We recently connected with Lindsay Valerio and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Lindsay thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I’ve been doing local, family-friendly content creation for over 5 years now through my brand: kidizona. It’s a group of social media channels (Instagram, Facebook and TikTok) and a website (kidizona.com) where families around Phoenix can find kid-friendly activities!
Through kidizona, I was approached by State Forty Eight to create a tshirt that when purchased, the customer would receive a discount card giving access to exclusive savings at kid-friendly local businesses. It was a perfect marriage of a well-known clothing company and my brand dedicated to sharing family outings!
We called it the Explorer Pass and launched it in October 2023.
People seemed to love the concept, so with the help of my business partner, (my Dad!) I worked on improving the discounts as well as the pass itself.
Currently, it offers discounts to over 55 locations and is growing every day!
And the pass itself changed too! It’s now a digital card that is stored in Google or Apple Wallet!
The shirt is still available and comes with a free 6 month subscription to the pass! Customers can simply visit the State Forty Eight retail store in Downtown Gilbert or the Shops at Norterra and pick up a kidizona tshirt.
The Explorer Pass is often compared to the one-time use passes. (I love those too!) But the difference is that most of the Explorer Pass discounts can be used not just once, but once a day!
For example customers can get the discount EVERY time they visit our indoor toddler spots, trampoline parks and more within the valid windows.
There’s also retail stores, restaurants and coffee shops on the pass – setting us apart from the rest.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
When I moved to Arizona with a toddler, I was looking for fun things to do with her and had the idea to compile the activities in one place: a website.
It wasn’t until a friend encouraged me to post my finds on social media that I started to share what we were doing in more real-time.
I’ve made some amazing friendships and business relationships along the way which is how Explorer Pass was such a natural transition.
I think what many people don’t realize is how much work it can be to be a content creator. We spend hours researching, visiting these spots, piling our kids in the car with enough snacks and water to last us, filming, writing captions, editing, and responding to comments and messages. It’s a huge time commitment and while I truly do love it, I do experience burn-out here and there so I constantly need to re-evaluate priorities and what I spend my time working on.
I have a degree is in Broadcast Journalism and a Master’s in Professional Communications. Then after graduation I spent nearly a decade working in the marketing industry before quitting my job to raise my kids. I think these businesses were a way for me to flex those marketing muscles again so-to-speak.
I try to apply the same professionalism to my current business relationships with kidizona and Explorer Pass…but we also have a lot of fun too!
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
It definitely helps that I’m a mom who reaches moms. I think the kidizona audience appreciates that I share things about activities that a real care-giver would want to know. Like ‘does it have bathrooms?’, ‘can I push a stroller or bring my own snacks?’ These are all facts we need to know before we leave the house with littles!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
When Covid started lifting, I started posting about which splash pads were opening back up. People were ready to get out of their house but not ready to play at an inside facility yet, so splash pads were popular for moms like me looking to get out safely.
Every city opened at their own pace so I’d visit parks, call city offices and sometimes just risk the drive to see if the water was working or not!
From there, I started expanding the content and then moved on to working with local businesses!
My advice to influencers or even businesses starting up socials, is to decide first what you want your voice/brand to be. Copying trends will only take you so far. But coming up with something original to say is what makes a post and a page authentic. Maybe it’s a unique angle or a personal experience, but keep it real to you and most of all…have fun with it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kidizona.com
- Instagram: kidizona
- Facebook: https://Facebook.com/kidizona
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsayvalerio
- Other: Explorer-pass.com
Instagram: @explorer_pass_az
TikTok: @kidizona
Image Credits
Headshot: Shoott.com