We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Allison Crow. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Allison below.
Allison, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the toughest things about progressing in your career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?
The most unexpected problem I faced in my professional career was the emotional agility and self-trust that would be required for the journey – and the realization that despite my strategic or coaching skills being top-shelf, my skills in emotional regulation and managing life and work with a neurodivergent brain were pretty weak.
When I went from being busy with 13 coaching sessions a day working for corporate – it took that same busyness and + drinking up to 2 bottles of wine a day to keep my nervous system depressed enough to function. This wasn’t my conscious plan, but it was the default way I lived and worked for the first many years of my career. As I cultivated my own coaching practice, my own life by design, in a much more holistic and healthy way, that space and way less wine opened my system up to feeling more deeply. My undiagnosed ADHD symptoms would smack me down at the most unexpected times – and that would often send me into deep insecurity and doubt despite being outwardly confident.
Being human is stressful. Starting your own solopreneur endeavor is stressful. It requires skill, systems, care, and some emotional stability. My natural sensitivity opened up, but often I didn’t have healthy ways of working with the stress and overwhelm, and I could get emotionally and mentally highjacked. It kept me in a perpetual spin of feeling passion and drive for my work, but also being confused by how much internal energy and capacity were required. Comparison to those who were less sensitive or neurotypical didn’t help at all – until I got my ADHD diagnosis late in life.
I’ve spent the second half of my career building the internal and somatic skills to understand and be with all kinds of uncomfortable emotions. I didn’t expect the wobbles of moving from unconscious success and external confidence to conscious and soul-full success and internal confidence. Still, I sure am glad my journey brought me here – and owning my own business was the vehicle that has brought the most healing in my life.
Allison, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve been coaching professionally for almost 20 years, unofficially since 9th grade. After an unexpected divorce in my early thirties, I jumped into the real estate world and found I had a natural skill for sales and was quickly tapped to become a sales coach and trainer for new agents. From there, I quickly rose in the ranks to be a coach of coaches, developing a coaching program across the nation for a global company. After four years of working with this company, I began to see what worked and what didn’t work for my clients in coaching, and what worked was not in alignment with the company I worked for – so I left to start my own practice. I didn’t really leave them so much as I took a step toward myself when I decided to go out on my own.
For years I did business coaching with a creative flair. I explored painting and spirituality, and marketing, even getting a certification in Expressive Arts Coaching – but over the last decade, my work has naturally transitioned to doing deep inner SELF-trust work with small business owners. My clients don’t need the “how to.” They are skilled and resourceful – and they work with me to build the skills of inner awareness and what we call “being with” skills. We cultivate authenticity and self-trust for their most powerful and soul-FULL work and life in the world. Because I adore business – once we get to the inner strategy connected, we can move into courageous strategy. Being a small business owner and human being provides so much juice for doing deep coaching work.
I have a coaching membership to help business owners by both being in the community and receiving group coaching from the place of practicing SELF-Leadership. Again – a splash of business mojo is always included. I am now an L1 Internal Family Systems Practicioner. This paradigm and practice supports my clients in building genuine and grounded confidence.
I also work with a small group of super high-achieving leaders in an intimate group format – I adore this Leadershp Circle and what these brilliant humans bring to the coaching circle and to their own lives.
Occasionally I work in one on one partnerships, 2-3 clients a year so they get a very personalized container.
I’ve done events and retreats in the past, and I have a 7-year-old podcast called the Wild Edge of Being Human: A Podcast for Business Owners.
Last fall, I published my first book – a book that is part memoir and part soulful self-help meant to help leaders lead themselves compassionately with an open and human heart. It’s called Unarmored: Finding Home in the Wild Edges of Being Human. I’m deeply proud of that creative work and releasing it to the world in full-color format with my art on the cover and in the pages.
I’m most proud that I have stopped abandoning myself to the “shoulds” of the world, and that I have learned to live and work in the full trust of myself. I’m proud to be a creator who has made it work both financially and soulfully in small business. I’m proud of my humanness and my willingness to leave the narrowness of “normal” and let myself live, create, and be a woman of range, and I’m proud of helping others do their version of the same.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One of the authors that got me into personal development was Brian Tracy – and he had a book called “Change Your Thinking Change Your Life.” I think Wayne Dyer also had a similar book. I loved him, too. For MANY years, this strategy and mindset work felt like enough. But over time, I began to experience and notice the gaps in this absolute. The mind – no matter how powerful, disconnected from the body – can be just a coping device – like any other addiction. I began recognizing the systemic privilege in mindset work and the law of attraction. These ideas seemed to help people of privilege the most, all while gaslighting anyone who was systemically oppressed.
Actual science helped me see that a brain can’t learn new things from a hijacked nervous system. I had to meet and get to know my own traumatized and hijacked nervous system to see that, in coaching, I had to learn to integrate my thinking parts with the truths in my body. Before this awareness, I intellectually pressed so much down, resulting in thirty years of depression – dePRESSING things down with mind control. Of course, that led to a body breakdown in my early 40’s. How to make all these connections in a short interview? It was a long (and still continuing) season of integration of mind, body, and spirit. To write those three words, those words commonly tossed around in wellness and personal development – seems not near enough to actually describe the lived journey and wisdom. It’s experiential, not informational. I’ll just have to trust your readers to know, deep inside, beneath the voices of the world, to hear their own mind, body, spirit truths.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
I was just sharing my “strategy” with a sales rep client today. Here’s my most effective strategy for growing my clientele which includes elements of Care + Skill:
- Love and Connect with My Self – All Parts of Me.
- Love on My People
- Share My Heart
- Show My Work
- Make My Offers
It’s easy to be lured by funnels and systems, especially if we have an online presence. I was online early – and when I left the company, I had a year-long non-compete and so being online in 2011 – sharing my heart and showing my work in this non-salesy way created relationships and community, and things grew from there. I was just being me – but on Facebook.
Over the years, the online world has shifted to so many “influencers” and “content creators.” It’s a great opportunity for so many but it’s a bit wonky for my soulful self. When I’m tired, I can forget and reach for “easy” and the temptations of scale and instant clients. But even if I forget- because I “Love and Connect with Myself,” I always come home to remembering what works for me. I’m not a content creator, I’m a creative soul, a service provider who happens to use the medium of social media to meet interesting people and share my ideas. Behind both sides of the screens sits a human being with a beating heart. Relationship with myself, my people, and my work. Exquisite skills both in my service and in my sales. Connection. Human and Heart Connections. Oh, and all while being relentlessly my authentic (and often unfiltered) self.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://allisoncrow.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allison_crow/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/allisoncrow
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisoncrow/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AllisonCrow/videos
- Other: Podcast: THE WILD EDGE OF BEING HUMAN – A PODCAST FOR SOUL-FULL SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS WITH ALLISON CROW https://allisoncrow.com/better/
Image Credits
@brooke_genn – photo with the halo and hair all over the place. – all others by allison crow.