Why Women Leaders Are Done Hustling—and What Comes Next with Allie Stark

 “The ultimate success story is choosing yourself above anything else.” —Allie Stark

We are living in a season where working harder is no longer the answer, yet the pressure to keep pushing has not slowed down. Many women are holding careers, leadership roles, businesses, and families while quietly questioning how much longer this pace is possible. This conversation meets that tension head-on and names what so many of us are carrying.

Allie Stark shares her path from holistic health and yoga to executive leadership coaching, shaped by chronic illness, entrepreneurship, motherhood, and years of deep inner work. Her approach blends strategy with nervous system regulation, showing how leadership becomes more sustainable when it is rooted in alignment rather than hustle.

Listen in, then pause and notice what resonates before rushing to fix anything.

• Leadership in seasons of transition
• Why non-linear careers are now the norm
• Letting go of hustle culture and overproduction
• Nervous system regulation for women leaders
• Motherhood, ambition, and identity shift
• Building sustainable, values-led businesses
• The power of community over doing it alone
• Redefining success beyond visibility and scale

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Episode Highlights:

01:11 Meet Allie Stark: Health, Life, Motherhood, and Leadership
04:43 Balancing Business and Transition 
09:16 Mindfulness in Schools and the Power of Yoga
13:30 The Power of Word-of-Mouth & Authentic Marketing
17:44 Social Media Presence vs. Real-Life Connection
21:18 Daily Routines for Wellbeing: Email Boundaries, Exercise, Sleep
26:56 How Allie Coaches: The Unlearn-Awaken-Align Framework
31:39 Challenges Women Leaders Face in Today’s World
36:41 Empowering Female Entrepreneurs: From Side Hustle to Full-Time
38:53 Success Story: Courage to Pivot & Life Beyond Entrepreneurship

Resources:

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Connect with Allie: 

Founder of Allie Stark Wellness and co-founder of Noria, Allie has over 20 years of experience in the health and wellness industry. Allie co-created a board-certified health coaching program for One Medical and taught a graduate-level class in wellness entrepreneurship at the California Institute of Integral Studies. 

She guides wellness entrepreneurs and small business owners in launching and running successful businesses, trains coaches in her unique methodology, and facilitates workshops for some of the world’s biggest brands.

Allie has an insatiable appetite to deepen her understanding of herself, others, and the world. Her commitment to her own personal development is ongoing and ever-changing. She holds herself in alignment with her unique core values: community, beauty, adventure, humor, and the endless pursuit of freedom.

Website (Allie Stark Wellness)

Website (Noria)

Transcript

 Hey ladies, it's your host, Heather Nelson, welcoming you to another season of Life Conversations With A Twist. This is a space where we dive into stories of remarkable women who've conquered challenges and emerged stronger. Join me each week as we unravel tales of resilience, triumph and empowerment. These narratives aren't just stories. These are stories of inspiration, and I'm so honored to have the space to share them with you. Plus, I will be sharing my own personal stories of inspiration as I navigate starting my own business and achieving my own goals. So whether you're driving in the car or out moving your body, get ready for heartwarming stories and empowering conversations together. Let's raise a virtual toast to empowerment, because here at Life Conversations With A Twist, every story has the power to inspire. Cheers, ladies.

Heather Nelson: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this week's Life Conversations With A Twist. I have the honor of having Allie Stark here on the show today. We just met, and I already like, can we just go hang out? Because we already are vibing, and I know this is going to be a beautiful conversation. And one of the things when you reached out to, well, your team reached out to being on my podcast, you put, she's a boss. And I'm like, yes, bring the boss on my show, because I need that energy. And I love women that show up that way, so welcome to the podcast. 

Allie Stark: Thanks, Heather. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for spending Friday morning with me. 

Heather Nelson: So tell the listeners a little bit about who you are, where you live, a little bit about your family life, just so they can get a little bit of an idea where you sit in your life. 

Allie Stark: My name is Allie Stark. I live in Denver, Colorado. As I was just sharing with Heather, I moved here about four and a half years ago for love, which I have lots of thoughts and feelings about. This will not be our final end point for our family, but it's been a very profound, I would say, spiritual experience of moving to a city that I would not have chosen on my own had it not been for my set of circumstances. And I had previously lived in California for many years, and grew up in Arizona. I'm a very warm weathered person that is continuing to find herself in cold weather places suddenly.

Heather Nelson: I'm sitting here in Sonoma County, and it's beautiful here. It's always warm, and I'm literally in a blanket because I'm so cold.

Allie Stark: But the Bay is a particular type of cold. It's this damp, drafty cold that actually chills your bones in a way that a lot of really interesting places don't. So I think the blanket is appropriate, whether it's for cold or safety. So I live in Denver. I have a 10 month old baby, so I feel like I'm really just, I don't know, I've always watched new moms take around two years to settle into parenthood, and I feel like I'm really just in the middle of that evolution and transformation. 10 months in, and it's my first child. I feel like those are the main things that you asked.

Heather Nelson: What's work? What do you do? I know you're not just a full time mama.

Allie Stark: No, I'm not a full time mom. I am an executive leadership coach. My career has spanned a lot of different aspects of coaching. Originally, I was in the health and wellness coaching space, which I can share a little bit about that background above interest, and then I moved into life coaching. And in the last five plus years, I've sat pretty strongly in the leadership coaching space, and I have two avenues for the work that I do. One is a boutique one on one leadership coaching business called Allie Stark Wellness. I have a small team of five coaches that work for me. And underneath my umbrella, I predominantly work with seasoned female creative founders and leaders who are building and scaling heartful and aligned businesses. And really, just because I think that's where I'm of greatest service, it's the most kind of mirrored to who I am in the world. I work with some just amazing, badass women. And then I also have an online leadership platform that's called Noria, and we have two offerings. We do B2B leadership facilitation, and in house transformative work with companies and small organizations. And we also have a global female founder and leader network where people can join for a year long membership and really be walked through this very depthful transformation process. That's a little bit about where my work is right now. So no, I'm not a full time mama. I'm still figuring out how to balance all of those hats. Just my assumption is you never really figure it out, and you're always adapting to a new pie chart of what the percentages look like.

Heather Nelson: I have such a hard time with that, because I need to know what I'm doing and where I'm going. I'm in this messy transition between my podcast and the consulting work that I do. I get so frustrated, but I've now realized that it's okay to not. And it's okay to change courses when you need to, and adapt. Especially on what are the demands, and who wants you, you know what I mean? So finding your way. I definitely can relate to that.

Allie Stark: Yeah. And it's interesting, Heather, I have just been doing a little bit of writing and research on this in this moment, because I think that we're in a very specific, collective moment where time is moving really fast, technology is moving really fast, and so what's being asked of so many of us is a you have to stay adaptable and nimble. But also, being a multi-hyphenate team member, employee, leader, is really to your benefit because it's allowing you to shape shifts in real time, and that's sort of the way the world is moving. And Bruce Feiler, who's written a few books, one that I just really love. It's maybe five years old at this point. It's called Life is in the Transitions. He's coming out with a new book this season that's about ritual and how returning to ritual is what's going to help save the planet. But anyway, the whole concept of life is in transition, basically that. Research shows that 40 to 50 years of every adult's life is spent in a transitional state, and our lives are becoming increasingly more non linear. And so the more you can sit in that messy middle and the gray zone, and the uncertainty, the more upper hand you have, just like out in your leadership, I don't really know a better way to say it. And I think that what was sold and told to us by our parents' generation was this much more linear pathway, and it's just not our lived reality. And so there's a lot of unlearning and deconditioning that I think is taking place right now about, how do you sit with an enormous amount of uncertainty, the changing climate crisis of culture? I could go lots of ways, but I'll pause here. It's so true. And the more and more I'm reading about it, it's so true. 

Heather Nelson: I want to know how you get into this work. I think when we were children, we're like, we're going to be teachers, we're going to be doctors, you know what I mean? And now this whole leadership, coaching, and consulting world has really blown up. And I really think that it's blown up a lot since covid, too. But I'm curious how you got involved in it. What was your journey through to where you are today? 

Allie Stark: It's been a long, winding path that I really do feel like this work very much chose me versus me choosing this work. I mean, let me give myself a bit more credit. I think that it's actually both an equitable amount. So growing up, I was a very sensitive kid. If you know anything like the HSP classification, a Highly Sensitive Person. I don't feel like that research was out at that time, but I very much would have fallen into that. And now as an adult, the classification I would put myself in is a highly sensitive person who's high stimulation seeking. And those are at odds with one another at all times, because I love novelty and new experiences. I'm a very curious person. Anyway, I was a very sensitive kid. I had a pretty avant-garde mom, it's kind of growing up in the 80s, and so I was exposed to a lot of holistic health practices from a really young age. And also therapy from a young age, which now is much more the norm. And I was exposed to yoga when I was like 10, 11, 12. And really, of course, I didn't know this at that age, but I think that it regulated my nervous system. And so I just totally got hooked. I've grown out of it a little bit, but a little bit of a low level addictive personality. And so I just took hundreds and thousands of classes when I was in high school, and I got certified to teach when I was 16. 

Heather Nelson: I have a funny story about yoga real quick. My daughter, she's like, oh. I'm like, what do you do in PE? And she's in high school, and she's like, we did yoga today. And she was like, it was weird. That is not the environment you should do yoga in with teenagers. I'm like, you need to be in a smaller group. I'm like, I'll take you to a real yoga class. But that is not what yoga is.

Allie Stark: But it's amazing becoming a part of,  there's mindfulness practices in school, and they're teaching social emotional learning. I mean, God, if we could have replaced half of our algebra classes with how to regulate your nervous system, how to have hard conversations, we would all be so much more equipped in our adult lives. So I think that that's awesome.

Heather Nelson: So funny though. It literally was yesterday's conversation. I'm still getting into yoga. Every time I do it, I'm like, yes, I just need to figure out how to bring that into more of my weekly routines. 

Allie Stark:  For whatever it's worth, Heather, I no longer do yoga. I kind of burnt myself out on the yoga thing. 

Heather Nelson: So you became a teacher at 16. 

Allie Stark: Well, what was kind of amazing is there were these two teachers that were a married couple, which is funny because when I look back on it, they were probably my age when they came to me and were like, you seem like you love this. Come to training. I got certified to teach yoga for like 800 bucks. It was crazy. I was probably 25 years younger than everyone else in that room, which I think for a long time was sort of the space that I exist within. So when I was in college, I studied fine arts in undergrad, and I taught yoga. And then I moved to San Francisco, and I got a graphic design job, and I totally hated it. I just felt like my soul was leaving my body. And at that time, I was dealing with a lot of chronic autoimmune conditions that I was just really struggling to get proper diagnoses and just the support I needed through Western medicine, which at this point, I think it's a really normal story. Especially for high achieving women that tends to be the subset of people who are really hit by autoimmune illnesses. 

And so in my own healing journey, I had found a graduate program in SF at a school called the California Institute of Integral Studies, which you may know of because you're Bay Area based, and they had a master's degree in integrative health. And so I went to that school really just to heal myself, but it had a health coach certification that was built into it. And this was almost 20 years ago, so it was really before its time in a lot of ways, and that is what set me off on the path and the trajectory. And then I have had the good fortune of always being like, I don't actually give myself the credit for this. I just think there's something mystical about my own journey. I'm always like 5 to 10 years ahead of when something becomes a thing. And it's funny because so many of the women that I work with now, I just identify them as women of the future. They are bringing in ideas, thoughts and patterns that the world's not quite ready for. And I think I've always just been a little bit like in that zone where I'm a little bit ahead of when something becomes part of the cultural zeitgeist. So yeah, that was how I got into it. And then it's changed based off of my own evolution. Every time that I transformed or evolved into a new space, then my work shifted as well. And I'm also someone who gets bored easily, so I need new injections to feel excited and alive. And I think something I love so much about this career path is there's really opportunity for so much growth, evolution and development. Yeah, I get to have my fingers in a lot of pies. 

Heather Nelson: I love it. One of the things in your bio that you got to work with really, I feel like impressive companies, GoPro and some larger companies that most people like. How do you even get into the door as a coach to these big, massive companies? And I'm only thinking this because as I'm building my consulting business, I feel like the bubble of the world is like this big. And then I travel and get on a plane, and I'm like, oh, my god, the world is so massive. But there's so many great opportunities with these bigger companies, or powerful leaders and women. How do you even get into the door with those types of companies?

Allie Stark: It's a really thoughtful question, and I'll just be a bit messy in my response because it shifted in the years. So when I was living in the Bay, I had a lot more exposure to Googles, the Go Go Pros, the Airbnbs, etcetera. And the opportunity always came from someone who I knew, introduced me, because there was a need. And I am the strongest believer in the best type of marketing that you can do is word of mouth marketing, which basically is slow, sustainable growth based off of reciprocal relationships. 

Heather Nelson: Exactly what I teach my clients about. 

Allie Stark: And also it matters so deeply to me that I'm not in transactional relationships. And so I just find that when you really devote yourself in generosity and reciprocity to people, good stuff comes back around. I turned 40 in a couple of months. And as I get older, the more I just sink my teeth into, good things take time. You're not supposed to get everything that you want all at once. What's the fun in that? So anyway, a lot of that was from word of mouth. It's hard to work with those types of companies. It's both exciting. You can do really, really meaningful work, and you're also having to work through quite a bit of red tape and bureaucracy to get those gigs, which I feel like this comes off almost immediately. I'm really bad with bureaucracy, and so I find that the sales cycle for something like that can be months to a year. And I have grown to really love working with small to mid sized companies. I really find a sweet spot in the 15 to 100 person company for a multitude of reasons. Oftentimes, the ones that I'm working for are female founded, which I love. But you're getting to work with a company when they still have this secret sauce. They're scrappy. There's a grit to them. It hasn't grown so much where there is this, just these like pillars that come into place, that the word is a lot of unlearning has to happen, which is way harder to undo. I really, at this point, love working with smaller organizations. And if I'm working with a big company, I want to work with a team within the company, and not the company at large, which is normally what happens anyway. I think a lot of it's like word of mouth. And then as you grow into that space, finding authentic ways to market and pitch yourself, and that looks really different for everyone. I always say, I'm just not an Instagram girly, all the respect. 

Heather Nelson: You're not even on Instagram, huh? 

Allie Stark: I'm on it, but I don't do anything. And also I will say I know that that has impacts in some way, shape or form to probably the growth of my business, but it has exponential impact on my well being, my regulation of my nervous system, and prioritizing presence, time and space with people that I love. And that matters to me. I also want to say that those are not mutually exclusive. You can have a strong social media following and have all of those things. I just haven't ever figured out how that works for me. I don't take pictures. I have a baby, and you'd be like, where's the photos of your baby? Because I don't take that. My husband takes all of them.

Heather Nelson: The opposite. I'm always like, can someone take a photo of me and my kids? Why am I always the one taking photos? But I find it very hard, because I try to show up a little bit more on social media. I'm really great about doing a reel and being authentic, and talk about whatever's on my mind at the time. But if I'm with somebody, or involved in an experience, I'm really there, I'm really present, and that's one of the things that I really strive for. If I'm having a coffee meeting with you, I'm not gonna be on my phone. You are my priority for the next hour. There's no other distractions. And so I think that's what's so powerful about relationships and being authentic, and it's so important.

Allie Stark: Especially now. I think now more than ever, it's the depth of fullness in a relationship and feeling locked in, and making eye contact with someone. And it's funny, I had a conversation with a client of mine the other day because we're collaborating on something, and she has a strong social media presence and following. She was like, Allie, part of what I liked about you is you have a low footprint online, which just made me think that how you spend your time is doing the work that you are teaching. And again, I don't want to say that this is not a black and white response. There are amazing coaches, leaders and transformative educators that have strong followings, and I have a lot of respect. And maybe even a little bit of, I don't know if jealousy is the right word, but it's so hard for me to access that. I just can't access it. And it's like there's pros and cons. You get certain opportunities because of it, and maybe you miss out on other things and vice versa. The grass is always green.

Heather Nelson: So funny, because I was just thinking about this the other day when I was scrolling on social media. It isn't this jealousy thing, but it's just like, oh, I want to do that. And then like, oh, I think I could do that. Or, oh, I want to do that. And now I stressed myself out because I want to try all these different avenues. I'm with you. I'm like, what's next? What's next? I want to try something different. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Heather, stay in your lane. Stay to what you want. What you feel inside is the path that you need to go on, and stop with the outside noise. So I see you. I really try to limit myself on social media, but I know that I need to be there for certain things, especially my podcasts and stuff. But also I'm like, ugh, it's so draining.

Allie Stark: It's also so interesting. We live in a really noisy world, and I didn't go to school to become a content creator. I'm not good at creating content. I am an excellent conversationalist. Have me for an hour, and you're going to get a lot of juicy content. But ask me to sit down and build out a con? No, thank you. I'm bad at it. I think that it's confusing. We now live in this culture where you're supposed to become a media presence and a podcast host, and you're doing all these things that actually used to be these really specialized industries where that was your zone of genius. It just creates so much noise. It's amazing how much time I find myself when I'm not working and not parenting, I'm just in silence. I don't really want a podcast. Oh, my God, I'm laughing as I'm being interviewed on. But for me, sometimes, it's information is overwhelming, and I feel flooded, and I then can't feel myself. My husband and I had a therapy session this week, which we do with regularity. And almost instantly, I was like, how are you guys doing? And my husband just started to tear up, and was just like, I just miss you. We're still in this new stage of parenthood and he was like, I don't have the space to feel that often. And you need space to feel like space is needed for clarity. If you're in between zones, I don't think more information is the answer. I think less information is the answer. More tapping into your intuition and your inner guidance, and getting quiet, going for a long walk in the woods, having a journal, I just find it all a little overwhelming.

Heather Nelson: It's so true. Even just talking about it, I'm like, let me breathe through that. I feel you. I'm curious, because you do so much. With your business, you're doing so much great, powerful work. Plus you're a mom. What does a daily routine look like for you? Or what kind of practices and stuff do you do in your normal day life to really stay grounded? Because that's one thing that I'm trying to find for myself. I'm curious about what kind of things you do, and what has worked for you?

Allie Stark: It's constantly changing and evolving. I am not one who's like, here's a quick tip of a thing to do. But I'll just share what's working for me right now. Love it because, Heather, you're so much more of an experienced parent than I am. I'm just kind of discovering that I used to have a lot more time for myself, and now I have way less time for myself. So what's essential? I did two things. One, consciously. One, unconsciously, recently that has been really helpful. One is I took email off of my phone. Oh, that was the conscious thing. And I made it almost impossible for me to re-download that. I changed all my passwords so I'd have to go through like, I made it real hard for myself because I was just finding like, I checked my email first thing in the morning. That is like a form of technology I'm addicted to. I would say that I now probably check my email 30% less than I did. That was a conscious choice. Unconsciously something happened. Maybe in an update on my phone where I don't have notifications on my phone, but I would of course have text message notifications or nothing is notified when I get a text, when I get a phone call. There's a little bit from an emergency standpoint that I feel like is slightly, I should maybe figure that out with the child, but all of that has just kind of brought the noise down. So those are some things that I do. I'm like a walker. It's like going out walking, being outside in nature. And as long as I get two times of real exercise a week, I have found that I would love for it to be more. It's not really in the reality of our world. My ecosystem with my husband right now, I could probably swing three. It just depends. 

But as long as I get two, I love to sleep. It's my most favorite thing ever. I prioritize sleep. I am in bed most nights at like, 8:39. And if I sleep well, everything is fine. I can handle anything when I am sleeping. And then I think that there's the accumulation, which I think is so important of 25, 30 years of therapy, personal development, work, et cetera where I have an enormous amount of tools to have a generally regulated nervous system. But I've worked my ass off for that. I drink green juice in the morning, and I feel good for the rest of the day. I am regularly paying attention to how does my body feels when I'm around that person. I'm really strict with my schedule. I would rather make less money and only see a certain amount of clients so that I don't feel overwhelmed. So all of those are just little things that have taken me a lot of time to learn. I feel like if I were to say my three key things, it would be less chatter on my phone. It feels huge. Prioritizing my sleep, and being really thoughtful about my schedule, I have the freedom to choose what it looks like, which I'm very privileged in as well.

Heather Nelson: So good. The email thing is really interesting for me, because I came from events. I've been doing events for 25 years, and it's always constant. You had to be on your phone. Because if there was an emergency, I was so prone to having to check my phone. And now that my business is on, oh, hey, stop right now because I like rebranding and redoing it. And my other business is super slow. I'm like, why do I find the need to have to check my email every five seconds? Why? You literally just said like, I don't understand if I did it morning and afternoon, and maybe evening, just to feel good about it. What am I gonna miss? Nothing.

Allie Stark: It's compulsive, though. That's how it's set up. There are two forms of technology I'm addicted to, maybe three, email, texts messaging. We actually don't have a TV in our house, which sounds noble. And let me just tell you how it's so not, because we put our laptops in bed with us and watch on our screen. That's even worse. That is how it is set up. And, yeah, you have to work really hard to undo that. You haven't shared much with me at all, but just hearing like, obviously, you're in a transition. Deep work is the greatest gift that you can give to yourself in transition. You need long periods of time and space to map stuff out, write it, and put it on a whiteboard, whatever that process looks like for you. And email, or texting, or whatever that leaps in your ear is the number one thing that's gonna not allow you to do that. 

Heather Nelson: So true. I'm curious, let's go into the leadership work that you're doing now. If I were to sign up with you, what does that look like?

Allie Stark: So I always like to tell people working with me that they are very non-linear. I do not have a one size fits all. I do have a framework, which I think is helpful, but it looks really different. And the framework is unlearned, awakened and aligned. So unlearning is old patterns, beliefs, conditioning, just all of the things that kind of hold you back from your truest self. Awakening is the creative process, throwing spaghetti on the wall, finding what sticks, finding what makes you feel the most alive. And then the alignment piece is strategy. Now, if I'm with someone who's maybe working through a pivot, such as you, that's going to look a really particular way because we're really doing a lot of throwing spaghetti on the wall. What sticks? What doesn't stick? What do you want to do? And then we can go into the strategy of branding a photo shoot, developing your leadership skills, and finding your team. 

If I'm working with a leader that's established who is looking to scale their business or get acquired, or whatever else that may be that's going to look really different, I'm then generally focusing a lot on their leadership skills, the culture that they're building, ensuring that their life is integrated, both on a personal and a professional level. I kind of can play this fractional chief of staff role in a certain capacity. I'm really a bridge, and I've always been like this between the woo and the reality. I just feel like being a leader is a really spiritual journey. But in order to actually get stuff done and make money in a capitalistic world, you need feet on the ground. And so how do we keep both parts of oneself activated and alive in that space? So that's a lot of what I do. And there are really tangible, quantitative outcomes. You change your business, you scale it, you get a merger and acquisition. You start a speaking career, you move homes, it can look like a million things. I care about that stuff. I care much more about the qualitative outcomes, which is I'm teaching you to regulate your nervous system to be more aligned with a flow state in your life, to really feel like the universe has your back, to be of greater service. What matters a lot to me is impact and service. So there's a lot of outcomes that can come from it as well. 

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Heather Nelson: What do you think is the number one thing that women leaders are struggling with, especially this day and age?

Allie Stark: My god, there's a couple I would say so I'll try to keep this as simplified as possible. I'm working with a lot of women entering midlife, not all. I work with a lot of amazing 30 year olds as well. But a huge thing that I think is coming up is the way that we work as women, which is cyclical, it's tribal. It's through a lense of generosity, a feminine economy. It does not fit within the systems of patriarchy and capitalism. And yet, that's where we live, exist and reside within so I think a huge thing coming up is I want to do this differently. How can I swim upstream and make that feel sustainable for me? Because if you're swimming upstream by yourself, that's super depleting, and it's going to lend itself to burnout. That's where a lot of the community, network, group work that I do comes into play. The more you are in a relationship with other women doing the same work, the stronger that becomes. So I feel like that is a big thing that's coming up. 

Another one I feel is women giving less bucks, if I can say that. I don't want to be over-productive, hyper vigilant, proving my worth all of the time while I wear 50 invisible hats that no one is seeing, and the loads that I'm carrying. There's a level of exhaustion that has crept in that women are like no more. I think there's something really interesting that's happening. If you're a leader in one generation, and you're leading a new generation, especially Gen X, and really how to motivate because they're really different generationally, I find that work really interesting and exciting because you just have to mine for intrinsic motivation in a new generation. It's there. It's just finding the language that they speak for it. I feel like that comes up a lot. And just this constant, steady, I don't think I work with a single woman who's not hyper vigilant, highly ambitious, over produces, works harder than she needs to, and that feels like a reckoning that we are in the midst of right now. You're nodding, so maybe this is resonant.

Heather Nelson: Yes, it is. One of the things I said this year, I don't want to work so hard. Why do I have to work so hard? I've been working so hard for 25 years. I've always had two jobs. I started working at 15. I just don't want to work hard anymore. But unfortunately, I have to because my husband had back surgery. He's been out for two years, so I am the financial support so I have to figure it out. I just don't want to be there anymore. It's literally killing me, you know what I mean? I just don't want to work hard. I want to find my zone of genius. I don't want to give what I can give to the world and be inspiring. I love the work that I do, but I don't want to work hard anymore. I'm slowly coming out of that. 

Allie Stark: First off, I think it's really brave for you to say that. I don't even think that you don't want to work hard. I don't know you at all, but my assumption is you enjoy being purposeful and doing good work. The hustle is not sustainable. And I know so many women, I think that this is the detriment of the feminist movement. If I may be so bold, we can do it all. And the truth is no one wants to do it all. Women are going to inevitably, generally hold more of a load if they're also mothers. I say that, and I have a badass husband who rose down. It feels generally really equitable. But biologically, I hold more. And although the baby's crying, my husband's nervous system is not reacting. Mine's like glitching out. I just think the hustle is dead, and it's sort of like, well, then what do you do? Because the demands are so high. And every time I feel like I'm getting ahead, whatever that means, I was just laughing. And my new health insurance rates came in, and I was like, what? They went up like $200 a month. You're just like, how do I get out of this cycle? And again, I really just go back to community. Being in community with women who are saying, I'm doing it differently. It's going to be subtle. It's going to be slow. It's going to be more sustainable. My path to, quote, unquote, success is going to look different. To me, I just hang my hats. I want to be around people doing things differently. I also just find it more interesting.

Heather Nelson: I've been sitting with this thought because I meet so many small businesses, and I'm with you. I want to help that woman who has a business but wants to grow, and wants to find something sustainable, and loves what she does. And most of the time, it's like a side thing, and they have a full time job. Helping them understand how they can grow so that it can be a full time job and get away from the 9-5. I was in the 9-5 up until three years ago, and I will never go back. Absolutely never go back. And so helping them see that that is such a great path to go through, and empowering them. But there's so many of them in our community that need that. I meet them and I can just feel them. They're like, we're stressed out. I have like 80 floral jobs in a year. I'm like, well, what if you did like 20 and made more money? You know what I mean? Because we have to do more, but we don't have to do more. 

Allie Stark: My hope is that we are starting to build more regenerative models of how to be in business that are more aligned with a feminine economy, which I can speak about. I feel like we probably don't have enough time for that, but that is really rooted in feminine principles. I've watched myself as I've gotten older, and my ego has sort of fallen away. In the past, I really wanted the stage and the spotlight. And as I've grown older, I'm like, oh, my god, please let me co-facilitate this thing with one or two other people. I don't want to hold it all. And it's better when there's more of us. And I just think that there's enough to go around, how can we share? How can we support one another? How can we gift each other more business? Make meaningful introductions without expecting anything in return, and not over giving, because women do that as well. It's like, be thoughtful in your generosity. But yeah, I want to be able to allow that there to be so much flow in my exchanges and hold less tightly. It's just more load. Why would I do that to myself?

Heather Nelson: Yeah. I love this conversation. I feel like I could talk to you forever. It sounds like you mostly work with women, but is there one story that stands out? A woman that was in such a hard spot in life, and how she got out of that. I'm sure you have multiple.

Allie Stark: Well, I have multiple. Also, why I'm pausing is like, okay, so if we were to play a trivia game and you were to tell me your favorite song and artist, my brain does not work like that. I'm like, so what I'm actually going through is like, okay, who's currently in my roster of clients that I want to talk about? Well, let me tell you about a client that feels really alive right now for me.

Heather Nelson: Yes, I would love that. Especially my listeners, we need more of those stories to be inspired.

Allie Stark: Okay. I'm actually going to tell you about a client that I'm no longer working with, that I love. I worked with this married couple, a man and a woman. And I met them in 2020. I probably worked with them for maybe, I don't know, three or four years. And coaching can be a very short relationship. I tend to work with clients around this three year mark. It doesn't need to be that long. I just think that we become homies. This couple actually catered my wedding, so a reciprocal exchange, which is what I like. So in 2020, so midst of covid. They had a baby. They left New York City and moved to Connecticut. They bought a house, and they opened up a grocery store together. And they had come from really high end hospitality. They had worked at Blue Hills Stone. I'm getting the name wrong, but it's a very well known high end restaurant outside of New York City, and they opened this grocery store. And so I was coaching them on the foundation, the growth and the scalability of this grocery store, and they did what I would never recommend to any client, which is blow up every single bucket of your life at once. It just brings you to your knees. Sometimes, that just happens. You don't have a choice. I would have done this a little differently. And they know this now. They just had their second kid, and they were like, wow, this was a totally different experience because everything else was stable. I'm a big fan of, keep at least one to two stable buckets when you blow up another one. Anyway, they really built this rad grocery store that was very holistic, integrative, regenerative, sustainability forward, etcetera. And they built it in a market that needed a lot of education. It wasn't like San Francisco where people want to go get their perfect Farmers Market groceries. And even though they were profitable, very profitable, especially being profitable in the food industry, especially as a grocery store, it's almost impossible. It's very, very challenging.

Heather Nelson: I always wonder, do grocery stores really make any profit?

Allie Stark: No, they do not. Unless you're maybe a buy, like you make a ton of your margins that are so ridiculous. But they were profitable, and they had a loyal community, and they did really great work.I just kept coaxing them in this space where I was just like, you guys don't feel happy. You did the thing, and you're still strapped for cash. Working together is stressful, like a marriage and a business partnership. And they did the brave thing of closing down this grocery store that they worked their asses off for. And I actually shared this story, because to me, this is the ultimate success story, which is choosing yourself above anything else. And now they're thriving. They both have these really cool consulting jobs in the food industry, in a chapter and season in their life where they have two young kids, and holding the burden of their own business felt like, I think, too much at least for both of them at the same time. And it was brick and mortar, which has a whole kind of its own form of stress. They're more in love. They are taking better care of their health. They have things outside of work. And it took us probably two years to build the business to where they wanted to be, and then two years to actually dissolve it for them to get to a place where they were like, yeah, this isn't what we want to do. And how do we tell our investors and our family? Also, I think it's really easy when you're an entrepreneur to hang, to put a little feather in your cap from a place of pride, look at this thing that I did. I think it's just as amazing to not do it so good. So that's an example. There's tons, but that was one.

Heather Nelson: That was a great one. I love that because, again, it's like following what you're passionate about. Following where your heart leads you, and not always doing what you think is right, or the job that you think is. If you leave it, oh, my God, what's everyone gonna think? I finally had to make that decision for myself, and it was messy. Figuring out still feels messy, but I'm so much happier.

Allie Stark: And for anyone listening, what I want to say is, the hardest part is figuring out what you want to do. Doing it is a lot less hard, right? It's finding the clarity to know what's next. And once you've done that, then it's just like the leap of faith because you're never going to know what the outcome is going to be. All you can trust is your past data. What is my data that up to this point showed me? And use that. Because generally, your life follows a dharmic blueprint, I think that's connected to the data that you've lived thus far.

Heather Nelson: I love it. I literally have been shaking my head the whole time. I'm like, yes, girl.

Allie Stark: Thank you for having me. What a pleasure. 

Heather Nelson: Allie, this has been amazing. I absolutely love this conversation. Seriously, I'm like, can we get coffee? But maybe when I'm in Colorado sometime, or when you move back to California. But is there anything you want to leave the listeners with today?

Allie Stark: If you're interested in finding me, you can find me in two different places. It's not social media. So one is, if you're interested in one-on-one coaching, you can go to my coaching website, which is alliestarkwellness.com. That is A-L-L-I-E-S-T-A-R-K wellness.com. And then if you're interested in the residency, which is my global female founder and leader network, it's really just for women. It's for seasoned women at an inflection point. Truthfully, we actually offer a free group coaching session once a month called the Expansion Session, which you can learn about on the site. And that website is hellonoria, N-O-R-I-A .com

Heather Nelson: Yeah. I'm interested in that one for sure, for my personal self. Allie, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure, and go enjoy that 10 month old baby and your family this beautiful weekend.  

I hope today's episode resonated with you. And if it did, don't keep it to yourself. Spread inspiration. Share this episode on your socials, and tag me. And if there's anyone in your life who can use a dose of encouragement, pass it along. Looking forward to continuing this journey of inspiration with you. Until next time, stay empowered and connected.