WOAMTEC - Professional Business Women Networking
Speaker 1: My first guest I'm so pleased to have here today. I can't sum up what she does in one word because she spins more plates that I can imagine. She is just a multitasking mom that is an amazing person. Please welcome to the set today the wonderful Allison Kreiger. Thank you so much for being here.
Allison: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: My pleasure. My pleasure. I know you're so busy, so for taking time out of your schedule to be with us here, means a great deal to me. Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Allison: Which hat would you like me to wear right now?
Speaker 1: Just build up. Start ...
Allison: Okay. I started HOPE which was a passion of mine many, many years ago. I went through a terrible eating disorder while I was in high school and so we started a non-profit organization to prevent others from traveling down that path. We're going to turn 12 in December which is just incredible.
I travel and I speak to schools and to organizations to prevent other people from traveling down the same path that I did. That also led me into my day job as I call it, my career. I work for a treatment center. A brand new treatment center that's opening in Umatilla and it's called The Recovery village.
We work specifically with those struggling with eating disorders as well as substance abuse addiction issues. That's a new project that I'm working on and very blessed. I spent the last year at the University of Florida in Shands, working with their eating disorder program as well as their substance abuse program. To be able to be a part of The Recovery Village team is incredible.
Then I'm also a small business owner. I'm following my passion with that. I started coaching young women when I was actually going through law school. So many people dealt with, my husband lost his job right after I started law school so coaching became something that I could do on the side to earn some income to help support our family.
It turned into something so much more so I opened a studio in Winter Park in August. We signed our lease, we opened our doors in October and it's called McKenna Walsh. About 80% deals with pageantry because I'm a former pageant girl myself.
Speaker 1: Oh don't downplay it like that girlfriend. Tell everybody what's your former.
Allison: I'm a former Miss Florida so I train other young women that are competing in the Miss America organization as well as some that compete in Miss USA. Then we also coach young women between the ages of 13 and 24 that are just really looking for that professional polish or that confidence to accomplish what they want to accomplish in their lives. Helping them with goal setting and building their resume so that they're putting their best foot forward.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to talking about HOPE for a little bit because I think that's so important. There's so many things that you can teach and educate our members with. Let's talk about eating disorders and the problem. You said as young as 8 years old nowadays. What are some of the signs or concerns that moms should look out for and be aware of?
Allison: Sadly, it's affecting kids younger and younger. I hate getting the phone call from a mother that says, "My child's 8 years old and she's not eating. She's starving herself because she doesn't want to get fat." It certainly doesn't always start from that type of motivation. My eating disorder when I was in high school was all about control.
I was a competitive athlete and so I would push myself. I had very perfectionistic tendencies and I was very hard on myself. I didn't wake up one day and say, "I think I'm going to be a bulimic and anorexic today, but my cycle of behavior turned into something that was very, very serious. Very long-term side effects as a result of my eating disorder.
You have to look for those behaviors if your kids are restricting, if they're not eating. If they're cutting out food groups all of a sudden. If they're making comments. "I feel fat, I feel bloated." That's something for parents to really pay attention to and to focus on what they're doing in front of their children.
Don't stand in front of the mirror and say, "Oh I feel bloated today" or "I feel fat today" because in their eyes, you're perfect. Mom and dad are perfect. If something's wrong with them, or their big sister or big brother is perfect. If mom and dad are saying that, then what's wrong with them? They're going to start to internalize those messages.
Obviously watch after food time if they're doing any type of purging. Whether it's going to the bathroom, whether it's using laxatives, whether it's excessive exercise to burn off every calorie that they've just consumed. Those are the types of behaviors that you really have to watch out for and address immediately.
The quicker you can address it and they can get the help that they need, the less likely that the problem will persist or that they'll relapse.
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely.
Allison: You have to get treatment.
Speaker 1: You have this new treatment facility that you're working with. What are some of the types of treatments that you give? How can these people help you or how can you help them?
Allison: Eating disorders and substance abuse are running rampant in our society unfortunately. Prescription pill abuse is a huge problem, and statistically, every family knows somebody that's coping with this. This new facility has everything under one roof which is unheard of. Everything from a designated detox which right now there isn't anything like that. You can get detox in the emergency room, but unless that's where you want to be, there's really no other alternative.
This facility has that. You walk in, it's completely anonymous so you don't have to worry about anybody know that you're taking that step because there's a lot of shame attached to what we're dealing with. There is a full residential program.
The ideal is that you'll be there for 90 days, but sometimes we only get you for 28, so 90 days you can be there in the residential program and the partial hospitalization program which is a step down or the intensive outpatient program.
Every patient is treated as a case-by-case basis obviously, but if they're dealing with a substance abuse problem, we can deal with that addiction. Alcoholism, eating disorder, any level of that we can address. There's such an issue with co-occurring disorders right now with eating disorders with a substance abuse problem.
We have an incredible specialist who's Doctor Kevin [Wadler 00:06:15]. He came to us originally from Arizona, and is now in ... he went to UF in Shands and I started working with him there. Really a legend in this field, and now he's with us at The Recovery Village. Addiction psychiatrist with a real specialization in eating disorders, and what we're noticing is that the co-occurring with eating disorders and a substance problem is deadly, instantly.
These individuals are starving themselves, they're depriving themselves and then they're using some type of substance to harm themselves. That combination can just be very scary and fatal.
Speaker 1: No different from what you do in the pageant world and working with those girls, you really like to empower young ladies to feel more comfortable with who they are. Tell us about the True Genes for Blue Jeans Campaign.
Allison: Oh gosh.
Speaker 1: Then we're going to talk about a contest that we're going to have coming up.
Allison: Absolutely. About 6, 7 years ago I was working in a dance studio, in a twirling studio, I grew up as a competitive dancer and twirler. I realized I was in an environment in which I could really empower our youth to look at the bigger picture and not say, "Oh I'm not fitting into this size jeans right now. Something's wrong with me."
No, donate the jeans, take care of yourself, focus on health and nutrition, and being the best version of yourselves as opposed to identifying success with the size of your jeans. Donate them. That first drive we collected about 1,000 pair of jeans between these 800 kids that I was involved with. It just kind of caught on. Then I became Miss Florida.
Then those Florida contestants wrapped their arms around it. We got another 1,500 pair and it kept growing and growing, and growing. Long Tech got involved and certainly made a huge impact on the campaign as well and we've collected 17,000 pair of jeans over the last 6 years and they've been donated to organizations all over the world which is just incredible.
What we really try to focus on now is providing jeans to the local communities from which they came from. If South Florida collects 1,000 jeans, I want 1,000 jeans to stay in South Florida, even if it means we have to swap them out so they can be donated to organizations.
Speaker 1: I just got goose bumps. I think that's great. I know that it's not just women's jeans. Men's, women's, kid's, and even if they're damaged, do you still take those?
Allison: Yes, absolutely. We take everything. The one issue that a lot of people aren't aware of is that men are affected by body images too. One in 4 of those that are struggling with an eating disorder is a man or a young boy. It's something that we try to spread this message across all ages and all ... It's such a startling statistic. It's very sad and very scary. We talk to everybody about this. All ages.
We take them and if they are damaged, there's an organization in South Florida that we donate them to, it's called Treasure the Children. They take the jeans that can no longer be worn and they cut them up and they make them into quilts, and they're donated to the hospitals for babies that are born with HIV.
Every scrap is used. I always encourage those that want to start jeans drives to find organizations that really need them. Women's shelters, homeless shelters, foster homes and things like that to help provide something that seems so simple to us, but while we're getting rid of it and shedding it because of whatever reason, because they don't fit anymore, because they're just not the right style anymore, we're giving somebody else something that they might not have at all.
Speaker 1: That they desperately need. As a foster mom myself, I can tell you that I experienced ... I know what it's like. Every mom knows what it's like when you go back to school, the school starts or your kid's growing into their jeans are too small. Giving jeans to 3 kids can be several hundred dollars, and foster moms don't get that kind of money. They don't have it. Abused women shelters. That's a staple in your wardrobe that everybody needs at least one pair. I think that's great.
We do have a contest that's coming up to you soon. I'm so excited to talk about. That is the Blue Jeans for True Gene campaign that Allison's doing, For all of our [Womtech 00:10:00] members, I challenge you to start your chapter collecting as many jeans as you can. Which ever chapter collects the most jeans between now and August 1, 2013 is going to win a prize.
Everybody in the chapter will win a prize but also your director will have the ability to give away 2 free annual memberships to the chapter. Start your jeans collection and just to kind of give you a small hint that I did discover the other day, last year one of our chapters who won the contest, Chateau Elan, Ginny Bishop, shout out to you girlfriend.
She won the contest and what she did is she partnered with the local consignment shop and any jeans that they weren't willing to take, they donated to her so she got several hundred jeans from that consignment shop alone which is really cool.
Allison: Go to garage sales. Collect that way or just through your church. There's so many different ways and it's really a great message to send to the community and then you're helping a lot of people at the same time.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I'm so excited. I do want to ask you a question. For all the working moms that are out there that are busy already. They're juggling being a parent. They're juggling their job. They're overwhelmed and stressed. You now only have a full time job, you're a parent, you're busy already. You've started a new sporting clothing line which I think is awesome and I'd love for you to share it with us about that, but in a non-profit. How do you balance it all?
Allison: Really good time management. I think that that was something that my grandmother taught me at a very early age was to always carry my planner with me. Now it's on my cellphone, but it was always delegate the time that you need to delegate.
Put the things that are most important in there first so that they don't get overlooked. It's always so easy to say, "You know what? On that Sunday, I'm going to cut out a little early so I can go to the studio and work." No, the tendency for people that are super busy is to work, work, work to get ahead, but then what do you do? You just pile more on top of yourself.
I think establishing boundaries is so important. Personal and professional in saying, "You know what? At 5:00 or at 6:00, I have to shut down for a couple of hours because I need to have splishy splashy time with my daughter at bath time, and feed her dinner and put her to bed. I need that just as much as she needs that. Knowing that I've got a great support team around me. I'm very lucky to have ... My mom helps out a lot with Mattie and certainly we're a very small family, but we hold on tight.
I think that that's so special and to have that support. It is, boundaries and time management are the 2 things that I've learned especially in the last couple of years as I've really gone into my career field and also pursuing my passion. I love what I do and as we were talking before, I feel like I've got 2 very distinct areas that I focus in and I love both of them so much.
I will always be involved in the eating disorder world, but I also really enjoy mentoring young women so those are 2 things that right now I want to make sure I have plenty of time to do while still taking care of my family and my daughter.
Speaker 1: Find what you love, and you'll love doing it, and you'll be able to find balance.
Allison: Absolutely and never work a day in your life.
Speaker 1: I think that's important. You mentor young ladies. Whether we're 14 or 40, what would be some of the biggest things that you teach these women. What would be the best advice you could give our audience members?
Allison: The first lesson no matter what, and I don't care if they feel that as they're professional pageant girls or they've really got it under control as a teenager or young adult or even a working woman. We talk about confidence because when you have that, and you understand who you are, what makes you tick? What are your goals?
What are your short term and long term goals? What are your fears? Addressing where you want to be, and more importantly than that, how you're going to get there. Establishing your own road map for success, and it's one thing to have these huge goals, but make them realistic. Then break it down into 3 or 4 or 5 steps. Give yourself a timeline.
You can say, "Oh you know what? By the time I'm 30 I want to do this. By the time I'm 40 I want to do that." Give yourself a deadline because otherwise time gets away from us. I swear this year is flying by faster than any other year before, but I have timelines and I make vision boards for myself. My girls make vision boards. Where do they want to be? Knowing exactly what you have to do to prepare yourself for success and then don't go into anything without having all of those tools with you.
Speaker 1: I think that's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. I appreciate you and all that you do.
Allison: You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Tell us about your clothing line real quick before you leave.
Allison: It's been so fun. Again, when an opportunity falls into your lap, you either leap and go get it or you wait and think too much about it sometimes. We leapt and we've met a clothing designer and this was through the McKenna Walsh business as well. The teens in the Miss America Organization don't compete in swimsuit. They compete in fitness wear. There wasn't any company that was specifically providing a fitness wear that looked incredible onstage that did what we needed it to do for those girls to compete. That they felt really good in that kind of held them where they needed to be so they could do their routines that they have to do to compete.
Speaker 1: So kind of like Spanks for the gym?
Allison: Exactly.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it.
Allison: We came up with this custom couture fitness line, and you really pick what you want. You pick your style, you pick your design, you pick all the fabric, all the trim, the accessories, everything, and it's built for you. It's incredible. We've been very lucky. We're the official fitness wear for the Miss Florida pageant this year and the South Carolina.
Two really big pageants days, so that's really exciting for us. We're going into boutiques and into retailers as well because everybody wants to feel good in the gym. If you're working hard, we want your fitness wear to help you look great too.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Allison: It's working as hard as you do.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to check it out. For those people that might want to see it, how do they find you? What's your website?
Allison: mckennawalsh.com
Speaker 1: Okay, mckennawalsh.com. Thank you again, Allison for being here today. You are a gem and we love you so much. You will see her as one of our speakers soon, for one of our competent women conferences in the future, so ...
Allison: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: My pleasure. My pleasure. I know you're so busy, so for taking time out of your schedule to be with us here, means a great deal to me. Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Allison: Which hat would you like me to wear right now?
Speaker 1: Just build up. Start ...
Allison: Okay. I started HOPE which was a passion of mine many, many years ago. I went through a terrible eating disorder while I was in high school and so we started a non-profit organization to prevent others from traveling down that path. We're going to turn 12 in December which is just incredible.
I travel and I speak to schools and to organizations to prevent other people from traveling down the same path that I did. That also led me into my day job as I call it, my career. I work for a treatment center. A brand new treatment center that's opening in Umatilla and it's called The Recovery village.
We work specifically with those struggling with eating disorders as well as substance abuse addiction issues. That's a new project that I'm working on and very blessed. I spent the last year at the University of Florida in Shands, working with their eating disorder program as well as their substance abuse program. To be able to be a part of The Recovery Village team is incredible.
Then I'm also a small business owner. I'm following my passion with that. I started coaching young women when I was actually going through law school. So many people dealt with, my husband lost his job right after I started law school so coaching became something that I could do on the side to earn some income to help support our family.
It turned into something so much more so I opened a studio in Winter Park in August. We signed our lease, we opened our doors in October and it's called McKenna Walsh. About 80% deals with pageantry because I'm a former pageant girl myself.
Speaker 1: Oh don't downplay it like that girlfriend. Tell everybody what's your former.
Allison: I'm a former Miss Florida so I train other young women that are competing in the Miss America organization as well as some that compete in Miss USA. Then we also coach young women between the ages of 13 and 24 that are just really looking for that professional polish or that confidence to accomplish what they want to accomplish in their lives. Helping them with goal setting and building their resume so that they're putting their best foot forward.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to talking about HOPE for a little bit because I think that's so important. There's so many things that you can teach and educate our members with. Let's talk about eating disorders and the problem. You said as young as 8 years old nowadays. What are some of the signs or concerns that moms should look out for and be aware of?
Allison: Sadly, it's affecting kids younger and younger. I hate getting the phone call from a mother that says, "My child's 8 years old and she's not eating. She's starving herself because she doesn't want to get fat." It certainly doesn't always start from that type of motivation. My eating disorder when I was in high school was all about control.
I was a competitive athlete and so I would push myself. I had very perfectionistic tendencies and I was very hard on myself. I didn't wake up one day and say, "I think I'm going to be a bulimic and anorexic today, but my cycle of behavior turned into something that was very, very serious. Very long-term side effects as a result of my eating disorder.
You have to look for those behaviors if your kids are restricting, if they're not eating. If they're cutting out food groups all of a sudden. If they're making comments. "I feel fat, I feel bloated." That's something for parents to really pay attention to and to focus on what they're doing in front of their children.
Don't stand in front of the mirror and say, "Oh I feel bloated today" or "I feel fat today" because in their eyes, you're perfect. Mom and dad are perfect. If something's wrong with them, or their big sister or big brother is perfect. If mom and dad are saying that, then what's wrong with them? They're going to start to internalize those messages.
Obviously watch after food time if they're doing any type of purging. Whether it's going to the bathroom, whether it's using laxatives, whether it's excessive exercise to burn off every calorie that they've just consumed. Those are the types of behaviors that you really have to watch out for and address immediately.
The quicker you can address it and they can get the help that they need, the less likely that the problem will persist or that they'll relapse.
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely.
Allison: You have to get treatment.
Speaker 1: You have this new treatment facility that you're working with. What are some of the types of treatments that you give? How can these people help you or how can you help them?
Allison: Eating disorders and substance abuse are running rampant in our society unfortunately. Prescription pill abuse is a huge problem, and statistically, every family knows somebody that's coping with this. This new facility has everything under one roof which is unheard of. Everything from a designated detox which right now there isn't anything like that. You can get detox in the emergency room, but unless that's where you want to be, there's really no other alternative.
This facility has that. You walk in, it's completely anonymous so you don't have to worry about anybody know that you're taking that step because there's a lot of shame attached to what we're dealing with. There is a full residential program.
The ideal is that you'll be there for 90 days, but sometimes we only get you for 28, so 90 days you can be there in the residential program and the partial hospitalization program which is a step down or the intensive outpatient program.
Every patient is treated as a case-by-case basis obviously, but if they're dealing with a substance abuse problem, we can deal with that addiction. Alcoholism, eating disorder, any level of that we can address. There's such an issue with co-occurring disorders right now with eating disorders with a substance abuse problem.
We have an incredible specialist who's Doctor Kevin [Wadler 00:06:15]. He came to us originally from Arizona, and is now in ... he went to UF in Shands and I started working with him there. Really a legend in this field, and now he's with us at The Recovery Village. Addiction psychiatrist with a real specialization in eating disorders, and what we're noticing is that the co-occurring with eating disorders and a substance problem is deadly, instantly.
These individuals are starving themselves, they're depriving themselves and then they're using some type of substance to harm themselves. That combination can just be very scary and fatal.
Speaker 1: No different from what you do in the pageant world and working with those girls, you really like to empower young ladies to feel more comfortable with who they are. Tell us about the True Genes for Blue Jeans Campaign.
Allison: Oh gosh.
Speaker 1: Then we're going to talk about a contest that we're going to have coming up.
Allison: Absolutely. About 6, 7 years ago I was working in a dance studio, in a twirling studio, I grew up as a competitive dancer and twirler. I realized I was in an environment in which I could really empower our youth to look at the bigger picture and not say, "Oh I'm not fitting into this size jeans right now. Something's wrong with me."
No, donate the jeans, take care of yourself, focus on health and nutrition, and being the best version of yourselves as opposed to identifying success with the size of your jeans. Donate them. That first drive we collected about 1,000 pair of jeans between these 800 kids that I was involved with. It just kind of caught on. Then I became Miss Florida.
Then those Florida contestants wrapped their arms around it. We got another 1,500 pair and it kept growing and growing, and growing. Long Tech got involved and certainly made a huge impact on the campaign as well and we've collected 17,000 pair of jeans over the last 6 years and they've been donated to organizations all over the world which is just incredible.
What we really try to focus on now is providing jeans to the local communities from which they came from. If South Florida collects 1,000 jeans, I want 1,000 jeans to stay in South Florida, even if it means we have to swap them out so they can be donated to organizations.
Speaker 1: I just got goose bumps. I think that's great. I know that it's not just women's jeans. Men's, women's, kid's, and even if they're damaged, do you still take those?
Allison: Yes, absolutely. We take everything. The one issue that a lot of people aren't aware of is that men are affected by body images too. One in 4 of those that are struggling with an eating disorder is a man or a young boy. It's something that we try to spread this message across all ages and all ... It's such a startling statistic. It's very sad and very scary. We talk to everybody about this. All ages.
We take them and if they are damaged, there's an organization in South Florida that we donate them to, it's called Treasure the Children. They take the jeans that can no longer be worn and they cut them up and they make them into quilts, and they're donated to the hospitals for babies that are born with HIV.
Every scrap is used. I always encourage those that want to start jeans drives to find organizations that really need them. Women's shelters, homeless shelters, foster homes and things like that to help provide something that seems so simple to us, but while we're getting rid of it and shedding it because of whatever reason, because they don't fit anymore, because they're just not the right style anymore, we're giving somebody else something that they might not have at all.
Speaker 1: That they desperately need. As a foster mom myself, I can tell you that I experienced ... I know what it's like. Every mom knows what it's like when you go back to school, the school starts or your kid's growing into their jeans are too small. Giving jeans to 3 kids can be several hundred dollars, and foster moms don't get that kind of money. They don't have it. Abused women shelters. That's a staple in your wardrobe that everybody needs at least one pair. I think that's great.
We do have a contest that's coming up to you soon. I'm so excited to talk about. That is the Blue Jeans for True Gene campaign that Allison's doing, For all of our [Womtech 00:10:00] members, I challenge you to start your chapter collecting as many jeans as you can. Which ever chapter collects the most jeans between now and August 1, 2013 is going to win a prize.
Everybody in the chapter will win a prize but also your director will have the ability to give away 2 free annual memberships to the chapter. Start your jeans collection and just to kind of give you a small hint that I did discover the other day, last year one of our chapters who won the contest, Chateau Elan, Ginny Bishop, shout out to you girlfriend.
She won the contest and what she did is she partnered with the local consignment shop and any jeans that they weren't willing to take, they donated to her so she got several hundred jeans from that consignment shop alone which is really cool.
Allison: Go to garage sales. Collect that way or just through your church. There's so many different ways and it's really a great message to send to the community and then you're helping a lot of people at the same time.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I'm so excited. I do want to ask you a question. For all the working moms that are out there that are busy already. They're juggling being a parent. They're juggling their job. They're overwhelmed and stressed. You now only have a full time job, you're a parent, you're busy already. You've started a new sporting clothing line which I think is awesome and I'd love for you to share it with us about that, but in a non-profit. How do you balance it all?
Allison: Really good time management. I think that that was something that my grandmother taught me at a very early age was to always carry my planner with me. Now it's on my cellphone, but it was always delegate the time that you need to delegate.
Put the things that are most important in there first so that they don't get overlooked. It's always so easy to say, "You know what? On that Sunday, I'm going to cut out a little early so I can go to the studio and work." No, the tendency for people that are super busy is to work, work, work to get ahead, but then what do you do? You just pile more on top of yourself.
I think establishing boundaries is so important. Personal and professional in saying, "You know what? At 5:00 or at 6:00, I have to shut down for a couple of hours because I need to have splishy splashy time with my daughter at bath time, and feed her dinner and put her to bed. I need that just as much as she needs that. Knowing that I've got a great support team around me. I'm very lucky to have ... My mom helps out a lot with Mattie and certainly we're a very small family, but we hold on tight.
I think that that's so special and to have that support. It is, boundaries and time management are the 2 things that I've learned especially in the last couple of years as I've really gone into my career field and also pursuing my passion. I love what I do and as we were talking before, I feel like I've got 2 very distinct areas that I focus in and I love both of them so much.
I will always be involved in the eating disorder world, but I also really enjoy mentoring young women so those are 2 things that right now I want to make sure I have plenty of time to do while still taking care of my family and my daughter.
Speaker 1: Find what you love, and you'll love doing it, and you'll be able to find balance.
Allison: Absolutely and never work a day in your life.
Speaker 1: I think that's important. You mentor young ladies. Whether we're 14 or 40, what would be some of the biggest things that you teach these women. What would be the best advice you could give our audience members?
Allison: The first lesson no matter what, and I don't care if they feel that as they're professional pageant girls or they've really got it under control as a teenager or young adult or even a working woman. We talk about confidence because when you have that, and you understand who you are, what makes you tick? What are your goals?
What are your short term and long term goals? What are your fears? Addressing where you want to be, and more importantly than that, how you're going to get there. Establishing your own road map for success, and it's one thing to have these huge goals, but make them realistic. Then break it down into 3 or 4 or 5 steps. Give yourself a timeline.
You can say, "Oh you know what? By the time I'm 30 I want to do this. By the time I'm 40 I want to do that." Give yourself a deadline because otherwise time gets away from us. I swear this year is flying by faster than any other year before, but I have timelines and I make vision boards for myself. My girls make vision boards. Where do they want to be? Knowing exactly what you have to do to prepare yourself for success and then don't go into anything without having all of those tools with you.
Speaker 1: I think that's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. I appreciate you and all that you do.
Allison: You're welcome.
Speaker 1: Tell us about your clothing line real quick before you leave.
Allison: It's been so fun. Again, when an opportunity falls into your lap, you either leap and go get it or you wait and think too much about it sometimes. We leapt and we've met a clothing designer and this was through the McKenna Walsh business as well. The teens in the Miss America Organization don't compete in swimsuit. They compete in fitness wear. There wasn't any company that was specifically providing a fitness wear that looked incredible onstage that did what we needed it to do for those girls to compete. That they felt really good in that kind of held them where they needed to be so they could do their routines that they have to do to compete.
Speaker 1: So kind of like Spanks for the gym?
Allison: Exactly.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it.
Allison: We came up with this custom couture fitness line, and you really pick what you want. You pick your style, you pick your design, you pick all the fabric, all the trim, the accessories, everything, and it's built for you. It's incredible. We've been very lucky. We're the official fitness wear for the Miss Florida pageant this year and the South Carolina.
Two really big pageants days, so that's really exciting for us. We're going into boutiques and into retailers as well because everybody wants to feel good in the gym. If you're working hard, we want your fitness wear to help you look great too.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Allison: It's working as hard as you do.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to check it out. For those people that might want to see it, how do they find you? What's your website?
Allison: mckennawalsh.com
Speaker 1: Okay, mckennawalsh.com. Thank you again, Allison for being here today. You are a gem and we love you so much. You will see her as one of our speakers soon, for one of our competent women conferences in the future, so ...
