Channel Mastery - Ep. 168: Abby Mickey, Cycling Tips
Cycling Tips
Building an engaged community, and making everyone feel welcome
“...One of our new members reached out to the entire Slack, which is like over a thousand people, for sure at this point, I don't know the exact number, but reached out to everybody saying that she was struggling with mental health in the pandemic and if anyone else was kind of feeling this way and everybody was, there were so many responses. They were just so supportive and that's just the community that we've built with the Veloclub. And I think they are instrumental in pushing Cycling Tips to what we are today and how much we've grown in the last year.”
- Abby Mickey
EPISODE PREVIEW:
I’ve been a long time follower of Cycling Tips and became even more of a fan when Abby Mickey, retired professional cycling and extraordinary journalist joined the team. Abby brings a beautiful narrative touch and has such a strong sense of storytelling that it makes every story richer and offers a point of differentiation. I was absolutely thrilled to host her as my guest on this episode of Channel Mastery.During our interview, Abby shares the story of joining the team at Cycling Tips as Associate Editor and the negative response from some of the audience members. This unwarranted feedback was sent to her via email, comments on podcasts and articles or directly to the Editor in Chief. She also shares how the community of Cycling Tips membership, Veloclub is highly engaged, loyal and quickly expanding. You’ll also hear how Youtube is becoming a channel important to women in cycling.
GUEST PROFILES:
Abby Mickey
Abby was born and raised in the mountains of Colorado. Until college she was a ski racer but once at the University of Colorado Boulder she discovered the world of bikes. She participated in mountain and road racing until she graduated from school with a degree in History. Afterwards she pursued a professional career in road racing and competed in Europe and the USA until 2019 when she hung up her race bike. Now she is an Associate Editor at CyclingTips. She focuses on covering the women’s professional peloton through writing and also on her podcast, Freewheeling.
SELECT QUOTES:
“...One of our new members reached out to the entire Slack, which is like over a thousand people, for sure at this point, I don't know the exact number, but reached out to everybody saying that she was struggling with mental health in the pandemic and if anyone else was kind of feeling this way and everybody was, there were so many responses. They were just so supportive and that's just the community that we've built with the Veloclub. And I think they are instrumental in pushing Cycling Tips to what we are today and how much we've grown in the last year.“
“It's also really nice that we as a media outlet are we don't have to cater to sponsors. Yes, it's really nice that we have partnerships with specific brands and stuff, and I don't think that that's ever going to go away, but when we're talking on the podcast and something comes up and it might be controversial for a brand, we don't really have to worry about saying the truth because it's not where our base income comes at this point. And it's really made a huge difference with Cycling Tips.”
“...when I first started with Cycling Tips, when I was on the podcast in the very, very beginning, Caley got from the very beginning, he started getting emails about me being on the podcast that were very negative. And a lot of them, he didn't share them with me. He didn't tell me he was getting them. He kind of chalked it up to misogyny and deleted them because that's just who Caley is. He's super supportive of everyone he's hired at Cycling Tips, but he could read between the lines of those criticisms.”
“I just felt like I'd found my home for the first time in my life when I found a bike and the fact that I can push the sport forward so that it's growing, so that the next generation. And so that Caley’s daughter, when she, if she gets into cycling in the future, she has an opportunity to race under, with the same salary as, as the men are racing for right now and may race the big races like that. That's kind of my goal. And I love that. I can, I love that. I have any kind of hand in what's going on. I don't think I do, but I mean, I'm trying.”