Tara Newman:
Hey, hey there, bold leaders. Welcome to another episode of The Bold Money Revolution. Today, I’m here with my friend and client, Allison Crow, who is an epic business and life coach, and she coaches Soul-Full CEOs. I’m going to let Allison introduce herself right now. Allison, hi.
Allison Crow:
Hi. This is always the fun part, how do I introduce myself? I still, after 17 years of working for myself, don’t have one of those smarmy elevator pitches. Let me see some of my clients’ words. I’m going to do this one in her Caribbean accent. Allison, I like your coaching shit, but you’re fucked up extra, extra, is why I hire you.
Tara Newman:
Because you’re fucked up extra, extra.
Allison Crow:
I think what she’s saying, and this is part of my purpose, so you can say life and business coach, and there’s a billion of us, but my heart is to be a transparent leader because I didn’t have any transparent leaders. All my leaders were wearing fucking pantyhose and blue suits and had that political haircut lady. That’s all a metaphor for their being as well. It’s not so much about what they wore, but I didn’t know. When I was in corporate and coaching, I was coaching coaches of realtors in the corporate world, and I started getting positions and a lot more space behind the scenes and I saw just the shit blowing up behind the scenes, and everything was glorified on the front end. The disconnect did not make sense. How the hell are we supposed to become these people when nobody’s talking about depression or illness or cortisol or heart attacks, or nobody’s talking about real life that’s going on with this human being.
Tara Newman:
I think that’s why you and I really resonate with each other because that transparency piece is so important. I said to you before we even started this, I said I just want to call this series congratulations you’re normal so that everybody can see how normal they are through the eyes of my clients around what we talk about, what the challenges are, how people are navigating their businesses. I actually thought it was funny because you started, the first thing you said I feel was so normalizing where you’re like, “It’s been 17 years, I still don’t know how to do this. I don’t have a smarmy elevator pitch thing.” There’s so many people who are in their heads about being able to communicate what they do in 60 characters or less.
Allison Crow:
It’s never the same, especially if you’re in an esoteric world. Why I say esoteric? Coaching is positioned as concrete and results. We all know you can find out the how to from a 15 year old on TikTok these days, and it’s really all about the inner fucking work. It makes the outer work fast and easy. It is hard to like, what do you do? I don’t know. I show up and I talk to people and listen and crack inappropriate jokes. I can go from mystic and reading energy to logistics, sales strategy and plans, and I’m a fucking genius at it. It’s fun. It’s fun.
Tara Newman:
How do you make your money?
Allison Crow:
Three years ago this month, I don’t know when this is going live, but we’re recording in October, so three years ago in October, I switched from high fee one-on-one and high fee groups to a membership site, and I have built that up. For two of those three years, that is all I focused on, one thing and doing it really well and doing it really deep, both technically and lots of learning. Then this last year in working with you, when I signed up, I think I signed up last October for the mastermind.
Tara Newman:
I think you were the first one.
Allison Crow:
I’m always the first one.
Tara Newman:
It was the funniest status call because you had been in The BRAVE Society, and so we already kind of knew each other and you knew my work and everything, and you kind of got on the call and you’re like, “How do I pay you?”
Allison Crow:
I was already in your membership program, and I’d already gotten the vibe of who you are. This is the other thing. I don’t put the responsibility on my coaches to create for me. My coaches are not responsible to give me results, and so I put the responsibility on me. As soon as I knew how much to pay you, I knew how many clients I needed to create. I think I had felt a little flat line, and my decision to invest in the mastermind, which was expensive, was a double-down on me. It’s a double down on me, and so then I turned around and created two new one-on-one clients to pay for it. Easy, easy.
Tara Newman:
Let’s talk about this because I want to stay here for a bit because I think this is such an important conversation to have, and this is how I operate too. I was just having this conversation with another client about who do you want to become? I remember when I first invested in my first mastermind, which was also expensive, I wanted to become the woman who invested in herself in that way. I want it to become the woman who took herself seriously and took her business seriously and put herself first, and like you said, double down on me. What made you want to sign up for the mastermind? Let’s start there. Where were you and what had you deciding to sign up for the mastermind?
Allison Crow:
Well, I had come out of spending many years, happy, wonderful, joyful years in Rich Litvin’s community. I remember at one point, he was wanting me to join something that he had done again, the 4PC Club and I said, “If I stay here, I don’t have time to do my own thing.” That’s why I had hired you. I was doing my own thing out in the world, and I started to experience the loneliness of leadership and wanted to be in a room with high-level business thinkers who also got it emotionally. I didn’t want to have the best business in the room, and there’s a lot of people that have way better businesses. When I say better, I’m creating some arbitrary financial number, but they have more complex or more revenue than I do. I wanted to be around women that were smarter than me, and I can find myself real easily being the smartest or the boldest or bravest in the room, and so I’m constantly dragging myself into other rooms. I also knew, ironically, I loved that there were retreats. We haven’t been able to do two of those.
Tara Newman:
2020.
Allison Crow:
I mean, I’m the same way. I have my own retreats and stuff got canceled, but those things give me, talk about double down on myself.
Tara Newman:
I agree. That’s why I do them.
Allison Crow:
I’ll be in your coaching room, but I’m not going to get on a plane. Oh, please, that stuff. I mean, the fact that I’ve done so well this year, both personally, emotionally and financially without those things teaches me something. I prefer to have them certainly, but that’s just who I want, and I like long-term engagements. I’m not a wham, bam, thank you ma’am. Over the last few years, I’m a Enneagram seven who’s expanded a lot, and so I don’t need things to be intense anymore, which is mind blowing. As you know, my theme for the year was open-heart, slow tango, big profit, and going slow has been a practice that has changed everything for me, but being in a year long agreement is slow. I want slow growth. I don’t want a fucking moonshot, I don’t want to be on a rocket. I want this to be sustainable. I want to be 97 years old, and my community and my people and my past clients to throw a fucking birthday party for me about the longevity and the unfolding in each chapter of her life, instead of hitting some seven figure mark and then burning out.
Tara Newman:
I actually think that slowing things down and putting in the consistent focused effort and continually saying no to things, no to distractions is actually some of the edgiest work we do. The reason why people are looking to move so fast and have such fast results is because they don’t want to put in the work that it actually takes to build something that’s sustainable. It’s uncomfortable.
Allison Crow:
It’s very uncomfortable.
Tara Newman:
You’ve had uncomfortable moments this year.
Allison Crow:
Sure. I’ve had a lot of uncomfortable moments, but there’s something that I noticed and I had it reflected in a client last week. I’m an Enneagram seven, like for things to be fun, like to take risk. Why? Because I want to avoid discomfort, and so I was talking with a client, who now I’m going to switch over modalities to the disc profile. She’s a high Di, I’m an iD, both way above the line. What I know about these really decisive driven personalities is that they’re motivated by fear. I was talking to her, and I said, “There’s this point…” I did the same thing. I was not motivated by fear, I was motivated by not wanting to feel uncomfortable.
Allison Crow:
There’s this point that it works for us. Everything I created was because I was willing to take that risk and willing to tell people to fuck off and go do my own thing, and all of a sudden, there’s this opportunity to flip that inside out and instead of run from or avoid something, we now embrace it. For me to embrace discomfort and boredom, set me free. For my client to embrace as a high D instead of running from fear, move toward it. High Ds do everything, so they don’t have to rely on anybody else. The whole point was she was coming in a breakdown and I said, “What if you actually allowed yourself to receive help?” It’s really hard for strong independent people to sit in a room with other people because we were born with this, if I don’t make it happen, I die.
We get to this place, I think in this midlife awakening like, we don’t have to run from our natural subconscious tendencies and we don’t have to let them go either. We can now use them to create life with intention. Going back to sales, realizing I don’t need the next new thing. I don’t need to try this. I mean, my first year of my membership program, I was like, “Everybody is making all this money with Facebook ads, and so I’m going to hire the best and do this, and I’m going to do a webinar.” I spent $30,000 fucking dollars, and hardly any of those clients were right aligned. I mean, I don’t have any regrets. It was a good, expensive lesson, but it wasn’t my way. I was wanting it to happen quick and comfortable, and so that was the final chop of like, what if I just… You tell me this all the time, “Allison, you know what works.” “Allison, you know what works.”
Tara Newman:
I truly believe that everyone has their own sales process and their own selling style, which is actually what I really love to help my clients kind of uncover because we’re being told when we take in business education, we’re being told that it has to look this way or it has to look that way. You have tremendous sales skills that you had built up in the real estate industry, which that’s all selling all the time, and really allowing you to do it your way this year and to slow it down and to be intuitive. You just said to me, “You’re a gardener, not a machine.” Thinking about some of the results that you had around feeling like you’re not striving anymore, like you’re not operating from that place of fear and things are more sustainable, it all sort of comes together that you’ve slowed down, that you’ve really stepped into owning how you show up in a certain way, which has allowed you to really kind of get rid of some of that striving energy, which has helped you make things more sustainable.
Allison Crow:
Yeah. In the past, it was always intensity over frequency because frequency was boring. I had to cultivate some space and some slowdown in my… I’m in my late 40s now. I’m 48. I started peri-menopause at 36. I’ve never had biological children, so my body has just been a weird hormonal mess my entire life, and was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Why was that there? It was there because I was always stressed out, and so I began to imagine what would it look like if it wasn’t stressed, if it wasn’t stressed? I was in that high fee coaching world, I called it the big swinging dick club.
I mean, I called it that to the face because everybody, Rich and Steve wrote that book, The Prosperous Coach and of course all these starving coaches think, “I want to charge $100,000 dollars for coaching. I want to do this.” Rich would always say they’re coming for the wrong reasons. I wish I could have written the book to say be you, but nobody wants to read that book. They all want to read the book about how to make more money. I came out of that world going, “Well, what if I went the opposite direction of everybody else and I charged less money?” One of the things I had personally learned from spending lots of money is, and this was I did give myself almost a year in your membership.
Tara Newman:
I was going to say because you took a break from being coached and having that kind of outlay in cash from your own business, and you came into BRAVE and you were kind of soaking up the juices in there for a while and you had some good results from that, that you gave yourself that pause. I think that, that’s something that people are really kind of grappling with now around maybe they’ve made some investments, maybe they’ve paid off, maybe they haven’t paid off, but we’re in this business culture where it’s like, buy this course, buy this course, buy this course, take this thing, work with this guru, do the thing, every mastermind, multiple masterminds, right? It’s very noisy.
Allison Crow:
It’s very noisy. This is the other thing. When I decided to start a membership and slow down my business, I also sold my big fucking fancy house and cut down my personal expenses and my professional expenses, not from scarcity, but as a strategy. As a strategy, I slowed everything down, not just my life, and I began to just take these steps. As it built back up, and that’s the other thing, I’m surrounded by… It wasn’t that I wasn’t being coached, I just wasn’t in a formal container. The way that I use coaching, I usually don’t need my coach to tell me to do something. I just need people in my life to remind me who I fucking am.
That’s why I say it’s not your responsibility as my coach to teach me how to do something. Usually, you just reflect back to me what I already know, and that pats my little booty and gets it back out on the… It’s like, “Get back on the road, girl. You got this.” It sounds so simple, but I think high achievers are like that. High achievers are not putting their… They don’t need coaching, they want coaching. They don’t need the mastermind, they want the mastermind, and so I did. I did a group program with my friend, John Morgan, and then I rolled into your program. It was nice because it allowed extra funds to go towards systems, which again, it’s one of the things. I just ran.
When I started my business, I just started running and selling and delivering, running, and selling and delivering. When I slowed down, I shored up the foundations of my business. I re-poured the concrete. I went in and redid the framework of my business. I hired one of your members to be my marketing team, and it wasn’t a one-off job, retainer package more than I’ve ever even paid coaches every single month to help me create a strategy and a plan because those aren’t my gifts. My clients told me in an event. They said, “One day Frank Sinatra doesn’t move pianos. They were like, “Allison, you just need to come in and play the piano.” That gave me a vision for the woman I’m becoming, and the woman I’m becoming-
Tara Newman:
That’s so good.
Allison Crow:
Yeah. The woman I was like, what would it be like if I ran these events and I just showed up and did my thing? I mean, I have the vision and the show up, but somebody else executes my vision. I do think in that world out there, they have their, they call it the integrator, but I want to call it the implementer. I want my person on my team who helps me implement my vision so that I’m saving my energy for my clients, for myself and for my personal life. That was a big shift, and so that required money, and was like, “Oh, you need to invest.” Why do we always invest in the cheap shit first instead of if I had a real company, which I do, but I started seeing it that way, I wouldn’t hire an intern or somebody from Fiverr just because they’re $10 an hour. I would hire somebody and build a relationship and they would do their fucking job really, really well.
Tara Newman:
Yeah. There’s a saying that, and I don’t know who said it so whatever, but this isn’t me saying it, it’s somebody else. They said, “If you think I’m expensive, wait until they see how much an amateur costs.”
Allison Crow:
Right.
Tara Newman:
Right? I’ve never built my team on the cheapest people or the least experienced people because I will always want to be able to fully delegate with having process and with having good communication rhythms in the business and clear scope of work and proper check-ins. I’ve always wanted to delegate at a very high level, and just make sure that it’s done and it’s done well. Then I’ve always just been like, well, this is how I run my business, so this is what I need to support this, so this is what I need to sell, reverse engineering it.
Allison Crow:
The other thing that mastermind gives me too, because earlier, in the early, I don’t know, 2013, 2014, I did try to hire high-level help, but I wasn’t yet willing to feel the discomfort part of life. When there were problems, I didn’t know how to move through those. I didn’t know how to communicate those through, and so I would just break up instead of move to resolution. By being a woman who is willing to be uncomfortable, willing to be bored, willing to do monotonous things, willing to do things that I don’t like in service of a result that I do, I think that’s why it shifted just from Soul-Full Success to Soul-Full CEO because I thought about what does it really mean to be a CEO of this boutique organization? Not structurally, but who does she be? Who is she becoming? What are her characteristics and qualities, and then what is the embodiment of that? It is a company of one because I do have contractors, not employees and I’m learning how to have help. I’m learning, I mean heck learning how to have Amber do some things and just say run with it, and then if I need changes, she’s not taking it personally and I’m not taking it personally, I have to tell her. My willingness to be uncomfortable and bored has created massive amounts of money and freedom.
Tara Newman:
Can you talk about… We’ve actually dedicated, I think almost an entire mastermind session to two people embracing discomfort. That was a big theme maybe last month that we were talking about as well as boredom in your business. I actually think that this has been a tremendous lesson for you because there’ve been a number of times… The way Allison and I work together, she shows up and she verbally processes-
Allison Crow:
Such a nice way of putting it. Women need that
Tara Newman:
How would you put that?
Allison Crow:
No, I do. I’m teaching it to my clients too. The other thing I realized I love psychology. I started out as a psychology major in college and I made a D, so I changed my major to home economics to be a wife and mom and a missionary with 10 kids. Who the fuck is that lady? Here I am, full circle passionate about the way brain works in psychology, and so yes, women, our brains are wired to come to answer through verbal processes. I can’t tell you how many men coaches have interrupted me and said, “I need to cut you short right now and ask some sharp question.” when really if we just opened our mouths, we know the answers. Yes, I verbally process.
Tara Newman:
Allison shows up and she verbally processes and I make some reflections back to her. I acknowledge her for some things, we debrief, and then she comes away with insights and actions that she goes and takes. More times than not this year, you’ve shown up with verbally processing through distractions, verbally processing through wanting to spend more money to make more money-
Allison Crow:
I love spending money.
Tara Newman:
… verbally processing through, I’m going to say self doubt, but just there’s a questioning. I think we see the way people are portraying things on the outside, and we naturally look at others, naturally compare ourselves and just question how we do things. Those have been places where we’ve really kind of brought you back to center, brought you back to a place that’s focused where you can be taking some consistent action, but you’ve really had to sit in the discomfort of boredom and not let the distractions pull you away from your focus of selling the one program and in doing that, in continually not blowing up the business, right?
Allison Crow:
Right.
Tara Newman:
I think that’s what people do. They get bored and they’re like, “I’m going to change everything. I’m going to do it this way. I’m going to add another-
Allison Crow:
The brain loves drama. The brain loves it, and it’s a nervous system response.
Tara Newman:
Yeah, and so really taking you out of that space, you’ve achieved some really big goals this year.
Allison Crow:
Yeah.
Tara Newman:
Like what, because this is… Everybody talks about having big goals, but I’ve decided I want to kind of operationalize what a big goal looks like for people, so what were some of your big goal?
Allison Crow:
One of them was to move, to buy a house because when we sold the big house, we downsized. We loved our house. We weren’t thrilled. The quality of life in our neighborhood was just not for my husband and I. We’re empty nesters. It just felt really confined. Our house is beautiful, but we were in one of those neighborhoods where houses are really close to each other. I’m from Texas, so we spread the fuck out. I kept thinking my money had to be a certain way to do that, and I remember being at a retreat with you and visioning about… I mean, I’ve been this way since I was a little girl. There’s something about my environment that is really on my thrive list and sustainable, and my home.
Allison Crow:
I work from my home and I live here and I’m a home body, so it’s the most important place. We did, and you asked me earlier this year. You were like, “I’ve been hearing about you dreaming this, what’s the next step?” I was like, “Oh, I guess I should see what I qualify for right now.” That was really fun because we were able to qualify for what we want without selling our other house. Not just earning more, but spending less, being really smart about, and I’m not talking about being cheap, but being really mindful of if it’s not serving, you don’t pay for it. We bought this house and moved in two and a half months ago, and it is heaven. There’s nature and space, and trees and deer in my front yard eating my plants, and I love every second of it.
Tara Newman:
You paid down some debt too.
Allison Crow:
To do that. When the lender called and said, “You can actually buy this if you’ll pay down this line of credit.” I had this line of credit that I had… Not line of credit, but I had consolidated some debt to pay down over time, and so I was like, “Oh, well, let’s pay this off.” You had asked me… I was starting to think coming off of just doing the one thing, just doing the membership, finally feeling ready after two and a half years to maybe open up another program. I’m used to do five or six programs at a time. It was exhausting. You asked me about my idea and I was like, “Oh yeah, in May, I’m going to launch this at my live event.” You were like, “Why wait?” Mind you, you guys, this was the end February, so we have no idea that Corona is coming down the pipeline. I was like, “Oh, sales page, blah, blah. I have to think through all this.” She goes, “Why don’t you just send a text to a few people?”
Tara Newman:
I’m like, “We’re just going to bypass all the things they tell you you need to do, and we’re just going to make this as easy as possible, and we’re going to get it done.”
Allison Crow:
I got a bunch of nos, but I got five yeses and three of those yeses paid in full. I gave if you pay in full, you got a little bit of a discount, and three of those yeses paid in full. Next week, Corona came and canceled all the live events, and these women were already in and I had that money just sitting in my bank account. I just paid down my debt with money that I had made. I didn’t even have to rob Peter to pay Paul, and so it’s kind of fun. Just in my business world, I’m down to $10,000 debt and I’m somebody that I call myself my own angel investor, so I have no problem going in and out of debt, but it’s really fun like I worked for that.
It wasn’t a windfall or it wasn’t… I don’t know. I created it. I realized that’s part of the other thing where I’m not striving anymore. It’s like anytime I want to create a project, I can find something I love and monetize it, and it doesn’t have to follow the rules. Then you just asking, and I know that if I had said I think I want to wait, you would have trusted me, but you’re asking why wait helped me find my real truth. I was like, “Yeah, I don’t have a good reason for waiting. Why not?” That created a really big month, really big couple of months and created the padding that I needed. It just created a nice padding, and then it created this house.
Tara Newman:
I also think it created the process because we really became very clear on what works for you, so anytime you came back and you’re like, “Maybe I should do it this way.” I’m like, “Well, remember you did it the other way and it worked.”
Allison Crow:
Yeah.
Tara Newman:
You have a very specific signature style of selling that works every single time. You just did it again recently with adding 10 people to your membership.
Allison Crow:
Just relationships. I mean, because I’m an introvert and when I’m stressed, so COVID, politics, I can close down my energy field to contain and I can, at least in my own mind, I think, God, I’m so mean and cold. I don’t want to go do anything with anybody, but I’m just here piddling in my yard and doing my thing, restoring my energy. I know that when I share my heart and show my work and build relationship just naturally, it’s not like, I want to so-and-so to be my client, I just serve my people. I love all my people, and if I wake up and don’t know what to do, we have a thing in my membership that says Soulies know they’re three, and Soulies is the nickname for my clients. The three is three front-facing activities that will stir up connection and sales energy. It’s not even selling something. One of mine is go live. One of mine is go to a local networking event or something and just be with people, but the other one is just go live.
I don’t even have to go live with three tips to X, Y, Z. I’m just building relationships and connecting. Little anecdote here, the last couple of days, I’ve done these posts. I didn’t even think about this until after I’d done the third one. The first one was I showed a picture of my desk, and it was kind of messy. I was in the middle of cleaning. Then the other one was a bedside table and I was like, “Show me yours.” I realized when these people would share this totally non-business thing, I felt their humanness. When I saw their bedside table not staged, and then yesterday, a friend of mine posted this thing and she had such fun answers. I said earlier I like to spend money, and it was something along the lines of what middle-class indulgence have you bought this season that you think everybody else should get on the bandwagon?
I didn’t think about the language, I just cut and paste. I was like, “This is a great question, and the answers are so fun.” All these people started sharing their answers, like they bought a Roomba or they bought a Nespresso or they bought a standing desk or all these little… Then some people were like, “What do you mean midlife or middle-class?” I’m like, “You’re missing the point of the question.” As I’m reading all these totally random, have nothing to do with anything answers, I’m feeling the humanness of these people behind social media, like they cook with an instapot, they have a Roomba and its name is this. It’s silly seemingly insignificant, but it is connection and being seen, and there was no braggadocios about it. I realized that’s what I love. People are either assholes or interesting, and so it’s my job to remember that my people are interesting and engage with them. It’s like Ted Lasso, right? Ted Lasso is all just be curious about people, and then all of a sudden that creates a connection and somehow or another, it ends up in me loving on people or inviting them to participate in something or them saying, “I want to work with you.”
Tara Newman:
It really is that simple. I always say be human, be helpful, be humble, and it really is that simple. I think that people get so in their heads about sales. I also think it’s hard to understand because I truly believe that a big portion of sales is energetic, and I think that’s a difficult language to speak, which is why I try and make energy as concrete as I can, but that’s really what you’re saying is, it’s energetic sales.
Allison Crow:
Well, yeah. I also know that… I mean, I do. I think you told me one time, I don’t even remember what all the other B-O-L-D is, I just remember O, own your credibility. Every once in a while, I forget. I got some credibility, I’ve got some experience, I’ve got a vast range. I forget that people… One of my clients at one point says, “I don’t even know what she does. I just want to be in the room when she does it.” Then somebody else is like, the fucked up extra, extra girl is like, “I do what you tell me to do. I make $10,000 a month. You told me to take naps, so the more naps I take, the more money I make.”
Again, that’s an energetic thing. If I had two or three sales tips, one is serve people before the sale and not in that cheesy, douchey way. When I open my heart, I’m giving. I’m sharing my humanness. I’m sharing my… That’s why I’m a life and business coach. I’m sharing my heart and I’m showing my work. Then the other part of share your heart, show at work is ask for the sale. My clients, biggest thing I’m like, “What are you selling?” I didn’t even know that you did that. I hear that all the time, I didn’t even know you did that, and I’m always talking about what I’m selling and still have people say, “Oh, I didn’t know you were selling that.” It’s like just make an invitation, and someone once told me making an invitation like inviting somebody to a party. I think when we’re making invitations with the obligation that somebody will say yes instead of the delight when somebody does.
That’s the other thing I really trust my people, who we could call prospects. I really trust my people to have their own yes. I know all the objection handlers. I think I told you last week, I had a girl call and she was maybe wanting to coach with me, and she was like, “I’m ready to give you my credit card right now.” I said, “I know you are, honey and I want you…” She said, “I have a couple other coaches. I want to talk to you.” I said, “I actually want you to talk to those coaches, and I want you to wait seven days.” I’ve never pushed it out that long, but I was like, “I want you to be so much of a yes that seven days goes by and the boredom has set back in.” She said no, and she hired somebody else. I’m so glad because the other thing is I may not have great conversion rates because I will test the yes and push that back a little bit, but I have people that don’t ever cancel their agreements ever, and they stay for a lifetime.
Tara Newman:
I honestly think that’s a really big myth that we want our conversions to be really high. I actually don’t think we want our conversions to be really high because I think that when we’re proactively selling a premium service with a boutique business or whatever you want to call it. I think you want your best customers, right? That’s not everyone. That’s not 100% of the conversion, so that’s just a thought that I have around that. I think that, again this really goes back to your values around slowing down, and really bringing your values into your sales process and really embodying that. Over the last year in the mastermind, what would you say, either your biggest lessons were or a favorite moment was?
Allison Crow:
I think one of my lessons was to remember to ask for help. I did decide that a few years ago. I’m becoming the woman who has high-level help, and so I started that with marketing help and Stacey, and then I have to remember because I can be very independent and I can work through things mentally or I can show up to a call and I think, and this happened the last time we met, and so it’s freshest on my mind, but I was just delighted with it. I was thinking, “They don’t want to hear this problem. This is so stupid. It’s such a quality problem to have, why am I in here.
Tara Newman:
And they all had the same problem.
Allison Crow:
My problem was I’m bored. I have too much time on my calendar and I didn’t want to be the lady who, I don’t have kids at home, and so I didn’t want to come across as like my life is so great, I have five hours extra a day, but really what it was about was in the past when I would get bored like this, I would blow my business up. Now, I want to find something.
I recognize one of my core values, learning something new and having a slight challenge, not a cortisol-inducing one, but an energy-creating challenge. I’m talking, talking, talking like I always do, and then all of a sudden these faces are looking back at me going me too, me too, me too. Once again, I realized that leadership is not about the pantyhose and the high heels and the blue suit or whatever is our model, it’s about all this. As my client Carolina says, “This fucked up extra, extra. It’s that one of the things really holding me back is that I’m kind of bored. I need a challenge. I don’t really… I scan is there a business challenge? No. I don’t want to just sell something just to create more money, and so it’s like, I could write, maybe I could do yoga. I think later that afternoon, I hired my book writing coach and I’m fully engrossed and challenged and enthralled with this process that’s been on the back burner for 10 years because I was willing to bring it to the room.
Tara Newman:
Yup.
Allison Crow:
I might actually have a… I don’t even know what the book’s about, but I might start telling my story and it might get published. It doesn’t matter. It’s for me. That’s the whole point, even writing the book. Committing to a writing practice and having, that’s the other thing. I can write by myself, but hiring my book writing coach is asking for high-level help instead of being the fucking stubborn lady that has to do it all herself. I can see all the ways that holds me back now.
Tara Newman:
Yeah.
Allison Crow:
That’s huge.
Tara Newman:
Yeah.
Allison Crow:
That’s my 4,000-word answer to your one little question.
Tara Newman:
Well, I think it’s great because I think that you really do bring… What I have always loved about masterminds is that I get so much out of everybody else’s hot seat when I’m in a mastermind, and I think that’s true for our mastermind as well. I think that the women sit there and they get so much out of each other’s hot seats that there’s just so many insights and so many takeaways and so much inspired action that comes out of these calls. One of the really great gifts that you bring, and I think this is something that women learn when they’re in a group experience like this because you’re either going to be the woman that sits back and goes, I have nothing to offer, I’m the weird one, I’m the one that’s not on level, or you’re going to show up and just be you. By Allison, when you show up being you, everybody else in the mastermind gets so much value from your hot seats because you sit there and verbally process the things that they have on their minds, but don’t have the words for or the courage to just be fully self-expressed. Then they take away from your hot seat like, this is my experience too or I have the same challenge or I want to talk about this more, and it’s really great for me as the facilitator to see that and to be able to have those conversations.
Allison Crow:
I love borrowed knowledge. I mean, that’s one of the reasons that I was so… Memberships are really caught right now, and there’s a few people that have been doing them forever, but the reason I went to memberships was because I actually used to charge more for my groups than I would one-on-one coaching because I felt the group coaching was more valuable. There’s more triggers. There’s more bullshit in there. There’s more things like that, and so a borrowed knowledge. Then I just have to remember, if I am too much for somebody, that’s not me. That’s somebody else’s stuff.
Tara Newman:
Right. That’s for them to look at.
Allison Crow:
Yeah. That’s for them to look at it, and so I actually find it more valuable. What I also like is that if I do need something practical or individual, I love to be able to sometimes pop, like if we have a Voxer chat specifically about something that I’m selling, that I don’t want to bring to the group or something like that, your availability for that has been really nice too, and we do have the one-on-one calls once a month. I don’t need three or four one-on-one calls a month. What the fuck? Who’s got time for that shit? I need to be implementing, and so I like that. I like having a combination of, I mean I hope you’re selling them both because-
Tara Newman:
We’re switching the mastermind up slightly, but actually to accommodate for what you just said. Once a month, we are having an implementation call.
Allison Crow:
Oh, cool.
Tara Newman:
It’s a three-hour implementation call where I come and direct the actions that we’re going to be taking that lead to sales, that lead to scaling, that lead to systems and process, that lead to sustainability. We have four themes that we’ll be going through over the year, sales, scale, systems process, sustainability because I was doing a lot of this implementation on these one-on-one calls with everybody and it was the same kind of implementation. We’re all going to do it together on a call once a month. Everybody gets a once a month hot seat, and then we have six one-on-one calls that you can schedule at any time with two back pocket emergency.
Allison Crow:
Oh, I love that.
Tara Newman:
It will be in Mighty Networks this year because we’ve taken everybody off of Facebook. We’ve taken everybody off of Facebook and we’re giving them Mighty Networks instead.
Allison Crow:
That’s probably pretty good. I did take Facebook off my phone, but it’s like moving from a home you don’t want to move from. You love and hate. No, I think it’s fantastic. That’s what I’m saying is what I need is there when I need it.
Tara Newman:
Yes.
Allison Crow:
I don’t like going through program like this is module number one, module number two.
Tara Newman:
No.
Allison Crow:
No, and I know you’re not doing that, but that’s what I’m saying, exactly what I need is there when I need it. What I need from the group is there when I need it, what I need from you is there when I need is, what I need from your team is there when I need it, and what I need from myself is there when I need it. I’ve found that what I need is both predictable and unpredictable, and so it is a container for me and that’s the thing. I doubled down on myself by putting myself in a container that has various resources that… You talk about thrive list all the time, and that is part of my thrive list. That is-
Tara Newman:
Having a container intentionally created to support you in your business growth as an owner.
Allison Crow:
Yeah.
Tara Newman:
Yeah.
Allison Crow:
As we end up this year and I begin to think about what do I want, I saw somebody’s like, “What are your goals for next year?” I was like, “Next year? It’s still March 1st.” All the things that were supposed to happen haven’t happened, and yet we have gone through all these months, and so I don’t have an end goal for this year. I’ve just given myself permission not to quit, but just to keep walking and wherever I end up is wherever I end up. I don’t want to create the constriction of finishing at a certain number that just doesn’t feel aligned for me this year, but I am considering what growth would be desirable for me. Not even what I want, but what would be desirable, and I’m going to go slow in answering that.
Tara Newman:
That was me who asked that question yesterday on Instagram.
Allison Crow:
Oh, did you ask that? I had written that down. On our last mastermind call, I wrote down, if I did grow, what would it look like because somebody-
Tara Newman:
No, I asked what’s your goals for 2021.
Allison Crow:
Oh, was that you?
Tara Newman:
It was me.
Allison Crow:
Yeah, maybe it was you. It was purple and white, I think, one of your marketing posts. I have no idea what my goals are, and this is the other thing. I’m so okay with that. I’ve become this woman that I trust my sustainability. I will tell you at one point, when we were going through all this stuff to buy the house, my husband was starting to worry about money. He goes, “You need a sustainable job.” I just looked at him and I was like, “Fuck you. 17 years, it’s always worked out.” I’ve had to swing years where I said, “Hey, let’s sell the house so I can do something.” It was just so funny how, for a moment, he didn’t see what I did is sustainable, and there is not a cell in my body that it’s not working. Of course it’s working. This is what I do. This is what I will do there. There is no question.
Tara Newman:
We had a lot of these conversations back when you got the EIDL money and whether you should take it or not because taking it almost felt like you didn’t trust yourself to create and to make it work.
Allison Crow:
I think I’ve always known, but I didn’t know if I should take it. I also like… I had a lot of people pay for an event that I haven’t been to, and I’m just holding it for next year and nobody’s wanted, and they’ve all said, “It doesn’t matter. We’re coming.” That’s what I realized. When I show up and do my thing and I make the offer, people say, “Oh, we can’t come this year. I’ll see you next.” They’re long, they’re slow. They’re in for the long game, and even if for some reason I had to refund all that money, I’d figure it out. I think I’ve gone through enough of the ups and downs, and basically I’m tired of the drama. I’m tired of the drama I create for myself, and so this year I just decided no more fucking drama.
Tara Newman:
No more drama.
Allison Crow:
Own my credibility.
Tara Newman:
If somebody was considering a mastermind this year, what advice, if any would you have for them? How would they know they were ready for a mastermind? How would they make that decision? Do you have a tip or trick or something?
Allison Crow:
I don’t have a tip or trick, but I would ask what are you willing to bring for the rest of the group? If I bring everything I have, if every person in this group brings everything they have to serve everybody else, they will get 12 times the service. They won’t just get service from Tara and her team. I think too often we’re like, “What can I get?” Just know you’re going to get something and what can I give, what can I contribute to the room? It’s a little reverse psychology there, but I’ve found that there is no mistake in what I joined. I knew I wanted to be, like my client said to me, “It doesn’t matter what Tara does. I just know I want to be in the room.” When I’m in the room, I know that I come away with laughter, I know that I can cry, I know that I can be human without being seen as weak, and I know that at the end of the day, I’m going to remember who I am, and in that remembering, I’m going to be inspired to do something about it and that inevitably creates money, space and time.
Tara Newman:
Thank you. Where can people find you if they’re like, “She’s a really cool chick.” Just want to-
Allison Crow:
I’m a very cool chick. I do a weekly podcast called The Better Life Better Work Show. I just basically shoot the shit about important things in my life that are probably important to a lot of you guys. I’m on Facebook and Instagram, allison_crow. I do have a website, allisoncrow.com, but podcasts, Facebook, Instagram, social media, not Mighty Networks. I’m trying to learn a new skill. I’m trying to learn a new skill.
Tara Newman:
Thanks for coming by, Allison.
Allison Crow:
Thanks for having me and letting me to share and talk. I’m honored to be in your mastermind and your client, and I look forward to next year.
Tara Newman:
I appreciate you.
Allison Crow:
Thank you.
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