heebie jeebies. So I needed a place, like, Okay. So if I can build a company that not just, like, solves this one problem around fandom and, like, the things that we wear that represent us and making sure that that those things go from closet A closet instead of closet to landfill.

Lauren Teague [00:35:08]:

Like, that’s 1 part. But, like, to introduce a sustainable circular solution Into textile waste and then hopefully, I’m successful enough to invest in other ways to, To, like, solve the problems of textile waste. I was like, okay. Now I’m hooked. Like, now I’m in it. Now I can’t I can’t not do this part, right, because it is So much bigger than me, and it is literally, out out a huge pollution problem that We refuse to address as a society because we like fast fashion and we like large wardrobes, and we love to buy things that support, Like, that that we put on that make us feel like ourselves. And I there’s a lot of people out there who rock their team jerseys, their team hats, their team shirts, And god bless them. I do too.

Lauren Teague [00:35:55]:

Right? I love getting new gear. I just wanna place where that gear can be pass on to someone else to make new memories in it. And so on the on the website, we say that fan wear belong belongs in stadiums, not in landfills, as a motivational help to to get people to look at what’s in their closet, and not just donate it to Goodwill because, unfortunately, like, 60% of what goes to Goodwill We’ll go straight to a landfill. It might spend 90 days in a store, but then it it’s going, to a landfill or an incinerator, and We could we could do that a lot better.

Brittany Hodak [00:36:32]:

I love it. And, you know, I one of the things that I love about this idea of fan to fan is Is also you can you can share some of the memories. You can say to somebody like, I, you know, I wore this hat, you know, 2 Stanley Cup games or, You know, my my team won a world series in in this hat, but, you know, I’ve I’ve moved on or, you know, like, whatever. Like, they’re they’re they’re the stories that come with the merch, which feels, very true to to the sense of community that I know is important to you and important to Fan Wagon.

Lauren Teague [00:37:03]:

Isn’t it funny how, like, the things that we believe in are the things that continue to come back? So just last week, we were iterating on this of Kind of what how do we bring the story deeper into the site? And so instead of we’re gonna start testing. Instead of just putting product description, We’re gonna prompt for a story. So you can tell me about, like, what size and the the and, like but we have attributes and tags for that. Right? I wanna know about the story about the thing. And some people will use AI to write their story, and that’s fine. But other people are gonna talk about it, and I there’s something like it’s the antiques roadshow effect. Right? When you know the story behind the item, it in automatic automatically increases the value. And so I think, like, wow, what a cool differentiator This is gonna be because you don’t get the story on eBay.

Lauren Teague [00:37:50]:

You don’t have a story coming out of fanatics. Right? That kind of thing. Like, the The Taylor Swift effect on, like, New Jersey sales is one thing, but I wanna hear why someone bought the jersey and why they decided to give it up, you know, in 6 months or 12 you know, 12 months. So, I think that’s that’s definitely a big piece of it.

Brittany Hodak [00:38:12]:

That’s that’s what you need to work on is, How to get your hands on all of the, Chiefs Scared when Taylor Swift is done with it and listed on bandwagon. That

Lauren Teague [00:38:21]:

Yeah. Yeah. Call me. Call me, T Swift. Call me. I’ll get you some I’ll hook you up.

Brittany Hodak [00:38:27]:

Awesome. Well, Lauren, before before we end, I wanna know what is something that you’re a superfan of? Could be a product or a brand that has changed your life in some way or you have fallen in love with and more people need to know about.

Lauren Teague [00:38:40]:

The sports bra here in Portland Is the 1st female owned, female owned and female sports bar in the entire country. And what Jenny Nguyen has done to just elevate the scope of women’s sports just in Portland and now nationwide, because she is one and a half years into her business, and she’s done amazing things. It’s such a fabulous, fabulous story of just Having an idea, putting that on the world, and, like, letting people contribute to it and letting people just celebrate, something that deserves to be celebrated like Like, women’s sports. That’s one that I am definitely a fan of. I just took my 10 year old son there, and he walked in and didn’t even blink an eye. He was like, Cool. It’s a sports bar, and I was like, it’s all women’s sports. And he’s like, great.

Lauren Teague [00:39:27]:

There’s volleyball. Oh, look. There’s golf. Oh, there’s soccer, mom. I wanna watch soccer. Like, the fact that that he’s growing up in a world where that’s really to him.

Brittany Hodak [00:39:36]:

Like, that’s incredible. I love it. That’s amazing. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for coming to hang out. Where can people find out more about you, about brand of fan, fan wagon, all of the things?

Lauren Teague [00:39:48]:

All of the things. Probably the easiest place to go is my website, which is lauren dotcom. There, you’ll get a link to like, you’ll see all the brand new fans show, also available wherever you get podcasts. We’ve got Thirty some episodes, similar to Creating Super Fans. So, we got that up. And then fan wagon is fanwagndot to come. And, of course, it’s fan wagon on all the socials as well. If you have something to, sell or re resell out or you’re looking for something for a game that you’re going to, or, you know, a Travis Kelsey jersey.

Lauren Teague [00:40:25]:

I’m doing my best to get them. Go ahead and, and go check that out. I’d be much.

Brittany Hodak [00:40:33]:

Awesome. Well, thank you again, Lauren, and I cannot wait to talk to you soon.

Lauren Teague [00:40:37]:

Thanks, Britney.

Brittany Hodak [00:40:39]:

Alright. That’s all the time we have for today’s episode of the creating super fans podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Now remember, If you’re a superfan of today’s episode, you can help us out in a big way by leaving a review and a rating wherever you get your podcast. It may seem like a little thing, but it can make a huge difference in helping others discover the show. Now until next time, remember, super fandom is a two way street. Show your love for your customers and your always, and they’ll love you right back. We’ve got an exciting show lined up for next week, so I hope we’ll see you right back here.

Brittany Hodak [00:41:13]:

Bye bye.