Inspiring Conversations with Alli Worthington of Allison Worthington Media

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alli Worthington.   

Hi Alli, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
In 2008, with $42 and a laptop that was missing the letters M, R, and K, I started my first business. My husband had lost his job in the midst of the recession, and we experienced a complete and total financial ruin. We lost our savings, our home, and pretty much everything we owned except what would fit into my granddaddy’s storage shed. As we started rebuilding our lives, I knew one thing, I not only needed to work, I also wanted to find a way to work and still be available to our five sons, one of whom was a newborn. I immediately fell in love with the opportunity and freedom that building my own business allowed. I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to be myself, to create, to find myself and my purpose in helping others.  

With my laptop and Google, I started a business conference for women that grew to be the largest women’s business conference in the USA. My work in the conference world connected me to major brands, and from there I started business coaching, helping women build their own businesses online. What I discovered about that whole experience was that I loved helping women dare to dream and to believe they, too, could reach for their dreams and achieve them.  

From those early days of working in McDonald’s with free Wi-Fi and a broken laptop to now, I have had the joy to be on both Good Morning America and the Today Show, I have written four books: Breaking Busy, Fierce Faith, The Year of Living Happy, Standing Strong, and book number five is in progress. I have the incredible blessing of speaking around the country about life, and business, and faith.  

My newest project, which I’m so excited about, is The Coach School, training coaches to build successful businesses for life, health, business, and all types of coaching.  

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
This one really almost made me laugh out loud. Has it been a smooth road? Absolutely not. But I don’t think anyone’s road is smooth. We’d never learn and grow if life were easy.  

As for struggles along the way? I’d say perhaps the biggest struggle for us has been battling the stereotype of the traditional family, where the dad is the breadwinner and the mom stays at home with the kids, which in our case is a lot of kids. First, we had to learn to overcome our own stereotypical thoughts and expectations to get to a place where we were both comfortable for my husband to stay at home with our boys and me to travel and be our primary breadwinner. I had to come to terms with the fact that we were switching roles, and he had to come to terms with that as well. It was a transition for sure.  

Then we had to come to terms with learning how to respond to other people’s reactions to our role reversal without taking on any guilt or shame it seemed to trigger.  

And like any working parent, I’ve had to learn to find the work/life balance. When you work for yourself, it’s easy to be “at work” 24/7. I’ve had to really learn how to maximize my work time while also still going about my mom life. A great example of this is sports practice. With five boys, you can imagine that I spend a lot of time shuttling kids to sports practice. Many months out of the year I sit in my car for hours at a time, multiple times a week, so I learned to use that time to write books, answer emails, take client calls, etc. I’m there for them, but I’m also getting stuff done!  

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Allison Worthington Media focuses on helping women succeed in life and business. I spend most of my days coaching women as a life coach or as a business coach. As a life coach, I help women find clarity, stay motivated, manage stress, and build resilience. As a business coach, I help women build their businesses, scale for greater impact, find work-life balance, and build wealth.  

I dive deeper into my work helping women succeed with my books- Breaking Busy, Fierce Faith, The Year of Living Happy, and Standing Strong.  

And there are multiple specialized programs for women in different fields. Called Creatives is a coaching membership program that I co-founded to help women who want to become authors and speakers. And The Coach School trains coaches to get more clients and build wealth.  

I wake up every day excited to solve problems, encourage others, and help women succeed.  

We love surprises, fun facts, and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I was a volunteer docent zookeeper at the Knoxville Zoo in college at UT Knoxville and worked with penguins and giraffes.  

I am an Enneagram 7 which means I am all about the fun. I think that is sometimes surprising to my business coaching clients because when we work, we are all business.  

I’m an amusement park aficionado. I will ride a roller coaster 10 times in a day if people let me. My vacations involve amusement parks. Period.  

And I’m a movie fanatic. You know how most people wait a few weeks after a movie opens before they go, so the crowds can die down? Not me. Give me an opening night. I love the crowds, the excitement, when people clap at the end, scream at jump scenes, all of it! 

 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://alliworthington.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alliworthington/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Its.Alli.Worthington/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/alli