Transforming from Food Stamps to Abundance with Allison Hardy: A Journey to Thriving Business

A lot of times, some mistakes I see are that the nurture sequence, that was a couple of emails that go before, like the pitch are really long. They're really long, like weeks or months long. And that just keeps your lead in this cycle of consuming free stuff. And that's like how they expect to interact with you, right? You're not really setting yourself up as a business when you do things like that, as a business is open for business, right? So looking at that nurture sequence and being like, can I actually shorten this? Because a lot of times when our leads come into our email list and they go into our funnel, they're looking, they're like actively looking to solve a pain point. So by keeping them in that cycle of like just value all the time, they're not really doing anything with it, right? Not like giving them the skills and the tools to move forward. So look at that nurture sequence. See, is it too long? Something else you can do is look at like the click rate. So are they actually clicking over to the sales page? So if your sales page converts it, let's say 50%, are you getting enough clicks to the sales page so that when it does convert it 50%, you're actually getting the results that you want. So reverse engineer those numbers and look at what's actually going on and be realistic and understand your numbers. Welcome to super entrepreneurs podcast. I'm your host, Shahid Durrani. Today we have with us, Alison Hardy. Alison is an email funnel strategist and she helps coaches and experts enroll new clients into their courses or memberships on autopilot. Thank you so much for coming on our show, Alison. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. Were you in marketing entire time or was this a transition? No, I taught college level art for about 10 years. I have the dream job. I have the fancy office, the 10 year track position. And then in a minute I was laid off. I was six months pregnant when I got laid off with my first and I needed to make money really fast. And the good thing I had going for myself was that I had worked in galleries for a really long time. I worked in private galleries and university galleries and art galleries. Sorry, I wasn't clear on that. Art galleries. And I had marketing experience from that. So I took those skills, turned it into an online business. And here we are. That's great. So you learn by experience. You were put in that situation, not by choice, but you found a solution. Yes. Can you share some strategies or tools you have found in your journey to be effective for automations of leads and sales? Yeah. So from my perspective with all things is how can we make our business run for us instead of the other way around, right? We need to make sure that our business actually works for us, that it actually fits into our lives. And so me and for a lot of my clients, we need to introduce automation. My clients have a lot of life going on. They usually are moms or parents and they didn't really start a business to like make themselves have another job. They started a business to have more freedom. So what I'm a big fan of and what I teach and what I have going on in my business is automated lead generation and automated sales. And so what that looks is there's some sort of lead generator that gets people onto your email list. And then from there you can send them through email funnel that develops like a trust factor that establishes you as like the authority in the space to help them solve the pain point that you solve and then offers them an opportunity to work with you to solve that pain point. So for everyone, it looks a little different, but like some examples of some lead generators could be Facebook or Instagram ads or Google ads or Pinterest, or maybe you have a really killer Instagram story strategy. There's something though, that's working all the time to get those people onto your email list. Do you recommend giving away something like a lead magnet? Yeah, I'm a big fan of lead magnets. I think that they, when done correctly, can really establish you as the authority in the space, really help to give your lead a quick win and also to be a really easy segue into the sales conversation because I think it can be a value to prove to someone who you've never met before that you actually do know what you're talking about. And then it creates a lot of trust in you and your brand when you can help them. And then from there, I think that it's also really important that yes, while it is great to give away some content, it's also really important to hold some content back and so having things inside of your funnel that are paid, I think are a great strategy because they help to create that culture of selling and that culture of buying and also lets your lead know, Hey, this person's open for business. Let's like buy things from them because they're an actual business instead of like this. A lot of people get on this like value train. Oh, I just want to be heart centered and I want to give a lot of value. Like it's too much. The best way that you can help someone is by offering them an opportunity to buy something from you because when they buy something from you, they show up, they do the work because they have skin in the game. And so those can be at different levels, but I do think it's important to have things inside of your funnel that folks can buy. Hmm. Yeah. I live by that. Like with the show every day, we're publishing episodes to add value. It feels really good to give, but there's a line where someone has to have some skin in the game to get the results because there's ample amount of value available online, anywhere you look, but if you don't have the proper guidance or direction, how to use that information, you're just going into a loop. Yes. And I think it's a slippery slope, but a lot of people find themselves on, they have this mindset that, Oh, if I just give away all a bunch of stuff, a whole bunch of free value, like, of course they're going to buy from you. No, like that's probably not the case. It was a couple of years ago. Marketing has evolved. The online space has evolved. And I think that there is some stuff that you shouldn't give away for free anymore. And that's where having a really strong content strategy, but also like a client ladder to help them to move through different steps with you is really important. So anyone in business, what could they do immediately to look at their current systems to see any areas of improvements or any aspect of their funnel that they can start looking at to see if there's room for improvement? Yeah. So ask yourself, is it working? Is it helping me to hit my goals? And if it's not, it's time to try something different. So a lot of times some mistakes I see are that the nurture sequence, those couple of emails that go before, like the pitch are really long. They're really long, like weeks or months long. And that just keeps your lead in this cycle of consuming free stuff. And that's like how they expect to interact with you, right? You're not really setting yourself up as a business when you do things like that as a business is open for business, right? So looking at that nurture sequence and being like, can I actually shorten this? Because a lot of times when our leads come onto our email list and go into our funnel, they're looking, they're like actively looking to solve a pain point. So by keeping them in that cycle of like just value all the time, they're not really doing anything with it, right? Not like giving them the skills and the tools to move forward. So look at that nurture sequence. See, is it too long? Something else you can do is look at like the click rate. So are they actually clicking over to the sales page? So if your sales page converts it, let's say 50%, are you getting enough clicks to the sales page so that when it does convert it 50%, you're actually getting the results that you want. So reverse engineer those numbers and look at what's actually going on and be realistic and understand your numbers. Okay. This number means this number means this other thing. So if you're not seeing the results that you want, what can you do to get those numbers to either go up and down to help you to increase whatever it is that you're trying to increase? Or in this case, it was the results to help you get those results. Yeah. It's a good practice to reverse engineer what the results are saying to find out where that, that improvement is. Absolutely. Yes. And being, and giving yourself the space and the time to actually understand your numbers, because we can look at like open rates and that's great. That's an open rate. Like, what is the point of that? What does that number signify? And so when you look at, if your open rate is hovering around 40, 60% of the people that get that email aren't opening it and just knowing that, okay, so that's the thing there, that's like what I understand and that's what I know about this. So like looking at those numbers and just really understanding what they actually mean. And so if you have a really low open rate, what can you do to get your email opened by more of your leads? Because when more of your leads open the email, they're going to be consuming that content. And let's say it's a pitch, more people are going to be getting pitched your thing. So when more people get pitched your thing, theoretically more sales come through of your thing. So just really understanding like the cause and effect of your numbers. So when you're looking at different strategies, for example, live launches or evergreen strategies, how do you decide which approach is best for your product or service? Sometimes people generally do both. They have the evergreen webinar, for example, and then they also do the live events or they maybe not do the live events. They keep pushing on the webinar and there are various types of products and services that they have, but they're not actually connecting it to the product and service. Is there some sort of strategy behind it, how to connect which option is best or just test them out? Yeah, I always go back to what works best for you. So are you the type of person that gets super stressed out doing a live webinar? And we need to discern the difference between like outside of your comfort zone and doesn't work for me. So what, which one is it here? So you have tried all the things with the webinar and you have tried, you've worked with the coach and you bought the course. You don't, you've done like all the right things and you've tried it over and over again and you just don't like it. Maybe that's just not your thing and that's okay. So finding a method or mechanism that works best for you and for your personality type, I think is really like the number one thing when it comes to email funnels and marketing and launching. And then the other side of the coin is the program like a start, like a, you have a set start date and then a set close date. Cause if it is, then yeah, maybe a live launch might work better because that's the way that you have set up that program. But if it's something that people can buy all the time, yeah, you could definitely still do the live launches, but maybe it does make more sense to have a more evergreen style in your business. What I have is I have a funnel that runs in the background all the time. It opens and closes the doors to my membership. And then I do a live webinar once a month that again, opens and closes the doors to my membership. So for me, that works because I, while I do love a live launch, I don't want to do them all the time. So I do one month and that's okay for me. That works for me. So it took me a while to land on that and it took a while to try out the different styles of webinars and like, Hey, do I want to do this live? Do I want to do this evergreen? And I landed on like that method and that method might change in a couple of months. You never know, but like for now and right now that works for me. So really it's like a landing on what works best. I want to say congratulations for going from food stamps to a thriving business. That's an incredible feat. Yes, it was hard. It was really hard. When I first started my business, when I first started my business, I knew marketing, but I didn't know how to market myself. I knew how to market art galleries. And so I had to learn a lot and I came with some pretty big financial setbacks, but it was through really investing in myself and in my business that helped me to move through that and get out of that situation and into a business that actually works and actually produces sales and actually help people, which, which is super empowering and really exciting as a person. It's incredible. I love hearing those types of stories. When you were going from that state to creating a thriving business, you realize that automation is the key. Can you share what steps you took? If you can remember, you know, exactly what steps you took to automate it and how it helped you increase your sales? Yeah. So I started my business when I was six months pregnant. And then six months later had a newborn. I had no idea what in the world I was doing. So during that season of life, what I found was really important was just the more people I could talk to, the more people would buy. It was a simple matter of numbers at that point. So for me, it was at the time I couldn't invest in automated lead generation, but what I could do is leverage other people's audiences. So I have a lot of online friends. Like I have a lot of connections online and I love that about the online spaces that we don't, we're not really limited by like location. So I would ask my friends like, Hey, can I do an Instagram live with you? Or can I, can we do a lead magnet swap or something? And so that's how I started to fit into not necessarily automation, but like more bang for my buck. So if I could do more of those collaborations every week, how would that get more people into my network? And I, at the end of those like calls or in the lead magnets, like I would offer up, like do a 30 minute call with you. Like I was very much so like, I'll basically do anything you want in order to get you on the phone so we can talk about what's going on in your business. And I can offer up the opportunity to work with you. So at first it was really like, it wasn't necessarily automation. It was like, how can I get more with like less work? And then it really happened. And then like things were fine. Then COVID really put the nail in the coffin for the automation. When COVID hit, I had a freshly two-year-old and a six-year-old and they came home and they were home for 18 months and I had like my husband and I had to figure out some sort of education thing for them. My work days went from, my work weeks went from like 25 hours to 30 hours to four or five because of that new demand that was placed on us. So during that time, I was like, we have to figure out a different way to do this. And it wasn't necessarily like a more bang for my buck thing. It was like, how can I buy back my time thing? Like what's the time aspect here? So that's when I got really sold on Facebook and Instagram ads. And I had, I'd been doing them before, but I was like, this is the only way I'm going to do this. Like this is the only option I have right now. And so that's, that was like my really first like actual deep dive into automation. So the Facebook and Instagram ads, and then I'd always done email funnels, but I never had to really rely on them. Like they were fine. There was something that worked in the background and like their job, but like I didn't have to rely on them. So I never did. And then when everything happened with COVID, I had to rely on them because I couldn't show up and do the live launches every single week, like I was doing. That was when I also got like super nerdy with the numbers. I came to the email funnels and that's what helped to really develop my automated process, but also like the strategy that I have inside the funnels that I now teach my clients. So it was really like those two life events. Like the first event was like more bang for my efforts. And then the second one was like, holy guacamole. How can I get out of the time aspect of my business? That make any sense? No, no. Yeah. This is wonderful. You have no idea what's going to happen in the future, but you just look back and you see how everything transpired into what it is today. Sometimes it's an eye opener, how things shifted, how it happened. And when you talk about this, when you talk about your journey, it must bring back some emotions from that time when you were unknown, like unknown is scary. And you made it happen. Did you work on your mindset as well at that time or before that or after? Yes. So mindset I can say in the past, and I said, I feel like always interjects itself in everything we do, but when I first started my business, I was definitely in a very like scarcity mindset. I had no money. I had no idea what I was doing. And like it, we were in the thick of it. Like my husband and I were like in the thick of it. So during that time, it was really important for us to be able to pinpoint our lack or scarcity actions, right? So our thoughts inform the actions. Once we were able to pinpoint the actions and how we were living in scarcity mindsets, the actions we had as a result of that, it was easier to like pinpoint them, like the thoughts that we were having. So when we were able to like actually call those out, like I was able to look to you and my husband and be like, that is, you became aware of them. Yeah. So like awareness, I think of exactly what you just said. I think of awareness a lot of times as like one of the major driving points for my mindset work. And then now I was like that. And of course, like we continue that journey, but now I think really it's. It it's the same thing, just on a different level, right? Because as you grow, you just get a new, what is that saying? Right. So it's a, I think it's the same thing, but it's just manifest itself differently. So now I have like a team and like we're scaling, we're not necessarily growing anymore. So like what's that next level. And it's the same things, just different manifestations of it. So like, like more thoughts about the team and investing in the business and other things. And it's just a different level of it. So I think when you can really pinpoint the actions and be able to call it out and be like, this is that it helps you to then be like, okay, why is this the way I'm acting? Why is this the thing that's going on in my head? And also like results, right? Cause before I wasn't really having, I was so new, but when you get, when you start to grow the business and you shift from growing to scaling, being like, okay, we did that live launch and like results weren't so great. So let's look back at it and being able to do that without it, meaning a lot about your work is also really cool when you can disconnect from that and just look at it as like numbers that it allows you to be like, okay, this is what's going on. Why did this action happen? Okay. This is what I was thinking. So you can go from numbers to, to backwards, to the action, to the thought. Yeah. And that's a key point there, the awareness, the energy that we put into our business or even our actions has a lot to do with the quality of results that we produce. We have the lack feelings and we're taking the action. We were just frustrated. So I know it's not going to work. It's not going to work. I know that's not going to work. So you're going in with that energy. I just found the outcome to be very much predictable. I talked to a lot of people and I'm not sure if I ever heard anyone that said when they went in with that kind of energy, that the results were just amazing. I think it's that the energy that you put into it, the vibration that you go into what you're doing, it shifts what is coming back to you. Absolutely. And what is that? There's a confirmation bias. Like you're looking to prove yourself, right? Like you go into something thinking this is going to suck. I'm not going to get any results. And yeah, it's going to suck. You're not going to get any results. And then you became aware that awareness is just super powerful. So when you become aware, like just as a consultant would not getting emotionally connected to it because that they'll just defeat the purpose. But when you became aware and said, Oh, wait a minute, that's that thought. That's that feeling, right? Or that's that behavior. And you just look at it. So just with the eye of an awareness, not trying to figure it out, but you would, but just initially you're just becoming aware. Just by doing that, you realize so much. It's like it opens up your eyes to realize that. Wait a minute. I just have to shift this and I can feel different. You know what I mean? Like it brings that clarity that what's going on. I used to have a coach whenever I would say something that was like scarcity minds up, she'd be like, Oh, that's interesting. And as soon as she said that, I'd be like, Oh, you've called me out of it. What she was trying to get me to do was to zoom out and being able to look at it from a place of no judgment of just like observation of that's interesting. Cause when you're out of it, what's the expression, you can't see the forest for the trees. When you're in, when you're in it, it's really hard to see it. But if you can just zoom out, yeah, it helps you to actually see what's going on instead of being looking at it from a really emotional place. It's like getting a bird's eye view. So Alison, what does it look like? For example, if you're working with a coach and they come to you and they're not getting that many leads, they're doing okay, they're spending hours on clubhouse, for example, they're posting consistently, they're doing everything right, but they're not getting enough calls booked. I'm just describing a very typical dynamics for a coaching professional. They're doing everything. They're adding the value, as you mentioned, but they're not getting enough people in front of them. What is the immediate thing that you can recommend they do to start meeting people to see if they can serve them? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think a lot of times we are doing too much, which spreads us thin, which doesn't allow us to actually get good results. So if you can pinpoint one thing that will get you in front of your ideal client, like what is that platform? Let's say it's still, let's say it's like Instagram. And you can start having actual genuine conversations over there. I think that is the thing to think about. So like, look at it from a numbers point of view, can you start conversations with 10 people a day? Like I would argue most people are not doing that. So what if you, just Alison, sorry to interrupt. Are you referring to Instagram, like doing lives or are you saying DMing or engaging with prospects? How exactly? Yeah, yeah. So I'm thinking like, what if you could, what if you go on stories on Instagram stories and create a poll, ask them like a question. And then as people start to respond, DM those people and be like, Hey, thank you so much for responding to my question. Can I ask you to follow the question and just start a conversation. Obviously if they're following you, they're somewhat interested in what you have to say. And if you could just start that conversation, ask them more questions about it, I would argue what I have seen nine times out of 10 is that conversation eventually shifts over into them saying something like, I've been watching you for a while and I've been thinking about working with you, always like the reason why they're watching you, right? So if you can just start to engage with those folks who are already in your network, I think that is just a really powerful tool and yes, it requires you to be a little scrappy, but like you want to hit different goals, you have to do something differently. And so that would be, I would think one of the maybe fastest like ways through that instead of building it, like you have a funnel, that's great and awesome, but a funnel takes time. So while you're building that funnel, like maybe it's time to just start having some conversations over in the DMs on Instagram or wherever that is for you, you know, it's just like a really specific example. Yeah. What would you do with a person like that? If they came to you, what are the steps that you would take with them? Yeah. To get the coach, the person who's having this pain point, if they came in. Yeah. Like how would you help them with your services? Yeah. So what we would do is set, figure out some sort of strategy for that, like live approach. So whether it's the DM strategy or something else, right? Doing that sort of live, active work. And then while you are doing that work, mapping out the funnel. So what's that client journey for you? So what's the lead generator? What's the lead magnet? What are those steps that your clients or your leads need to know so that your offer that you have for them is actually logical and actually makes sense for them. And so making sure that we know those pieces, what are the things that they need to know in order to buy your thing? What are those very specific steps? Because it's my philosophy that like that nurture sequence, that very first funnel that folks go through is actually the most important part. The pitch sequence is great, but it only backs up what you said inside of that nurture sequence. So that's what I would recommend you do. That's how I would definitely get started. Very good. Allison has been great talking to you. You added so much value. It's all about adding value to me still, but feels good to the heart. So when I bring guests like you on what you're doing and the tips that you just shared, if it could bring some kind of business to someone, I still feel they'll be excited to get in touch with you to see how further you can help them. So I really appreciate the fact that you came on the show and added value and gave information because people could definitely use it. Yeah. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to come onto your show. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Audience, thank you so much for joining us. Once again, Allison's information will be in the show notes. Get in touch if you need help and thank you. Bye for now.