Why Female Fandom is Dominating the Attention Economy: From NFL Athletes to Swiftie Communities, with Alexy Posner

0:00Alexy, hi, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here and get to chat with you, even though it's like morning your time, night my time. Like it's so fun to be across the world getting to talk to each other. I know. I love that for us. That's the power of the internet,

0:18Alexy Posner:I guess. You're on my list of places to come visit, though I do hear the spiders are quite large. so oh my god it's my husband when he like sees a spider he's like oh my god and i'm like well let's take it outside like let's get a bowl and like make sure it's okay that is so all the videos of i feel like all the aussies like take literally like caring for the spiders and taking them out i would sell that house burn it down like never return ever again if i found a spider like this big in my house but um anyway it's on my list to come and visit see you anyways even though they're even though we got spiders.

0:54Alexy Posner:I feel like so many people who haven't been to Australia say the same thing to me. And I remember actually when we moved to Bali in 2019, there was this huge huntsman in the room that like was like the size of my hand. And I remember my husband coming in and being like, listen, I'm not afraid of spiders, but like, we're going to have to get that out if we're going to stay in this house. And I was like, it's fine. Like, we'll get it out. Get the bowl. oh yeah no thank you no thank you that's a hard path for me very big where are you based i'm in scottsdale arizona so we just have rattlesnakes and like scorpions and like those things here but yeah not that deep i'm like what the hell i would i didn't think i've ever seen a scorpion or i mean or a rattlesnake i've never seen either the problem is I'm originally from Philadelphia.

1:46So a rattlesnake sounds the same way as like we on the East coast have these like things called cicadas. I love that this has turned into a nature show, but I'm going to tell you a dumb story about myself. So they're like, there are these like beetles that are called cicadas on the East coast and they like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they like rattle or whatever. So I'm like off for my like hot girl hike in Arizona and I hear that noise and I'm like, oh, it's a cicada. Like not that, like just naturally think that being from Philly. I look down and there is a giant rattlesnake like within a foot of me.

2:20I have never launched backwards so fast my whole entire life. And then he slithered away and I was like,

2:25Alexy Posner:okay, so pay attention, Lexi. Don't, there are not beetles here. Yeah, that's, that's Molly. My mom had the same experience, actually. She lives like more in the middle of Australia. And so she has like during the kind of spring season, brown snakes, which are the snakes that can kill you here. Oh, I think they're called a great brown or something like that but they are like super gnarly and they're really aggressive and they fight over like whatever they fight about anyway my mom was out in the garden and they were there was one kind of like coming for her chickens and her dog barks differently when there's a snake around and so she heard the dog barking and she was like oh okay there's a snake and then she turned around and the snake had reared up and it was ready to like go and so her life like flashed before her eyes she launched back and like kind of turned because she was like terrified it was like ready to bite she turned around but she fell and kind of like hit her knee while she was trying to scramble like away and was like hysterically screaming for like anyone to hear kind of thing because if you get bitten I think you have 20 minutes she would have died for sure and um she like she obviously scared the snake too so the snake actually went away instead of like going for her but she was oh my goodness literally like you know terrified like yeah like traumatized after it she was like this that my life flashed before my eyes like I was about to die not ideal it is not ideal I was like I'm not coming I'm never coming back no no my dog is so tiny like the snake would eat her like a possum I mean she's like a possum okay oh well thank you let's talk about you though.

4:01Alexy Posner:Let's talk about sport. You're in the business of helping athletes generate wealth outside of kind of playing the game. You're also in the business of fandom and community. So I'm really excited to get into kind of what you do, how you make money, what you're passionate about, and what you're seeing in the industry. Do you want to start with giving us a little bit of an overview into you, the business, and how it works? Yeah, absolutely. So I have an athlete and talent management firm. I represent top NFL players. So we football is actually coming down, down, down your way this year. I think there's a game in Melbourne.

4:39I forget who's playing, but yeah, we've got NFL is expanding globally. So represent top NFL players and on-air talent. And then I have a offshoot that I started. That's a fitness brand based and embedded in the lovely fandom of Taylor Swift, which is absolutely hysterical and insane. And, you know, a year ago, if you would have said like, are you going to start a fitness brand that is based on Taylor's music? I probably would have giggled, but it's turned into this massive community and has been really, really, really, really fun to build. Oh my God. I'm so excited to get into both of these things.

5:16Alexy Posner:Like let's talk Taylor. I got you. That sounds amazing. I went to the Taylor Swift concert when she came to Australia and it was like, it was my husband and I say it was the next best thing after our wedding and like we aren't fans I mean we're fans now because we went yes but we weren't fans like you know we weren't in the community beforehand and our seats were separate we sat separately like so we're both totally separate in the stadium and he was like okay well I need to wear something that's kind of like you know people will make friends with me so we had this shirt that is like our dog all over it like and she's this cute little chihuahua daddy's girl and it's like her she's always like in pink and stuff so he basically made friends with everyone because everyone was like is that your dog oh my god and then afterwards when we met back up we were like whoa that was like the best night of our lives and we weren't even together and we were both just like that's amazing community of all time like all the little tiny girls and the shifting of the bracelets and oh my god it was so cool love that so fun we're gonna get into that let's start with the athletes, my real business, what I actually do.

6:25Alexy Posner:What's the nine to five looking like these days? Yes, yes, yes. So 10 years ago, I started AP Brand Group, which is an athlete and talent management firm. So my role is to build brands for both talent and athletes based on their passion and their purpose. That's what we do. And so how does one get into that? How does one, start doing that? How do you get your first client? What do you do for them? So we, so I started completely self-funded, you know, true entrepreneur at, at, at my heart. I worked in sport. I actually take it back a little further, was a professional athlete. I grew up riding horses very competitively.

7:08And then when I was 21, my riding career ended and just, my parents were done funding my very expensive habit as they like to call it. And so So I knew I wanted to stay in sport. I knew I wanted to stay. I wanted to go into an industry that was like going to be hard, for lack of better words. And right at that time, that was in 2012, you know, not a lot of females in sport, especially in high level positions. And just thought like, great, like basically tell me I can't do it and I really want to go do something. And so started working in baseball, then transitioned over to hockey. and I was seeing this kind of pattern over and over again of athletes who were so hyper-focused on what was happening either on the rink or on the field, which is what they should be focused on.

7:57But then there was nothing happening off the field. There wasn't that community building element. There wasn't that brand building element. And there were so many athletes that like, you know, their career would end for one reason or another. They would get hurt. There would, something would happen and they would experience what I experienced, which was like deep depression. I became an alcoholic. You know, I acted a fool because my whole identity, my entire life was wrapped into my sport. And so when my sport ended, I was like, I don't know who I am or how I want to show up. And I saw that time and time again, like my story was definitely not a unique one.

8:32And I kept seeing that pattern throughout all the teams I worked with that as a guy would get cut, But, you know, they just had nothing to like fall back on. And I also so anyway, I decided to start AP Brand Group to work with athletes and talent to really build their brands and build their brands in a way that it was based on their passion and their purpose. So wasn't now this fall back on mentality. It was let's step into what is really exciting to you. If we built a brand based on your passion and purpose, when you're done playing, whether that happens in 10 years or one year, you're moving into this next phase, like really excited versus feeling like, you know, a shell of yourself.

9:12So I started AP Brand Group 10 years ago.

9:15Alexy Posner:I mean, it's a long, it's a long time. I love that for you. I have so many questions in so many different directions. I want to start by when you're saying like brand, are you talking about, you know, everything from the deals and the ambassadorships, or are you talking specifically from the like, we've started a drinks brand and we're there? Or what are the kind of like, longer term generating things that do kind of merge out of the brand deal space and into that like other space? Yeah, so when I use the word brand, I'm actually referring directly to like that athlete or that talent, we absolutely create physical brands.

9:52Alexy Posner:Got it. Their IP is a brand. Yes, exactly. So my job is really to create a brand of that athlete or that talent. And, you know, ultimately, I boil that word brand down into evoking a certain emotion from our consumers. So I want our consumers, our fan base to think about one of my clients and feel something specifically. And it's my job to help those athletes or help that talent figure out what that feeling is and then make sure it's properly communicated across all consumer touch points. So those consumer touch points are social media, their media relations, their brand deals, their appearances.

10:29And any time a consumer could possibly interface with them, we're really focusing on, OK, what brand are we trying to build? What emotion do we want those fans to feel about them? And it's really fun. It's really fun. And it's really fun getting to figure out authentic, like what is authentic to that athlete and kind of pulling all these puzzle pieces together. But we also then you might my team and I now also create physical brands. So like Jaleel White is a great example. He famous actor. We started a cannabis company together. So helped him with his whole, you know, the physical brand of his cannabis line, which is legal here in in the States.

11:09Alexy Posner:Yes. Got it. I love that because I think as well, like athletes and maybe even like maybe a performer, like a singer, they kind of have this thing that a typical founder or a creator doesn't have up front, which is that they know there's an expiry date to their kind of career and how long they're going to be able to play for. So now in today's world, that's probably changed a lot since you started. They already know that they need to be building those other things around it. Whereas like a founder or a creator or specifically creators, I think is like, you, you start this thing and you think you're going to be able to go for a really long time, but you kind of misjudge the level of burnout that can come from being on that hamster wheel every day and like not having figured out the bigger picture.

11:51Alexy Posner:And so I'd love to kind of like take an example maybe that you have in mind and kind of break down like a case study of an athlete where you're like, cool, we had this person, you know, redacted information, fine, but we had them come in and this is like how we started to structure the deals and how we actually turned their IP into this like licensed product or, or how we thought about it big term so that we can kind of take that playbook and think about what creators or founders building a personal brand could actually extract from that. Yeah, totally. So I think a great example is Mac Collins.

12:28Mac is a very well known. He's actually happens to be in Australia at this very moment training down there. So he was just so funny. So he plays for the Patriots. He's well-known NFL player for all of his kind of funny, quirky antics. So he like eats with his hands, doesn't wear shoes. We've really branded him as the most interesting man in the NFL. And when I started working with Mac nine years ago, he was on the IR, on the injured reserve list, going through a herniated, like had a hernia and and and was really just like we weren't sure how much longer he had to go. He also wasn't he's a wide receiver.

13:07He wasn't getting into a little football talk here. He wasn't like a wide receiver one or two. He was really a special teams guy. So, you know, he kind of wasn't set up to be like the big fan favorite. He's not that guy at that time in his career making these crazy catches. He is now he's one of the top wide receivers in the league, but like could have just ended his career there and rode off into the sunset and no one would have really known about him. And we decided to spend a lot of time digging into who he was, what he cared about and how he wanted to show up and saying no to a lot of stuff.

13:41So like when I think about a creator or an entrepreneur, there are two different sides of it, right? Like people see, I've been a self-funded entrepreneur for the last 10 years. Like what people see about me on my social media is heavily curated of what I want them to know about me. They don't see a lot of the other stuff. And so with Mac, it was like, what do we want fans to know about him and know about him that's authentic to him? So it's not, even though it's curated, doesn't mean it's fake. And so we then really got clear on what his brand was and he loves education. and so slowly we started a content series called macbook mondays which every monday he read a different book he encouraged his fans to read that book that then evolved further into education with his fast fact fridays he then became a global ambassador for special olympics fighting for inclusion within education we've just continued to expand and expand and expand mac also doesn't eat he only eats meat fruit and organs doesn't eat vegetables you will never see the man eat a vegetable, which is like wild.

14:44And so what? Wait, cucumbers. Think about the cucumbers. Does that mean he doesn't eat pickles? Well, I guess cucumbers are fruit, isn't it? Because it's got seeds on the inside. So I think that actually counts as a fruit. Oh, I think cucumbers are a fruit. Okay. Well, broccoli.

15:02Alexy Posner:I'm like, I could not deal with not having broccoli in my life. Oh my God. Okay. Wow. No broccoli. No. By choice or just he hates them because like it's a taste thing doesn't do it doesn't do it's not even like i don't know if he just thinks they have no value for him and so he just doesn't do it you'll never see him eat a vegetable right so fiber comes from fruit we're good we don't need there's no function that's right ones that's right yeah and so um so we really focused on building a brand and said no to a lot of things for him and that is kind of the key in all of this is like then now that we So it's led now he has a huge deal with Vivo, which is a barefoot shoe company.

15:43We turned down deals with all the major shoe brands that wanted to be the first person to put shoes on Matt Collins. And, you know, we kept saying no, no, no, until we found the brand that he truly loves. So that's kind of a fun case study of this human that we took and helped kind of grow and evolve. And now he's dubbed the most interesting man in the NFL. And it's really fun to work with him.

16:07Alexy Posner:That's super cool. When you first started working with him, obviously he was at a different level of kind of fame than he is now. Do you think that you have to be famous to be able to apply these playbooks? Do you think that you have to have a huge audience? Or is there a world where a creator or a founder who has kind of influence in their circle or, you know, in their communities online can apply those types of things and build those kind of brand opportunities without being kind of like famous? Yeah, definitely. I mean, we all have the opportunity to make an impact, whether it's a small impact on, you know, your 200 followers, whether it's a bigger impact on 200 ,000 followers.

16:50But like you can also make an impact just in the community that you're in, right? Like social media isn't a dictator to how big of an impact that you can make. And so I think spending the time to get really clear on, you know, who you are, how you want to show up and like what legacy you want to lead, that can then be a ripple effect for anyone that you touch. And so I completely encourage people to go through brand exercises and like have those moments and have those thoughts with themselves. And, you know, for me as an entrepreneur, one of the very early things that I dedicated myself to is this notion of rising tides, raise all ships.

17:24And so my impact was I early on in my career, before I ever started AP Brand Group, I there was a female that was in a had started a PR firm. And I'm not a publicist, but at that time, that's what I knew. And I asked for her advice. And she, instead of helping me, actively tried to stop me from succeeding. And I very quickly realized. Jesus. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, I could. There are the stories I could tell and not just her. And I very quickly found out like, you know, there's kind of two types of women in this world. and this again sounds rough, but I'll say it, right? Like there's two types of women in this world.

18:06There's the ones who feel like being at the top, there's not enough space for everyone. And then there's the ones that go, you know what, if we link all hands, we can actually be stronger together. And I really early on in my career kind of dedicated myself to the latter, which is, you know, there's enough room for all of us at the top and together we can be stronger and together we can rise. Because if you continuously approach every single day from a scarcity mentality of like, it's only me at the top and there's not enough room for anyone else, like you're going to live a very scarce life. And so that to me was the impact I could make.

18:38I have an all-female team, not because we don't like boys and I would hire a great guy, but I have an all-female team. And that is like, that's the impact I want to leave, right? It's like, it's helping hopefully inspire the next generation of women and bring people up as I continue to rise.

18:53Alexy Posner:Oh, so cool. Yeah. I mean, I feel like we've all experienced the former. Yeah, for sure.

19:27Alexy Posner:data. Experts trust it. Rookies love it. And if you're switching from another platform, their team handles the whole migration process for free. Use code FSC for 30 % off your first three months by going to omnisend.com forward slash FSC or clicking the link in the show notes below. To kind of like keep on that same track of like someone who maybe doesn't have a lot of kind of success yet in terms of following and the social media piece, because I think we all put this focus on, you know, growing our audience and growing these things. What would your advice be actually to someone who is like a founder or a creator who's like, oh, how could I like start dipping my toe in?

20:04Alexy Posner:And like, what are the things I should focus on? Because yes, I should be focusing on, you know, building the socials and that kind of thing. But what are the deals that I could go after? Or how could I identify? And I guess the question is more around like, a bit of a framework of figuring out like, how can I go out there and take these, you know, different avenues of my life that I am kind of passionate about and putting online and monetize that into a more of a like a longer term deal or a longer term opportunity versus like just a one-off, you know, sponsored post or something. Yeah, I think, I mean, it starts with figuring out what your audience is.

20:43Like, so great example of this is Swifty Lifty Club. I started it in January. We are now, we literally today hit like 5 ,000 followers. and it's been all authentic growth and cultivation of a clear community and a clear audience. And that's actually made it really easy for me to go after brands for brand deals for Swifty Lifty Club. My personal brand is a little bit more kind of all over the place, like with my own social media, like, and who's following me. It sort of runs the gamut of like, you'll get a thirst trap every once in a while because I'm still trying to find myself a husband to like, you'll get me with NFL play, you know, it's, it kind of runs the whole, the whole game to, to fitness stuff.

21:21But, um, Swifty, for example, we, we really were like, we wanted to cultivate a community. And so that again, for these entrepreneurs or for these creators, I would say like, first and foremost, get clear on who that community is that you're trying to reach. And when you then go to post and when you then go to create content, it's like, what am I trying to like the, so what question? So like if I post this, so what, right? Like what is that actually telling my followers? What is that telling my community? What am I trying to communicate to them? Because I think we can get wrapped in this game of like, you know, like just sort of posting.

21:57We can get wrapped in this game of trend chasing. And so really thinking about what value am I adding to this community? What's the so what behind this post? And then all of a sudden your community starts to grow and grow and grow. And it also makes it a lot easier when you are talking to brands about like, hey, you you know, sponsorship or whatever that is. But the other thing I would say with brands is stay authentic. So there are brands that like we've personally turned down because I don't use them. Like there's alcohol brands that have reached out wanting to do collaborations with me. I don't drink.

22:28I'm two years sober. So it doesn't make sense for me to do an alcohol collaboration. You know, I also like I don't eat dairy. I don't eat like I don't eat gluten. And there was like a dope like bread company that wanted to do something. And I was like, because of like sourdough and Taylor Swift. And I was like, oh, like, I don't you know, that's not authentic for me to like sit there and be like, let me eat this piece of bread. Like I don't eat gluten. I'm allergic. So that is also something I would say to like creators and entrepreneurs and anyone that's like thinking about using their social platform to grow a community is like, stay authentic to you.

22:59That immediate deal that sounds really good with that sourdough company, like turn it down if you don't eat bread, you know, 100 percent, 100 percent.

23:08Alexy Posner:I want to like hear more about the Swifty Lifty Club? Like, how did it come about? How did it start? What was the kind of like beginning? Was it a strategic like, oh, I'm going to try and strategically put together an idea that I know is going to have legs to go kind of like into that fandom world? Or was it like, I'm just obsessed with Taylor Swift. So I like have to build this in this certain way because I'm obsessed. Or was it accidental? What was the, that kind of like beginning piece of putting this together? all? Yeah, so I have been in fitness my whole life, obviously growing up a professional athlete, stayed in fitness after I stopped riding.

23:45I did my yoga teacher training, taught yoga for a while, then went to rumble and taught rumble boxing and love, love, love fitness. It's been probably the number one thing to keep my mental health. I have a lot of energy and I have to move my body twice a day. Otherwise, like there, it's not good for anyone. So I love fitness. I started coaching again after leaving Rumble. I started coaching at a really amazing studio here in the Phoenix market a year and a half ago. And, you know, I think as a fitness coach, it's like you can very quickly fall into this trap of like, oh, I'm going to go be this because this person did it successfully.