Welcome to Episode 49 of our podcast. Today, we've got someone really special for you - Alison Armstrong. She's the brain behind "Understanding Men," a platform where she's been digging deep into human behavior and specifically, men, for over two decades. She's an author, a course conductor, and she's got a whopping 100+ hours of online training on her site, alisonarmstrong.com.

Alison gives us a backstage pass into her journey, taking us from her early transformative experiences in her twenties to her groundbreaking insights about men that kicked off in 1991. She takes us through the trials and triumphs of running her business - facing economic downturns, battling the pandemic, and brilliantly shifting to online workshops in 2017.

Next, we have an awesome chat about something Alison holds close to her heart - integrity. She shares some personal experiences where she learned the hard way about the importance of integrity in every part of the event organization process, whether it's selecting a team, choosing a venue, or engaging with participants. She gives us some real examples of how she lives out this value in her events, like designing them to meet the promised outcomes and keeping it real in her promotional materials.

Moving on, Alison takes us through the transformation process she weaves into her events. It's a four-step process that's as fascinating as it is effective: revealing the root of undesired results, offering fresh understanding and information, creating an empowering environment, and establishing new habits. Alison gets into why she's big on live interactions and how she uses neuroscience-based exercises in her workshops to make quick, meaningful changes in behavior.

Alison leaves us with a thought - the journey to build integrity may not be easy, but it's worth it, and it all starts with being true to yourself. 

Want to connect with Alison?

Website: https://www.alisonarmstrong.com

Next In-Person Event with Alison: https://www.alisonarmstrong.com/live/la23/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/understandmen/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thealisonarmstrong/

Audible: https://www.audible.com/author/Alison-A-Armstrong/B00OQGXS0S

Want to learn more about Rudy's work at V.E.S.T. Your Virtual Event Sales Team? Check out his website at https://virtualeventsalesteam.com/.

Hi, welcome to today's episode. We have a really special guest, Miss Alison Armstrong, and she's going to be sharing on how to fulfill the promise of an event with integrity. And I know many of you probably recognize her name, but for those of you who do not, Alison has been in the transformational event industry for over two decades, and really has been studying human behavior since 1999 with her decision to study men. Her brand is Understanding Men as well as has a series of other books and courses that she's been doing with over 100 hours of online training that are available at alisonarmstrong.com. Alison, you are a sought after speaker and thought leader amongst people with the desire to live empowered lives. Welcome to show Ma'am.

Thank you.

Yes, and I want to open up by asking you a beautiful question that you taught me to ask is, Alison, how are you being today?

How are you being? Cindy Szwatski actually taught that to me just moments before we started the course together. I'm being happy to be with you and privileged to talk about this topic. It's dear to my heart. It's definitely an expression of my highest values and really glad to get to articulate.

Beautiful. And I am being grateful and excited to have you on board. I actually imagined you as a guest on our show for over a year now, and finally we get to turn that yes into a reality.

Yay!

Yes. So, Alison, I know you have a lot to share with us in the time that we have. I would love to just turn over to you to maybe share a little bit about maybe your background story that eventually led you into the education industry and then doing events and then really turn over to you to share on the show topic.

Wow. Both- 19, when I was introduced to the world of transformation and took to it like a duck to water and I began designing and teaching in the world of transformational programs when I was 21 and started training other people to do it as a follow-up to a program that my boss had created that was awesome. When I started studying men in 1991, the things that I was learning, the things that I was seeing, the way that I was being transformed by committing to finding out what was I doing that was bringing out the worst in men, I couldn't not share it with people. I mean, what I learned was so contrary to how I'd been raised and what I'd been told and what you see in any sitcom. Who men started being, how they started being around me was unthinkable. I was astonished at the level of support and affinity and play and friendship and being protected, feeling protected by men and men wanted to provide for me. All of that was new. I didn't know I'd been preventing it, whether it had been related to that. I was attacking preemptively, which of course put men back on their heels to protect themselves from me and that blocked all the providing they might have wanted to do before that moment. I didn't intend to have an event company. I kept studying and studying, and realized I wanted to write a book, but that I didn't know how to write the book.

My interactions with women one at a time weren't going to produce the ability to write the book. So I said to my best friend, I think I need to do a workshop to learn how to teach this. So she signed up to do that with me. It's pretty funny, we did our first workshop and I'm still this way. I won't schedule a second kind of a workshop until I'm happy with the first time. So people say, when are you going to do it again? Like they've been in October, when are you going to do it again? I don't know, I had to love it first. So we did our first one and then we loved it. So we made a business plan whereby a year or two later, we wanted to start venturing out of California. Three months later, we did a workshop in Wisconsin, a month after that in Utah. It just kept people, like they had sisters in other states. Oh my God, you have to do this. And that was the beginning of how people have always referred to us, which is they rave. That is the number one word people say about what we do is they rave about it. That's why I'm excited to share this. How do you end up with people raving? I can tell you how you do that. So we're unusual. We've existed since 1995. So we're in like less than 1% of businesses that have survived, let alone a depression, a recession, and COVID. We have graduates all over the world.

We successfully transitioned from live workshops to online in 2017. I've never been ahead of the curve ever. I've never been ahead of the eight ball, but we were when COVID hit. I've even been able to figure out how to do things online better than we did live. I now only do live where live in-person interaction between the participants is required to produce the result. I don't do it just because people prefer live workshops. If they're not a better structure for delivering results, I won't do it. But just part of the integrity.

Wow, thank you for sharing that. There's so much in just that brief sharing that you put out there. One of my takeaways here is the focus on how to create raving fans. So many people talk about that. There's so many books on the topic, but you've done it clearly since 1995. And that's how I learned about you was through a raving fan.

It's true.

When you talk about, when I say your name amongst people that heard your name before or done your work, I see them light up and they're like, oh my God, her stuff is so good. It's saved my marriage or it's typically not like, oh, I've heard of her. No, it's like, oh, I know her stuff. It's remarkable. So you've definitely done that.

Thanks. So should I dive in?

Yes and you mentioned the idea of integrity. So I'd be curious just to hear from your perspective how you define it and then you share whatever there is to share with us about it.

Oh, boy. In less than a day.

Yes.

So integrity, I would say there's all these different expressions of it. Integrity has to do with structure. Is something structurally sound? Is it sustainable? Is it true to itself? Is it designed to fulfill in every way? So we'll talk about promo copy and stuff like that. And even like what I didn't discover. We started in 1995. It wasn't until early 2013 when I found out that we did almost entirely live events. 92% of them lost money and 2% of them made a profit. In between, we broke even and I didn't know that because I wasn't tracking that. We got sucked into that since we had a curriculum that built on itself. We had the term loss leader. Like it's fine to do a loss leader when you mean to do a loss leader. We didn't mean to do loss leaders but we would commit to having a program without saying this isn't green lighted yet until it has this many people. So we would commit. So we'd do programs that we lost money on.

Hopefully it would be worth it because of what other people signed up for in the future but we need that money to produce that program. We also, if somebody didn't show up, we kept their money on account indefinitely. We had spent money to produce that event for them to be there and now they're going to take a seat in another event but they're not going to pay more money. And there's not unlimited space. So even integrity in our cancellation policies and money back guarantees are not, which I'll talk about, and like part of the sustainability of a program is its profitability. I grew up in a non-profit. So I thought making a profit was bad. No, making a profit is how you have a future. It's the worth it calculation that men know so well. If you just barely come out ahead, you have nothing for emergencies. You have nothing to build on. You don't ever get anywhere. So pricing something well, including pricing it not what you think people can pay, but what you know you can deliver the value on. That people will say, like you witnessed last week, on the first day I got ten times my money's worth. I like that. So integrity, it's everything. Does everything add up to a whole?

There isn't anything that has it go tilt or is incongruent or inconsistent or someone would say, but you said. And you didn't deliver. How are you about that? Good enough for now?

That was remarkable. I'm going to go read that transcript. That was great. Thank you. Yes, please continue. I'm going to go off camera just for a moment, but please continue.

Well, I will say another part of integrity is that so much of what we provide when you're producing an event or leading an event can only be provided by the participant doing their part. It took me a long time to learn that I was doing my part when the other side wasn't doing their part, that wasn't integrity. I was keeping my word no matter what. No, that's not integrity. It's not sustainable. What would be integrity is when they stop by. That was another big lesson. Okay, can I start at the top?

Yes, please.

So I'm an engineer. So form follows function, I think from design. So I always start with picturing right at the end of the event. What have people learned? What have people healed? What's been illuminated? What skill have they had a chance to learn and practice? And how would they describe the experience? What did it feel like for them? So I started at the end. What are they going to walk away with? And I write all that down. Then I think about a picture providing that. I picture who's in the room. So who is this for? What will be their part? What will they need to come for? We never call them seminars. We always call them workshops because you will work. And, you know, from being at The Pax World Tour, you had to work. So think of your customer. This was another part where integrity came in and we learned the hard way. Like, did anybody ever learn the easy way? I don't think we even noticed when we learned an easy way.

But we, in promoting our events, wanted to help everybody. Men and women are so messed up with each other. We want to help everybody. So we cast this really sad white net. And then people started talking about, what's your target market? Our target was like the side of a barn. Then someone introduced us to, but what's your bull's eye? And then I got to look at, okay, for what I'm going to deliver from the front of the room, really, who's the perfect person? What are they looking for? How important is it to them? What are they willing to do, even if it's uncomfortable? What do they focus on? What are they intent about? And that became very important. In our web copy, if you are, we'll actually say who it's for. If you are, and we'll spell out bullets. It doesn't really have to be all of it unless we say, if you're all of this, right? If you're any of this. So thinking about the result, thinking about the for whom, and then starting to think about after that, okay, so what's it going to require? So we don't book event space based on we want to have an event at a certain time. It's the event space based upon the results I intend to produce for the people I'm encouraging to be there.

Then what do I need? Sometimes a theater, for example, is more suited to the purpose than a huge room. For October, we have a huge room. Then, and then there's, to me, it's this interplay of I'm designing it to produce the results. I think of it as being pregnant. Am I pregnant with it? It's, I'm cogitating. There are things I'm clear about and not clear about. But then, I have to have a certain amount of clarity to start producing copy for a web page and copy for a promotion. I don't ever promise beyond what I'm clear about. So, like, you got to save the date last week. You promised nothing. Allison Live, save the date. So it's going to be me. We promised that. But now I have to generate more because I know a lot of the content that I'm planning on doing. I have to then articulate that in copy form and some of that would be one of the things that we take into account is what people are most likely to invest in.

So some people are problem oriented. So you have to express what you're doing in terms of what kind of problems you are going to solve. Some people are learning oriented. What will I learn? What will I know how to do? Some people are growth oriented. What will I be able to beat? So in the copy, whether it's a promotional email or a video you put up or a web page, being able to express it so people can find what they're focused on. The most to the point you possibly can be. This, by the way, keeps being interactive. So as I'm designing the program and articulating it, then as I'm doing my agenda with a timeline to deliver the program, I'm checking it back against what does the web page say? And what did all the promotional emails say? Have I accounted for that so that I deliver everything I said I would? And I can be held to account to deliver what I said I would in those two places, which is why no promotional copy goes out without me looking at it. So the person who drafts it, who's brilliant, and she's always checking the web to make sure it fits, but she might have just changed a word because she's very clever. And it's wonderful. But that word, I can't deliver on that word. So it has to be changed to what I need.

So I actually learned this from Alanis Morissette years ago when I was coaching her on something. I'm like, can't you delegate that? She's like, no, this is who I am. It cannot be delegated. Oh, promotional emails and the web page. And then there's all the videos. They're who I am in the world. Of course, I'm going to ensure that that representation is accurate, has integrity. So never exaggerate. And say as much as you can without having people think they entirely know what you're talking about and already know that. Because if you say too much, they may think they already know that even when you know that they don't. So it's interesting. So there's that. So can you get that thing where it's keeping checking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth? And even other parts of integrity of delivering an event are what kind of team do you need? How are they going to be? How are they going to approach things? Take your seats. Don't move that chair. So you have to have principles. You have to articulate the flavor of your environment and then uphold it and train people to be that and even fire volunteers because they won't be incongruent.

Well, this is just how I dress. I'm sorry, honey, your breasts are beautiful, but the men aren't going to be able to concentrate. So you're going to have to cover them up, honey. So we've had those conversations. So all of those all of those parts and even like the seating and like we're not getting together if we're not going to interact and do exercises with each other. We used to have our couples retreat, which is where the workbook you were working on came from. We create since it's a couples retreat and it's called Partnership By Design. The couple sat in pairs. They sat in pairs and there was space between the pairs. Then when they needed to do an exercise where they would share intimate or confidential information, they wanted privacy. We called it the cone of music. So we would literally turn music up loud enough that they'd have to lean in and only they could hear each other. So that was a production designed to fulfill an intention of the course. When we worked on Delicious Sexual Partnerships, we gave them all the assignments, let them leave the room, and go wherever they wanted. We waited in the room. They could come back and ask questions if they got stuck, but go create as much physical space as you need, mental space, privacy, do whatever you need to create items.

That as you know, the eighth CD of Celebrating Partnership. There's this one more thing that I want to tell you. So it has to do with money back guarantees and it has to do with this thing that I do in order to protect the space. Because if you don't protect the space so that it's safe enough and on point enough, everybody pulling in the same direction, then you won't be able to produce results. So one of the things we do is we were very upfront about what has a money back guarantee, like all our entry level courses have money back guarantees, or online courses, but courses that so people can try, they can just try it even if they won't give it what it takes. But courses that are highly dependent upon what a participant puts into it, we don't give them a money back guarantee. We state that there is no money back guarantee but this is too dependent upon your part. So we guarantee to provide our part, but we do not guarantee your results because that's going to be on you. So we're very upfront about that and that's part of, I think the raving, we don't just blanket promise something. Then the other thing we've done since the very beginning, and I'll do this in October, is one of my staff used to say, people don't read and people don't listen.

So even though we've put everything in writing, I maybe had an introductory webinar where I stated everything for the people who don't read, but they listen. Then the people who show up, I'll tell them the plan, I'll tell them what's required of them. And most of the time, I'll design it so that everything until the first lunch break, people can participate in and get value from and they'll get a real sense of what we're doing here. Then we'll tell them if this isn't for you, you can come in at the beginning or the end of this break and we'll give you your money back. So we can't get their time back or their travel back. We're not going to do that, but we'll give them their money back for the course. Often that can be the impetus for the person who didn't really want to be there, but they didn't want to upset their spouse or their friend, to go, I know you treated me for this, but I don't want to waste your money and I don't like her. She talks funny. She's really bossy or picky or whatever people say about me with all my structure. And then they leave and I'll even coach women who brought men to the Understanding Women course. If he can't say no, he can't say yes. You really got to let him say no or you'll never get a real yes. And then you'll think he just is a flake and not countable, but he's not. So that protects the space.

It'll have people leave the space who know they don't belong there. Then I'll keep protecting the space. The course you did last week, there was someone in the course who didn't fit and the decision was finally made after all these years. No, this course is going to be about space. It's going to be about application, and it's not going to be an easy application, to sort out people who aren't in the space. We're creating the results and what it takes. So, that's the other thing I do. Anything that has really a small limited space and people have a huge effect on each other, but I will let people go. If somebody's being incongruent, I'll say, we're letting you go. We'll give you all your money back. I could do that two hours before the end just to restore the space to what's needed for that part. Okay, that was the short version.

Yes, it's so good. I can't wait to find the long version.

Oh, wait, there's one more part. There's one more part that I'm going to do because you asked me about this before we started recording. We pay attention to what Michelle Skrull articulated that she paid attention to in horsemanship and we call it a process of transformation. So the first part we call revealing the source of the results you don't want or the source of you not having the results you want. So what's the source of that? I call it false cause. Most people misidentify the source of their results, especially between men and women. They misidentify it. So they're solving a problem that isn't actually happening and they're not solving the problem that is happening. So we'll start with that and then we'll offer new information, new understanding, new skills, new abilities. And then the third step is ensuring that that exists in an empowering context because so many things that human beings learn in the transformation space can quickly be sucked into survival instincts. Empowerment to manipulation. Very fast. So that's why I have the live interactions. One of the reasons I have live interactions is because people are taking online courses. I spend eight and a half hours a month just ensuring the empowering context. I won't just answer a person's question, respond to the question and what's behind the question because that often has to be corrected.

And then we're going to have the results you want. Then the last part is what Michelle would call the new good habit. So like in our live workshops, even live online, we do exercises that use neuroscience to cause shifts very quickly so you don't have to remember to do it for four years before it's a habit. We actually interrupt the neural pathway that isn't working. Then you know this about me, I always try to articulate things in ways that are highly memorable. Whether it's a story or a term or something like that or a surprise rug pull. Do you know I've been known to do that? So we pay attention to all that and if there's something ongoing like where people would want to come back and ask questions, like I'll do that for the event in October. I'll make sure that there's some follow-up live interaction so that when I'm inside the three days and the timeline, people always have more questions that don't need to be answered in person. So I'm not going to take every time to answer that in person. It's not for everybody. Ask that on the call. So I create an overflow space and I learned this the hard way too because I didn't have one.

And then I realized I need to talk to everybody. So send out an email, come on the phone. So just planning that in so it overflows. I'm going to do that with Core for next year by the way. Plan an overflow for every participant. That has you not ignoring people or being impatient with them or you got to pay more for that, which is something that really irks people, to have to pay more for. Sometimes we'll have a series of follow-ups that's like you get it for free if you register for these things because we know they build on each other. It's again, part of the integrity of the next thing. We want them to have that.

Alison, I love your engineering mind. I'm going to go back and listen to this recording several times and I recommend our own. We're going to be sure to include links to the October event with this episode as well once we get that available to us. I acknowledge we're right at the top of the hour and you have another interview to get to. Do you have any final comments for our audience as we wrap up?

Yes. I would say integrity takes time. Interacting with other team members. Welcome resistance because it'll help clarify what matters and does it matter to people looking from different angles who see things that you don't. Don't let somebody rush you. We decided to do this event a year ago but I've just been pregnant for a really long time because I'm going to have it like an elephant or something. So be willing to not schedule things right away until you have enough space to get the clarity you need so that you can build the integrity in. I would say integrity is inconvenient. It just is by its nature an inconvenient thing to pay attention to. So you've got a muscle and it's like in a smart singles program, build the muscle to be true to yourself. It starts back with that thing I was saying about who is this for and even discourages people from buying it and coming to it if they're not going to be in the room. I just want to see what's available. I just want to observe. The press has been trying to get their men into our workshops since their beginning.

Sorry, we don't have observers. You can sign up for it, transform their relationship with men and they're right. This is proven in physics, right? Observers change the environment and they make it unsafe. There are very few observers who contribute to the safety of some.

That's a huge distinction. Thank you for sharing that with us. I love you and I thank you. I appreciate you for being a guest on our show today. I totally respect you have another commitment to get to. So for our audience, if you haven't already, go check out allisonarmstrong.com. Get to her next event. Consume all of her material as I have and many of my friends have as well. Thank you for who you are in the world, who you're being today and always. I love you and have a beautiful day.

Thank you. You're welcome.