Hidden Gems: Meet Allison Jordan of Better Belly Therapies

Today we’d like to introduce you to Allison Jordan.

Hi Allison, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
In 2015, I developed a debilitating digestive disorder. Doctors called it IBS, but I had already had IBS most of my life, and what I was going through was different and far worse.

Despite changing my life to heal, I didn’t get better. I actually got worse. I went on one of the most limiting of diets (something called low FODMAP), ate gluten-free, dairy-free. I quit my job (my doctor told me it was my stress.) I did yoga, exercised (as much as I could), but I felt miserable.

I couldn’t sleep at night. I could barely poop (hope that’s not TMI!) I completely lost my period. I was in pain all the time (my spine, my abdomen, my muscles, and joints) – and all my doctors said was that my labs looked “normal.”

I did not FEEL normal.

This is how my mission for gut health f0r ALL women started.

I spent two years researching on blogs, trying different foods, making my own kombucha, taking probiotics, going to doctor appointments, getting a colonoscopy and endoscopy, doing all the “healthy” things – and still not getting better.

By chance, I was referred to a pelvic floor therapist who happened to know two manual therapies called Craniosacral Therapy and Visceral Manipulation. Her normal pelvic floor therapy treatments did not help me – but when she did craniosacral therapy and visceral manipulation, I’d go home, sleep, and poop. This was the first time my health started turning around, and at the time, I remember being disappointed because I thought that only PTs could do this work.

About six months later, when I was halfway through a medical massage therapy program, I learned that I could also learn Craniosacral Therapy and Visceral Manipulation. In 2018, I started my own massage business, and with every client who came in, I quietly screened them for gut health problems. I honestly didn’t think that my business would ever be like it is today. I just knew that I wanted to help people with belly problems – and I wanted to test out my skills to see if they really could help people.

Well, I began having more and more clients come to me after our sessions and say that, after our appointment, they had less bloating, slept better, pooped better, or had less acid reflux. I focused more and more on gut health problems, and in 2020, a few months before the pandemic hit, I rebranded my business from a massage business to Better Belly Therapies. I knew by then that I wanted to spend all my focus and skills on helping women with gut health problems, so I stopped doing massage therapy and started only doing Craniosacral Therapy and Visceral Manipulation, specializing in gut health and abdominal problems such as IBS, Ulcerative Colitis, acid reflux, swallowing problems, pelvic floor pain, and urinary incontinence.

As I continued to grow that part of my business and started to become known for our gut health work, I also knew that I wanted to somehow grow my education in how to help people not just physically (with their ligaments, organs, and fascia) but also biochemically (with pathogens, toxins, and things that cause gut health to go wonky – even when the diet is “perfect”). After searching for more than a year for the right program, and just one week before the pandemic hit, I found Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN), the functional health program that I am now certified in that allows me to due functional lab testing for my clients to find the HIDDEN cause of gut health problems.

When my business shut down due to the pandemic, I talked with my husband, and we invested in this program for me to take – even when my income source had gotten cut off! My husband was so supportive, and I can still remember sitting on our couch, surrounded by packing boxes (we moved into our first home two weeks after the shutdown in Michigan!) and feverishly working through my course, trying to finish it as quickly as I could so that I could work with my clients remotely by using lab testing.

Well, I hit my goal. According to FDN, I finished the program in record time. Most people finish it in six to twelve months (it’s self-paced), but I finished it in 40 days. With some extra exam time that extended it to 60 days for my full certification. That’s what you do when the pandemic hits and you have nothing else to do – am I right?? Haha.

I see the timing of me finding FDN as 100% a part of the miracle of my business’s story. God provided for this business the whole way, from the clients who found me (in sometimes the weirdest ways!) to landlords who offered rental to me for way under the going price in Ann Arbor.

Now, we work with women both locally in our clinic, doing Craniosacral Therapy and Visceral Manipulation, and internationally across the US and in Canada doing functional lab testing. I have an assistant who helps make it all happen smoothly, and we’ve worked together to help women who’ve been told by their doctors that there’s nothing else they can do to get better, or that their labs look normal, or that it’s all in their head and they just must be stressed.

Let me tell you. Pain and symptoms are not in your head. Nausea. Constipation. Yes, our minds and emotions are incredibly powerful parts of our health, but the body doesn’t lie. Through our functional lab testing, we’ve found parasites, yeast overgrowth, acid-eating bacteria (called H. Pylori), antibiotic-resistant bacteria (called C. Diff.), and mold – and we’ve helped all our clients overcome these things and end their fatigue, insomnia, pain, and bloating and indigestion.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Lol. No.

Oh gosh. The first place I ever rented (which was a God-send initially) ended up booting me out with a very scary-looking piece of paper that said that I had to leave. I had been having some strain with one of the owners of the business I was subletting out of. She wanted me to give some of her clients and friends free massages or significantly reduced pricing, and I had politely refused. I was totally surprised when it cause her to break the legal contract with me.

I was only five months into business, and it definitely hurt my self-confidence. After all – everyone wants to be liked and please, right? But I also knew that people pleasing doesn’t help anyone – even the person who’s trying to change your actions.

So, I had to VERY quickly find a new place to rent, even with very little cashflow and not even knowing if my new clients would be loyal enough to follow me to wherever I rented next.

Thankfully, one of my old massage instructors actually owned a business that rented out spaces to other health practitioners, and I was able to use a room part-time at a price that worked for me. It ended up working out great as I built relationships and got referrals from other practitioners in the space, and to top it off – most of my clients that had been seeing me in my first space did follow me to my new one. It ended up being a big confidence builder that people liked my work, and that I was doing something that was valuable!

The next biggest thing I can think of to challenge me in my business honestly is COVID. It was generally scary. No one knew what would happen or how long we’d be closed. My biggest challenge was finding a new stream of income when previously I only made money my doing in-person work.

There were two things that made it possible for Better Belly to survive the pandemic: 1) following the Profit First method, by Mike Michaelowizc, and two) finding and being certified in Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN).

If you haven’t heard of Profit First, or have cashflow problems, I would highly recommend checking out the book Profit First. I’d been doing it for maybe six months by the time the pandemic hit, and it set me up so I was able to pay myself a consistent salary with money in the bank account until I started working with clients doing FDN. There was about a two and a half month period where I made NO revenue due to COVID. That was scary. I didn’t qualify for any state or federal funding until July, so it was ALL my preparation with profit first that set me up.

FDN was a blessing because it answered both a desire I had had for a while (to be able to do lab testing with clients) and it solved a problem I had (needing to be able to provide valuable yet remote services to clients). What’s even cooler, though, was seeing the health of some of my long-term clients soar through the roof when we started doing FDN together. It was amazing to see someone getting better with me even with me not touching them (the only way I worked prior to COVID), and since then, I’ve learned how to blend both our lab work and in-person work so that we get the most effective outcomes for our clients – without them wasting time or money on a therapy that isn’t the solution they need.

We’ve been impressed with Better Belly Therapies, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Better Belly Therapies is a clinic that specializes in helping women who feel like they’ve tried everything in their health to find the root cause of their gut health problems and get back 50-90% of their energy.

While many programs and health practitioners rely mainly on diet to heal the body, we realized that for many women (and men!) diet alone cannot heal the gut. Why? Because going gluten-free doesn’t get rid of your H. Pylori, or parasite, or heavy metal in your body.

A majority of advice on blogs and even coming from doctors is simply, “If you have gut problems, it’s your food.” This is might be true for some people, but not everyone. And that’s who we serve – the women who have tried diet change and nothing has improved.

At Better Belly Therapies, we instead us functional lab testing to evaluate everything from liver detoxification to pathogens to heavy metals – and then we help your body heal from those things, naturally.

We’re most proud of that fact that, after working with us, not only do women feel like themselves again, but they are not stuck on restrictive diets (that didn’t make them feel good in the first place!) We’ve worked with women who’ve been to top doctors across the country, including Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and the University of Michigan Hospital, who’ve lost hope in ever reducing their pain, healing their hormones, or enjoying food again without pain and bloating. And we see them start sleeping through the night, having zero-pain days, and start trusting food again.

The single biggest barrier between us and our clients is that many women have never heard about the work we do. They don’t know therapies like this exist, or they don’t know that there are more lab tests that can find things in their body than what their doctors ran.

To help address that, one of our favorite offerings is actually completely free – our podcast, the Better Belly Podcast. We have so many women reach out and tell us that our podcast created a huge “a-ha” moment for them, helped them feel like their body made sense, and gain the courage to take steps in their health again.

We also just launched our first course ever, Blood Lab Bootcamp, which teaches women and men how to read their own blood labs, find what their doctors missed, and get an idea of what their next steps in their health should be. Blood chemistry is an extremely powerful tool that’s under-utilized due to doctors reading them poorly (there are six reasons why, actually, which we talk about in episode 31 of the Better Belly Podcast (https://www.betterbellytherapies.com/podcast/31)

Once you can read your own blood labs, you have power – just like reading the text on this page gives you power, encouragement, or may give you your next steps in your business or life.

Aside from our podcast and course, I am of course madly in love with our core offerings – Craniosacral Therapy and Visceral Manipulation (for local clients), and our Foundations Program, which is a six months, A-Z program where we do functional lab testing and help our clients turn their health around in six months (available to anyone in the US or Canada!)

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Hmm. My best mentors have always been ones I’ve paid for. I do believe in naturally connecting with other professionals for encouragement and ideas, but honestly, the best time I get for mentorship is time I’ve paid for.

I’ve had two main mentors in business, who are my business coaches. I found one through her podcast (The Biz Chix podcast), and one through a counselor friend of mine who loves business (Christine Kane, author of The Soul Sourced Entrepreneur). I knew both times that I wanted to choose these women as my business coaches by how they impacted me emotionally. Anyone can teach you strategy, but HOW they teach you, and HOW they approach business varies person to person. Pick a mentor who jives with your personality, is further along that you, and can challenge you (in the best ways!) And don’t pick a mentor (free or paid) who just does things differently than you in a way that makes you feel you’re not being honest to yourself or your business.

Other than that, my best “free” mentorship has been what I’ve found in books and podcasts. I heard once that if you listen to a podcast episode every day for a year, it equals about a semester of college education. Pretty cool! I am to always be listening to something educational, challenging, or emotionally maturing when I’m in the shower, driving, or doing manual tasks like laundry, cooking, or exercising. Our subconscious’s are changed through repetition of thought, not logic, so if you want to change your brain (your attitude, mindset, or that “tape-recorder” of voices in your head) then start putting voices in your head that you WANT to listen to. I’ve done that through podcasts and audiobooks, and it’s absolutely changed my life (and note: I struggled with anxiety and depression since 6th grade, so I was not starting from an easy place when I decided to start rewiring my brain).

I’ve had phenomenal time networking with people I do business with. I found an amazing chiropractor in 2017, and he and I are now friends. We send each other clients, he’s been on my podcast, and we get dinner to just talk health and business. I have an acupuncturist that I do trades with, and she’s also become a friend. We swap business book recommendations and love talking money mindset. I have a variety of friends that I’ve networked with, and I love them because I love the work they do (and am willing to pay for it), and they love the work I do.

Networking just doesn’t work well when you feel desperate – desperately needing mentors, or clients, or referrers. People sense it, and you sense it. Instead, networking (just like friendship) best happens over time, staying in touch, focusing on doing what you do well, and letting other people enjoy it (and you enjoy their work.) It’s not that I’m buying someone’s friendship or respect, but merely that money to me is showing that I value them – and vice versa. And that can lead to a lot of mutual respect and enjoyment. And then – a network!

I’m a resource nerd, so if you’re really thinking about how to network, I couldn’t more highly recommend the book “The Referral of a Lifetime.” It’s an easy read, written in parable format, and really makes you think about how you want to work when you’re building a network.

Pricing:

• Blood Lab Bootcamp – $497 (as of Aug. 25, 2021)
• Craniosacral Therapy – $125-$200 / hr
• Visceral Manipulation – $125-$200 / hr
• Foundations Program (Functional Lab Testing, 6 months program) – $4995 (includes the price of four labs)
• Being able to eat food again – priceless

Contact Info:

• Email: hello@betterbellytherapies.com
• Website: Betterbellytherapies.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/betterbellytherapies
• Facebook: Facebook.com/betterbellytherapies
• Other: Podcast (Apple): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-better-belly-podcast-gut-health-transformation/id1529653651 // Podcast (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/4EaPt4RenN1Tg2dt81ejw7

Image Credits
Allie Siarto Photography