Episode 10: Lauren Vasquez, CEO of Dreamin Social: Starting Your Own Brand

Ever wonder how people built successful careers in social media when the industry was just being born? This raw and candid conversation with Lauren Vasquez, founder of Dreamin' Social, takes you behind the curtain of a 15-year journey that perfectly captures how sometimes the most rewarding paths are the ones we never planned.

What makes this episode particularly valuable is Lauren's practical wisdom about creating meaningful social media strategies that foster genuine two-way communication rather than just broadcasting messages. Her straightforward advice—"action breeds expertise"—cuts through the noise of complicated business strategies and reminds us that sometimes just getting started is the most important step.

Whether you're a marketing professional, aspiring entrepreneur, or simply fascinated by how careers develop in emerging industries, this conversation delivers both inspiration and practical takeaways. Listen now, and if you enjoy the episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share your thoughts in the comments!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Lauren Vasquez from Dreamin' Social
• 1:29 Lauren's Journey into Social Media
• 3:17 From Film Industry to Marketing Career
• 5:21 Starting a Business and Entrepreneurial Spirit
• 10:34 Final Advice and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Mallory Green: 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome back to the we Travel podcast. We're here today with Lauren Vasquez from Dreamin' Social. We are so excited to have her on. So, without further ado, let's welcome Lauren to the show. Lauren, welcome, we are so excited to have you here. Hi, mallory, I'm so happy to be here. I just want to start off by saying thank you for having me on the podcast. It is a joy and, honestly, a true honor to be here, and I'm so excited for this journey and to see where this takes you. Thank you, we're just so excited to have you here and just, first and foremost, hear all about you starting your own brand. I am so enthusiastic about this.

Mallory Green: 0:39

All of you who don't know, lauren and I worked together at Evolution Hospitality for second wave marketing back in like 2016, I want to say up until 2019. So, yep, yep, that was almost 10 years ago, so started like nine years ago, and we were both at each other's weddings. Yes, oh my gosh, I remember the. Your wedding is beautiful. Hey, your wedding anniversary is like a month away. It is, ah, that's so cool. What is it? Seven years, seven years, oh my gosh, that's incredible. And then you'll be coming up. I'll be coming up, yeah, because we both got married the same year. Yeah, the same year. That was a crazy year. What a wonderful year. At least we got married before you brides who had to reposition everything because of COVID. So, lauren, tell us about your journey.

Mallory Green: 1:28

How did you get started in social media management? So I'll start just with my quick elevator pitch. So my name is Lauren Vasquez, I'm a social media and digital marketing expert and I also own, as Valerie said, a social media agency called Dreamin' Social. I've been in this for the last 15 years I know that's aging me and my experience spans from being on property at the hotel level to creative agency experience at Second Wave, as you mentioned, and as well as at the corporate brand level, overseeing a portfolio of hotels and restaurants and their digital marketing strategy. So, across these various roles, my focus has been to help these businesses grow online through visual storytelling, advertising and, of course, social media marketing as a big component of that.

Mallory Green: 2:14

So how I got started is kind of funny. Well, I never envisioned I'd work in social media marketing, because it wasn't really a thing like when I started going to school, when I was in college. But I think it was a natural progression because by nature, I'm a creative, I'm an artist, I love all things photography and storytelling and writing so it kind of was a natural progression. So when I was in college back in 2004, was when I started college, it was right when Facebook came out. So I was one of the first people to have a Facebook. No way Back when it was, you had to have a college, a valid college email address to even join. Oh my gosh, okay, yeah, so that's how you like Facebook started was. Mark Zuckerberg basically was a college student at Harvard and it was a network for Harvard students and then he opened it up to all college students. Then he opened it up to high school students and then a few years later he opened it up to everyone and it was like a big party on Facebook. So the social network is a true story it is.

Mallory Green: 3:21

So I joined Facebook back in the beginning and I had no idea where it was headed. But I was initially an advertising major at San Diego State University and then I quickly realized that that major wasn't very hands-on. It was like interesting to me, but I really wanted to learn how do you make a commercial? How do I produce it? I want to see the behind the scenes stuff. I want to literally know how to film it, edit it, produce it. And so I ended up switching my major to television, film and new media and then minored in art, and so that's really where I got my visual storytelling start. So I learned so much about the behind the scenes stuff, about video editing, about photography, videography, and then, with my art minor, I did a lot of like graphic design classes and I took a web design class. Oh my gosh, all that stuff, I feel like, really helped me without me knowing that I was going to get into marketing, like I thought I was going to work.

Mallory Green: 4:20

Your website, by the way, is so cute, I love it. So you did this right. Yeah, oh my gosh, I love it. I'll link it here. Well, I had some help. No, it's okay. Yeah, from my hubs too. Shout out to Jeremy. We'll link in the show notes so everyone can easily access your website. Yeah, so that's kind of like where I got my start, I'd say is like that was. My foundation was heavy on the creative arts and visual storytelling and the TV and film industry and I didn't really know it was going to head into marketing and social media, but that's kind of how I started oh my gosh.

Mallory Green: 4:56

Wait backtrack to like the film industry. I remember us driving to Grace Loves Lace and we talked about like your time in LA, right, didn't you have a short stint for a while? Yeah, after I graduated college, I slept on my uncle's couch for a few weeks and I worked as an intern, of course, for what was the film called? It was called Detention. It was a feature length film and it was with Josh Hutchison oh okay. And it was like about being in a school. It was filmed at Santa Monica High School, oh my gosh. But I interned on that. No way. I don't even know if I'm in the credits because I was just a lowly intern, but I interned with, like, the art director and like because I really wanted to do production design back then and it was funny because, like, the few weeks that I spent with her, she was like complaining about her job and she's like I should just go get a farm somewhere out in the middle and farm like of nowhere and just get out of this rat race of LA. And I started like having a come to Jesus moment, like do I really want to get into the film industry like these people are miserable. Yeah, no, no, I can tell, I know I can tell, but just just how it was like 15 hours a day, yeah, the way that world is run, oh, I don't know. So power to you to getting out.

Mallory Green: 6:10

When you did, yeah, and graduating in in 2009, was when there was the recession, so there wasn't a lot of jobs. I actually started waitressing. I was waitressing in college and I literally, with a college degree, waitress for several years out of college just to make to pay bills, and then what I did is so I waitress that night and then during the day, I interned, again for free, because there were no paying jobs. This is all for free. I waitress for money, but I didn't do that for free, no, no. But there was like a very boutique creative agency in downtown San Diego and that was like my first marketing job and I would work there during the day, intern there, and then at night I waitress. Oh my gosh, I feel like that's how you have such humbleness. So that actually was the beginning of my hospitality career. So I started at the bottom and then from there, I got a job, my first like paying, real job. That wasn't being a waitress and nothing wrong against that.

Mallory Green: 7:21

But I was the media relations manager at a magazine called 101 Things to Do San Diego and it was like my intro to the travel tourism world and I was on the other end. So I was like an advertiser, right. So I would manage the website, our social media accounts and our email marketing, but I would help place like advertisers amongst that. So they would they would pay for advertising in our print magazine we still had a print magazine, but then we also had digital components, so digital advertising spots and placements and then I would help write articles for the website and, yeah, just make sure all of our advertisers which were all like area attractions, like SeaWorld and like really cool activities in San Diego cool restaurants, hotels, all of those cool places that were very it was very family friendly focus, but yeah, so I kind of got to meet different people.

Mallory Green: 8:16

I went to a lot of networking type events, like local CVB type events, and started to realize I was working with all these marketing managers that like the marketing manager for um, I forget, like the whales, you know, san Diego tourism authority no, sightseeing, sightseeing tours, oh, okay, yeah, um, yeah, it's really big. They do. They take like the boats out and let's say Hornblower yeah, hornblower. Oh, okay, hornblower was one of them. So I like met the marketing manager there at Homebrew and the marketing manager at this entity in this place at SeaWorld, and I'm like this sounds fun and like I could totally be a marketing manager at one of these businesses. And because, unfortunately, the print magazine thing was fun, but print is I don't know how to say it it's kind of like a dying industry and I could see the writing on the wall Like there probably wasn't going to be as many opportunities going that route as there would be going the marketing route. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, good thing you got in when you did. But it was a really cool experience because that's where I had already done a little bit of social media stuff, but I really was like the main one overseeing all of our digital stuff. So it definitely gave me hands-on experience. Oh, my gosh, amazing.

Mallory Green: 9:31

So what motivated you to create your own business? Did you always envision running your own business? Or was it something that kind of evolved over time, kind of going back to how you started? Yeah, so actually I didn't ever think I would start, just fell into your lap. Well, my dad's an entrepreneur and I always saw like how stressed he was all the time and my mom was a third grade teacher and I just knew I was like I don't want any of those jobs, like not for me, not going to happen. But I think something changes the longer you work in a field, Once you start to really get experience under your belt, and after you work for various bosses and different people, you start to kind of say like, hey, you know, like I could do this myself, like I don't need someone telling me what I can and can't do and what my passions are.

Mallory Green: 10:25

Work with Lauren Lauren is amazing. Everybody Just shout out oh, you're the best, sure. What would you say to emphasize why social media is essential? Social media shouldn't just be a one-way loudspeaker for your brand. People share feedback with you about your business and then sometimes you actually have an opportunity to leverage other businesses and to cross-promote.

Mallory Green: 10:46

Lauren, we're wrapping up here. But if you start their own brand or their business, what would it be? Best advice in business is get out there and do what you want to do. Don't let someone tell you you can't do it. Action breeds expertise. So get out there and do it. You have to just go out and create your own opportunity. Thank you so much for being on the show. We're going to link everything in our notes and we can't wait to have you back on our next episode. Thank you, mallory, for the opportunity to share my story. Thank you so much, lauren, for being on the show and if you're listening to this on a Friday, a bon weekend. I wish you a well and pleasant few days off. Be sure to like and rate the show if you enjoyed it, and let me know in the comments if you're looking forward to hearing from anyone else in the next few months. Bye.