Kajabi Edge Podcast - Toni Collier
===
[00:00:00] Jared Loman: Hey there. Jared here is listening to these shows. As you feeling inspired to start your own online business with Kajabi. I want to get you some extra help. Simply head on over to kajabi.com/edge or mentioned the Kajabi edge podcast in the, where did you hear about his field? When signing up on our homepage, just for our podcast listeners, we're going to give you two calls with one of our customer success managers.
[00:00:21] One-on-one strategic guidance to help launch you on your way to success. So if that's you head on over to kajabi.com/edge, that's K a J a B i.com/e D G E. And start writing your story.
[00:00:53] Hello, everyone. Welcome to the good Javi edge podcast, where we talk to real entrepreneurs to give you an edge on Kajabi. I'm your host, Jared vice president of customer experience. And today I'm joined by my friend, Tony Collyer speaker, author, and founder of broken Kranz. Still color. How's it going today, Tony?
[00:01:10] Toni Collier: It's going so good. I'm so grateful to be on. I'm super excited about the conversation.
[00:01:14] Jared Loman: Well, I'm excited to have you here and I was hoping that you could maybe just. The quick rundown, that's a lot in your title, but give us maybe like the 15, second elevator pitch version of what all it is that you do
[00:01:25] Toni Collier: so good.
[00:01:26] All right. So long story short, I would say that people put me in the Christian pastor speaker traveling speaker box, but Kajabi. And honestly, like everything I've been able to do through entrepreneurship has kind of stretched that box a little bit, give me some new barriers and language. And so it's a beautiful thing, but in a nutshell, I'm a Christian speaker.
[00:01:44] I travel. Sikh. I write, um, on really hard topics that include Christianity and some of those different avenues, but also talks about really hard things. And that's kind of where broken crayons still color comes into play. We talk about trauma and divorce and mental health and emotional and spiritual health.
[00:02:00] And so those are, I'm kind of like. This riding the tension of like the heart and holy kind of thing. And I'm creating just resources to help women specifically heal and find hope and understand that you can be a believer in something great, but you can also be honest about where you're at. And so shout it from the rooftops, broken crayons, still
[00:02:19] Jared Loman: color.
[00:02:20] I love it. And that's that the name makes a lot of sense now. Um, I imagine that there is, is there any story behind that other than the. Maybe a
[00:02:29] Toni Collier: parent or, oh yes, there is. So I'm a mom to a seven year old strong-willed blessing. That's what we call her because it's little crazy over here. And when I was going through a divorce from a toxic marriage and transitioning out of a really experience really manipulative church, I was a single mom.
[00:02:48] And my daughter had the incredible idea to just take a 64 box of crayons and just ruin it. Rob those crayons of their dignity, stripped them of all their clothes. They were naked. It was crazy. She drew on a wall. I mean, it was pretty much. And I remember that night, first of all, I'm dramatic. Let me just say that right now for those listening.
[00:03:09] But at night I'm cleaning up all these crayons and I'm crying just all over the place, not coming out. It's crazy out here. And I just felt for the first time that my life was kind of like she's crayons, like so broken, so messy. So all over the. And I just felt this nudge in my heart and I just said, yeah, but you still work.
[00:03:27] You know, and most of us is kids. Like if we do have experience with crayons, we have broken to crayon and pick that mug up and kept coloring it. So that concept has just been a part of my life for the past five years and throughout my own healing journey, the idea of what. How can I help other women heal and recognize that me and know your broken is doesn't discount you and you can still create something really beautiful from the most broken places in your heart.
[00:03:50] So
[00:03:51] Jared Loman: very creative holding it down. I hope my daughter doesn't listen to this one and get the, to give me any idea. Bust up or crayons.
[00:03:59] Toni Collier: We don't keep crayons in the house. It's open. Do not keep crayons in the house anymore is
[00:04:03] Jared Loman: over. Okay. Smart. Well, I'm good. I guess maybe take us back a little bit to kind of like, what, what were you doing at that point in time?
[00:04:11] Like professionally?
[00:04:13] Toni Collier: Yeah, I was broke. Give me just say that right there. Okay. I was on WIC and food stamps and financial assistance. I was applying for jobs left and right. I finally got hired. Yeah. Girl scout corporate. I was helping inner city girls become girl Scouts with moms that were in women's shelters or Borst and impoverished.
[00:04:31] And it felt like meaningless, honestly. Like I love girl Scouts, love what they stand for, but I had this daughter and we had gone through a really traumatic situation in my first marriage. And I just, I wanted to do more. And even when we look at the five stages of grief, you know, in the past, maybe five years or so, there's been a.
[00:04:51] The step of grief that has kind of sprung up in the Institute and it's a life of meaning and purpose. If we can take the very thing that broke us, that causes so much pain and grief, and we can put it into meaning and purpose, then we're honestly able to heal quicker. And I wanted to do that and I had no freaking tools to do it at all.
[00:05:10] I was out I'm like 80 body. Notice me I'm in all this brokenness, I'm a single mom. I'm working a job that doesn't give me life and passion. And it was, it was tough.
[00:05:21] Jared Loman: It was real tough. Oh, I can imagine. So at that point in time, is that actually, when you decided, like, is that one broken, can still color kind of began or
[00:05:30] Toni Collier: it did.
[00:05:31] I had. Speaking engagement. Okay. One singular speaking engagement to 200 middle schoolers, first of all, at a middle school in Georgia. And I was processing through the talk and praying about it. And I was like, I'm going to write about this broken crayons, still color thing. Like I'm going to speak about that.
[00:05:51] And if I cried very hard, middle slows Republic, like this lady. She needs to go. Um, but also it was one of the most powerful talks I've ever given because it was real. And I think from that point, I realized, and I've really been living honestly like a double life. I've been home in a marriage with, you know, doors ripped off the hinges.
[00:06:12] Punched in the walls and on social media, like being fake, honestly, pretending that everything's okay. And oh, look, I got it all together. And I have this perfect marriage and we're doing this, but I'm broke and I'm tired and I'm, you know, just broken in all sorts of different ways and I'm mentally unstable.
[00:06:28] And I remember giving that talk. Hmm. I mean, people came up to me left and right. This woman came up to me after she was like, I got this women's group and I'm just love if you came and did this talk there. And so then I get another speaking engagement. I'm like, oh my gosh, people love this. And it was right around like the Bernay brown era, you know?
[00:06:44] So everybody was like, I'm broken, I'm brave. And, and they loved it and it was just timing and everything just came together. And I honestly started off as just speaking about it and then it morphed into putting. This thing, like, what does this look like as an organization? How can I really make this a business?
[00:07:01] So
[00:07:01] Jared Loman: amazing. Amazing. Well, I'd love to like, just really just drill right on into that. Like, I can't even imagine like what the, what the journey is like going from just getting a few speaking gigs to actually turning this into a profession to where you are traveling around the country. I don't know how big this is, but maybe give us a little bit of.
[00:07:20] So
[00:07:20] Toni Collier: it's interesting because I've kind of got these two brands coinciding. So Tony Collier is, you know, for lack of better words, a personality, it's a person that people book and bring out to speak at conferences and churches and women's groups, all the things hands, and that's been amazing. I've almost got like 50,000 followers on Instagram.
[00:07:39] I think I travel maybe four to five times a month. Speaking at different organizations. Well, right alongside me is my business broken crayons, still color. And we have a team of seven beautiful women from all different backgrounds, with all different brokenness. We've got single moms, we've got different ages.
[00:07:56] We've got a slew of diversity. We've got someone who's Indian Honduran. I mean, it's, it's a really, really beautiful ministry and they all do different things from operations to graphics, to content creation. And we, we started off as just like a blog. I feel like that's the easy lob, right? Like five years ago, it was like, I'm going to start a blog.
[00:08:14] That's going to be how this thing sets it all. And we did. But when we created the content, we did series every single month. And we talked about the hard things. And for those of you that are listening, that are familiar with the Christian space, you don't talk about hard things in the Christian space.
[00:08:28] You know, you talk about the glorious and the Bible and whatever, and all this. And, and we just realized that we needed more. Like more depth, honesty, more authenticity or transparency. And so we kind of became this like in-between business where it was like, yes, sure. Faith is like a touchy subject, but I really want to talk about the hard things in a safe space with people that can support me.
[00:08:50] And so we talked about like red flags and relationships, toxic people. We talked about darkness, like depression and anxiety. We had all these series. And then I remember someone asking me as I was speaking right after. Getting off stage and she said, you know, it'd be really cool if you could just like, sit down with me and tell me how you healed.
[00:09:11] And I was like, that's okay. I, uh, okay, so we got, got counseling. I had to transition toxic community. I read a whole bunch of books, a whole bunch of counseling, trauma treatment. I mean, I had all of these things and the team and I got together on our retreat and we said, what if we created a resource. That actually was a roadmap to healing that took that surveyed and took all of these stories of women who had been through divorce and domestic abuse and trafficking and drug addiction even, and all of these different things and got on the other side to hope somehow and like find the, found the consistencies.
[00:09:46] And that's what we did. Eight of us got into a room and we sat down and we said, how did we heal? And we created this roadmap that became our first product and it's course now called the hopeful woman. And that was kind of the start to the monetization side. It was like, shoo, like we're going to do this.
[00:10:01] We launched that mug in COVID, which was nuts. Everyone was home and everyone was facing their junk. And they were like, yeah, I want to actually dive into this while I have the capacity and the time. And I have all of this mess, like staring me in the face. And so that was kind of like our first we thought about Punjabi.
[00:10:23] Bri kalbas we don't know what's going on. And our rep Johns was so good. We were like, bro, we have no idea what we're doing. We just going to have to walk us through this thing. And it was crazy. People bought it, women healed we're on our second round. Now we're creating more courses now and it's nuts. And so that's how we came to be
[00:10:40] Jared Loman: amazing.
[00:10:41] So I would love to just like, even just dig in a little bit more like into what that journey liked in terms of like, Uh, launched here in the middle of a pandemic. I can imagine that you're kind of, you know, this is a risk, if nothing else. So like what, what were your expectations when putting this thing out there, did you expect to, you know, sell?
[00:11:00] I don't know what
[00:11:02] Toni Collier: we were like, nobody's going to buy this. That's what we said. Like that wasn't the expectation. It was just like, listen, we're just following what our hearts are telling us. We think this can help a whole bunch of people. We don't know if people are going to buy it. And I remember the process.
[00:11:14] How much to be charged for. This was the first question. And it's really difficult as an entrepreneur who had been doing free stuff. I mean, we're doing blogs, we're on Instagram. People are consuming our content for free for two, for a year and are people really going to buy it? And so one of the things that we thought about early on was it has to be good at.
[00:11:34] To sell and we have to transition our people from this consumer model that's just free and I'm just sitting down and I'm eating it. I'm getting full off this content to know. I actually want to invest in myself because my healing is important. And so we had to create language around why healing was important first to prime.
[00:11:52] Our. It's like, no, you invest in trying to be cute having four apps instead of one big app, right? Like you invested trying to be cute, you know, like externally with fashion and you, I mean, we have a cost when COVID hit Amazon ASOS, H and M I mean blew up or with online shopping, you invest in all these things, but is your emotional and mental health?
[00:12:15] Good enough in your mind to be something that you want to invest in. So we started talking about how has your toxicity and emotional strife, you know, infecting essentially leaking onto your family. How's it ruining your relationships? How has it really holding you back from promotions at work? Because you're too insecure to.
[00:12:33] How is it keeping you from financial increase? Because you don't feel like you're worthy enough to actually go after what you want. And so we concert into like slow leaks, slow drip, this like me. And honestly, healing is like the new black, it's the new sexy, it's like the new thing. And so we gathered all these women together by doing a company.
[00:12:53] And we, we sat down with a few other people that had done courses in the past. And at the end of the day, it's about creating that huge funnel for people to come in, really giving them the tools that they need to understand why the product would even be great before you even say anything about the product.
[00:13:08] And so we have 1500 women sign up for an online conference. We got, so my speaker friends together, and we talked about the heart and the holy everyday. About relationships and about dating and dating toxic people. And then it was also about like your identity and your words. We had just phenomenal speakers that I'm still just shocked.
[00:13:29] They said yes, but they're like, yeah, we're at home. We'll submit a video. We'll hop in like whatever. And we did this conference totally free. We got these women into a room. Your healing is important. And we drilled in that idea. And then on day two of the conference, it was five days long. We started to introduce the product.
[00:13:46] We started to say, it's super important. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to invest in? And no, we have 50 women purchase this course, and it was nuts. And we had a donor come out of nowhere. That was on the call. That was like, Hey, I just want to invest $5,000 into this. If any woman can afford it, because I know if they're going through a divorce, they may not have the funds.
[00:14:05] If they're trying to get counts. They may need this resource to invest in a counselor. And so that was nuts. And we were like, okay. And so we pay for half of women's courses because we wanted them to have the monetary investment in themselves. It would be the only way that they would finish. It'd be the only way they take it.
[00:14:23] If they had vested interest in it. And so we have 50 women and we walked them from all over the world. We had women from Puerto Rico, the UK United States, all over the U S it was crazy. We were like, are you all, this is so crazy. We created a journal with it because we knew that our live calls weren't enough and the pre-recorded videos, and the course weren't enough that women actually needed to tangibly have some sort of guide to like, track along with your healing journey and be able to read that.
[00:14:50] In the future. And so that works and then we do it again and we do it even better. Cause we kind of slept on that first time. If we're just going to be honest, we were nervous. I was crying. I was like, it was crazy. But the second time we got a little bit more succinct and it was even better. And we had 70 women join that.
[00:15:08] And it's taught us so much. I mean, gosh, I can't even describe all the things that we've learned through this process, but I mean, the launch of this course via Kajabi made our little blog, a business and it is nuts. I am still like a jock about it. Cause it's only been two years. That's
[00:15:28] Jared Loman: amazing. Well, I have to ask, like how much of this plan was, I guess, like, was your plan strategy or how much of this was pivot based upon the fact that everyone's home.
[00:15:38] Toni Collier: That's really good. Well, I'm at three on the Enneagram. Let me just say that. So I'm going to crush it every single day. All right. So I'm planning, I'm a detailed oriented person. And I really do believe in, you know, for us, like in like in the Western culture, like we, we kind of just like, we see a problem and we go straight solution and a lot of Eastern culture.
[00:15:55] And even with organizations that are based in different parts of the world, they actually see a problem as a.in the middle of a circle. And in order to get to that, they have to circle around it from every single angle and see what are the problems, what could be the potential roadblocks that could come into place.
[00:16:13] Sat down and like map this thing out, what we talked about, women that couldn't afford it. It was like, okay, what are we going to do about those women? We have to have some sort of sponsorship, however they have to invest still. And so we need to build out a one-time payment, but maybe we also build a two or three time payment.
[00:16:30] And so all of those things, when we start to circle around our end goal, it helped us to launch with some sort of strategy. I also believe I just went to a Tony. This conference and a lot of this, you don't have to know, you have to learn. And so sitting down with other entrepreneurs that had done courses in the past and saying, how do we launch this really well?
[00:16:51] What's the best way. How did you fail before having all of that in place was a huge deal for. Now, once we got women in the door, then we were winging it. We were like, okay, uh, what do we need to do? Cause, cause it was shocking that women actually bought it. So we're just like, okay, we were not planning for people to actually get this.
[00:17:08] They actually got it. How do we set ourselves up for success here and really care for these women? Because we're not just talking about a course to learn how to sell your products on Amazon, which is amazing. We're not just talking about a course on how to draw your eyebrows on. So they looked like sisters and not cousins.
[00:17:23] You know what I'm saying? Like we're talking about internal work that will last for a lifetime. And so we had to figure out. How to like actually tend to people through this digital sphere in this product. And that was difficult and we did not do well on the first round. We were burnt out. We were like, we are spending so much time tending to these women that we have not seen.
[00:17:48] We we're exhausted. We're depleted and women are getting healing and it's awesome, but this isn't sustainable. And for the second round, we had to refine some things where it wasn't as extensive. And we're still learning that. Now we have another launch coming up in three months and we got to scale more and that means.
[00:18:07] Maybe not so much lifetime, but more resources that are prerecorded, more questions that are already answered, but it's already typed out for them to go to. And those are, that's the tension that we're in right now. It's like, how do you actually show up for people and make them feel like you actually care, but audit be honest about the fact that this is a business that we've got a scale out here.
[00:18:26] Jared Loman: Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the things. Stood out to me, as I was listening to you is like, the stakes are really high here because you know, it's one thing if like, if people don't pay and you don't have to do anything, but you're talking about, you know, a very, very sensitive topics that deal with, you know, emotional health, mental health, like your success.
[00:18:45] Somewhat rooted in like, I guess people making it through this program and hopefully, I guess the in-state would be healing. So like, this is not a, if, if this doesn't work, it's potentially scary. So I want to understand a little bit more, like you kind of started telling us about like this journey, like what, what were you thinking in terms of like, what if this doesn't mean.
[00:19:05] Toni Collier: It's okay. So I grew up, my friends used to call me a teletherapy. Okay. Because even though they're pretty creepy at this point, as we're all adults, you know, it's like looking back, it's like, why are we watching that show? But the whole idea was that I, I have this theory optimistic view of the world. I am a glass half full type of girl, and I don't know why, but for some reason I never believed that it wouldn't work because.
[00:19:29] I personally been to the journey and I sat with women who had been through the journey and we found an overwhelming amount of evidence that said, if you get people out of toxic environments to start, then the healing journey has already begun. If you help women become aware and be able to even have the courage and the bravery to name the things.
[00:19:50] 60% of hearing is already done, like just from naming it. And I just believe that if we help women with those two things, the rest was just like cheering on top and a little bit of whipped cream, probably as well. But if you get people in healthy community, if people are seen and known, I mean, we come into this world as psychologist, Kurt Thompson says wanting to be seen and secure and sued and deeply know that is what we need as humans.
[00:20:17] That's what we need to thrive. It's what we need. Stable. And I mean the faster, just out there hug a kid eight times a day, they will be emotionally stable for 10 seconds. Not 10 seconds is a long time. I hooked my daughter for 10 seconds. It's so awkward, but it does something to your body when someone embraces you and they don't let go.
[00:20:36] Those are, those are psychological. And so I just never, for a million years thought like, oh, this just isn't going to work. And I am like, maybe that's naive of me, but the things that came up when we said, what could go wrong here, it was women can't afford it. Women don't finish. And what are we going to do about those two things?
[00:20:53] Well, be put guard rails in place. The first thing was art. How can we get some scholars? To answer that first need. And the second thing was at the beginning of the course and every single call that we have, we remind these women, this will not work unless you finish period over and over and over and over again.
[00:21:11] And as time goes by, what's beautiful, you know, especially about being in a. Space is being able to be vulnerable as a business owner and say, this is our first round. You guys are our first people. This is like a beta test here, you know, and being honest. And I think oftentimes it's so funny. I was on a M 18 T calls setting up my wifi in our new house.
[00:21:29] And this guy is freaking rep that I had was just. Oh, Hey, what's up? What's your name? I'm like, yeah. Yeah. Texts. You're trying to get things to, she was like, oh man, this is crazy. I've never even seen this before. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, you get a discount on your cell phone service. I mean, it's
[00:21:48] Jared Loman: crazy.
[00:21:49] Toni Collier: And I'm like, Hey dude. The technician is here right now. I need you to help me set up this account first. Can you talk about this deal later? Yeah. How about this? I'll just send it to you. I'll call, email it to you after the call. I'm like, yeah. Great. I'm not really worried about phones right now. I really just would love to get my wifi set up.
[00:22:04] I've got some things to do. I think what has happened is we have stripped away. The goal is caring for people in whatever that means. It taught me fricking love. Chick-Filet so much, they treat us better than our family and their mission is to be the most caring company in the world, not to make the best chicken.
[00:22:19] I mean, because that actually can, is pretty freaking amazing when we start thinking about it, you know what I'm saying? And they do well at it, but their number one, They're number one mission is for people to walk out of their doors, feeling cared for, and here's the deal Chick-Filet can mess up my order.
[00:22:33] They can mess that sucker up. I probably won't even go back because I'm like, these are my family. I don't even care. It's fine. I don't need any fries. Okay. I feel good about myself. And I think what has happened over time is I think entrepreneurs and businesses. I have forgotten that people want to be seen and cared for.
[00:22:49] And when you care for people, well, if things don't go well with your business, with your product, with what you're doing, if you care enough about them, it'll get solved. They'll walk away feeling honored. And that's the goal here? The course, I mean, we got to the end of eight months, we spent all this time together.
[00:23:04] We developed this relationship together. We were like, it didn't work. Hey, great. What can we do to care for you right now? And that's the goal. Yeah. That
[00:23:11] Jared Loman: that's, that's incredible. I want to come back. Actually fast forward a little bit to like kind of where things are at today and also where you're going.
[00:23:19] But I want to, I also want to diverge a minute and talk a little bit about the fact that you here at Kajabi, we're celebrating black history month and you as a black business owner, I want to kind of just get your thoughts. Like I want to get your perspective on like your entrepreneurial journey. You
[00:23:33] Toni Collier: know, it's interesting because there's obviously been a shift.
[00:23:37] Hello? Somebody there's been a shift in our world has been a shift of aware of. Um, I've gotten the chance to work with organizations like be the bridge. They're an incredible, um, racial reconciliation and education company. We get the opportunity to work close closely here in Atlanta with the king family, Dr.
[00:23:52] Bernice king and, um, and Martin Luther king Jr. His youngest daughter. And it's interesting because in the past five years it's taken a lot of devastation to produce. Right. And, and we see that in our everyday life, like, oh man, we're at a funeral. It's like, why did it take us so long to get together?
[00:24:09] Devastation actually brings people closer together. And that is what we've seen as business owners, as minority business owners, as black business owners, is that we've seen the devastation of black and brown businesses not being successful. Not because they're products. Aren't good, but because they don't have the.
[00:24:25] Not because their business can't be run smoothly and sealable, but because they don't have the clientele and the training for it. And that's just like this. I mean, gosh, we get to have a whole nother podcast episode about the historical grounding of that. But one of the things that's been very special and sweet to me is a lot of my white brothers and sisters who have invested in our.
[00:24:46] Who have said, I mean, I've become aware about the devastation and I want to do something tangible about it. And a lot of my black friends that are entrepreneurs have experienced the same big have experienced investors, brothers, and sisters that have said, Hey, I don't have it all together. I don't know what's going on.
[00:25:01] I probably got a long journey of learning right now, but I believe in your vision, I believe in what you have. And I want to give you what you may not have access to finances, training, clientele, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's been. What I would call, it's been a place of hurt and hope coexisting. You know, it's, it's been the realities that, and the numbers and the statistics that black business owners don't always make it.
[00:25:23] And when you put, you know, black business owners up against, uh, primarily white American business owners, there's some distinct, obvious factual differences. And that's been the hurt, but the hope has been this revolution of, you know, black females are the number one in fastest growing entrepreneurial group.
[00:25:42] We're finishing school at a, at a really high pace. It's been a beautiful thing to watch, you know, I, for lack of better words, like beauty rise from the ashes. And I have a lot of hope in that. I have a lot of hope in that and I do believe it has come with a little, a little bit of. I honestly do see the difference when I go to an organization and they're like, yeah, we've actually got a, uh, African-American fund that we've started here, you know, because they witnessed the devastation and now they want to help and invest back.
[00:26:12] And so it's been hurting hope. It's, it's not been all pretty obviously, but it's been very hopeful. In that I can see that there are a group of people that are like, we want to change this. We want to level the playing field. We want to leverage what we have. And that's been really, really
[00:26:28] Jared Loman: beautiful, love that, and kind of, uh, kind of a parallel to the type of work that you're doing on a day-to-day basis in a way.
[00:26:35] Any, any thoughts on just like black history month in general? Like it doesn't have any meaning to you just personally. Yeah,
[00:26:41] Toni Collier: that's really good. It's interesting. My journey with black history has been very messy. I grew up in Houston. Super diverse city pad, white friends, black friends, Asian friends, Hispanic family, all the things.
[00:26:53] And I grew up very, very ignorant. It's interesting because now that I'm married to someone who is, I mean, my husband's an incredible diversity and inclusion consultant. We built a church here in the past six months. That's based on multiculturalism here in the Mecca of the civil rights movement in Atlanta.
[00:27:11] But when I first met. I, if I'm just being honest, we're going to be vulnerable here. I was like, I'm going to say, well, we know why black people are so mad. I mean, you have all the opportunities that everybody else has. I just don't understand it. Okay. I grew up, I was competitive cheerleader. I was acting, I did this, that, and the other, all kinds of friends from all different backgrounds.
[00:27:28] This is crazy. And Houston city girl moves Atlanta where a lot of segregation still exists, where a lot of pain still have. To this day. And so it's been a journey of awakening truly as a African-American woman to sit down and understand that even my ignorance causes pain as an African-American woman to the African-American community.
[00:27:52] And so much like a lot of my white brothers and sisters, I had to learn and humble myself. Well, we just go be a hundred percent. And go through the journey of learning and understanding and seeing the idiosyncrasies and understanding that in the civil rights movement, it was clear. It's not okay for someone of a different race to not be able to drink out of this water fountain.
[00:28:13] The figures I'll tell you about it's not okay that we have to sit in a different area. It's not okay that I can't jump in this pool labeled whites only. Well now it's not that way. It's very muddy and it's blurred and it's small and it is. It's it's hard to pinpoint. And so now there's a, there's an amount of patience and grace and openness and humility that a lot of our world doesn't have.
[00:28:37] We are, we are prideful by nature. We want to win. We want to be right. We want to fight on freaking Facebook out here. And I think it is humbled me if anything, to be open, to listen and to understand, but to also use. And my platform and anything that we have our, you know, 17,000 followers on our business, Instagram page and our 15,000 people email lists, like to say, like, we can actually use our voices to say something about this and to bring an awareness to it.
[00:29:06] And if we're going to talk about toxicity and healing and abuse, That's better me included. Okay. We pick and choose. We can't fall into the pain comparison trap. So it's a part of our story. Most definitely. It is. It's just beautiful. And heart is beautiful and heart. Yeah.
[00:29:22] Jared Loman: Yeah. Well, I guess I'd love to just kind of hear like where, where you're at today with everything kind of like bringing this into a bit of a close, like this lot of, a lot of really cool, but like important topics.
[00:29:35] Um, tell, tell us, I guess a little bit about like where you're at today and kind of where you're going with all.
[00:29:40] Toni Collier: Well, it's an interesting year where, you know, fresh up into 2022, hoping that it's a better year because they can only go up from here. Hopefully knock on nine
[00:29:50] Jared Loman: quick.
[00:29:52] Toni Collier: Let him just be quiet about it.
[00:29:53] Okay. Whatever happens happens, you know, I, I essentially have become like a full on I'm no longer consulting companies. I that's something that I've done. For finances and all sorts of different companies. Faith-based not based with faith-based Atlanta Braves, financial companies. I mean all the things and I've stopped completely.
[00:30:13] I had an epiphany this past year that said, Tony, if you gave 30% of your intellectual capacity, your creative capacity to broken crayons, still color that you're giving by consulting. Then I think you can go further, faster. And so this is a big year for me and for our organization. And I've talked to our team about this in our interview, brainstorm.
[00:30:36] This is like our maker break here. We're in the third year of our business. Usually businesses start to monetize and scale around that third year, we monetized in our year and a half, which is. But you grow and monetize too fast and you break, okay. So we want to scale and want to make sure this thing can come around the distance.
[00:30:53] And so I have a lot more time now to just focus on our organization. What that means is a whole bunch of content. So this year we're cranking out products and we're trying different things. We're actually going to be launching on in Punjabi. A kind of like a, a membership portal called the. And it will be a space where you can come and create something beautiful from the broken with us.
[00:31:14] And it will be a small monthly fee and they'll get, you know, resources and podcasts, recommendations and curriculum. And we're just going to freaking go for it. I mean, we're going to put it out there. We built up the audience. We think we've built up brand trust and buyer power, and hopefully people sign up for this 10 to $15 a month type membership, where they get community and resources and recommendations.
[00:31:38] We are also launching a few mini courses. So we've got this big course, eight months long, 50 videos, 180 page journal. It's wild. It's a lot. If we are going to scale what our team has been saying recently is our funnel at the top is super big. So we have Instagram, we have all these different like partners with YouVersion.
[00:31:57] And right now media, we have our email list. Like the funnel's big, you can come in. Part of our organization, but right now they come into the funnel and they take a deep fricking drop down to the course. And some people can't afford it. That may be a too big of a step. And so now this year is all about how to we create hooks that bring them down to the course throughout this funnel.
[00:32:19] Many courses, a small. The et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's this year we're going to focus. We're going to make it pop. We're still going to offer the course, but we're going to come out. We just did a devotional in October. We have another devotional coming out in April and it's, it's just those small things, those small hooks that can bring people into the family and then transition them into what are our big kind of prize like our, our Mercedes, our push, if you will, which.
[00:32:45] And that's yeah, that's it. We're head down working right. And recruiting. We have social media interns we're interviewing right now. We're just growing and it's kind of crazy, but it's awesome. Wow. Well,
[00:32:57] Jared Loman: I can imagine that there are several listeners out there who probably have had an interest maybe in checking.
[00:33:05] A little bit of what you have going on. Uh, what's the best way to kind of get in touch and kind of connect with what all you have going on.
[00:33:12] Toni Collier: Absolutely. I always first and foremost want to appoint people to Brooklyn crayons stuff. I mean, I, I love to talk, obviously I'm an extroverted I'm here. I want to talk all the time, but the truth.
[00:33:22] My story is not powerful enough to change the ideas that your brokenness discounts you, a community as needed for that multiple stories is needed for that. So go to the broken crown stuff. So we have Facebook group about 3000 women in there. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful, safe space. It's called the broken crayons collective.
[00:33:40] You can just search it on Facebook. Um, Instagram, same thing, broken crayons, still color. So cutie and bright. You love it. We have like a peach little logo. Um, and so you can go there and you can find everything that you need, um, on those social sites. Of course, if you want to connect with me, Tony, Jay, call your Tio.
[00:33:57] And I J C O L L I E R on Instagram and my website and Facebook. I'm not getting them Twitter. It's a scary space. It's very frightening. And so yes, you can connect with me there. And then if you want to shoot a text to us, we have this kind of like free mini guide to healing. You just text the word hope coach to 9 4 0 9 0 and get that's
[00:34:20] Jared Loman: awesome.
[00:34:21] We will have all of this listed in the show notes. I do want to just check, I know broken, spelled interesting on your website domain, right?
[00:34:28] Toni Collier: We do have it. BRK in crayons.com. The youngest. They were like, oh, let's make it cool. We're like gen Z. You got it. Um, so yes. And it's that way on Instagram as well. Or you can just search broken crayons, still color and it'll pop up.
[00:34:43] Jared Loman: Awesome. Well, Tony, thank you so much for taking the time to share this journey. I know you're fresh off of a move, still setting things up and like, I really appreciate you taking some time out
[00:34:56] Toni Collier: of your day. Absolutely. I'm so grateful to be here. And I think my hope in. When saying yes was just like me. And I really hope that there's a part of our story that helps someone and encourages someone else in this really gruesome and not linear journey of being an entrepreneur because it's crazy.
[00:35:12] Well,
[00:35:12] Jared Loman: no matter what, you have one here, you know, I'm hearing this in real time. So you got your one. Yes. Well, thank you again for taking the time to sit with us and share your story. Uh, also a big thank you to all of our listeners for listening in. Um, I believe that's all we have for everyone this time.
[00:35:29] So we will look forward to seeing everyone next time on the Gabby edge podcast.
