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Welcome to The Health & Wellness Practitioners Podcast! Dr. Danielle and other guest experts talk about everything from getting your practice started, developing your clinical skills, growing your practice YOUR way, and dealing with the real stuff life burnout and work/life balance. Whether you’ve been practicing for decades or just started your journey, you’ll find something here for you!
DR. DANIELLE: Welcome everyone. I am here live today on my Facebook page with another guest. This is two in a row, which is unusual for me, but it is what it is, this is just how it worked out today. And our guest right now is Allison Hardy. Allison is the creator of The Lead Generation Lab, which I've been a member of for a long time. Like since you started it, I don't know when that was three years ago? You can tell us.
MEET ALLISON
ALLISON: It was at least two years. This is really bad, I don't know. Actually, when we started it, I believe it was two years ago, but yeah, you're like a founding member. You're like an original crew who came in.
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. So share more about yourself, who you are and what you do. And we'll kind of dive into lead generation from there.
ALLISON: Yeah. I'd love to. First off, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm Allison Hardy. I live in Arlington, Virginia, which is right outside of Washington, DC. I have two kids, Camden who is almost eight and Nora who is three and a wild lady. She's definitely giving us a run for our money, which is wonderful and great and challenging all at the same time. My husband is a United Methodist pastor. He works right across the street in the church. I started my business when I got laid off at six months pregnant with Camden, who is eight years old. I was teaching college level art. I had the job that I thought I was gonna have for the rest of my life. And then in one minute I had it and then the next I didn't and I was like, holy guacamole, what am I gonna do with my life? I realized that a lot of my identity was wrapped up in that job and being the college art professor and I was really proud of that. And so when I was gone, I kind of went into this big identity crisis. We didn't have the finances for me to not work. The goal was for me to work up until the day I had Camden and then for me to take five weeks off and then go back to work because we just didn't have the funds. So getting laid off at three months pregnant was a big problem for us. So I had a super side hustle, a personal training business. I was like, all right. I think it's time for me to go all in on this guy because it's not like college level teaching art jobs are common. So I went all in. I replaced my nine to five income in the three months before Camden was born, which sounds great, but as fast as it went up, it all came crashing down. When I had him, I had postpartum depression, I was working like a crazy person and couple all of that with a baby who doesn't sleep and it just doesn't work. So yeah, I kind of had a come to Jesus moment. One of my friends and I were sitting at coffee and she was like, I don't know what's going on, but you need to make a change, clearly this isn't working for you. She's like, I'm pretty sure you haven’t taken a shower in a couple days. When was the last time you worked out? Have you done anything besides work? And I was like, no! She's like, this doesn't work for you. You need to make a change. She's like just do the business thing, that's the thing that you like. And I was like, well, yeah, I like business. She's like, no, you love business. You like personal training, but you love business. And I was like, oh! So I started doing that. I was like, let's see what happens. And after putting out an email to my list three months later, I was fully booked with one on one clients. And I was like, oh, that was the easiest thing ever. So I got super invested in business and my jam is systems. It's automation, it's lead generation and it's selling on autopilots so that you can actually live your life. And so that whole story, I just told you was a big motivator for that.
DR. DANIELLE: Well, yes. And all of that is why you're here right now, having this conversation with me. Because there's so many people that listen to this podcast that can relate to every single step of that. And especially interesting to hear you say that your jam is lead generation because most people that listen to this podcast are going to say, what's lead generation? So let's just start there.
ALLISON: Lead generation is finding people who are like, yes, I am interested in solving the pain point that you solve in whatever way that you solve it. They don't really care how they solve it. They just know they're in pain. Like I don't like to think about it like this, but they have a problem they wanna solve. And they're like, Hmm, I think this person can help me solve that problem.
DR. DANIELLE: Well, that's the simplest explanation of it that I've probably ever heard anyone give. I often find myself stumbling to really explain it clearly to people that are totally unsure about what lead generation is. Okay. So that's awesome. Then there's the others, the other group of people who hear lead generation and they're like sales, oh my gosh, and they just wanna turn this podcast off.
ALLISON: I get that. I wanna say you got into business to sell things to people. Like none of us are like, Hmm, I wanna work 40 hour weeks and not make any money. That's not how we are, that's not the point of our business. So, if you're feeling sleazy or slimy around the idea of selling number one, I think you gotta work on that mindset. I think there's something else going on there. But, number two, what are the tactical ways that you can change the way you sell to make it feel better for you? I know for me, and what we do inside of The Lead Generation Lab, email funnels feel good. They feel in alignment because you can show up in a different way than doing something like a live launch or the DMS or the cold calling, like all that feels exhausting. So having the systems in place to do that for you can be a really great alternative.
DR. DANIELLE: I love that. Yeah. Because some of the things that you listed do feel salesy to me and I even use them sometimes, you know, depending on what's going on in my business. Because I'm just that kind of person, I guess like I, I will do the center uncomfortable. If I feel like there's a mission, you know, behind the thing that I'm doing that is uncomfortable. So I'm sending direct messages to people on Facebook, for example, to invite them to a training and I have coming up, it's kind of like cold calling them, but I'm willing to do it because I feel like I'm on to get the work that I'm doing out to more people. Okay, interesting, right? Because, yeah, if you don't know what lead generation is or if you think you know what it is and it sounds, the words that are coming to my mind are like disgusting are gross salesy then we really gotta take a look at that.
ALLISON: Yeah. I mean you're in business to make money, you're in business to help people. The way that you can help people is by enrolling them in your program, your offer, whatever is that you do. So you owe it to your audience to sell to them. And they're, you know, they're big girls and boys, they can make the decisions for themselves, but they're not gonna make that unless the offer is presented. So I kind of view it as like you owe it to your people to tell them how you can help them. And it's on them at that point. They can choose to do it or not.
THE #1 STRUGGLE PROVIDERS FACE WITH MARKETING
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. Okay. So let's talk more about some of the common mistakes that you see people make when it comes to lead generation. I have a thought that's already coming to my mouth, but I'm gonna sensor. I'm gonna just shut it down. I'm gonna let you talk. Cause I wanna see what you say.
ALLISON: Yeah. So I think that a lot of people have this story. They've told themselves that paid traffic isn't real people. They're not actual people that are into your programs. They're not quality. I think again, if you're, if you have that dialogue and you had, I'm always a fan of asking, why, why do I feel this way? Why is this something that I'm writing a story around? So, you know, I think paid traffic is an amazing way to get fast results when done in the right way, obviously, but I also think like lead generation also can be a really simple high impact quality Instagram post or showing up consistently on Instagram or creating reels or having a Facebook group that's free that people can come into for a specific mission. You know, lead generation doesn't have to be this really complicated thing. I think of lead generation when it comes to like the tactical elements of like, what are the platforms that I show up? Do I show up on Facebook? Do I have an ad in the yellow pages? Do I have an Instagram account I post to fairly regularly? And what is that doing for me and for my business, am I getting results from these things? So it's important to know the sorts of things that you're doing and why you're doing them and then are they actually working. And then I think as much as we lean on that organic traffic in that presence, that online presence that we have, and if we really wanna like fast track, it let's say they were doing an event like you're doing and you have some cash to spend like spend outs and paid traffic that can be Facebook ad, Instagram ads, Google ads. It can be any sort of paid thing, that will just allow you to reach people that you probably never would've been able to reach organically. So it can be, you know, both things you can have organic and you can have paid. I know people that have a hundred percent organic. I know people that have a hundred percent paid and that works for them. It's just a matter of landing on the platforms, how you wanna show up and how you want to, how quickly you wanna see results.
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. Okay. So you went a different direction than what I would've said when I asked you the question. Okay, can I share with you what came to my mind, because I think you'll have a lot to say about this.
ALLISON: Yeah, let's hear it!
DR. DANIELLE: I'll give you some backstory about where this came from first. So, in 2019, I literally woke up one morning and I was like, oh, like, okay, hold on, I'm listening. I had all these downloads about like this sort of new direction that I was gonna go with my business. And I knew that people struggled with marketing their practices. So I wanted to be able to help with that because I don't wanna say I've never struggled with marketing, but I'm just not afraid to do it. I've always known that's a really key part. It has to happen. So anyway, I felt like I could help people with this. I woke up, had this download about starting a Facebook group that was specifically for marketing for chiropractors and all of a sudden, hundreds of people started coming into this Facebook group. And I was like, I must be on the right track. So in the process of people joining the group, they had to fill out the screening questions. And one of them that I asked was, what's your biggest struggle in marketing and 90 plus maybe like 95% of people. And there were over nine hundred of them all saying the same thing. It was consistency. And I was like, what? Like, well, wait a minute. If you're not consistent in marketing, it doesn't work. I would've never ever, ever, ever, ever guess that, that would've been like the landslide that hands down everyone said the same thing, right, with the exception of 5% of people. So I thought, well, okay, that tells me a whole lot. That market research was really helpful because then I made a course that was specific to that problem with marketing. So I mean, lead generation is a part of marketing, right! And when I thought like, what are people doing wrong or, what are the mistakes that they make when it comes to lead generation? It's like, they're not doing anything at all. They're not doing anything consistently, especially.
“We asked over 900 hands-on providers what their biggest struggle was in marketing. Over 90% of them said that their biggest struggle in marketing was CONSISTENCY!. If you’re not consistent in marketing, it doesn’t work.“
ALLISON: Yeah.
HOW TO BECOME A CONSISTENT MARKETER
DR. DANIELLE: So how do we fix that problem?
ALLISON: How do we fix that problem? I think with the online space, we kind of don't have an excuse, not to be consistent because there's tools that we have. Right. There are schedulers we can use. There are different settings that we can set up for things to go live at certain times. And I think a lot of times when people get into, like, what I see a lot is if we're inconsistent generally and I'm generalizing here, we have big ups and downs in our businesses. So like intake a bunch of people and then it will go down because we're working with those people and we're not consistent. And like, and then we are like, oh my gosh, we need more clients, so big surge. And then you come into those feast famine months, right. So consistency allows you to get out of that. And that's why I like email funnels for example, because essentially if you're getting like, let's think there's just like one person inside of your funnel every single day, you're launching to one person every single day. So you have more of a slow drip or it doesn't have to be slow, it can be a fast drip of people enrolling or becoming leads, getting nourished through that funnel and then eventually enrolling in that program. So I think when it comes to consistency, we have to get over the idea that like I'm not consistent or I'm not able to be consistent, I only post when I'm inspired, I only market when I'm inspired. There's too many resources now to do that, to have that be the way that it is, it used to be, you know, a couple years ago there weren't as many tools. There weren't as many resources. And if you didn't show up live to be consistent, it wasn't consistent. Now you have tools to help us with that. So I think that while we can be inspired and create a lot of content, like spread it out over some time, use that marketing to withstand you for a month or a week or whatever you're looking to plan for that. Does that answer your question at all?
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah, it does. And you just described me because when you're talking about creating content, when you're inspired and then not creating content, when you're not inspired, that's me. I will get this really inspired state and I'll be totally honest with you, it's largely correlated with my menstrual cycle…
ALLISON: Oh yeah.
DR. DANIELLE: The first two weeks of it. I'm like, I get all kinds of ideas. I feel camera ready. And I wanna put myself out there and then roughly the last 10 days, I'm like, nah, I got nothing. Nothing.I have nothing to say.
ALLISON: Right. But you have all of that from when you were feeling inspired to withstand you and get you through that time. So you're not ghosting your audience. You're still showing up. It's just that you wrote the content maybe two weeks ago and that's fine. That's wonderful and it's a tool, it's a way of working that can serve us, especially as women.
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. I think it really comes down to, for people that are used to, like I was, and still am to some degree used to getting the inspiration, creating the content, like, typing it into literally as it's coming to your brain and then posting it. It's like you have to create another system to put that content in like a Google doc, for example. And then you've got it ready to go when it is time to actually post it.
ALLISON: Absolutely 100%.
DR. DANIELLE: Right. But like we just don't think, and these platforms are designed to want us to be there and be present with them at every moment of our lives. So it's natural-ish for that to happen and for us to not think about how can I think ahead a little bit so that I don't have to have those lulls or be on the rollercoaster ride really.
ALLISON: Right. Right. And so leveraging that time is I think very important.
STARTING A LEAD GENERATION SYSTEM
DR. DANIELLE: Okay. For someone that has no lead generation system at all, what would be the first thing that they would want to do or need to do to start building that now?
ALLISON: Yeah. So I'm a big fan of email marketing as I've spoken about. I think email marketing is not, I think, I know it has the biggest ROI for us. Just looking at stats and numbers and things like that. So as far as when I consider a lead, I consider it someone who's on my email list because like Instagram, you don't own it, Facebook, you don't own it. You don't control who sees it or when. I believe on Instagram, it's like one to 2% of your followers actually see your feed posts. And if we're looking at email 20% is considered good of an open rate. So, comparing those numbers, email seems like a good ROI for me. So having a lead magnet, a free resource for your people to download as a result of giving you their name and their email address so you can get them on your email list. You can send 'em through an automated funnel that does the work for you. So getting started means you need to have that. You need to have that at least entryway onto your email list. So that when you do show up and someone's like, oh my gosh, I loved that post you made. Or that I G T V you created was so helpful. Oh, she mentioned this amazing free resource that she has, let me go find it. They have something to do. They have somewhere they can go and they can get a quick win from you through that lead magnet. So, I think the simplest way to start generating leads is for you to talk about the free resource you've created on whatever platform it is that you hang out. Easy enough.
DR. DANIELLE: Yep.Yeah. I'm with you. I mean, you're the expert here, but I'm with you. The course I mentioned that I had previously offered, it's not currently available. That's exactly what I taught people, how to do was to create a lead magnet and then create an email series that goes to the people that get that lead magnet and how to share the lead magnet on social media so that you're building an email list because most of the people in my community don't have have an email list.
ALLISON: You need an email list.
DR. DANIELLE: Right, right. Yeah. For all the reasons that you've already shared plus some. Right.
ALLISON: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how often, like now I know social media has changed a bit in that buying directly off of an ad or a Instagram post is more normal. Right. It's changing a little bit, but really how often are you gonna buy off of Instagram or Facebook or wherever you're hanging out? Probably not a whole heck of a lot. I would argue. We buy off of email a whole lot more than we do social.
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah, for sure. I think that's still really true. You know, I've noticed myself buying off of Instagram ads more frequently. And I was like, whoa, I'm not gonna be my grandma because my grandma used to shop on the home shopping network, like 24, 7, like literally seven days a week. She would buy so much stuff.
ALLISON: QVC
DR. DANIELLE: I mean, there's a whole lot that say that's a very nuanced conversation, but I just had this moment where I was like, Danielle, do not let yourself be your grandma in that way. So this is like reign it in with Instagram ads, bro.
ALLISON: Yeah. And I mean, I have, so I have a slow funnel. So I have an ad that offers up like a really low priced high quality document resource but honestly the uptake on that is a lot slower than my free resource. So I think it's just an interesting observation on the quality of person you're getting on your list free versus paid free resource versus paid resource, you know? Like what is that for you? Um, so I'm not saying that it’s a bad idea, but it's a harder sell a free thing or paid thing, which one's gonna work better for you. So I think also it's a matter of figuring that for you and for your specific business also.
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. Well you just hit a really important note, which is that what works for one business may not work for another business. You could compare with a whole bunch of chiropractors, for example, or you could go talk to all your massage therapists, friends or your acupuncture's friends and, and they might all tell you they're doing X, Y, Z to get new leads through social and online, and then you do it and find like it doesn't really work that well. And so it's just a matter of really looking at the statistics and figuring out how to make it better and just embracing that it's going to be a test to figure out what works for who you are and for the people that you want to attract. Not just any people, but like the right people, especially
ALLISON: The right people. Yes, absolutely.
DR. DANIELLE: Okay. So, if there's someone that's listening to this, and they're like, well, oh, this is such, this is such a great question. Okay. Well, I understand why I should have an email list and what lead generation is and why it's important, but I'm already so busy. They're like, I don't have time for this stuff. What would you say?
ALLISON: What do we say? What do we say? So one, I think that being busy is a choice and if you're telling yourself the story that you're busy, if you legit are busy, it's time to off something onto someone else or get rid of it. Or if you're just busy and that's your excuseI think you dive more into that. So let's say you're like, I don't know how to set this stuff up. There are resources out there. Google will be your best friend. Get on a simple email CRM that allows you to email your people. Maybe it has some landing pages built into it so that you don't have to build out that form to get people to download your lead magnet, choose a software that works for you, right. Where you are now. Cause you can always upgrade that can and there's tons of help. There's tons of help. I use Convertkit personally and they have video upon video upon video to help you. Um, so pick something that works for you that makes sense is a price point you're comfortable with. And then you can always add on more.You can always upgrade. You can always move to another piece of software when you outgrow that current piece of software and become a student. Allow yourself the space and the time to learn, allow yourself, the space and the time to mess up. Cause it's gonna happen and allow yourself the space and time to give yourself that grace. So when you forget to hook up the automation or you forget to hook the funnels together, it's gonna be okay, it's not gonna be the first time. Or if that's just not a case for you just offload it to someone else, hire someone else out to do it.
DR. DANIELLE: There's an interesting phenomenon that happens for people who work with their hands in healthcare, they are obsessed with learning and they will go learn and take all of the continuing education clinical courses and learn how to become better practitioners. And it's wonderful. Right. But I see that happening and sometimes I'm like, um, that's avoiding the work of growing a business. People don't like to hear that because it's true. But like you focus all in on the delivery, we've been told for a long time, by the way, that if you just go help people and you do a good job for them, that your business will grow. And I think that's actually a very harmful philosophy to pass down to people because that may not happen. I see a lot of amazing doctors who have wonderful clinical skills who still aren’t able to grow a business because they keep thinking, I just tell people and I do a really good job that I'm gonna be successful. Right. And I'm like, mm, what if we took some of that time that you spend and money that you invest in learning the clinical stuff and give some of that to learning how to grow a business? Like what would be possible then? And yeah, It can help more people. And there's so much value in learning how to help people by actually helping people. Right, and not feeling like you have to take all of the classes and spend tens of thousands of dollars on continuing education to become better practitioners when we don't even know if there's gonna be people to help.
ALLISON: Right. Right. When I was a personal trainer, I actually started training people before I was certified because I had an extensive fitness background and people knew it. I'm not saying like, be a doctor without a certification. It's not what I'm saying, but I felt comfortable, you know, running a very healthy 35 year old woman through a strengthening class. I could do that. I was very upfront, like, I don't have a certification, but this is my background. And then once I validated my business, I then got the certification. So I spent time actually growing the business so that I had that experience so that I knew, hey, this is valid. I actually really like this before I went and did like a hundred hour personal training certification with nutrition and postpartum specialization and all that. Before I did all that, I made sure that I actually liked it. To take that same idea and apply it to what you're doing right now. Like you're an expert right now where you are. Yes. There's always a fancy, new thing certification you can learn about. But at the end of the day, that's not worth it. If you don't have a business. And so you need to have those things in place to have a business, to allow you the space and the time to get those other awesome certifications that allow you to help more people.
DR. DANIELLE: These are the things that we just learned through the years of being a business owner and like learning the hard way often times.
ALLISON: Yep. Yeah. Yep. It's hard. It's hard when you just wanna help people. I get it. We just wanna help people, but at the same time, as much as we wanna help people, we have to actually be able to help ourselves and our business. So it may be like, I wait on that certification or I put that off for another year or whatever, so that I can get this thing up and going, because this is really gonna allow me to do the thing that I wanna do.
DR. DANIELLE: Yes. Awesome. Allison, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with The Business of Being Well podcast community today. I think that this is a conversation that some people are not gonna wanna listen to, or they're gonna be like, okay, I'll listen, because I know she'll ask me if I listen to it and they're gonna feel some resistance to what they hear. I just wanna leave you with this note, this thought that if you do feel resistance, if there's something that you heard today, that's like, uh, that's a really good indicator that there's massive growth available for you when you lead into that place, that you feel that resistance. So just keep that in mind, you have free will free choice to do whatever you want to or not do anything you don't want to in your business. But when you're willing to go to those uncomfortable places, that's when the magic happens.
ALLISON: Absolutely.
DR. DANIELLE: Okay. So if people are listening to this episode and want to learn more about you and what you do, where is the best place for them to find you?
ALLISON: Yeah. Hang out with me Instagram. I love the gram. You can find me @Allison_Hardy_ I couldn't get the whole name without the underscores and my podcast is The 6-Figure Mompreneur Podcast. I'd love to have you listen.
DR. DANIELLE: Perfect. I can tell that you do love Instagram because the content is so good and I can always tell you're having fun when you create your reels.
ALLISON: Yeah. Yeah. And I kinda got to the point, you know, 2020 was hard enough and I was like, just have some freaking fun creating like a silly reel, like get your kid involved, like do a funny sound just have some fun. I love it, I think they're super fun.
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. Awesome. Well, you do a great job.
ALLISON: Thank you.