Education empowers people, but only when it’s shared with purpose, authenticity, and vision. Marketing strategist and storyteller Tori Allen, founder of Brainchild Associates and Mastery Monetized, joins hosts Dr. Sylvia Morris and Dr. Angela Walker to explore how education becomes a force for empowerment and trust in business. From her mother’s groundbreaking legacy as the first Black female insurance agency owner in Queens to her own 20-year journey building brands that thrive on strategy, storytelling, and innovation, Tori reflects on how women can own their expertise and transform knowledge into profitable, purpose-driven ventures. Her insights reveal how learning, leadership, and legacy intertwine to uplift not only entrepreneurs, but entire communities.
Music courtesy of Dealer’s Choice Sound Recordings, Inc.
Music artist: djezi
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Education Empowers People: Turning Knowledge Into Power With Tori Allen
Mastery Monetized
Our guest is Tori Allen. She’s a powerhouse strategist, storyteller, and visionary entrepreneur. Tori is the Founder of Brainchild Associates, a full-service marketing boutique firm known for elevating brands through strategy, storytelling, and innovation. Tori is a proud Spelman graduate. She released Mastery Monetized, a guide helping professionals transform their knowledge into profitable information products. Tori’s here to share insights on marketing mastery and the mindset it takes to build something extraordinary. Before we get into our interview with Tori Allen, let’s talk about commercials. Angela, what are some of your favorite commercials?
Tori was good about telling her history in marketing and PR. We asked her about one of her favorite ads or pub campaigns. That brought up our idea of commercials. For me, usually, it takes something that makes me laugh. The first thing that came to mind in terms of a commercial that I find funny is the progressive insurance commercials. I thought about it. They’re probably geared towards people our age, with all the scenarios of how not to be your parents.
I’m annoyed and offended by them because I’m like, “They have nailed me,” sometimes.
That is me. I laugh at it, but I can’t even give the reference to my kids because they stream. They’re not even on regular television. I realize they’re probably targeting my age anyway. The other one, which is funny, is another insurance. It’s the Liberty.
With the ostrich?
Yes.
That bird scares me.
On the golf course. Usually, it takes something to add humor to the equation. They do it so repetitiously that it’s ingrained in your head. Although that’s not the insurance I have. I’m not sure that they’ve affected me.
Your purchases?
No, but I do find them entertaining. How about you?
As the audience has come to learn, I’m a huge Michael B. Jordan fan. A few Super Bowls ago, he was Alexa. You would say, “Alexa, please turn off the lights,” and there would be Michael B. Jordan. She was in the bathtub or something to that effect. It was spot on. I like a good tongue-in-cheek commercial. Tori certainly helped broaden our understanding of both marketing as well as PR work.
She had so much valuable information. Our audience will get some pearls and gems from this, if not for themselves, but something to share with someone else. Without further ado, we will go ahead and give you our guest, Tori Allen.
We are in for a treat. We have Tori Allen. Tori, welcome to the show.
It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m so excited to speak with you both and also with your audience. Thanks for having me.
We are excited.
From Queens To Georgia: Tori Allen’s Entrepreneurial Roots
At the beginning of our interviews, typically, we start off with some background information about you so our audience can get to know you. We’d love to know where you grew up and how that environment itself influenced your entrepreneurial spirit.
I like to say I’m the best of both worlds. I grew up in New York, so I claim the Big Apple.
Manhattan? The Bronx? Brooklyn? Come on.
I grew up in between Queens and Brooklyn, primarily Queens. I’ve been in Georgia since ‘96, so I do claim a little Georgia Peach. I would say I’m the best of both worlds. A little Big Apple and a little Georgia Peach. I grew up in New York, and I was exposed to the entrepreneurial journey as a child. My mother had her own insurance agency.
I started working in her agency from elementary school days, and even before elementary school days. Back in that time, my mother would go to people’s homes to sell them life insurance. She had her briefcase. There were times when she couldn’t get a babysitter, so it would be a dynamic duo. She had my little briefcase and tote. I was trained, groomed, and conditioned to be on this journey from a very young age.
Life insurance was a big deal, or selling insurance in the Black community was a big deal, and was entrepreneurial. It was certainly a way for Black people to have their own businesses and help to support the community. I didn’t know of any women insurance agents, so she is a trailblazer.
She was a trailblazer. She was the first Black-owned and Black female-owned insurance agency in the Borough of Queens. She was not just a high-producing Black-owned agency, but she was a high-producing agency period for the Borough of Queens. She has more than 100 awards for top-selling agencies. She has retired and does some consulting now. That’s pretty much how my path got started. It was seeing her in action. I’m also an only child, so I take the path uncharted. That helped springboard me. I started some child-owned businesses, even as a youth, and I started my agency at the age of 29 back in 2006. The rest is history from there.
We’re going to get to that.
A Trailblazing Mom: Deborah Allen’s Insurance Legacy
I want to peel back a layer because this story is a little bit different from some of the stories we’ve heard. We have parents who were on more traditional routes back when we were growing up, like teachers, nurses, and that field. To have your mom in that field, which is quite different than what we hear as we talk about parents, can you give us a little backstory? I know this is your story, but a backstory for her. How did she have that notion or that moxie to know, “This is what I can do.” How did that happen for her?
Back in the day, there was a retail store called Sears. I don’t know if you guys remember that.
Sears and Roebuck.
She started working at Sears and Roebuck. At that time, they had a partnership with Allstate where they had agents working in their Sears locations. She stumbled upon it from there and then found out how lucrative it was to work in the insurance industry. She went and got her insurance license, but she didn’t have the guidance and mentorship to show her the ropes. She was doing things the hard way. She didn’t know that there were classes to help her prep for the exam.
I remember her saying that it was books like this big that she had to navigate through, not realizing there were preparatory classes to help her. She went through that book and memorized it from the first page to the last page to take this exam. She had inundated her mind so much with this information that she forgot everything else, including, at one point, where she lived, because her mind was so filled with this information. She took the exam and passed it with flying colors the first time.
Without the preparation?
Without the preparation.
The book and without somebody’s father’s cousin.
The hidden education.
She did it the hard way, but she passed the first time because she was so serious about creating this career path for herself to take care of me at the time. She passed the exam, and then she started working in the Sears location initially. She then went on to work for some independent agents. She can tell you a lot of her story better.
We may need to have her on.
From there, she opened up her first agency. She started with a partner and then went on to do it solo. She became a major beacon in the Queens community, especially the Black Queens community, for her success. It wasn’t easy. She faced a lot of racism. A lot of agents were trying to sabotage her business and her name, so it was a fight. There were some legal battles along the way that she had to get through in order to stick her claim. One thing about my mother is that she is a fighter. She has that New York fighting spirit.
Nonetheless, through her journey, it gave me the fearlessness to chart my own path. I didn’t go into the insurance industry, which she had hoped. I was more on the creative side. I like to write. I like to draw. I like to create characters. I started writing plays in elementary school and even produced them. I had a few of my plays performed on stages. I was more of a creative child, so marketing came more naturally to me.
Tori, I want to honor your mom. Can we say your mom’s name?
Sure. Her name is Deborah Allen.
Spelman & HBCU Experience: Building Community & Excellence
We are grateful for Ms. Deborah Allen. As you were more of a creative child, that led you to Spelman. You’re a proud Spelman graduate. Can you talk about your HBCU experience and how that also propelled you to where you are?
Yeah. Like many folks probably around my age, we grew up with the Cosby Shows and the different worlds. That was my introduction to the HBCU experience, watching a different world, particularly. I always wanted to go to Spelman. If not Spelman, then it was going to be Howard or Hampton. Those were the Plan Bs and Cs, but as God would have it, I got into Spelman, which was no easy feat.
When you go to an HBCU, especially one like Spelman, some of the key things that we are entrenched with are a sense of community and having each other’s backs. That is something that stuck with me, especially as I built my business. Probably about 80% of my clients are Black-owned businesses. That has been a hallmark of my success. I’ve always wanted to support folks who look like me and don’t necessarily have access to the resources and information, so that they can be competitive.
One of the key things about going to an HBCU, especially one like Spelman, is that we are really entrenched with a sense of community and truly having each other's back. Share on XAs I’ve mapped out this journey of online education, I realized there are not a lot of folks that look like me who help people get into this space. There are enough of us that are monetizing our knowledge and expertise so that we can work smarter and not so hard. I’ve made it a mission to help empower our community as such. Going to an institution like Spelman, there’s also this unapologetic excellence that we have. That has also carried me in how I conduct myself, my business, and the relationships that I have and that I nurture as well. Being at Spelman is a big part of my outlook on how I do my business and choose who I do business with.
Brainchild Associates: From Internship To 20-Year Success
Leading into your business, let our audience know a little bit more about it. How did you leap to launch Brainchild Associates? Tell us about the vision when you launched it and how it has evolved over time.
While I was still at Spelman, I was interning at one of the largest marketing and advertising agencies known as IMAGES USA, which was spearheaded by Robert McNeil Jr. He had big accounts like McDonald’s, Pepsi, and the US Army.
How did you get that internship?
I had a mentor who was good friends with the owner of that agency. When I went into Spelman, I initially wanted to pursue a career path in film, only to find out that Spelman was the wrong school for that. I should have gone to Clark because Clark had a more robust multimedia department than Spelman did. I then decided, “I’ll go into marketing,” because marketing still fuses creativity along with some professional development.
One of my mentors used to do college tours, and I went on one of the college tours. When I was in high school, I was able to tour the campus and get to experience Spelman directly before applying. Once I let him know that that was a career path I wanted to further, he connected me with Mr. McNeil. I interviewed with his team, and then they brought me in as an intern for their PR department. I started working in public relations. One of my first accounts that I spearheaded was the Black McDonald Owner Operators Association. They had that account.
That’s a big account.
They had that account, and they had various facets of it. They were doing ad campaigns. They had the PR. I helped to spearhead some of the PR efforts for that account. For a lot of the national campaigns, we were helping to implement them within the Black-owned restaurants across the Southeast. There were a lot of in-store events and activations that we were doing.
My task was to get a lot of press coverage around these in-store launches. We had Pokémon and all kinds of things that we were doing at that time. I was getting press coverage around it and inviting the press. That was my main task. It was getting the press releases out, doing all the follow-up, and getting interviews coordinated with some of the McDonald’s owner-operators. I also worked on Pepsi and the US Army while I was interning with IMAGES.
I then moved on to work for an international PR firm known as Porter Novelli. They’re a global corporate PR firm. There, I worked in their corporate communications division, which was a complete deviation from working with more consumer brands in corporate communication. Here, I’m working with manufacturing brands and some tech brands. It’s straight B2B, very linear, vertical PR outreach that I’m doing.
B2B?
Business-to-Business.
Thank you. You’re good.
Communication is very structured, corporate, and not as fun and creative as where I came from, but it was a great learning experience working for a major global entity and understanding their processes and infrastructure. It was great getting access to some of the tools that they had access to, some of which I carried into my own practice when I launched.
The Leap Of Faith: Launching Brainchild Associates
How did you know it was time for you to make the leap from working for someone else to launching Brainchild Associates?
All while working at Porter Novelli, I was always freelancing. Outside of my corporate world, I was volunteering. I was volunteering for the Urban League. I was also the Executive Director for an organization known as eWomen Network as well. I was always doing some kind of freelancing work and volunteer work while working corporate.
Eventually, I got to a point where the corporate communications weren’t as fulfilling, so I wanted to branch out and start my own work for myself. I had enough freelance gigs to give me the confidence that there are people who will pay for my services outside of working at this agency. One of my colleagues, who also worked at Porter Novelli, but she worked in a different department, decided that she would partner with me. Both of us were freelancers. Some of the projects we freelanced on together. We decided that we both wanted to take that leap of faith and do it on our own. We launched Brain Child Associates in 2006. It’s almost 20 years in 2026.
You’re coming up on your 20-year anniversary. That’s awesome. As an entrepreneur, I’m sure you’ve learned a lot along the way. It does sound like this was in line with things that you had already been doing and your passion and your purpose, but I know that as we launch into something different, there are sometimes bumps in the road. Can you tell us some of the biggest things entrepreneurs don’t get about marketing when they’re starting out? Anything that you can share?
Yeah. From a marketing standpoint, the key thing, especially one of the greatest assets your brand can have with your target audience, is trust. When people trust you, they don’t just do business with you one time. They will do business with you on repeat, so much so that when the opportunity presents itself, you may be the first person they call because of that level of trust and relationship.
When it comes to marketing, it’s not just about volume or clicks. It should be prioritized around cultivating trust with your client. You have that trust factor, almost like Oprah. People trusted Oprah. If Oprah said it was good, it was good. It was something that was going to sell out because she had that type of trust with her audience.
My business is focused on helping clients cultivate that trust through online education, because education empowers people. When you can empower people and help them achieve a transformation or a breakthrough, that’s a level of trust that is unbreakable. These people become your greatest advocates and your greatest ambassadors. They are first in line for any product launches that you have. They are your biggest referral network. We work on helping clients leverage the power of trust to build their brands and build their businesses. That’s a key thing that I think is not prioritized in the way that it should.
Marketing In The Digital Age: Social Media, AI & Trust
Certainly, it takes time to develop trust. There’s not 1 ad campaign, 1 press release, or 1 event that you can do to develop trust. Talk about social media. We know that over the twenty years that Brainchild Associates has been in business that social media has exploded. Can you talk about how that has evolved? With AI, how is that going to influence marketing in the near future?
I’m almost twenty years in. At the time I started, Facebook was getting off the ground. It has come leaps and bounds since I started in my business. Back in my day, it was good-old gorilla marketing. We were still doing direct ad campaigns and marketing campaigns.
Flyers?
Indeed. We did mailers and billboards.
I still like a good billboard. Come on. If it lights up or has some animation, I love it.
It was like a party to do a billboard unveiling. Social media has changed the game. You don’t have to do all those things. You don’t have to work so hard. You could work a little easier with social media, even though that’s still evolving. With social media, it does make the process of cultivating trust a lot easier because you are able to develop a cult following through social media. As long as you are consistent and you provide value, then you can develop that trust. It doesn’t necessarily have to take an exorbitant amount of time to be able to establish that if you leverage it and utilize it the right way.
With social media, as long as you're consistent and provide value, you can develop that trust. Share on XDo we miss people with social media? I would imagine my algorithm as a 50-something-year-old Black woman who lives in Atlanta, went to Berkeley, and all these things. My algorithm is very specific. I may not see ads that would go to someone who lives in a different part of the country or is a different demographic.
The algorithm has changed. When these platforms first launched, it was open access season on everybody. We were easily able to create followings that were highly engaged. The majority of those who followed us saw our content. Whereas now, you’re lucky if 1% of the people actually see your content, and those are the kind of people that you nurture and develop, not even thinking about those that are external that you haven’t already connected to.
Now, it’s pay-to-play. You’re going to have to spend some dollars on boosting your content and doing some ad campaigns. That is not just to reach external audiences, but to reach your internal audience so that they are actually seeing your content. Things have changed. The algorithms have changed, and they change by the day. There’s always something new. LinkedIn, which was always celebrated as being that platform where you could still more easily build and engage a following, has changed. Going into 2026, it will become more of a pay-to-play platform as well. It changes. They all change.
AI has changed the game. It’s taking it to another level. With AI, you have a flood of content creation capabilities. What used to take 3 days to 1 week to create a reel, now we can get it done in 2.5 seconds with AI. AI will write our captions. AI will help expedite the process of creating content. That being said, there is a thing called AI fatigue, where people don’t value AI content as much because they see it as being a little disingenuous. There is an art of balancing actual human efforts with AI efforts in order to build an authentic brand that people can still believe in and have trust in. AI certainly changes the game with a lot of things. With AI, you also have the AI influencers. You don’t have to hire human influencers any longer. You can create AI.
Do you mean like a bot?
Yes, like an AI actor. It looks like a person doing a review of your products, but it’s not a real person. It’s an AI actor that’s reviewing products. These reviews are very real. Many people are tricked. They’re compelling. They’re effective. In addition, people are cloning themselves with their own AI twin. You don’t have to put forth the effort of recording videos and editing the videos. You can create your AI clone yourself.
Mastery Monetized: Transforming Knowledge Into Profit
That could be used for evil. I’m not quite ready for that. Give me a little claw at ChatGPT to help with my caption, but I have to go back and make it sound like me. When I read these posts, I’m like, “You put that through ChatGPT. It doesn’t sound authentic.” Let’s move into Mastery Monetized. We still need human influence for PR and marketing. We cannot put it into AI and then post things. How do you help people monetize their skillsets?
The first thing, for people to understand, is don’t underestimate the value of what you know. There are actual people out here who will pay to learn what you know if what you know has had proven success. That’s the first thing I let people know. People are like, “Who’s going to want to buy?” I’m like, “You’d be surprised. You have kids who are teaching classes on how to play video games and are millionaires.” There’s that. The online education space is trending to become a trillion-dollar sector by 2030, globally.
The online education space is trending to become a trillion-dollar sector globally by 2030. Share on XCan I ask you quickly to give us a little bit more insight? When you say online education, when I first read it, I’m thinking of online education for a kid, but you’re speaking of a business or a person who is educating someone about their area of expertise. Am I mastering that in terms of how to communicate that?
That is correct. We’re talking about what I call productizing your knowledge through whether it be online courses, webinars, membership programs, coaching programs, or certification programs. It could even be virtual conferences and summits. All of the above. Any way that you can share information that can have a positive impact on someone’s life or business is defined by what I mean when I say online education.
Thank you. I interrupted you in terms of how you launched Mastery Monetized and how that is advantageous to our audience.
I’ve had my agency for almost twenty years. When I started my agency, most of the projects that we worked on were a lot of product launches. We were doing a lot of product launch events. During these events, there was a lot of product education to equip and empower consumers, or whoever the target audience was, on how to utilize and put into practice my client’s products and services. It was always some kind of educational experience taking place at these events. We would do these events all over the country, from trade shows, expos, pop-up events, to pop-up stores. You name it.
About 2013, I came across online education or online courses. Primarily, people were doing online courses. There were platforms like Thinkific and Teachable that were new on the scene at that time. I was like, “I wonder how effective it would be to take some of these in-person event experiences and bring them to audiences online so that we can reach more people than those that are in the building?”
I started working with a few clients. Some of them were like, “We want to focus on doing these in-person events,” because that’s what you did then. I had a couple that were like, “Do your thing, and we’ll see how it goes.” I started creating some online education programs. At that time, I was primarily using Thinkific. We would bring these product launch events to the platform and then start inviting people to these events. People loved them.
From there, I started to create the online academies of my client brands. They had their in-person events. We were doing these online academies, creating a whole curriculum, not just so much so around the product, but a curriculum to help people get a greater understanding. The product was the catalyst. It made selling their products very turnkey because of how we integrated it with the information that was being provided.
When the pandemic hit in 2020 and everything went online, and all in-person events came to a screeching halt, it was my clients who allowed me to use them as a Guinea pig and create these online education experiences that thrived during the pandemic. One of my clients, who had been in business for 30 years at that time, said that 2020 was his most profitable year because of the immense number of people who bought products through the online education events that we were doing at that time.
That proved to me that I was onto something. I was burnt out from the in-person events. It came at a good time because I was burnt out. Doing in-person events is not for the faint of heart. Being able to reach audiences globally and still be able to allow my clients to be profitable was all the proof I needed to make a pivot. I launched Mastery Monetized in 2022. I have exclusively been helping businesses and business owners create online education extensions to their business in all the ways that I described a little while ago.
That is fascinating. I’m familiar with Thinkific. Is that still one of the main platforms that you recognize as being advantageous, or is there a plethora now?
We have a plethora now. We don’t use Thinkific anymore. The online education space is trending to be a trillion-dollar industry, so there are many more platforms now compared to back in 2013, when it was just Thinkific. We use a more sophisticated platform that allows us to do all types of online education programs, not just courses. We do coaching programs, membership academies, etc.
Entrepreneurial Self-Care: The Power Of No-Meeting Weeks
We’re going to move ahead and talk about self-care. We always ask our guests what their self-care regime is or what they aspire their self-care regime to be as a busy entrepreneur. Please share with our audience how you practice self-care.
This is one of the things that I started doing, which has been like, “Why did I not do this sooner?” above and beyond all the typical things, like getting your steps in, eating right, and all the things. One of the things that I did that has had a monumental impact on my self-care was cycling my work weeks with meetings.
Tell us more.
I found myself getting burnt out and overwhelmed because I’m in a lot of meetings throughout the day. After the meetings, I’m moving to work, facilitate, and project manage different projects and whatnot. It became quite a lot. Starting 2024, I began doing weeks of meetings, followed by a week of no meetings.
I like that.
My no-meeting weeks are times when I can regenerate.
Work uninterrupted.
Be creative.
My meal planning and being able to handle some personal things that I never had the time for. I can work with my team on the different projects we’re working on. Then, I have a meeting week. I’m booked up, you know, pretty much most of the day on my meeting weeks. Talking with clients, closing deals, and cultivating partnerships, all of that is in a meeting week. That is followed by a week of decompress, which is following up on those things that we talked about the week before, and seeing what the next steps are based on those meetings. That has had a tremendous impact on me. You guys are my only meeting this week.
We are honored.
I’m on my no-meeting week,
We are honored. I was going to ask. Do you have an absolute hard stop, or are there some exceptions, too?
There may be some exceptions to the rule, but it has to be a good exception. I consider this a good one. There may be some exceptions, but ultimately, I do try to stick with that. My calendar is structured accordingly, so people can’t even book meetings with me during my off week.
That’s awesome. You have shared so much information with us. We have a few Rapid-fire questions if you’re game. It’s not that many. Give us top of mind and what comes to the tip of your tongue. Are you game for that?
Let’s do it.
Coffee or tea to start your day?
Coffee, always.
We’re in the same club.
LL or Nas?
LL. Sylvia, your face was not in sync with that.
I don’t have a dog in the fight. I’m from Inglewood, so we have our own stuff. I love them both.
Ladies love Cool James.
LL all day. Nas came in a little later. LL already had me.
Best Business Advice: Opportunity Meets Preparation
He still rules the world, Nas. Best business advice you ever received?
It was probably from my mom. Her advice was opportunity meets preparation, and that I always have to be ready and stay ready in order to seize opportunities that come my way. If I’m not getting the opportunities, then I may not be prepared. That was one of the greatest insights that I can recall off the cuff. There have been many, though, but that one always sticks with me.
Always be ready, and stay ready, to seize opportunities that come your way. Share on XThat’s beautiful. I love that. How about a brand you admire for brilliant marketing?
Red Bull.
Red Bull gives you wings. I don’t even drink Red Bull, but I know the commercial.
The way they are both able to cultivate what I call a cult following, where they have that trust factor. For any and everything they sell, the people are first in line around the block to buy their products. They’ve created a community around their brands. The hallmarks of a brand that’s here to stay and that will thrive for the long haul are creating that sense of community.
A lot of the online education programs that I work with my clients all have community aspects to them. People are learning in community. When you create that type of dynamic learning environment, you have clients for life. They’ll be first in line to buy your offers. Those are two brands that have mastered the art of community to the point where they’ll always be hallmarks in our world.
It’s interesting you say that. I remember being at a kids’ soccer game. I’m an OB-GYN. I saw a patient. She was full-on Red Bull gear, and she was driving the little Red Bull car. Sure enough, she was one of their markets. I was like, “Oh my goodness.” It was a thing. You could see the young people following that. I get that one.
For Apple users, they’re going to get the newest Apple phone, not because they need it, it’s because it’s the newest. It’s the latest Apple. They’re going to stand in line all around the block. They’re very exclusive. If you’re not part of the Apple Club, then you’re not with the folks.
As I sit here with my Apple laptop and my Apple phone.
We’re handicapped as well.
I love it. They’re accessories. Those are the ways to build a brand that sticks and that lasts. It’s through that sense of community.
Tori Allen, where can people find you on social media?
I’m active on LinkedIn. If you look up @BrainchildAssociates on LinkedIn, most likely, you’ll be able to find me. People can email me at TAllen@BrainchildAssociates.com.
We’ve covered so much ground here on all the things that you’ve done in your life and what you’re doing. Would you like to give our audience any parting words, whether it’s advice or information about your business and what you’re doing?
Yeah. To anyone who has been possibly thinking about monetizing your mastery through an online education program, but you haven’t taken that step yet for whatever reason, I will let you know one of the key things, especially as we move into 2026. Online education is a little different now than it was back in 2020.
As we move into 2026, people are looking for programs that provide high value or are very results-driven and create transformation. The good news is that they’re willing to pay for it. They don’t want the YouTube University information overload. They want guided step-by-step direction. When you show up and provide the step-by-step support that they need to get from point A to point Z, people are willing to pay a higher premium price for that level of guidance.
You no longer have to chase the volume to try to get everybody into your program, and that intimidates you. You can maybe have 5, 10, or 20 people, but if they’re all paying a high ticket price, and when I say high ticket, I mean anywhere from maybe $2,500, $5,000, to $10,000 on up, you can focus on working deep versus working wide. You can create a sustainable revenue stream for yourself by providing online education programs. When you have a great online education sales system in place, it allows you to make money while you sleep. People are enrolling in your programs even while you’re sleeping or on vacation in Zanzibar somewhere.
I love that one. We can end on Zanzibar. If you can get me to Zanzibar, I’ll sign up.
We can make it happen. People don’t need to be afraid by the fear of having to try to get thousands of people. If you get five people paying you $10,000 a piece, then that’s a great way to segue into this space. Structuring your knowledge in a way that gives people the transformation that they’re looking for can take your revenue stream to a whole other level.
Word of mouth sells itself. We thank you, Tori Allen, Founder of Brainchild Associates, and our audience. We appreciate you coming by and sharing so many pearls with us. We look forward to talking with you again in the future.
I would like to add one more thing.
Sure.
I do provide online education sales strategy sessions. For individuals who are interested in exploring how they can set themselves up for success in monetizing their mastery, one of the first things we do before we start creating any curriculum, modules, or eBooks is create a sales strategy. It’s where we identify the target audience that’s most poised to benefit from your knowledge. We also provide pricing recommendations on what you can charge. We also provide a build-out of how to structure your educational offer. That is something that we do offer. I could provide the link where people can click and schedule their strategy session with me.
That would be fantastic.
Thank you, and thank you for providing our audience with such valuable information. Until we meet again, may you be well.
Thank you so much. I appreciated this conversation and the sharing with the audience as well.
‐‐‐
Unpacking The Interview: Insights And Inspirations
Angela, that conversation with Tori Allen was fantastic. I was particularly intrigued by her mom, Ms. Deborah Allen, and the trailblazer that she is. Certainly, everyone has already read the story, but she was fantastic. My take-homes were being able to learn how to market yourself and understanding that everyone has a skillset, that education empowers people, and that people are willing to pay for a skillset as long as it moves the needle on their ability to impact their bottom line and transmit information. I was impressed and excited about our conversation with Tori Allen. What take-homes did you get?
They’re in line with yours. The first one was, don’t underestimate the value of what you know. That comes into play because when we’re in a certain industry or profession, we tend to think that we should operate in one way. For us, it’s either in the office or in the hospital. In our line of work that we do in the media and even via the show, we can give our expertise in different ways. There are people who want to know some of the things that we have to say outside of our traditional venue.
Never underestimate the value of what you know. We are at a point in life where we have a lot of experience and know a lot. I like that. The thing that she learned from her mom that she shared was that opportunity needs preparation. You can have all the opportunities in the world, but if you’re not prepared for them. It goes back to stay ready to be ready.
You don’t have to get ready if you stay ready.
There you go. We have the base of it, but maybe I’ll choose opportunity needs preparation. I’m going to stick with that one. That’s easier for me to remember from now on. Lastly, I loved what she had to share about her mom. I didn’t expect to spend that much time in terms of her mother. We can’t say enough about the trailblazers that we’ve had in our communities, and to shine a light on people who did some of the non-traditional things.
There were so many women in our lives who were silent warriors. They fought. They worked. Most of the time, it was for the people in their lives, but a lot of times, it was because it was something that they wanted to do. I can do it, and the belief that I can do it trickles down. I love that part of the story. I know our audience will hopefully gain something from the interview for themselves. If not, they know someone in their life who could gain information from the episode.
We would love it if you would like, subscribe, and follow us on all the streaming platforms. You can subscribe to YouTube. You can find us at BossLeapPodcast.com on our website. You can drop a note. Certainly, if you have recommendations or what you’d like to see in the future in terms of episodes, we take that as well. We are very grateful to you for following us on this journey. Sylvia, as always, I’m grateful to you for being one of my mentors and my partner-in-crime in this show. Until we meet again, may you be well.
May you be well.
Important Links
- Brainchild Associates
- Mastery Monetized
- Mastery Monetized Online Education Consultation
- @BrainchildAssociates on LinkedIn
- TAllen@BrainchildAssociates.com
- Boss Leap Podcast on YouTube
About Tori Allen
A marketing extraordinaire with a passion for turning the greatest ideas into industry game-changers, Tori Allen is the go to guru to make your brainchild a huge success! Tori is most renowned for her integrated marketing campaigns used to launch hundreds of new products, services, events and program offers. Many of these product launches have resulted in millions of dollars in sales and billions of media impressions through top tier media outlets such as Good Morning America and the New York Times to name a few.
Tori is the President and Founder of Brainchild Associates, a full-service boutique marketing firm that has been delivering results-driven strategies for more than 18 years. Brainchild Associates has supported major corporations such as Target and L’Oreal, national organizations including the National Conference of Black Mayors, the National Urban League, and the National Black MBA Association, as well as numerous small businesses — helping each achieve greater visibility, engagement, and growth.
To help clients not leave any money on the table, Tori recently launched Mastery Monetized. Mastery Monetized is offers a suite of services to help subject matter experts, skilled professionals, entrepreneurs, educational events and organizations cash-in on the e-learning revolution by monetizing their knowledge and skills through information products, online training and coaching programs as well as membership communities.
The strength of Mastery Monetized lies in seamlessly guiding clients to develop online educational resources and programs, transforming them into powerful tools that not only generate income but also strategically upsell and cross-sell additional products and services.
In addition to running Brainchild Associates, Tori has served on the board for the Atlanta Urban League Chapter and as the Atlanta Area Director for eWomenNetwork, a national networking organization for women-owned businesses. She also currently leads digital marketing efforts for the Black Directory, an entrepreneurial membership community of more than 2,500 Black-owned businesses.