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The Art of Online Business
Transforming Setbacks into Success with Email Marketing Strategist, Allison Hardy
Allison Hardy talks about her journey in building a successful email marketing business, especially after some serious setbacks like getting laid off while pregnant. Allison also shares her insights into transitioning from personal training to network marketing, and eventually finding her niche in email marketing, helping people like you and me sell more courses and memberships.
Watch the episode Top Email Marketing Mistakes You Can't Afford to Make with Allison Hardy (releases August 14th)
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Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie’s Links:
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Allison’s Links:
- Listen to Allison Hardy’s 6-Figure Secrets podcast
- Join the Funnel Of The Month Club
- DM Allison: www.instagram.com/allison_hardy_
- Get Allison’s The $80,000 Email Template
Welcome to another episode of how they Built it, and if you're watching on the YouTube channel, you can see Allison Hardy and we'll be talking about how she built her business as we get to know each other. She's an email marketing strategist who helps coaches and experts enroll more clients into their courses and memberships on autopilot, and this I mean for me. I'm excited to have you here, allison, because I feel like my email marketing game needs to improve and I have so many questions for you as an email specialist.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to dig in.
Speaker 1:Me too, me too. The rest of what I wanted to tell the listener about you is that you're the creator of a podcast it's called the Six Figure Secrets Podcast, and you're a Huffington Post contributor. So that, to me, makes you even more legit, because I just have always struggled with the written word, and so anybody that could be a contributor to a publication like the Huffington Post wow. To a publication like the Huffington Post Wow. Also, you were named Washington DC's. Well, you were put on the list of Washington DC's most influential professionals under 40 by Washington Life Magazine. How did you accomplish that?
Speaker 2:They just emailed me. I know it sounds kind of crazy. They just emailed me and were like hey, you're included on this list because of your reputation.
Speaker 1:And it's crazy.
Speaker 2:It's crazy. Yeah, it's such a weird thing Cause I got to go to like this big party with like sports celebrities and like really important people and I was like, well, what am I doing here? It just felt so like out of body, but it was really cool.
Speaker 1:Wow. Okay, I'm going to ask a little more about that as we get to know each other and you know, as you share, about your journey and building your business in this episode I that just to me seems really impressive because I did spend like we started to talk to before, before we hit record and I did spend about eight months in Washington DC and I call that the most expensive vacation I've ever taken, and one of many things that I learned, as I was humbled by everything that is Washington DC, is that everyone there is so successful and so educated and so to be on the top 40, I'm like, wow, who do I have on my podcast right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a wild place. I've lived here basically all my life, just in different parts of it, and it's one of the most competitive, high powered places ever. And I find like when I get out of DC, I like forget that not everybody is like you know, the rest of the world's not like super aggressive, so I find it to be like a funny, like juxtaposition sometimes.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean super aggressive that is. I would say that is accurate of Washington DC. I had a lot of fun there, but I just realized I was outclassed and outperformed in pretty much every way. Before we get into that, though, for the listener who's listening, this is the first of two episodes with Allison. You'll want to tune in to the second one, where she's going to share all the good things about how you can make your email marketing work a lot better for your business.
Speaker 1:I have a couple of questions stored up for Allison for the next episode, one being the biggest email mistake that she sees, course creators making. That's costing them sales. Since she looks at emails all the time and she's going to be sharing about what exactly goes into a sales email, a sales pitch email, to make it work. And maybe you didn't know this, I generally did not know this, but she's going to share the difference between a nurture sequence and a welcome sequence, and which one creates more sales. So if you need more sales in your business, you can also listen to the next episode that is linked up in the descriptions below. It releases exactly two days after this episode is being released. And with that, allison, where do we start. I want to go to DC, but I want to start back when you first started your business, because this is how you built it and I know personally. For me, the road was not always smooth selling as I built my own business. So tell me how you started out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my business started because I got laid off when I was six months pregnant with my son With a what yeah, yep.
Speaker 2:I was, you know, living in DC doing my thing. I was teaching college level art. I was 28 years old. I had like the job, I was tenure track, all the things, and then, you know, I was, it was done. My son is now 10. So that was 10 years ago and, yeah, it was a lot. I came home that day and I was like hubs, this is what happened. And he's like what, what are we going to do? I was like I have no idea, because it's not like college level art jobs are common, believe it or not. And he was like well, you've always talked about starting in your own business. And I was like, yep, and he's like so here we go. I think that's probably what you're going to do.
Speaker 1:So that's how it started, but that makes it sound so easy. No, it was not, I was going to say what was it really like coming home?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a mess. So I started a personal training business. I had like a super, like side hustle personal training business. I would train my friends in our backyard and we drink mimosas after our workouts. Like it was great. And I was like well, it looks like we're going to take this thing and like go full time. So I actually partnered with a network marketing company and because I had a lot of connections I was able to rank and advance really fast in that company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know. Then I started having like people asking me to mentor them and with network marketing you can't mentor people outside of like your downline and upline.
Speaker 1:I completely understand what you're saying. By the way, I think I got my start with a network marketing company way back in 2007 yeah yeah, we speak in the same language yeah.
Speaker 2:So like it was a great like business in a box, you know. But then I got hit with like a really nice dose of postpartum depression and like I couldn't work in the same way. So I will never, never forget, like I went to coffee with one of my friends and she was just like I don't know. She like kind of looked at me and she was like I don't know like what you need to do, but like clearly like this isn't working for you, like you are super stressed. You're like burning the candle at both ends. She's like I'm pretty sure you're not sleeping and I don't know when. The last time you washed your hair was and like you need to like do something.
Speaker 2:And I did not appreciate that at the time, but what that conversation did was got me thinking about building a more sustainable business and one that didn't depend on me and could do things on autopilot, and so that's when I transitioned from personal training to business and then more into email marketing.
Speaker 1:Okay, but how did you make the jump? Because I'm connecting the dots from you said you were a professor at a college, right, yeah, yep, so I'm going from here to your super side hustle personal training while and then starting a network marketing business. How did email, how did the written word fit into that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've always liked writing. When I was teaching one of the parts of my job was I worked for the gallery at the university and so I was in their like marketing department. So I've always loved writing and I was an English minor in college. So writing has always been like something I enjoyed, but I never really like did it like for a living. It was just kind of like something I did for like with my living, I guess.
Speaker 2:So part of like building that sustainable business was when folks would come to me in the network marketing organization. They'd be like can you mentor me? And I'd be like no, I can't. One day I was just like what if I just like got rid of that barrier? Like what if I wasn't in this network marketing company? I could probably still mentor these people and that would really help me to not be cause. With network marketing you kind of build like two businesses you have like the thing you sell and then you have to like mentor the people. So like what if I just got rid of the thing I sold and just mentored the people? And that's where the email marketing came in, because people didn't know like how to communicate through email and I just thought it was always pretty easy. It was very keen, like super naturally to me, so it just like made sense and I know it sounds like a really weird, like weird ball that I had to like unravel, but it kind of just all really organically happened, which is super strange.
Speaker 1:It all organically happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Okay, and I had people you know reaching out to me. So I was like okay, like how can I get around this obstacle? Like how can I mentor this person Even though I'm technically not supposed to mentor them? Okay, get rid of the network marketing partnership, and then that opens you up to so many other opportunities and not that network marketing like did that, it does that, but it did that for me.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:So what year did you start your current business? Like when I look at your website and it says let's sell more of your course or membership. What year did you start this version of your business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, that's the funny question. I don't really know. It's been at least eight years.
Speaker 1:Nice, okay, so before the internet boom, if you will, the internet course boom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, before the internet course boom. And it was fascinating watching the internet course boom as someone who already had a business, you know and watching all these businesses come online, so that was really quite wild to watch sometimes.
Speaker 1:I bet. So when I was, when I was in China, there was this he was a transition specialist, because China, at least when I was there, the people who are working over there, it's just a very transient community, right Like you're there on a contract for two years, you leave, there's always friends coming and going, and he had this exercise where he would ask you to reflect on your experience with the high and the low. So I want to know the high before the low, like the high point in these past eight years of running your business, like what was the high point? Give me a snapshot of how that looked and how that looked and how that felt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think my highest point was when I had my first five figure launch, and what that kind of like proved to me was that I didn't need, like an organization to help me make money. I could do it my own way. It was also like the same amount of money that I would make in a semester, and I got it in, like you know, two weeks and I was like, oh, like this can actually be a thing. It was kind of it like proved a lot of things to me. So when I had that launch and I think it was like a 12 or $15,000 launch Nothing crazy, nothing like massive but for me it was like the thing that started like the okay, this is actually possible for me type of thing.
Speaker 1:Wow, when did that happen? Like timeline yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I always like we move a lot, so I'm always like what house was I in? I was living in Chesapeake Virginia at the time, and so that was. Nora wasn't born yet, so that means it was before 2018.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, maybe like 2016, 2017. Within like how many months since you were let go from your?
Speaker 2:I was let go from my job in 2013, 14.
Speaker 1:Okay, so a lot of work went into this it did. Yeah, I feel like people will hear oh yeah, I got a five-figure launch and I just snapped my fingers. But how hard was it?
Speaker 2:It was super hard. It was super hard because I'd been doing one-on-one work. I was doing like done for you. I was working as like a contractor and that was great and it was really like one of the first times I ever really was able to do like a, like a scalable offer. You know it was.
Speaker 2:It wasn't directly tied to my time and that was like it was hard to wrap my head around it and I had to get through a lot of mindset stuff right, like will someone actually buy something where I'm not actively writing their emails for them? Or am I actually going to be able to help them get results by not, you know, working with them one-on-one? So there was a lot of like mindset that went into it. But also, like I saw the writing on the wall, like it wasn't, like the one-on-one wasn't a sustainable way of growing my business. I liked it, I was good at it, but it didn't. If I wanted to make more money, I had to either charge more or work more, and there was no way getting around that. So it gave me the, the ability to kind of remove myself more from my business and still make more money, and so as soon as that happened. I was like, okay, like we're shutting down all the one-on-one stuff and we're just going full on into this.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, so you changed direction that gave you enough motivation and excitement to go for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I proved it to myself. That was I have to do that a lot. I have to prove things to myself that, like, this can actually happen. So that like did that. And then, as soon as that did that, I was like okay, we can go into this more scalable model.
Speaker 1:Nice. And then, as soon as that did that, I was like okay, we can go into this more scalable model. Nice, Our brains are so interesting. We you know, with the mind box and how we have to prove things to ourself even though we know it can work, and we see other people doing it.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, we're like, okay, other people can do this, so why can't you? But for whatever reason, I have a hard time believing the why can't you? So for a lot of the stuff that I do, sometimes I just have to like prove it and then I'm like, okay, we'll do more of that.
Speaker 1:I think I identify with that. I think maybe the listener does too. What thoughts did you have going through your mind and I don't mean like what thoughts, I guess. Let me clarify that question. At that time, when you achieved your first five figure launch, what were you consuming Like? Were you reading business books, self-improvement books? Was it podcasts that were sort of giving you that faith for you to take steps across until you got to your success? Or did you have a coach at that time? Walk me through that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always have a coach. I'm always working with someone. So I had a coach. I was in a, I think at that time I was in a mastermind for people who were like scaling to, who were not scaling growing to six figures so it was, you know, very specific niche. I needed help with the launch aspect, so I had that coach and I got into the mastermind for that. As far as, like what I was, I actually don't consume a lot, simply because it takes up a lot of my brain and I have a hard time with bright, shiny object syndrome.
Speaker 2:So while everything is a good idea. I have a hard time figuring out if it's a good idea for me and I have a hard time understanding or figuring out like I need to do this now and this later I want to do all at once. I'm a very like all or nothing type of person, so at the time I was probably like listening to a few podcasts. I've always listened to podcasts, I enjoy them, but that, honestly, probably was it because I also was, you know, paying that coach.
Speaker 1:So I really lean hard into those relationships and those investments so that I can get, like the fast track to results instead of a bunch of a bunch of information you know, I do know I talk about this analogy where it's because I have a course right that teaches Facebook ads and when I was doing I'm not doing it anymore but when I was doing like live weekly Q&A for like the founding members, I got a lot of questions.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, well, I'm in this other course and they teach this and you know. But you're saying that and so can you help me out? And I was like this issue is it's like someone who needs to lose weight and then they Google how to lose weight and then they go online and the first results like there's somebody in the paleo camp, you know, and there's somebody who says follow the Mediterranean diet. And then there's like the vegans that say just go all vegan. And then you have people who say eat only meat, right. And then you have others that say, do intermittent fasting, and they all look like goddesses and gods and we're just left like fat and confused because there's so many different, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, teachers confused because there's so many, so many different. You know teachers, so you just leaned all the way in with what your coach was saying and you saw the results.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's how I operate, that's me and how my brain works. For other people, like, they can consume all those different things, but, like for me, I just get distracted and I've always been like that and so I needed I I know, when I invest with somebody, that I have to, like I have to listen to them. Otherwise, like it's just not, it's not going to work, and then I'm going to be resentful and I'm not going to get any results. So, like, let's just make things easy for everybody involved and just lean into the investments that you make.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. I feel the need now to go and add in a little personal note, lest somebody think I'm fat shaming with my analogy. Like I got that because, like, right now I'm sitting at about 190 pounds and recently, right before I moved to DC, actually, I think I hit a high of like 230 pounds and it was not, unfortunately, muscle. So that was completely me figuring out how to lose weight and get healthy again.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I try that. No, that's great. I think the fitness industry being a former fitness industry professional has. There's just so much you know, there's so much that's out there and it's important that you're listening to somebody who can guide you for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, listening to somebody who can guide you, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So that was a high point.
Speaker 2:Low point. Yeah, give me context. So many low points. The entrepreneur rollercoaster. The high points are super fun to talk about, but the low points you're like.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, when I first started my business, we were all like feast or famine, like big months followed by months with nothing sent because everything was tied to my hours.
Speaker 2:Right, so if I could work more hours, I can take on more clients. But also, what I found was when I had more clients, I didn't have time to market so that I would have, you know, the pool of people coming in, so that when those clients off boarded, I didn't have anyone else coming in. So there was this time where, like I didn't bring in a new client for like six months and, yeah, it was big, a big deal put us in like a huge financial strain. And I remember my husband and I sitting down and I was like I don't know what to do, babe, like I don't know, like if this was just a fluke, if, like you know, maybe this whole online business thing was a bad idea, and he was like I mean, maybe I remember saying that he was like I mean maybe, maybe, but like I feel like if you've had success once, you could probably keep doing it again.
Speaker 2:So like what's the thing for you, what is it? What's like the thing that needs to change? And I was like I think I need to go back to a nine to five, because I think what's happening was I was putting so much pressure on myself, right, to make money I had to but that pressure was making it so that when I would sit down to work I wouldn't really know what to do. It was kind of like frozen.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I went and got like a I got like this, part-time job at a frame shop, an art like frame shop.
Speaker 1:Frame art shop. Okay, all right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Cause, like I had that background and I was like I can do this easily. But what that did? I only made like $15 an hour, Like it probably, like it wasn't even worth my time, but like DC DC.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's like below minimum wage in DC or I think you feel like it.
Speaker 2:No, like I.
Speaker 2:It was not like actually paying the bills, but what it did was it gave me like the space to be like okay, at least today I know I'm going to make this amount of money I'm going to make like $80, but I'm at least going to make $80. And while I was, you know, doing this very repetitive work of framing it, my brain could just like think of things you know, and I could like think about different ideas and different ways of doing things. And I remember at that frame shop, I had like this, like piece of paper on the side of the wall and I would just write down ideas. And so, while I felt like a total failure cause I had to go back to nine to five and I was making $15 an hour, that job was actually like super helpful and I was in that job for like a month, like a probably like a year and a half, two years. But it just gave me that, that space and that time to continue on with the business and to figure out do I want to continue with the business?
Speaker 1:I think it took you out it sounds like it took you out of flight or fright mode, right or right? Yeah, right mode.
Speaker 2:I guess like yeah, I think it took you out of flight, or fright mode flight or flight, flight or flight yeah, I think that's how it is. But yeah, it like totally gave me the ability to think and I think that's really what I needed. I felt like a whole bunch of pressure and I couldn't think, so like get rid of the pressure, and then I think it made me think.
Speaker 1:I've been there very recently, in 2020. That was the year my life fell apart and we did have savings, but we did end up going through all of it as we were like displaced from our 12-year home in China and those talks like where you were like six months without bringing in a client and you were able to sit down and talk with your husband about it.
Speaker 1:You make it sound so rosy, but we forget, or at least it's hard to communicate, I guess, the tension, the anxiety. Even your loved one wants you to succeed. But also you're looking at the bank account and you're looking at the credit card bill possibly going up. It's like yeah, we racked up a at the credit card bill possibly going up.
Speaker 2:It's like yeah yeah, we racked up a bunch of credit card debt during that time because that, like, at the end of the day, we had to pay bills, right. So, like, how did we get a dime that we didn't have any? Like, we went through our savings, we didn't have any left, so, like, we put it on the credit card because, like, what are you gonna do? We have to pay the electric bill. So it was, it was a. Really. We were like we actually had applied for like food stamps, which is like federal assistance for your, your food. Yeah, we pulled my son out of preschool because we were like we can't afford the payment for that. It was a lot. It was a lot. There we were in kind of like a do or die moment. So, like, those conversations were ridiculously hard. But you had, we had, we had to have them and we're better for it.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, how did you? Okay. So what was the? What was the dynamic at that point? Like, was he working or were you just all relying on your income?
Speaker 2:no, my husband is a pastor, so he's he is not anywhere in my business and that's very on purpose he's doing the Lord's business. He's doing that. He can stay there and do that.
Speaker 1:So at that point then you're figuring out. Stop it completely, so to speak, and go for day job. You went and worked at the frame shop for a bit. That gave like your brain, I guess a safe space to, let's say, to create again and figure out how to, because you were still doing that. You're still doing the email marketing business on the side while you're at the frame shop yeah, yeah, I worked there like 30 hours a week.
Speaker 2:So then I worked in the, my business, probably like 20 hours a week okay at that time I'm actually super curious how did you, what happened?
Speaker 1:like how did you get yourself out of that, out of that space? Because I've been in credit card debt and it feels like a mountain and especially the in, like a mountain is on you and like the interest and stuff. So like living in dc like definitely high cost area. You said your husband's a pastor. How did you, how did you guys make it through that point and like get out of debt and the business continued to be more and more successful than it was well, we still have some of that debt hanging around.
Speaker 2:Call it like it is. We're still paying it off. We're paying like four times what we have paid in the past. So that's wonderful, it's gonna go away. It's gonna go away, but yeah, so it's still there.
Speaker 2:But what I did was I launched my. I've had three memberships at this point. I launched the first one and it was all just information and I already had, you know, so much of that information already created for my one-on-one work and it was probably one of the best things I've ever done, because I didn't have to show up at a certain place in a certain time. I could just take the stuff I already had put it in, like the monthly deliverables, like it was super easy and I never had anything that was actually super easy in my business. So I launched it. You know, I had a founding members launch. I did the whole thing. I wrote the funnel for it and it just it turned and burned in the background. And I mean not at first, it didn't turn and burn at first, but once I perfected it and I was able to actually be like okay, I'm onto something here again, I kind of had to prove it to myself. I was able to continue to run that while I worked at the frame shop.
Speaker 2:And then, as soon as I was like, okay, I hit the number I think it was a hundred people in the membership. As soon as I hit 100 people in the membership, I was like, okay, we can stop the frame shop. And that was a cool day. I actually really liked working there. It was really fun Again, it gave my brain a break. So, like for me that was really good. But I remember when I like put in my two weeks notice, the woman who owned it was like you are my best employee and I loved working with you. But I'm so glad we're not gonna be working together anymore because I know what you really want to do is your business, and so I think that's really great and I was like, well, all the feels she was so supportive and she was wonderful and I still talk to her to this day. But that was kind of like the. Again I'd approve it in order to like make that choice and do that action.
Speaker 1:Cool. Yeah, that is cool. I thanks for being a little personal and sharing about that. It helps me and it definitely like encourages the listener. Because we hear, we hear the highlights. Because we hear the highlights, you know five-figure launch, seven-figure business, you know high six figures this year, and we very rarely hear what it takes to get through the lowest points, or even if there are multiple low points, we very rarely hear that, you know, and so even you just sharing that like for sure is motivating somebody right now through their low point.
Speaker 2:So thank you no you're good?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll take a little turn here. So I was in DC. I was in Silver Spring, which is about how far on the metro from you, or are you further out?
Speaker 2:I'm in Arlington, you were in Silver Spring, so probably a really long metro ride simply because metro is insanely inefficient, but I can drive to silver spring in like 30 minutes okay, so like I would go come down into the city and out to the what is that east? And yeah, no west, I'm the west of dc wait, I'm mixing it up.
Speaker 1:I was going to say, see, I do remember, but that was already a long, long, long time ago. Yeah, no, I called that the most expensive vacation of my life because we were in China, my wife and I, no kids at that point. And, oh my gosh, speaking of no kids, I don't even think you. I asked you to touch on this, but you did the frame shop plus getting the business going, and you were already a mom of one or two at that point.
Speaker 2:One.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:My son had been born yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, wow, wow, and that's also when you said that you had to pull him out of preschool. I remember being in DC and looking at childcare as we were thinking about starting a family and being like, oh my gosh, like how do people do this?
Speaker 2:It's so expensive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were in China and then we got the bright idea, and it was the bright idea to move to DC. And I'll put it in like a faith context, since you're a woman of faith like we did not pray about it, we didn't ask our parents about it, you know, we didn't even ask like our pastor about it in China, and everything was going like super great in China. You know, we were teaching, we were making lots of money on the side too. You know, like we both were involved in our well, it's not a church, actually, in China they don't allow churches. You can only have international fellowship, which is a whole other set of challenges. It's still really, really cool. But so we asked the yeah, we just didn't talk to anybody about it. We came up with this. Everything was going well there too is why I mentioned that and we just came up with this idea that we were going to move to DC because we lived in China. You know, at that point, I think three, about three years and nine, 10, 11, yeah, three years and change, and I spoke fluent Mandarin and my wife was fluent in Spanish, and we're like we're going to go to DC and I'll get a government job using Mandarin, and so we just went and it was the I think we my timing was off.
Speaker 1:I think at the time the government was doing layoffs, so like they were reducing everyone on their payroll in like the various places that I was applying to, and so I was working at a temp agency. I had a temp job, and so did my wife, and I think at that point we laughed about it. But it was so bad that we were going home on the metro different metros. We would arrive there and whoever got there first, like we would just go to Giant and we would buy a pint of cookies and cream, ice cream and get two spoons from the deli and like we would just nurse our pain with ice cream. Like it was bad. It was bad, you know, like, but we laugh about it now because it's better now. But yeah, those were tough times. No, it can be brutal.
Speaker 2:DC can eat you alive. And like I see I live in an area where there's a lot of universities, so like I see these young folks walking around and you can tell they're so excited to be here and then like I feel like like halfway through the semester everyone's just like mom because it's it can be hard. It can be a really hard place to live. I've lived here my whole life so like I basically know it, but like I think for a lot of people coming in it can be really cutthroat and rough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everybody was just. I remember I always liked to go to networking events and meet people. And then I went, went to one in DC and I was like wow, everybody here was. People were friendly and cordial, but they're like what do you need? What do you want? What do you need? I'll tell you if I can help you right away. If I can't, I'll tell you, and then goodbye. And this wasn't even like a speed networking event and it happened over and over again. I'm like whoa.
Speaker 2:It's knew what they were there. Yes, absolutely do and live for you know. Yep, oh yeah, and that's like how it goes, that's how like I mean I haven't been single here, but like my friends who are single, they're like, when I go to, like when I go out, it's just like my first question what do you do for a living? Instead of like, what do you? What lights you up, or what are your hobbies, or what are your passions? It's like what do you do for work every time?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, I mean, so many things in my mind changed. I also like I used to. I used to continue. I used to make the mistake of like bringing up like political arguments or or or agreeing to have political conversations, knowing it would turn into an argument, until I went to DC and then, like every day, I saw people that couldn't agree, that were like two degrees beyond my degree, you know cause I only hold like a bachelor's. I feel like minimum to get into anywhere is like a master's in. You know, in DC and everyone there had like PhDs and lots of research Cause I spoke Mandarin. So, like lots of the places, oh, what just happened? Oh, that was random. I thought I lost you. I have this toggle time tracker that just popped up on my screen and I couldn't even see anyone. I'm like, oh no, no.
Speaker 1:I didn't see you, yeah, so where was I? So I went there and because of, like, my Mandarin skills, I applied to a lot of three letter places I don't need to name name, I'm sure you can figure that out and a lot of the people that I was friends with also had foreign language skills and also were doing research for various foundations and in and out of the foundations as the tides changed politically, and so like at first, when I heard them having their discussions, I'm just like, oh gosh, you guys don't agree and you're on a level that's way above anything that I could ever participate in. And so, like that's kind of when I decided to just keep my opinions to myself, so to speak, and not succumb to the trap of discussing politics with your in-laws, and then also something that I was. So this is completely random and then we'll go back to you. But you said your husband's a pastor. So at church, like do you do? Like is there? Does your church do like small groups and things like this?
Speaker 2:Uh, yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I was sitting in a church small group and everywhere else in the country you talk about like your work life, but like there I think there were like nine guys in the country you talk about like your work life, but like there I think there were like nine guys in the small group and it was like I made the mistake of like asking where you worked and like the guy who had asked was like oh, you know, like I don't really discuss that. And then I realized like seven of the guys there like don't discuss where they work because you can't you know, yeah, I'm like this is interesting, like such a part.
Speaker 1:It's like we're relating around like Jesus and we have these jobs that we don't talk about, so it's just like church and social life, but not like everything that's going on at work. You know, I was like this is this is so intriguing to me. I thought it was really cool at the time because I just wanted to live in DC and adored it, even though while I was there I was working at an architect company as an office manager, so I was doing lots of crawling around.
Speaker 2:I had computer skills back then, so like I was doing lots of crawling around and making sure the network was working and everything an office manager does yeah, yeah, no, it's fascinating when, like, there's an individual who attends our church, who is a like you would know them if I said their name, so it's funny. It's so crazy when he like walks in the church and sits down next to you and you're like, oh, hey, yeah, what's up Just there? Yeah, it's a fascinating place to live.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, it's the center of the world. Some would argue, well, maybe the people who live in london would not like that, or new york, but otherwise you know. So fast forward to now, before we finish this episode and we jump into the next episode, when I look at your website and I see that it says let's sell more of your course or membership without launches that drain you, keep you in feast or famine months or that stress you the heck out. Tell me what's included in that membership and talk to me about what we're going to discuss in the next, because that membership it makes a big old promise, but you are here as an email marketing specialist, so like what's in the membership and what really does make it matter as far as what makes emails really work for your members in that membership yeah, so the membership is called funnel of the month club and what it does is it gives you monthly email sequences.
Speaker 2:So there's like a master class. There's templates, there's examples, anything you need to get the job done, and so what you can do is use those sequences as one-off sequences to just send to your email list, or you can hook them all together to make an email funnel, so when someone comes onto your list, they have a journey that they go through, and I'm sorry I forgot the rest of your question.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it was a complicated. I didn't form it very clearly, but I want to know what the membership was basically and then what you feel like the best part of it is the thing that really helps the members, Cause there's always many things in a membership I feel like, but then there's the one thing that the members come back and use over and over and over again and they just rave about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the templates. They love the templates. So we have color coded templates that you can fill in. And usually our members before using the templates, it takes them about two to three hours to write a singular sales email. When they use the templates, they report back that it's like 15 to 30 minutes. Yeah, so we help them act, because a lot of my members, you know, they don't know what to say, they don't know how to say it, they don't know like, and so it takes them forever, right, yeah, to write emails. So I was like, how can we just like speed people Like, how can we help people like speed up? And so that's how the templates were born and you know they can use them for different products, so they can use them over and over again. It's not just like a one-off thing.
Speaker 1:Thank you for making that membership. I am definitely one of those people who spends hours on sales emails, like I just wrote an affiliate series of three emails. Oh, I guess I sent it to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I was definitely intimidated about sending it to you. I was like, wait a second, I'm talking to the same person, but that took me quite a while. So be kind, as you look at that, decide to use it or change 80% of it. But for me that took at least four and a half hours At least, and that's just my writing challenges. So the listener might be like what are you talking about? Like alice and I were, alice and I were talking about doing a promotion, if you will like, coordinating, coordinating together, working together, like looks like we might have some instagram collabs coming out. But the specific one was where you were going to send a series of three emails about Facebook ads to your email list and then also introducing me and partner in that way. And so I had written a series of affiliate emails, my first time ever, writing in full transparency emails that somebody else would use to introduce my lead magnet, and it was a trip. It was a trip. So thank you for being gracious with those emails, allison.
Speaker 1:And in the next episode, what we're going to discuss again for you listener is, I guess it's quite simply the secret to writing good emails that sell. Allison is an email marketing strategist. She's very good with the written word. She's going to answer my questions about common email marketing flaws and what goes into a sales pitch, slash sales email and the difference between a nurture sequence and a welcome sequence. And again, you can find the link to that episode in the show notes below. And if it hasn't been released because you're watching on a Monday or Tuesday, that episode is coming out next Wednesday and that will still be linked below. Thanks for this episode of how she Built it, allison.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been a cool conversation. I can't wait to do the next one. So until we hear each other or see each other, be blessed and take care, bye.
