Who She Is
The portrait photographer who decided midlife women were a real market
Alicia Erickson is 51, based north of Seattle, and spent 13 years running a portrait photography business before she started building fitness content for women her own age. “Social media tries to make us think that, it’s all gonna go downhill… as soon as you hit your 40s and 50s, you just don’t have a chance anymore to change your physique,” she says.
Alicia was not buying it. At 45, she quit alcohol, not for anyone’s approval, but because perimenopause had changed how it made her feel.
She had always had a level of confidence, regardless of her physique. What came later only amplified it.
“I was like, wow, okay. There’s some muscles popping. Wow, I got abs. I didn’t realize I had all those abs.”
Alicia Erickson @aliciae • 783K followers
The Before
Thirteen years of one-client-at-a-time photography, and a fitness following stuck at 2,000 for years
For years, Alicia posted fitness content to about 2,000 followers. CrossFit training, photography, fashion, whatever seemed worth sharing that week. Nothing dramatic happened. By 2023, both of her daughters were out of state, the oldest in Indiana since 2020, the youngest headed to Arizona State. “Who am I? And looking at my husband, like, who are you? And what are we?” she remembers asking. She quit CrossFit and every high-intensity workout for lifting, walking, and cutting sugar that same year.
Her income was still built one portrait session at a time, and none of the audience she was building online had anything to buy. Followers had already started asking what program she followed, and she had nothing to send them to.
Followers by March 2024 300,000
From roughly 5,000, during a December 2023 Disneyland trip where one reel went viral mid-ride. In December 2023, on a Disneyland trip with her family, one of her reels started going viral mid-ride. By March 2024 she had 300,000 followers, up from about 5,000. She still had nothing to sell them.
“Imagine if you were in a room with 100 people and they’re all listening to you speak or they’re all watching you. That would be a big deal.”
Alicia Erickson @aliciae • 783K followers
Why Playbook
She was already subscribed to another creator on Playbook. Then she noticed nobody was building for someone like her.
Before Alicia built anything, she was a paying subscriber herself, training inside another creator’s program on the app. She saw the space the way a member does, not the way a platform pitches itself to creators. When she decided to build her own program, she scanned the midlife women’s fitness space and did not see obvious competition. Nobody else was building specifically for this audience, on that app or anywhere else she could see.
She joined as a creator and built out her program. The decision was low drama. She recognized the audience because she was already part of it, and she had the content and the following to serve it herself.
“I don’t really see any other women in the midlife space doing this on this app… I’m gonna go be that person and go in there and do it.”
Alicia Erickson @aliciae • 783K followers
How She Does It
Every program in two versions, gym and home, so nobody has an excuse
Every program comes in two versions, gym and home, so no subscriber has an excuse not to start. The names do not read like fitness products. ReclaimHER. She-Ra Era. At Dawn WE LIFT. Muscle Mommy. Nutrition guides and modification notes sit alongside every workout, because Alicia’s subscriber is not a college athlete. She is a woman in midlife with a full life and a body that needs to be met where it is. None of it was written for a twenty-five-year-old, and none of it apologizes for that.
The years of posting had already taught her how to hold an audience’s attention once it arrived. Building inside Playbook meant giving that same instinct somewhere real to land, for the same audience she had been talking to the entire time.
“All of those years sharing on social and sharing on my stories and getting on and talking on stories prepared me for that moment.”
Alicia Erickson @aliciae • 783K followers
The Results
12,000+ paying members, a business past $1 million a year, and nobody chasing a fluke
Paid Subscribers 12,000+
Monthly Recurring Revenue $100K+
7-figure annual run rate Choose Annual Billing Upfront 85%+
Year-Over-Year Subscriber Growth 65%+
That figure, 85%+ of subscribers paying for a full year upfront, says more than the revenue line does. An audience the industry treats as an afterthought is, in practice, the audience least likely to leave. Alicia built the loyalty. The platform’s job was to hold it.
What’s Building Next
Two years after the viral moment ended, the audience it built keeps paying
The Disneyland reel stopped being the story a long time ago. Two years later, paid subscribers are still up 65%+ year over year. A spike does not compound. This has, for two years running. The viral moment was hers, and so was the audience it built. What Playbook gave Alicia was the infrastructure to keep an audience nobody else was building for, and turn it into something that renews itself every year, on its own, without another reel going viral.
