Million Dollar Low Ticket Memberships with Allison Hollinger

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 114. Today I'm bringing a good friend, Allison Holinger, and we're talking all about how to build a million dollar low ticket membership.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up coach? Thank you so much for pushing play.

On another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm super pumped to introduce to you a very special guest, Allison Holland Garcia. I met Allison in a group coaching program that we were in together. James Wedmore's BBD is next level and I have worked closely with her over the years and it has been incredible to see her journey and I am super excited to share it with you today. So Allison helps busy parents feed their families healthy, simple and affordable meals without the stress. And in today's podcast she is going to help you see how possible it is to build a seven figure figure business with a membership that started at $14 a month and is now somewhere in the $29 a month range. In fact, you can even save to pay in full when you pay for the year. Allison is an incredible mom of three. She is the healthy recipe creator and founder of Plan to Nourish where she teaches busy parents how to remove overwhelm and stress out of feeding their families and healthy, simple and affordable ways with affordable meals. So in addition to being a mom of three, she runs a seven figure business and she is going to share powerfully her journey on the show and she's going to debunk some of the myths that either you've heard or maybe you might be saying these same myths to yourself, like it's not possible to make money when you're doing a business to consumers. Or maybe you also may have heard it's not possible to build a seven figure business unless you have a huge team. Well, all of these myths Alison will debunk for you inside of today's very special episode. So without further ado, let's roll that interview.

Alison, welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today.

I'm so excited to be here. It's such an honor. Thanks for having Me.

Oh, you're the jam. And you guys are about to get your minds blown. Allison is such an amazing human being and I'm just going to let her share a little bit of her journey. We have known each other for, oh my gosh, feels like 10 years, but it's three, three or four. We've known each other, we met through next level. So I'm really excited to bring her to the show. So for those of you who never met you, can you please share a.

Little bit about who you are, who.

You serve and how you got there?

There?

Yeah. So I'm Allison Hollinger and I have a meal prepping membership for busy moms. And I've started this about. Well, it was, I'm about to hit my three year anniversary on it on November 7th, so we're getting close. And I started out by, I'm a stay at home mom, I'm a military spouse, dance mom, like all the things. And I started out with a live cooking show just for fun. And then it turned into a meal prepping membership after that, like, and then it kind of snowballed.

So amazing. I love that, you know, so clearly we connected because when I first started, I was working, I was, I was.

A busy mom.

Doing the same thing.

Cool.

All right, so can you just, would you mind sharing a little bit about your process just in terms of, you know, what it is that you, how you attract your people, what you carry them through, and a little bit about your offer, if you wouldn't mind?

Yeah, sure. So I, so my meal prepping membership is called Plan to Nourish. And right now, currently we have about 4,500 members. And that's not where we started, that's where we are now. But how I kind of how I serve my members is that we'll talk about the offer first and I'll tell you about how I get people into it. Let's do that. So inside my membership, my, my members go through a 12 week habit building program that I coach them through. So they get coaching from me twice a week. One is for specifically on a habit that we're talking about in the program and one is for like meal planning together. So they see me, then they see me. For twice a month I host workshops live over zoom for my members. Everything is recorded. And then they have access to a giant resource vault that has all of my recipes, video tutorials, past coaching calls, meal plans, all that stuff. It's like a one stop shop for resources for feeding your family and developing healthier habits. So how I attract members to that or to me? And how is that? I. I actually offer a free experience once a quarter and I do a challenge launch, so it's called, where I give people a taste of what it's like to work with me for free, no strings attached, and I give them the best of me for five days and then I pitch my program to them. It's a natural transition. I give them a little taste of what I do and then offer the big one. In between my launches, I do a ton of live content. I'm still doing my live cooking show. I'm offering motivation and support and recipes all as free content that's valuable but very on brand. In between my lunches.

Oh, that's so amazing. So how did you start? Where did you like, what was your first launch? Essentially?

My first launch. Oh my gosh. My first launch was like a hot mess express. I had nothing, I had nothing, nothing to offer. I just sold a dream. I did a beta launch. That's why actually I joined bbd. And where I met you through there was because I didn't know how to take like my live content and turn that into something more like a business because the live content was not making any money. So I talked to my. I had a pretty good following, Die hard following, small but mighty that would follow my recipes and kind of my mom tips for how to organize life when you have little babies. And I pitched to them, kind of put it out there in a live video, said, hey, I'm thinking of doing this, this membership. Would you like to be a beta member? I have nothing to offer you right now, but I'm going to build it with you. And I got 20 people to sign on with me. And it started there. And I took my live show and figured out how to put it up into a resource vault into, I call it like a recipe database up in. I use kajabi and I put it up into there so that they would have access to previous cooking shows. And then I literally built the program week by week with those original 20 people. And then I didn't launch again until like, oh, it was probably like five months later. And then I did like my very first challenge launch and it was a baby launch. Like it was like little. I came up with content and, and I, I did. I didn't put any ads into it really. It was me just kind of launching it as a free challenge to my audience first. And then after that it kind of got bigger and bigger and bigger as I figured out how to Scale it.

Yeah. So how many people were in your first, like, baby launch? And after the beta? After the beta.

After the beta.

This is your first challenge launch.

Yeah, I had, like. So I say baby launch, but it was really like. When you consider, like, where most. So I had. I think. I think there was 2,000 people in the challenge.

That's amazing.

Which I had. Oh, you know what? I misspoke. I did put ads. I remember I was working with Liz, and I put $400 into ads, which back then was, like, a lot for me to risk. I was like, 400 bucks. It was like, a lot because when you're a military spouse, like, you know, when income's tight, you're scared to spend anything because you're like, what if it's like going to a casino and your money's just gone? So I spent $400. I got 2,000 people, and I converted 25% in that first launch. And from there, then it grew, and then my launches became bigger. Then I took that same exact launch, the same exact ads, pull a little bit more money behind it, and then a little bit more money behind it. And then to my launches were. Then getting. My biggest challenge Group now is 35,000 people.

Is amazing.

That's a lot of people.

Yeah, it is a lot of people. And I do to talk to you about how you start to transition, because on this show, we do talk about how there are stages of growth, and there are things that you did mention in, you know, in the way that you're talking is that there are things that you had to bust through in order to, you know, take the risk and how you manage to mitigate your risk and then also, you know, grown with your business while rinsing and repeating a very similar process. Yes, you're enhancing it. Yes, you're making it better, but you're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater and just, you know, shifting gears all the time. You're staying consistent with what it is that you're delivering. So now, just so my people understand, this membership was not a $2,000 a month membership.

No, when I first started it, it was 14.99amonth. $14.99. And then when I say $14.99, you're like, oh, it's like $1,500. No, $14.99 a month. So when you think about it, it's not a huge, like, it's not a huge moneymaker in the beginning, but there are ways to make it explode, which is what I've Done. And when you say rinse and repeat. I've done the same challenge content 10 times since I've started. So we could talk about kind of how I had to bust through, like, the risk. Like, so love that.

Can you share a little bit about, like, how did you get through? Because, like, we were just talking offline and it's like, okay, well, Now I'm spending 70k on my ads. How did you get through each level of Here we Go.

All of it's scary. You know, you have to jump without knowing where your feet are going to land. You kind of have to take that leap of faith, which is really hard if you're financially not stable, if this is kind of like you're getting, like, for us, we. Every penny that I put into this, it was going to be a hardship on us. It was going to be taking away from something else in our life. And then there's that pressure of, like, what if it doesn't work? So you don't know until you try. But I had bust through the fear. So fear is so powerful, and it can be. And that's where you have to really do some reflecting, get a really great coach that can help you bust through that, to let you know, like, that your goals are bigger than the fear. The fear is just a feeling. You can still do something and be fearful. You just. It is whether it cripples you. And I decided that my dream was worth it. It was like, it's now or never. I got to try it. I have to do it. I owe it to myself and my family to try it. And that's what I did is when I started small and then grew from there. You know, you don't just come out spending 70k off the bat, but you can grow it over time. And once you figure out how your kind of your system, your vehicle, your kind of your content, that works really, really well, it's so easy to scale it, and the risk gets lower. Still a little bit scary every time. But the risk definitely get. It's more of a calculated risk as you get further along into it.

So true. So good. Now, I'm also curious, right, Because I know some. A lot of people here in this audience. There they are. There's two things, two questions, but I'll start with one, is that sometimes they're either new, where they're like, oh, I'm new to the space. How am I going to stand apart? And they start to feel like there's not enough for everybody. So as someone that you are literally reaching 35,000 people a launch. How do you ever start to feel like, you know, you're going to reach a ceiling or there's not enough? Or am I only going to be launching to the same people over and over again? Like, how do you start to kind of push through some of those, you know, upper limits of scarcity?

Yeah. So when you think about it, I'm in the food space and the food you would think would be super saturated. Right. It's like the number one, like, most search thing on Pinterest. And everyone's always looking for recipes and food ideas. And there's a lot of free content out there, too, which also can make you feel like, what am I gonna offer that someone's gonna pay for? Right?

Yeah.

But when you get down to reaching certain people, if you try to reach everybody, you end up doing yourself a disservice. A disservice where I've kind of niched down and I find the exact people that jive with my personality, with what I stand for as a brand, the type of mom specifically that I'm targeting, I've had to niche down. And then you find that honestly and truly, you never run out of people to talk to. Like, everyone needs to learn how to cook. Right. Just like everyone needs to learn how to have fitness, everyone needs to have healthy lifestyles. People. There's always more people to talk to. But also, I've had members that go through my launch multiple times before they actually commit to joining. So although I'm always constantly reaching new. I'm also retargeting the people I've already talked to. So how I reach those people all the time and how I get people warmed up quickly and how I find that people can learn about me the fastest is by showing up live, authentically on social media on a weekly basis, very regularly, consistently. For me, it's at least once a week. That's what I do. That's the easiest for me.

I love that. And I do want to talk about your live show, because I've watched it. In fact, there's a watermelon tip that you gave me that I use every. All the time. Like, it's like changed my party planning days. My kids love it. Allison taught me how to cut watermelon so that it's like a fun watermelon popsicle. And we. I literally. My Gwen. Gwen's sixth birthday was yesterday. And I was like, well, I'm talking. I'm cutting the watermelon as I'm like, oh, I'm talking to Allison tomorrow.

I love that. See, that's like a prime example. Like that little tip that I shared live, it's just something that's so small, right. It's not like this huge life changing thing, but it's fun. It made a difference for you and for me, it was something valuable that I put out there. And because I did it live, people, number one, know that I'm authentic. They get a chance to learn my personality. And social media prefers that in the algorithm. So you get more bang for your buck if you're in a live show. That. That's just like my one little two cents about going live.

Yeah. Now I'm just curious really quickly, like, do you go live only on Facebook? Do you go live on Instagram both at the same time? Where do you go live?

I'm on Facebook only for live shows. I need to start dabbling into Instagram. It's just kind of more unfamiliar for me. But honestly, my Dem graphic is mostly Facebook. When I. That just seems to be where my moms are the most in the audience that I'm targeting. Seems like when I. So this is the thing. My, this is showing up now with this launch them about that I've started to. That's about to start next week. Is that because my challenge, my launch that I do is primarily it's all on Facebook for the community. That's where I have a community for it. That's where I have my community for my membership too. People need to be on Facebook to have it make sense. And when I'm finding with my ads that go to people on Instagram, some of those people aren't on Facebook. And then it becomes a problem for me. It's like, well, you need to be on Facebook to have the community and the support because you can only do so much over email.

Yes. So true. Which leads me to, well, I want to go, okay, I'll ask this and then I'll go back. Right. But I am curious, you know, with last week, when we have the Facebook and all these borrowed spaces go down, right. And I know that you and I, so we're friends so we can we talk about other things and how the Internet space starts to change. I'm curious how you have stayed relevant and how you've seen the social media chain experience change over time.

Right.

So how have you adapted some of like the new things or have you just let it go? Like, what are some of the ways that you are measuring, you know, adapting with the change but also saying consent.

So I honestly and truly Whatever the other changes happen in social media. I know no matter what, me showing up with that live content will put me in front of eyeballs no matter what. So regardless of the changes that happen, I mean, granted, if. If social media goes dark like it did last week, it gives you a little gut check. Like, okay, we have to have our email list covered. Other community ideas. We're all like, what do we do? Right? You can't reach people. All of us. How do we survive without social media? But let's just say that doesn't happen on a regular basis for me when it comes to changes as far as. Okay, so for, like, a big example, do you mean like the iOS update that happened that was like, yeah.

Or like, when clubhouse comes up or when this comes up? Like, so many people are so quick to, like, jump to shiny objects.

I know, I know. And I. I don't do that. I stay consistent with where I am because, like, I went to. So Clubhouse is a prime example of that. Like, I was like, quick, someone give me an invite. I want to see what this is all about. The shiny objects, those are, like, such a time suck for me. And it, like, you could spend so much time in clubhouse. And I was like, this is not helping my business. Where are my people still primarily? How can I give them a valuable content in a very easy way that's not too concise, time consuming for me. Right. And we're also. They're gonna be able to find it relatable and all those things. And for me, that's. I don't jump ship unless I have to, so I stay true to kind of what works. And then I'm constantly trying to make it better. But for me, the live content, no matter what, keeps popping up. That's the one that's been like, instant engagement. Instant Is that is video for me.

How long. How long did it take you to really build up a good, engaged live audience?

Oh, my gosh. It took quite a while because I was horrible on. I had the worst stage fright. Oh, my gosh. I was like, I'm sorry, y' all who have to watch me right now. I was so glad I had, like 10 followers when I first started that because I was like, okay, it's my mom who actually turns out to make me even more nervous is if my mom is on. But it's like, it was just like my. My best friends and my family that were my followers, and I was like, okay. And I was like, horrible. Quite a while to get my feet wet with it. And now I'm like, I can't believe I was ever scared of that. But that was like another big thing I had to conquer. Right. Another risk I had to take was put myself out there. I wanted to set myself apart from the pack by being authentic. I didn't want someone to think I was edited, filtered, scripted, because that's the stuff that I don't love. I don't like. Like for me, like I'm kind of the anti Pinterest person. I don't like when you go to Pinterest and you look up like meal planning and prepping, it's a really fast way to make you feel like a bad mom because people are doing a million and one things. And so I've kind of like, I'm not going to be that person. I want to be real life and show you what that's like. And for me, showing up a video and not being scripted and just be like, okay, let's just talk. Is how I built a following fast. And then. Yeah, so I started my cooking show before I started the business. So the cooking show I started, I want to say, five years ago and it took me like two years to decide to put it into a business around that. So. But I have over 100,000 followers now. So I've gone from 10 to over 100,000. It took years for me to do it. Didn't take me years to get to 100,000. But it's. Yeah, it takes time. It does take time. But that's. But in the beginning, your audience is the warmest it will ever be. And it. And it's the highest converting audience you'll ever have. The people that love you and know you and follow you for years, those are your first customers and those are your die hard lifers. It makes it, you know.

Yeah. I was Gonna ask your 20 people, are some of them still with you?

Yeah, they're all with me.

That's amazing.

Still, it's crazy, right? So I have in the membership, I have a 95% retention rate which is really high after all these years. But the offer didn't start. The offer started at 1499amonth. But that's not where it is now. So it pays to stay because you get grandfathered in. So I as it worked well, I would up it. I tend to up it in January because that's when like people the highest, they're so motivated. Right. In the health and wellness space. But it started at 1499, then it went to 1999, then it went to 24.99 and now it's 2999.

A month.

A month or 299 for a year. You know, you times it by 10 for a year. They get two months free.

So. Good. Now I just had a curiosity. You were mentioning that it has like a 12 week intensive essentially that is associated with like habit building. Do your members get to just repeat that process over and over when they stay every time you launch?

Right now they do. And actually that has turned into a really great retention program because people don't get through all the 12 weeks the first time because life happens. They're like, okay, well another round's coming. I'm going to do it again with a new group of people because I have my launches set so that when we're ending like the 12th week, next week is my challenge and so my big launch. So I'm bringing in a new class of people to restart that again and it helps rejuvenate the group. So right now I have it set that way. I don't know if it's going to remain that way or if I'm. Once you start building your programs and you're building your like your paid content, it's. You can kind of see where naturally things start to break off, where you have more programs than you think. You have more paid content that you can use for, for other things. I'm a. So I'm a very low ticket offer, but I've made a lot of money with a low ticket offer and I have even lower ticket things inside built into my program that I can then use to put out Evergreen or things like that. So, so yeah, that's so cool.

I love that. You know, I let. And we were talking before I hit record is that so many people have this belief. They're like, oh, only B2B people who sell to other businesses make money or it's not possible to make money unless you have a high ticket, you know, because you have coaches out there that are like high ticket only. High ticket only. And you're like, no, you can actually make a big profit on a smaller ticket item.

Absolutely. And my audience, my audience struggles financially, but they are willing to put the. If you make your offer great enough and if you can give enough valuable content in between your launches to have people really know that you're authentic, then it's for us. Even though my audience struggles financially, they will put their. They, they invest in it every time. They just, they do each time when I'm upping the price of, of the membership because I Have to be fair. As I grow and as my team grows, I have to charge more. This is kind of how it works. And then even when I. I get nervous increasing the price, my audience still invest in it every time. And they struggle. Of course, they get a lot of money back in return. I save them a lot of money. But yes, it's that initial getting them to invest in you, that if it doesn't matter if you have a $5 product or a $5,000 product, no one's going to invest in it if they don't find it valuable.

1000% one that's like.

And you can have the same person that doesn't want to put $5 in that is willing to put $5,000 into something if it's something that's. That's valuable for them.

Yeah.

So I'm also curious. Do you find that these people show up for themselves? Like, do they come? Do they participate? Do they pay attention?

You mean like in the paid membership or in the free.

In your membership? In your paid membership.

In the paid membership. Engagement is pretty high because I have a lot in place for them. So this is the thing. When it comes to a program like mine, a membership like mine, people come in thinking that they want, you know, recipes or whatever, having that concrete product. But why people stay is for the support and community. So they come. They really show up for themselves. If I have accountability in place for them, if I make it fun for them, if I have engaging content for them inside of the program, that's kind of built in. And so the more I do of that, the more they show up for themselves. Now life happens and you get the people that. It just kind of happens. They fall off. Especially with. So this is the problem, but with, like, if people don't. This is where I'm not going to articulate this well enough. But we can sometimes figure this out. Like, people have to invest in you to show up for themselves. If they don't have an investment.

Then.

It'S expendable, it's disposable. They don't have any skin in the game, but if they have an investment into it, then they're more likely to show up.

Yeah. So this is something that I do talk about a lot in terms of, you know, how price and determining your price is a marketing in the sense that to your point is that it's not for us to really decide what is expensive and what is cheap. And I'm putting that in quotations for the podcast to our members, what they are really Evaluating is, is the worth the asking investment and it doesn't matter if it's 27, $5, $27, $2700. That journey, they're going to be asking themselves those questions all the time. And so the reason why I asked you that question is because you'll, you'll hear gurus out there saying, oh, you just need to charge high ticket, because otherwise there's no transaction, there's no, there's no, they're not going to show up for themselves unless it's high tickets, you know, unless it's high ticket. But my point, and I think that your membership clearly demonstrates this is that high ticket compared to what. It's not for us to decide what that threshold of investment is. It's for the customer to decide whether or not it's expensive or not or worth the asking investment.

Absolutely. And I think that pricing is one thing that can hold you back so much. Making that decision of, okay, I'm going to charge this, and then you go back and forth, is it worth it? Is it not worth that? Will they pay that? You set your price based on what you're comfortable and what you want to have it at. And then it's your job with messaging and overcoming objections and all of that and having your no brainer offer, people will buy it. You do a great job with your messaging and you have a really great offer behind it. Like, you can't ever apologize for charging your worth. I mean, I'm worth More than 2999, but you know, it's like I got nervous about putting $29.99 in there. I got nervous about putting that out there. But you have to charge your worth and you can't decide for your audience if that's too expensive or not.

Yes, exactly. Yes. So how do you manage 35,000 people in a challenge? Like that must be so intense in terms of like engagement, like how, in terms of like people talking to you, like how do you facilitate that type of environment where people also don't feel like, oh my gosh, I have a zillion notifications.

So I'm very specific on how I run the challenges. I think I have it down to like a really good science. Especially if they're large groups with 35,000 people, you have to have closed posting off inside of a group because otherwise it's overwhelming for everybody in play. So I take my team, I have a team of eight and I've got them who are not just my integrator and my ads manager, but I have team members that their sole priority is making sure people are supported inside my membership, my paid membership. And. And then they devote their time to help inside the challenge group. They kind of shuffle from the paid membership to the challenge group. And I give. I give my access to my team inside there. They are the ones that are able to manage comments and stuff like that. How I. How I deal with the 35,000 people all in the group at one time is that I have accountability posts that I have go out every day, but they. People can only comment on those posts. So really, we're just managing comments. I never manage any of it myself, none of it, because I have to conserve my energy to show up for my live trainings. So I give the best of me. Like, my challenge launches are very exhausting on me. Like, at the end of it, it's like, whoo, after the five days, because it actually goes longer than five days. But I go live twice a day during that time, and it can be very draining. So I only interact with people live. So I have my training that's once a day. And then I do a live Q and A session where they get to ask me their questions live, like rapid fire. Other than that, I'm hands off in the group. My team handles it. We have, like, we have certain rules in place. I'm really big on setting the intention for the group before people join so that they know that if they don't play by my rules, that they're out. And we have keywords that are flat. Like, in Facebook groups, you can put in those moderation alerts so that if people have certain words that they use or you can. It'll alert you. So it's worked well. I feel like I can hit. Like, if you can handle 35,000 people, you can handle. Like, if you can handle. Gosh, if you can handle a group of a hundred people, you could handle a group of 2,000 people. Once you figure out how to do it, it's like, like, let's keep going. Let's keep adding them in.

Yeah. So I'm also curious, like, in your, you know, objections, like, for you specifically, do you ever have to deal with, you know, oh, the group's too big, you know, how do you ever feel like you have to, you know, manage feeling like you will be seen even though there's 35,000 people?

That's never come up. Isn't that crazy? I think, because really good job of the support, because I think we do. So even though you have a group of 35,000 people, you don't have that many people that are actively engaged inside the group. So like for me the goal Is to get 25% of them engaged inside that group. And as you start on day one, you get the most and then it dwindles down. So it's a smaller portion than the big, than the big list that are actually who you are having to manage and engage with with. They're all inside the group but they're not engaging with it actively.

But even in your. With your 4,500 people that are paid in your membership, right? So now you've got that same support that's built in to your membership. So everyone feels like even though the group is 4,500, they've got community inside of there.

They feel like it's an intimate group. We actually have like gamification that we use inside the group, meaning like we've got incentives and things like that that are fun. And we just finished up one where we had them shout out someone inside the group that was helpful. Oh my gosh. We have hundreds and hundreds of video testimonials that we didn't even ask for of them thanking the team for all of the support that they've had. Like so many people, like they all feel so supported by the team and that they, they're just so appreciative of that, all of them. The group feels very tight knit. Even though there's 4,500 people in there. It feels tight knit, it feels intimate because I've got the managers in there, community managers.

So our community managers, were they previous members?

Yes, every single person on my team, except for one, except for two. That as manager and the integrator, they were all met, they were all challengers first in the free experience. They became like my expert students inside the membership and then I brought them onto the team and I kind of have a trial period before I bring them onto payroll.

So good.

It works really well and then they know the content really well. They become experts themselves and they like my members have a goal to reach. They're all like my members come in. I'm very open about that. In my challenge in the free experience, like I say, like all these team members that you're seeing in here, they are in your shoes when they first started. Makes them very relatable and they get to know them really well. So yeah, we do a lot on video though. I showcase them a lot on video. I get them live on video too.

So good you helping them. So are the of the 4,500 people that are in the membership, do they get to post in the group?

Yes. Okay, so it's open posting in the group and it's okay. It works. Like, I've got rules in place around it. Like, there's no links of any kind. Whether it's a helpful link or an affiliate link, it doesn't matter. So we have, like, certain rules that we live by inside there. Especially, like, there's no negativity of any kind. Like, and my team is on a schedule that. That works so that we always have coverage inside the group.

So what? As you grew. I have two questions, two part questions. But as you grew and grew your team, you know, what, how has it been for you in terms of, you know, fulfilling on the fulfillment of, you know, doing what you love, your live show and hanging out with your moms also versus, you know, managing a team. Did you ever feel like, I just don't want to manage people and then, you know, overcome that and, like, work through that? How have you kind of navigated that?

I'm curious. Okay. So for years I prided myself on that. I could do it all myself. I did all the ads, I did all the email marketing, I did all of the content. I. James would always tell our coach would always tell me, you need to hire people before you need to hire people. He's like, you need help before you realize you need it. And I was like, nope, I'm not. I don't want to slow down to train people because. And to, you know, I always say, you have to slow down before you speed up. I'm like, I don't have time to slow down. I don't want to teach people how to do something. I can do it better myself faster. Turns out that became a really big issue as my launches got bigger. And it's actually not the group that became challenging to manage. It became customer service emails that became really challenging to manage. So when you have 35,000 people in a challenge group, they are all emailing all the time, whether they don't know if they can watch the video live, can they have a replay? Can they didn't get the email. Where do they go for the email? They can't find this, they can't find that. It's like thousands of emails. And then when you have a membership, you have emails that come in and customer support for cancellations, which is natural. There's a natural churn, it's called, that you would expect for people to cancel their memberships after about six months or whatever it is. And not only Was it overwhelming for me to be inside the support inbox? It was negatively affecting me because I took it very personally when someone would want to leave my membership. So I had to hand over the support. That's how it first started, was that I needed help, community managers inside the group and I needed help in the support inbox. The support inbox was the last thing for me to hand over. And it's the biggest thing that made the huge impact in my life where now I'm like, I have freedom. Oh, my gosh. I only, it's amazing. Like, I only work a couple days a week now where I was seven days a week inside that inbox, answering emails, managing things out. Being inside my challenge group, like it is life changing when you have support in place and in turn it actually builds more income because you're able to do a better job. You reach more people faster.

Yeah, that's so that's so important. How much of your day would you say you spend managing or, you know, developing the team versus being in your membership?

I almost don't want to admit this. It seems like I get the less I work.

You're not the first person to tell me that.

I used to. So I will say I work like crazy. In the beginning when I. For me, while I was building my audience, I work like crazy. When I said that I would show up on live video, like, I was showing up like three or four times a week on live video. It was a lot. Everything I did for my family, I just showed it live because I felt like it would help build the audience. But once you, once you build your audience and you've got your program, you know, your program down and stuff like that, and you start to have a team, you can start to do other things in your life that can help spark your creativity. So I work, Gosh, I work two days a week. I have to be inside my membership. I do those two call, two coaching calls twice a week, twice a month. I work on a Saturday. I do a junior chef workshop and I do a freezer meal workshop for the adults. And other than that, I only have to work if I want to. So, like, I don't work Fridays, I don't really work Thursdays. My team takes care of the inbox exclusively. The rest of my time is coming up brainstorming new ideas and coming up with, like, my challenge content, stuff like that, how to make my next launches better and better. But being inside that group, my team is an extension of me and I don't have to be in There, like, I'm not in there.

So it's amazing. It's amazing.

It's so freeing because you can feel like you. So when you first get started with building a business, especially if you're in like a coaching type of world, you feel like you have to constantly give content and information to keep your people, to keep your customers, especially when it's online. And it becomes like, for me, it was like chronic coaching where I was like, I couldn't put it down. You know that like, I love.

Because I love it. Yes. And my people, they're going to resonate.

With this, like chronic coaching. It's like you feel like you have to do it 24 7. Like you have to answer their. Their questions instantly, things like that, so that they feel that they're being supported by you. And that was the hardest thing for me to let go. But the one thing that gave me like the biggest, like, changed my life was to. It's like freeing. And the less I do, the, the more valuable I am when I do show up.

Yeah. So can you tell us who's on your team, if you don't mind?

You mean as like the number of like, family?

So like, so you have like, you have your ads person that helps.

I have my ads person. I have my integrator. And then I have six community managers.

Amazing.

And they help you, but they all have different. So they're community managers, but they also have other things that they do too. So they're in the support inbox. They are creating PDFs and things for me that I need. They're like canva experts. They are taking content and working with the integrator to do other projects I don't even know about to help get some stuff, evergreen, things like that. So even though they're community managers, that's not their only role. And when they first come on to the team, when I invite them, my students to come on as a team member, they start with just being like a team leader, like a community manager. They start there. And then as we figure out what they're good at, like what their wheelhouse is, what their specific gifts are, they contribute and we start to bring them onto payroll. Like now I'm taking all of my team members that were just community managers that were not on payroll, and I'm bringing them all on a payroll because I'm going to give them a pot of people based on their, what their, their expertise is.

Love it. So good. Now. Okay. I want to be mindful of your time, so I'll Let this be the last question. So I'm curious for you and as you have grown, what would you say the biggest differences are for you? Not from a strategic point, but even from like a mindset and as a business owner, for you, going from starting to six figures to seven figures, what are some of the biggest, you know, the biggest differences and what would seven figure you want to tell brand new starting Allison you.

So the biggest thing is to believe in yourself and to believe in your value and your worth. Because in the beginning of where I was for someone that was asking my parents for money to help me pay for coat for like a coaching program, like I then it, it's like you have this dream of being a seven figure business, but it's almost unattainable. You're like, not me, that's them. He's like an imposter syndrome kind of a thing. Like, what do I have that I can get there? They've done it and it seems great, but I don't know. Believing in yourself from the beginning that anybody can make it happen, that if my self now, my seven figure self now tells that would tell that new person, like, believe in yourself. Just give it a chance. You have to try. If you don't try, you never know. You have to try. So that would be believing yourself. Self doubt is really hard and like always being indecisive and critical of your choices, comparing yourself to someone else's. Someone else's success is a very slippery slope to making you feel like you can't get there. You know, like it's hard because sometimes you feel like you should be on a path that someone else has taken but you don't know where they started. You know what I mean? So it's really keeping blinders on staying true to who you are and showing up authentically to your audience and believing in yourself. You can move mountains. You really can. Easier said than done when it comes to mindset work. But and honestly, get a coach before you need, before, you know, like get a coach, get support.

Yeah, for sure.

Support is you can't do it without support. I was a firm believer that if any, like I can do it myself. If anyone could have done it herself, it would have been me. And I was as frugal as they come on that.

No.

Like, do you have a coupon code? Like, no, like you, like, like you can't do it alone. And if you want the fast track to success, you have to invest in.

Your, like you have to invest, invest in your dream. For sure. Art did you retire your husband.

So he's not retired yet, but he is going to be next October.

Are you so excited?

Military.

It's amazing.

And it changed our life. Like, I have totally changed our life. Like, we bought our dream house almost a year ago. So it's like our life has significantly changed because of this business. And honestly, it took support from. Not. It took support from him, too. So that's a whole other conversation.

Yeah, I know.

What do you do?

Yeah, you know, my husband is, is a detective, so we're, I'm, you know, he's got five years left before he gets to 20, and I'm like, we're going to retire you.

We got to 20 a few years ago, but he stayed in and now he can leave. Like, he's been able to leave at any time, but financially we haven't been, you know, willing to do that. So. But now. And now he can go do whatever something else he wants to do, not something he has to. To do.

Yes. It changes the game.

Yeah.

Allison, thank you so much for pouring into me, into my community. You are amazing. So for those of you who want to come learn more about Allison, because like she said, right, everyone needs a coach. Doesn't matter. Maybe you need, have you need help with some meal planning. Right. You know, she's your go to person. So would you share with us, like where I can send that? Yes.

If you go to Facebook, you can find me on there or all my live content that I'm talking about. You can actually see my free experience. It's going to start next week. I don't know. But yeah, but you can go to Allison Hollinger. That's the name of the spelled like Hollinger. That's my, my page on, on social media. You can find me at, at Alison Underscore Hollinger on Instagram or you can go to AllisonHollinger.com and you can find it.

Great. And well, I'll make sure to link all that up in the show.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you so much for having me.

I feel like I could have chatted forever.

I love talking to this about this.

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