For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode44
In this conversation, we dive into:
🎧 Ashton’s business journey and the trajectory she followed to this point (it’s definitely not the “usual” route you’d expect!)
🎧 How she started her business with a very unconventional first offer
🎧 Why her unique path led to building a sustainable business and cracking the code on attracting high ticket clients
🎧 How she picked one idea and stuck with it for a year (honestly, I can't even imagine being able to do this)
🎧 The massive investments (we’re talking $20k+) and the massive failures she made (plus the lessons learned from these mistakes and setbacks)
🎧 Raw conversation around icky marketing (you know the type!) and how to scale without losing the depth you have with your clients
And so, so much more!
It’s such a FAB conversation - very real and honest and the themes we touch on NEED to be heard, especially if you’re just starting out.
Go listen today on your fave podcast platformđź‘‚
Connect with our guest, Ashton:
Connect with your host, Jordan:
For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode44
In this conversation, we dive into:
🎧 Ashton’s business journey and the trajectory she followed to this point (it’s definitely not the “usual” route you’d expect!)
🎧 How she started her business with a very unconventional first offer
🎧 Why her unique path led to building a sustainable business and cracking the code on attracting high ticket clients
🎧 How she picked one idea and stuck with it for a year (honestly, I can't even imagine being able to do this)
🎧 The massive investments (we’re talking $20k+) and the massive failures she made (plus the lessons learned from these mistakes and setbacks)
🎧 Raw conversation around icky marketing (you know the type!) and how to scale without losing the depth you have with your clients
And so, so much more!
It’s such a FAB conversation - very real and honest and the themes we touch on NEED to be heard, especially if you’re just starting out.
Go listen today on your fave podcast platformđź‘‚
Connect with our guest, Ashton:
Connect with your host, Jordan:
Jordan: All righty. In this episode I am chatting with Ashton Smith. She is the founder and CEO of The Awakening, which is a platform dedicated to helping women in business build intentionally so that they can leave a powerful legacy behind them. She specifically helps soul led impact driven founders expand their profits sustainably, scale, and leave a lasting legacy love.
We have a really fun conversation. We are all over the place as I usually am. And I mentioned this in the, the intro. this is, this is like my first long form interview back. It's been a while, since we've been doing all of these mini-series. So it takes, it takes me a minute to get back in the groove.
don't, don't worry. We cut out most of the, the weirdness of me losing my train of thought and having a million like rabbit holes I wanted to go down. So I hope that it is smooth and fluid and fun and super enjoyable for you to listen to because we talk about some of my most favorite things to talk about, ranting about the online space, talking about marketing and lead gen, and how to use Facebook ads and like just a ton of stuff that I really enjoy talking about and I hope is helpful for you.
So please enjoy this conversation. Welcome. Welcome everyone, and welcome Ashton to the podcast. I
Ashton: am so pump to be here. Yeah,
Jordan: this is gonna be fun.
And I was just telling you before we hit record that it's been a while since I've done a long form open-ended no agenda podcast episode. So we'll see. Hopefully it doesn't take too long for me to get back into the groove, but I'm excited to see just what comes up.
Ashton: Yeah, I love this. I mean, I'm used to doing interviews that are shorter forum, but I think longer form content is combing back.
Jordan: So Yeah, I think so too. And I just feel like I, I had a ton of resistance when I started this podcast to doing anything other than long form, partly because. . I personally enjoy long form conversations when it comes to podcasts. Those are like my favorite conversations. They're the ones that are like one, two, sometimes three hours long.
I don't know, I don't have much time these days to listen to things that long, but when I get time, that is like what I reach for. I just don't like short form. And so that's why I really wanted to do all long form. But, yeah, people don't, people in this space don't have time to listen to, to a bunch of two hour conversations.
But that's like, I feel like where the meat comes, you know, it's hard, hard to like get into the real depth when you're trying to just like cram it into 30 minutes. Mm-hmm. . I agree. Yeah. There's a time and a place for both, which is why we're doing both and why we're bringing back the long form. I missed them, so I love that.
Here we are. let's start with. Let's start with just setting the scene. This is one thing that we've been doing in our mini-series, which I think has been really helpful, just to let people know kind of like where you're at in your business, how long you've been in business, like any other like stats or facts or figures, things like that, that you can give us just to set the scene.
I think that would be super helpful.
Ashton: Yeah. Okay. So I started my first business in 2017 and I ran, excuse me, quite a few before we started this one. So my current business, the Awakening, was founded in 2019. So we're coming up on our four year anniversary here in a few months. That's awesome. so yeah, quite a few years, experience in quite a few different business models.
but yeah, we landed here. We have an EDU platform, coaching platform, community platform. So that's kind of, at the core. Super cool. What
Jordan: business model? What were your businesses before? .
Ashton: So when I started, I started with a lifestyle blog. So very like lifestyle content over there. I was so trying to find my footing, like my, my mission in business was like, I wanna empower women, which is beautiful, but like also not specific at all.
Yeah. So, you know, you know how it goes. So started blogging, eventually turned that into a print publication that we ran for a couple of years. and then after that I did a little bit of life coaching and somewhere in the mix I started an agency with my husband because he is a developer. and I am really good at like the marketing side.
So we kind of dabbled there for a while. I was very much so that person that I had no idea what I really wanted to do, and so I kind of had to go through the motions and find my footing with what I really wanted before
Jordan: we could get here. Yeah. Okay. I have a couple things I want to dig into on this.
So, first, , how did that go with running a business with your husband? I'm super curious about this. . Yeah, so
Ashton: that was, it was such a short chapter that like , we probably weren't at it long enough to really get into like the trenches of, you know, the issues that could come up there. I think that it actually worked pretty well.
my husband and I are very, very opposite and I, I tend to find that in a business setting that just works. So, I mean, in relationships in general, obviously that works so well, but even in a business setting, it, it just worked. and I was very much so like the front facing person, the client facing person, and he's more of like the tech, you know, person behind the scenes.
And so it worked. and like I said, we weren't at it long enough for, I feel like some of the things to come up that would've inevitably come up. Yeah. But it was fun. It was fun for what it was.
Jordan: Yeah. It's super interesting. I've, I've had three. Businesses. This is my third and my first two I co-founded.
So I always, I'm always interested in chatting with people about co-founder experiences because they are just so different. One of my, my first business I co-founded with my mom . So like, wow. That, and we are not opposites, so maybe that was part of our problem. No, it was actually a really, it was actually a really good experience.
It was really cool. because we could, we could do a lot of the same stuff and like really tag team, you know, the, the content creation is like what we really like to do, cuz we're like very organized and super nerdy and like to get shit done. So we were, we were, we were kind of a, I don't know, can you call yourself a power duo?
Is that like, egotistical to say that I, that's how I feel like when my mom and I get together, we're just like, we're pretty intense for people. , I guess is what I'm saying. But, no, I love that. Yeah. My husband is not that way. So that would be a very different style of partnership for sure. But it does work.
Okay. So let's, fast forward back to like the present moment then, and talk about this current business.
You've been in business for almost four years now. So what has that trajectory looked like? Has it been slow, steady, has it been quick? Has it been up and down? What, what has that looked like?
Ashton: Hmm. I have so many questions for someone that answers that question and says it's been so great and there's been no downs and it's been all ups and
I have so many questions for that person. so my journey, it's definitely been a lot of ups and downs and one of my favorite things to do is like pull back the curtains on all of it, because I just think that in the online space, you know, you just see. One version of what the process really looks like, and it tends to look like fast success.
And it's not even like we're meaning to do that, you know, we're just, we're sharing about the businesses that we're, we're proud of and that we've spent time and energy building, but there's so much that's lost in translation when it comes to the process. So for me, I always tell people that like, fastest success was not my story at all.
I have a lot of friends that, you know, they went to college, they went to school, and then they, you know, dove into the corporate world for a while, which gave them a lot of, in realtime experiences, and they were able to kind of find their footing with, you know, what they were good at. And then when they dove into business, they were able to bring all of that to the table in what they were building.
And so their trajectory, you know, they, they hit specific miles. , you know, some would consider in a very quick timeframe, but for me, that just was not my story. I went to college for business. I was very much so the person that never fit in though, because I didn't want to take the typical corporate path.
I feel like my brain is equal parts strategy as well as like creativity. And that very much so comes from my parents being that way. And so I never really felt like I fit in, had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew that business was broad. I am, I come from a family of entrepreneurs, so I'm a sixth generation entrepreneur.
And so I felt like that was in my blood, but I didn't know what to do with it. So when I dove into business in 2017, I was just like, okay, I know that I can empo, empower, and inspire people. We're gonna roll with that. and so like I said, I went through those series of businesses and then we founded this business and.
When I started this business, I was really serious about bringing my passions and my expertise to the table, but I was also a lot more serious about like the profitability side because that's something that I didn't really have in my business before with our print publication. we built, you know, a great community and movement and, you know, we sold copies of our magazines, in so many places in the world.
But, you know, we never really reached the level of profitability that I wanted. And I knew that I wanted to go full-time in my business and I wanted to have that freedom and that flexibility and do what I love full-time. And so that was the intention that I brought into the Awakening our current company.
And so I moved honestly, really methodically and slowly, for the first few years. And I know that there's a time and place to like adapt and make quick decisions. And then there's a time and place. To stick with one thing and see it out. and that's the path that I took. So when I launched our business in 2019, we started with one offer and I just started by building the community, by building, rapport with our community and kind of becoming known for a few things.
and perfecting our first offer, which was a membership. And that's usually not the trajectory that I would recommend to people. but that's just the one that I happened to take. And so I focused on that for literally 365 days. The following year. We introduced coaching, focused on that for a year. The following year we introduced our group program, focused on that for a year.
And it's not that I like said I'm just gonna go one year at a time. It's just that I really wanted to see it through with everything that we were doing. And I wanted to be intentional versus just going through the motions and throwing spaghetti at the wall, which I feel like you can tend to do in those early stages.
Yeah. So. It's taken time for
Jordan: sure. That is so interesting and so different than I feel like what anybody does and to be honest, would drive me up the freaking wall. Like, I am so impatient. I am like such an impatient person. So like , I, I don't like, I don't think I could stick with anything for 365 days if I saw that.
It wasn't like just totally popping off. You know what I mean? like, I don't know. That's really cool though, because obviously it's worked.
Okay. So there is, there's literally so much in that, that I wanna dig into. And I don't usually take notes, but I was like taking notes cause it's like, I don't wanna forget this.
I don't wanna forget this. I don't, cuz I wanna follow up. So, I want to talk about starting with a membership because like you said, that's not typical and I also don't typically suggest that people do that, but I know several people who have done that and it has worked. And so I wanna talk about that a little bit and why you made that decision and why you think you were able to get it to work.
one other thing that I wanna chat about is this piece of like, pulling back the curtain, like being transparent. And I'm super passionate about that too. I mean, obviously that's like, that's our whole shtick. That's like what we like to talk about and what we like to do. And I think it's, it's a scary thing for people to do in our space.
Like you're working with business owners, right? Mm-hmm. , I work with business owners and so when you are. helping people build a business like you have to in this space. I feel like it's the expectation that you have to present your own business as being successful and having done things well and right and quickly and all of these things that like, I feel like people think that they have to do their marketing like that and almost that you have to be super successful compared to your clients.
And what I think is really interesting is that just in like the last one or two weeks, I've had multiple clients of. specifically say, you know, I actually really like working with you because I don't feel like you're so far ahead that you can't even actually understand my questions anymore. Because they've had experiences where they've worked with these people who are like, oh yeah, I made like a million dollars and like half an hour, and now all I do is just like, sit on the beach and like, don't, I don't even know how my business runs.
It's really hard for people at that level to actually give you practical, tactical advice versus me, I'm like, oh, I actually just did that like a month ago. Let me tell you how I did it and, and how it's going and you know, how I arrived at this conclusion. And I don't know, I, I actually think it's a total mistake for people to paint a picture that's not accurate when they're trying to sell people their
Ashton: services.
I fully agree and I think every entrepreneur listening. uses the online space to grow and build their business. I feel like we can all relate to the pressure that we sometimes feel, to almost appear like, you know, we just have it all together all the time, and we are the authority and we are, you know, quote unquote perfect.
And we just have it all figured out and together. And I just think that there's an element of building authority and, and owning your expertise. Like, don't hide, don't like suppress that. But also I feel like there's so much power to be had and like vulnerability and transparency. And I've had so many people that have worked with me one-on-one or worked with us in our programs because I was honest and upfront about like some of my biggest failures.
And that's relatable. That's like human, it's, it's human, you know, to be imperfect and people come together in that, you know? Yeah,
Jordan: yeah, totally. I just, yeah, I don't know the whole. , I've been really on a rant lately about the online space, and this is exactly why, because I just feel like there's so much dishonesty and just misinformation really is more like, like what it is.
And it, and I don't even know if it's people giving misinformation on purpose saying, you know, you have to present in this way in order to like, get people to pay you money because I, I just don't, it's not like anyone's out there telling you that for the most part, maybe some people, but it's more like you said, the pressure and the expectation of like, well, if I'm taken, if I'm gonna be taken seriously, I have to have done certain things, or I have to be more successful than my clients.
Or like, I don't know, most of my clients maybe make more money than me, I would say, because I have a baby business and a lot of them have like really established businesses and they've been arou around for a while and they're just looking to further scale and. . I don't know. I'm not trying to like talk about that.
Exactly. Let me like change gears here. Let's take it back to your business model, cuz I want to talk through a couple things. One, how you even settled on picking an idea and sticking with it for a year because that's like totally crazy, but also cool.
And then why you started with a membership. So let's, let's start there. Mm-hmm. ,
Ashton: I love this conversation. And again, to reiterate, if you're listening, I would never recommend this to a beginning entrepreneur. usually I recommend the opposite to your point because it doesn't make sense at all. but this just happens to be like how I got started and, I think part of the reason why I chose a membership, number one, I.
I wanted a community type of environment. I had already built so much of that with the print publication community. and so I wanted a community environment. I wanted to create something that I could easily design as an m MVP product. for those that don't know, a minimum viable product that's created for the purpose of testing, the beauty of creating a membership was that it was a month over month offer so that I could change it.
Like I could receive feedback from our members, I could change it. I could literally co-create the space with them, and optimize it and create it to be exactly what they wanted and what they needed. So the membership we launched in January, 2019 is literally so different from what we have today cuz we've co-created it with our community.
That was another thing. And then I also, of course, I love the element of recurring revenue that a membership would create. And I think probably one of the biggest things of all that allowed this to work in my favor is I was, I was also thinking of the long-term trajectory. What could happen if this membership really took off, if this membership allowed me to create a tight-knit community of 50 to 70 people, which is kind of what we did, what we got to by the end of the year.
That's all I needed to have a warm pool of people to then fill our beta spots for our one-on-one. So even though I've spent longer perfecting and optimizing offers, a lot of it has also been networking and relationship building. So that as we tiered out, we added to our offer suite, we had people that were hot and ready immediately wanting to dive in.
And so from that point on filling programs, , I don't wanna say it was quote unquote easy, like it involved work, but it, it, there wasn't that much resistance there because I had already built the community. so that's just kind of was my path and why I chose that.
Jordan: Yeah. And one part of that that you didn't specifically mention but kind of alluded to is when you build a membership, you really have to crack the code on like leg gen and messaging and all of these things because you are going for volume.
Like you're, you have to get a certain, a certain, like critical mass behind you and your brand and your message and your product for your membership to even be a thing. Like you can't have a membership with five people in it, you know? So if you, by, by doing it backwards, that's why then everything else was easy because it's like, well, you already, you already have the audience.
If you have an audience big enough to sell, a membership and fill a membership. Well, of course you can fill five one-on-one spots, like that's gonna, that it is gonna be easy. It is gonna be easy because the people are there. that's what we've found too. And we did actually things completely opposite.
So, you know, started with very high ticket one-on-one, done for you services, and then did a group program and then did a membership, which I feel like is typically the trajectory because by the time you get to that third offer, that membership style product, you've been working so long on building your audience that then you have enough of an audience to launch something that takes more people to fill, you know?
So I feel like that, like it, it's interesting that you were able to do it the other way. Makes sense that that's why the, the filling the one-on one spots is easy. And that's what we find too. Like we, we never have to promote our one-on-one. Like why would, why would you, you know, you have enough people in your inner circle who are already interacting with you on a regular basis that if you have a spot, it's probably gonna go to somebody who's already working with you in some capacity just at a lower level.
I think that's really cool. so then, yeah. Yeah. So interesting. Okay. Membership and then one-on-one and then group and you stuck with each for a year. I just, I just can't get over this .
Ashton: I know I did. And like when I say stuck with it, I just mean that I didn't introduce any new offers, kind of like in that timeframe.
but I mean, for perspective, when we launched coaching, like all of our spots were full, but I was. Very much so, like figuring out how I wanted to structure those containers. So how I launched one-on-one is not what it looks like now. And so for me, it just happens to be like that allowed for the space that I needed to perfect offers.
And I think too is like, even though we needed a level of volume for the membership, once that was built, it's almost like the volume requirement wasn't as high as a lot of people think. Because when you have multiple offers and you have people that are going into, you know, each of those offers, you can like, you can scale, you know, fairly quickly with that.
but yeah, I mean obviously we were working on other elements of the business. I just didn't want to introduce too many things at one time because I, I'd also done that in the past as well. And I think that you can easily just like veer off the path and veer off a focus.
Jordan: but yeah, just worked for us.
No, for sure. for sure, for sure. And I, I feel like most. Most business owners fall into that camp of like, they just want to launch a bunch of different offers because it's fun. Like creating an offer is totally fun. Like, I get it. I, I've done it. I've, I totally can relate to that. I feel like still, I just told my husband at the end of 2022, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna focus on the offers that I have cuz I know that they work.
And then literally a month later created a new offer. I just could not help myself. I, I can't. And I think most people can relate to it because it's just so fun. But it is, it's totally a distraction. Not always, but it is. It's a, it's a time and energy suck for sure. And money, cuz usually you have to have someone like build out things for you if you're not doing it yourself.
And if you're doing it yourself, then it's even more of a time and energy suck. But, It's just so fun. But I, I agree. I, I wish everyone could channel your level of like, focus and dedication to just doing one thing and doing it well and, and you really did. Like, it's almost like you gave yourself like a one year testing phase is like, how it seems, is like this is the year that I'm gonna like really perfect this offer.
I think that's a cool frame to use.
Ashton: Yeah. I'm curious too, like, do you know your Enneagram or your human design? Mm-hmm. .
Jordan: What's your engram? I'm an Enneagram one. Okay. And I'm a manifesting generator. Okay. Yeah. I knew that ,
Ashton: I knew that a hundred percent. Yeah.
Jordan: usually people aren't surprised when I tell them any of my personality test results.
yeah, my number one strength is achiever and my number two is competition, which I usually turn onto myself. . So I'm like constantly just trying to do better at everything. .
Ashton: I love that. Yeah. I'm a Enneagram three and then I'm a projector. Mm-hmm. . But I tend to work with a lot of manifesting generators. A lot of sevens.
Yeah. and some ones, but I, even though like by nature I'm actually a really impatient person. I feel like for whatever reason in a business capacity, I just have the ability to like, see the vision, see how to reverse engineer, and then to like stay patient with like the foundations that need to be laid.
I mean, I'm not perfect at that, but I feel like that's why I tend to partner with people like that because you have all the ideas and that's what lights you up. Yeah. and it's figuring out how do we like, bring all of these things to life, but prioritize
Jordan: in order to get there. For sure. No, I, I'm a big fan of all of that.
fun fact, patience. Shows up in my human design chart multiple times. That's like the number one lesson in life that I have to learn. So, , if that tells you anything about how bad I am at it, I, I'm, I'm, I'm not patient. I'm not a patient person. I'm the type of person who, when you move into a new house, every single one of my boxes is unpacked within a week.
Everything is exactly where it goes. And I've also gone and bought all of the new furniture for every single room like that. There is no other way , you know what I mean? . It's, that's amazing. It's not a good thing. Always. drives people nuts. Drives my husband nuts. but our house looks great. . That's a part.
okay, so here's one question. Here's one question that I have. that again, like I, I think transparency context like. , like really giving picture, giving a, a good picture of like exactly what you're doing and, and where you've come from, I think is super helpful for people listening.
Would you, would you be willing to give us some kind of just like general trajectory in terms of like revenue from the time that you started until now? I think that would be helpful too, too, so that, especially since you really focused on one offer at a time, I would love to know how that has changed.
Mm-hmm. .
Ashton: Yeah, I'm also happy to share some crazy, crazy stories like the time I lost 20 k, went into massive debt .
Jordan: Oh, yeah, yeah. Let's do it. Yeah, let's start, let's go there.
Let's
Ashton: start there. That sounds great. So what I haven't mentioned in 2019 when we started this business, we started the membership. Obviously, like you mentioned, you're focused on high volume with an offer like that. and at that point I was just so ready to get the business off the ground and to really start generating a substantial profit.
that was really what I felt like I needed and I was willing to do whatever it took in order to do that. And so, I ended up hiring an ads and funnels expert. have a lot of clients that have had great experiences with that we're, gonna be investing in that here soon. But I think the point being is that we were in our infancy stage and I didn't have, you know, a fund built up that we were, you know, going to allocate to something like that.
So, ended up spending $20,000 working with someone for a few months, and it was very much so the communication was very much so, yes, your business is ready for this. Yes, we can create, you know, incredible results for you. You're gonna make this investment back plus, you know, money on top of that. Very big promises, which should have been red flags.
But what was ironic is that this person actually worked with a really, like, well-known, established entrepreneur in the space. Like, I'm not gonna mention the name, but if I did, a lot of you would know who they. . But the point being is I think that number one, I didn't take ownership and responsibility of knowing what my business could handle at that stage.
You know, trying to jump the gun to a place where we weren't ready to go. And then also partnering with someone that wasn't really willing to be honest with me. Because to your point, if you're going to promote a low ticket offer, if you're going to run ads, I mean, you've gotta have like an offer that's proven.
You have to have marketing and messaging that's proven. There has to be a lot of pieces in place that really, in my opinion, should be proven from an organic perspective before you ever go to paid. But lesson learned, so did that, spent $20,000. and like I said, that wasn't money that I had and at this point in time, I was still full-time in my job as an office assistant.
and so there was just a lot of pressure that I was feeling. And I mean, for probably one to two months after that investment wrapped like. . I was just so like, I don't know if depressed is the right word, but just, you know, so, so mortified, embarrassed, upset, questioning everything. Like, clearly I'm not cut out for this.
How could I be so stupid? You know, I felt so much, guilt because I, I actually recently had gotten married to my husband. so we were about a, a year into being married. And so, you know, just a lot of, just a lot of emotion that came with that. and that's really where it led to like a fork in the road for me.
Like, I was like, I will do this by the end of the year. I will find some level of stability and replace my full-time income by the end of this year. Or I'm gonna have to, like, I'm gonna have to do something different. I don't know if I'm gonna continue forward. so that. , how this business actually started was like straight out the gate.
Massive failure. Oh
Jordan: no. Massive investment in massive failure. And gosh. Okay, so this is, this is really interesting, because I wanna give, an opposing example, but then also talk about all of the middle in between and then try to try to pull out some tangible takeaways from this. Cuz I think that this is like a really, really, really great thing that we should pick apart and dive into a little bit for people.
So, for context, cuz you probably don't know this, I started my business the exact same way cuz this is my third business. And I had tried, like I had done the slow growth study thing, like, we're gonna like bootstrap and like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. No, no. I'm like this business is gonna be it.
This is the thing. I know it's gonna work. I've got $20,000 here that I'm willing to throw down on it. , I'm gonna go hire this Facebook ads agency to build out my ads for me. Like immediately, immediately I had gotten two clients just like, kind of by accident. And I was like, oh, okay, well yeah, this is gonna work.
so very interesting that we did the exact same thing. funny enough, when I approached this company to do my ads, I told them I wanna build out a passive income funnel and here's what I want it to be. And thank God this gal was like, Uhuh, no . Nope. That's not what we're gonna do. What we're gonna do is build out a funnel for your high ticket services and we're gonna get money coming in, and then we're gonna take that money and reinvest it back into the funnel build and the ads for your passive income.
We're not gonna do it any other way. And she and I interviewed 10 plus. Facebook ads agencies and funnel strategists and you name it, in about a two week span. She was the only person who said that. I was like, okay, this lady knows what she's talking about. I couldn't believe it. And I even asked a couple of other people about it cuz I, I, she wasn't like final call.
And so when I had calls with some of the other people, they were like, oh, I don't know if you really need to do that. And I was like, I just know. I just know she knows what she's talking about so let's do that. And it exactly worked. And you know what? My passive funnel sucked and didn't make any money
Wow. So she saved me. And, and so the actionable thing here that I think is interesting is the fact that this person pretty much like shot my dreams down on the passive funnel and was like, no, this is what we need to do. Cuz I don't think that's a good idea to start with that. And the exact same situation for you.
They like, they oversold you. on your own dream instead of being like realistic about, because they see this stuff all the time. They should know, you know?
Ashton: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's just, it's such a good take away for people listening, like trust your gut, interview multiple people. I think, you know, for me, I was so naive and new to the space at that point that like, I would've just gone for anything.
And I'm such a believer and I'm, I'm super, like if someone tells me something, I just expect it to be like a no. You know, thing. Cause that's just how I am too. Like if my clients come to me with, you know, a suggestion like I had, I'll be like, I highly advise not, no, yeah. Here's what we should do instead.
Cause I wanna be real with people and I wanna see people succeed. And so I think trust your gut interview people, and, you know, know what stage of business you're in as well. And like also be real and look at the numbers too. Yeah. Like, it makes so much more sense for you to push ads to a high ticket offer when you're first starting.
Build that base, have a fun that you can allocate to something like that. and I think the other big thing here too is like, it doesn't really matter, how much of an authority some people look like. It doesn't matter necessarily who they work with or what they claim. I mean, I'm not saying not to trust people, but I'm just saying you need to, you need to protect yourself first.
Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. for sure, for sure. And, and this was, I, okay, I wasn't gonna go down the rabbit hole earlier, but I am gonna go down it a little bit right now because this is something I've been talking to some of my friends about, my friends, my online friends, about the fact that it's frustrating to me that I feel like the least honest that you are and the least forthcoming is, is going to correlate with being more successful.
And the people that are like more honest and more transparent and more like, Hey, I actually don't know. I'm pretty sure I can help you, but like, I'm not gonna like sell you something. Like I just had some sales calls recently and was meeting with these folks about something that they did and I was like, I'm gonna be real honest with you.
Like, I don't know the answer to that because that's like part of what we would have to figure out together. Like, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that I know something that I don't know. And unfortunately, That sometimes doesn't get the sale. And, and you have to be okay with that. And I think we all need to be a little bit more aware of that on the, on the consumer side, that if someone is overly confident, there's like a f I don't know, 75% chance that they're bullshitting you, you know, maybe higher.
Um mm-hmm. . And, and it's frustrating because I feel like, you know, they're, you wanna be confident in your services. And this is where I think things get really tough for, for quote unquote heart centered entrepreneurs. And, you know, people who, who have their clients' genuine interests at heart is because they aren't as good at sales and marketing because they're not willing to bullshit people and lie about what's possible.
And like, I just, I think that that sucks. And it's not an online space thing, it's a general sales and marketing society problem. and it's just a bummer. I don't know. I'm sorry to bring everybody down, but it frustrates me.
Ashton: No, it's, it's a good conversation to have. I feel like people like you, like you have the ability to kind of call people to a higher standard at a higher level, you know?
And I think at the end of the day, what is so great about, you know, landing a sale or hitting X revenue milestone, if you have to do it in a way that's not honest and that's slimy and not real, you are not gonna be happy. Like, you can suppress that for a period of time. But like, if you're not operating out of integrity, you'll never be happy with where you're at.
Like, there will be so many inner problems and issues because you're not operating out of
Jordan: integrity. Yeah. I wanna get your take on something too that's maybe a little, I've never said this publicly, I don't think, but I've definitely said it to people behind the scenes, which is, I know a lot of people listening to this want to be very successful financially, and they also genuinely care about their clients. I feel like in order to be like extremely successful financially, you have to actually care less about people. I, I think it actually is a barrier to being, and I, and I'm talking about like extreme amounts of money here, like.
like huge names that we see because you cannot please everyone and you cannot help everyone. And that I feel like is, is really hard. Like when I think about how I work with my clients, like, and I'm sure you, and I'm sure a lot of people listening, like we're very invested and that's actually, I don't feel like super sustainable in terms of like really scaling and growing a business because you, you can't do that to that extent.
I don't know this. , I've never talked about this, so I'm actually having kind of hard, a hard time putting words to it. But does that make sense, ? Yeah,
Ashton: it does make sense. And I think to your point, I'm still navigating some of this as well because this is one of the reasons why, for me, like I actually have never come out with a course in our current business.
And one of those, one of the reasons being number one, I, I've never really had the best experience being a course purchaser. and number two, I just, I love being hands on with people. And even though I have a membership, anyone that's in that membership will tell you like, I don't understand why she's not charging more for this.
Because I answer every question. I go live like we meet on Zoom and there's this element of connection, and intimacy that I'm still able to bring there. Whereas with some of these more quote unquote scalable offer, I personally have a hard time creating and releasing things like that because I do wanna work so intimately with people because I am so invested and like, I wanna hear from you on Voxer and I wanna talk about business strategy and I wanna be there on the shitty days.
We are questioning everything. And for me as being on the receiving end, that's where I've always been the most impacted and transformed. And so I can relate to what you're saying.
Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just, to like, take it full circle back to what we were talking about earlier. The people that are like massively successful and have extreme scalable businesses with tons and tons of money, I mean, I'm talking like millions and tens and hundreds of, millions of dollars plus per year in revenue. , you can't look at your clients the way that I feel like we look at our clients. You just can't.
And, and I think there's some, I don't know, there's some, like you said, downsides to that as a person, as like a business owner of a business like that, that you have to almost like be able to separate yourself from your clients a little bit. I don't know. I, I don't know. I, I go back and forth when I think about this a lot because I'm like, well, I do wanna make a lot of money, but I also wanna be able to sleep at night
And I am just not so sure, like already, like, you know, client work keeps me up at night sometimes being like, oh my gosh. Like, how are we gonna make this work? What, you know, because we're invested again, like, we're so invested that. , it's, it's a different type of like, energy drain and you, you almost have to look at your clients more as like a stepping stone to a revenue goal in order for you to hit some of those like, ridiculous numbers.
And, and I just don't know. I think people need to like, maybe call me on this if this is bullshit. But, that's how it feels. That's how it feels to me from where I'm at. I just don't understand how it's possible any other way. Mm-hmm. .
Ashton: Yeah, and I think like, the cool thing when I think about like, businesses that have really scalable models that serve like thousands or hundreds of thousands of people is like, your life is able to touch and impact a lot of people, but in a way, depending on what it is, it's, it's kind of more at the surface.
Mm-hmm. versus providing actual depth. And that's where, you know, I. You have to be honest in your marketing and you, you don't wanna overpromise and you wanna be clear about who these, these, offers are a good fit for, right. Like, you never wanna promise you're gonna have an intimate one-on-one experience if it's a course that's diy.
Right? And I think that that's the perk. And like I'm also in, in that side of things, like I would love to impact more people, but also you lose some of the depth. And so I feel like it's a very, for sure that's a good
Jordan: way to put, it's interesting one that's a good, it, it brings to mind an ad that I saw a couple days ago.
I don't know what app I was on Instagram or Facebook. And I, I'm not calling this person out cause I actually don't even know whose ad it was. I didn't even look at whose name it was. But it was something like, I make $75,000 a week off of like a 700 person membership and here's how, and I. . I did the math and I was like, okay, so those people are paying, I think it was like 500 bucks a month and there's 700 people in there.
Like, what kind of value are they really? I just don't, I don't know if, if I feel good about that. That feels like something about that, that messaging to me just feels icky. Like you're making $75,000 a week, like, but you're serving 700 people at one time. Like what? I don't know. Like what are they actually getting?
Mm-hmm. .
Ashton: Yeah. And I think the other issue I have with marketing like that is that it's so centered on shining the spotlight on the number or the amount of money that's being made and the, the CEO or the host or whatever, it's all about them and the money that they're making and they're teaching you exactly how to do that.
And I feel like over the last few years, I have just felt more and more compelled. To shine the spotlight less on things like that and more on like, how, how am I partnering with people that care about money but care about more than money? Because when you work with people that only care about money, I mean, I just have, I have no interest in that because I'm, I'm like, I wanna work with people that truly care about what they're doing and who they're working with and the impact they're creating in the world.
and I also don't want people to just work with me because they know how much money I make or how many people I serve. I want them to see the skillsets that I bring to the table and see how that can amplify their goals,
Jordan: you know? Yeah, yeah. No, totally. And this is, I think the catch 22 in the online space is that I kinda have to talk about how much money I made and the fact that I was quickly successful because otherwise, like how do you, well, I don't know.
I guess this can go both, can go both ways. Like how do you. differentiate or like show your credibility? For me, I think it is, it is part of my credibility is that we were able to grow and scale very quickly and hit multiple six figures in less than a year. Like that is, that is like a thing that I think people are like, oh, that's super interesting that she actually did that.
Now what's tough is anybody can say that , and in fact lots of people do say shit like that then it's not true . And so that's the hard part. And also to tie it back to what you talked about at the beginning, profitability. Profitability is not your revenue. Okay. Everyone listening I think knows this.
It's very easy to forget when we're consuming marketing language. Cuz even I look at stuff and I'm like, oh, that person's super successful. I don't actually know that cuz I have no idea that they're spending 80% of their revenue on ad spend each month. and then like they've got their team and then they've got like, it's just, I don't know.
It's, it's difficult. It's this whole, like talking about your money online thing is very strange. Mm-hmm. .
Ashton: Yeah. And I feel like the way that I feel about it has even changed over like the last four to five years. Like, I think, you know, in my earlier days I actually talked a little bit more about this. I think part of that was because I was excited.
Yeah. You know, and so I, I'm not like dogging on people that do that, and I share too, like, you know, the general umbrella of like being in the multiple six-figure realm. But I just think the way that we use that information, at least for me, I never want it to be like, I think you agree. I never want it to be like the only reason why people work with us, because they somehow feel that I'm promising that I'm going to help them create the same exact outcome.
because I don't wanna help people replicate my version of success. I wanna help them create their own version of success.
Jordan: No, totally. For sure. For sure. Yeah. okay. I have one more thought on the ads stuff, and then I think we were going somewhere after that with your, your own stories. but on the ads, another thing that I think is really interesting is you mentioned you were early in your business and so was I.
but you mentioned this thing about, I think this is what you said, or maybe this is just what it triggered in my mind, about the fact that you had, you hadn't figured out a lot of the messaging stuff. Like you hadn't, you hadn't tested, you hadn't validated this offer yet, and then you were gonna like, throw, add money and, and add agency fee, edit.
And again, I think there's a time and a place for this because I was in a similar situation, but I do think I had somewhat validated the offer already because I had a, a couple of clients, right, that I had found organically and, and it was a service, which is, like I'm not gonna sugarcoat that selling services, especially high ticket services, is very different than selling, a membership or a group program or even one-on-one coaching.
Like, it, it's different, because there's an inherent, there's an inherent tangible component that someone's paying for, right? So I think actually it's easier to sell. I think services are easier to sell generally. But anyway. on my passive funnel. I hadn't validated it. And I've had some clients who have come to me who are like, I want to do ads and, you know, I just want to, I just wanna do it.
And I, I'm always like, okay. And this is the important thing that I think people need to recognize when it comes to ads. You can totally use ads to like test and validate your idea. It's gonna be hella expensive. And so that's why you need to be okay with that. And that's probably not what they sold to you at the beginning.
Like if had you known, okay, well you're gonna need to invest $5,000 a month in ad spend for three plus months to figure out what works and what your conversion rates are and all of these things. Like, that's a different decision. Cuz now we're talking about $20,000 plus 5,000 a month plus, you know, that's just to like, figure it out and then, you know, hopefully we're, we'll start making sales and like, it's just people don't paint the full picture.
And, and, and like, Give you the information so that you can decide, you get to decide if you value the money or your time more, cuz there's no right answer, but it also might not work, you know, . So like, that's the hard thing cuz I have a client who was like, no, I just wanna do it. I'm like, okay, well then you need to like have a number in your head of like, what's your Okay.
Literally throwing away in money because you could literally just be throwing it away every single month because you, you haven't validated the idea. And if you're okay with that, it, it might work or it might not. And then you can, you know, figure out what you wanna do after that. And luckily for her it's actually worked, so that's cool.
but sometimes it doesn't, I don't know. Mm-hmm. .
Ashton: Yeah, no, I agree. I always say like, I always ask that question, would you be okay losing that money? If something's not already validated, if the answer to that is no and everything's banking on that, don't do it. The answer is yes. Okay. Like, you know, go for it.
But you can lose all that money .
Jordan: Yeah. It happens a lot. It happens very often. People don't talk about this like, I, I don't know, ads are such a, such a black hole. and there's so many unknowns and you know, you talked about your price point too on ads. I think that's another interesting thing that I had to learn the hard way on that passive funnel that I tried to build out is once I actually did the math, and this was another thing like the, the ads agency I worked with was fantastic and this was on me for not doing, but I think this should be a prereq prerequisite for anyone who's running ads is take average conversion rate data and plug in your price points and see if that shit works out.
Math. It's just math. Like there are industry standards for conversion rates on like how much a lead costs and how many people buy the trip wire. Then how many convert to buying your membership or whatever it is. Like you can find some really good conservative estimates on that and plug in the prices of your stuff.
And if the math doesn't work it, the math doesn't work. Like hopefully great you, you convert better than industry standard, but you can't build out a funnel based on that. You know, you have to do conservative estimates. And when I actually ran the math on my passive funnel, I was like, well, this is why I'm losing money and sometimes barely breaking even is my course doesn't cost enough with these conversion rates.
I'm never gonna make money off of this funnel ever. Doesn't make any sense. Mm-hmm. , you know, no one told me that. Yeah. Super basic shit. Like why did no one tell me that? ?
Ashton: Yeah. The amount people that don't actually. Think it through and like do basic math is is crazy. But I mean, like I was one of those people, but I think it made me someone that will never make that mistake again.
And I think too, for me personally, when it comes to ads, I also, at this point, I think it makes a lot more sense to start running them if you have a longer term strategy as well. You know, if you are acquiring someone for a membership, what happens after that? You know, like if you don't have anywhere else for them to go, I think that that's a missing piece.
Jordan: Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. There's so many different ways that you can use ads. We, I've been really, really, really getting into ads a lot lately for my own stuff and for our clients, which is not something I ever thought that I would do. I actually used to tell people, , like my, my kind of like spiel to people on sales calls or when they were asking about what we do, I was like, well, we do everything that you might possibly need done in your business.
Except for ads. Like that was like my thing. I said it a million times, you know? And now I'm like, oh, maybe we do ads because they're really, I don't know, I think people make them out to be more complicated than they are. And there's like some basic principles that you can use to figure out how to set them up and to your point that what's the purpose?
What's the short term, but also the long-term purpose. Like I have ads that I lose money on every single month, but it brings me in a ton of leads to my list. And then I know that I sell people off of my email list, you know, so that's worth it to me. There's just so many different things that you can do with them.
It's really interesting. But yeah, you know, this is not a podcast about ads kind of is now. all right. So back to your, back to your stories. And I had asked you the question about the, the revenue stuff with, which I know you're gonna get at, but you told the initial lovely failure story, which I think is fantastic and everyone listening can relate to in some way or another because we've all had.
Big investments not worked out, not worked out. We've all been burned, in different ways. But what else can you tell us to paint the picture of that trajectory from start to now? Hmm. Yeah.
Ashton: So at the gate spent 20 K on ads, built our membership. but right after that, you know, I was just like, okay, I'm gonna do this.
Like, I, I have to do this or something has to change and I know I wanna do this, so I'm gonna freaking do it. So by that point in time, it was probably May or June of that year. And so I had about six months to build a base in our membership, and that's like all I focused on. And so I, I just did a ton of community building.
I primarily used Instagram and email cuz with ads, I, I was able to grow my list quite a bit. and then with Instagram, of course, you know, content marketing, but even just like proactive networking, connection, collaboration. so I was just like in the trenches nitty gritty work. Okay. I know that I.
Build this base. How am I gonna get people in one at a time? You know, I did different like launches and I tested different like flash sales and launch events, and that's kind of how it started. By the end of the year, I had a solid base. And so from there that's where I, I launched coaching and it, it started to make sense, but that was the point at which I started actually testing launch events.
so that, as you know, we've done that over the years. I have this data, and I have like these conversion rates and I can see if I were to take something to ads, you know, I can actually have a good idea as to how that may perform. Course different because it may be with a cold audience, right? But I at least have that to work with.
and so yeah. Did that dove into coaching? I remember like my first container for coaching. Oh my gosh, it was only two months long. And I remember thinking to myself, I was like, how am I going to support us for two whole months? Like, what are we gonna, what are we gonna talk about ?
Jordan: What the hell am I doing?
Ashton: Oh, that's so funny. And now I literally, we have a six month package, but I, I really prefer not to work with people for less than a year, just because things take time. Right? Yeah. but yeah, started there. my initial goal was to fill five spots and we did that and kind of tested from there. but yeah, I mean, it was just a lot of trial and error.
It was a lot of testing. And kind of going back to it, what we talked about a little bit earlier, when I get on sales calls, like testing is something that I talk about a lot, especially for people that are wanting to build up like their passive income or they're wanting to use live launches to gather data to then go to ads.
I'm never gonna be the person that's gonna tell you like, oh yeah, a hundred percent we can make that work. . It's
Jordan: like, that's not how it happens. .
Ashton: No. It's like, I, I'm gonna be honest with you. Like, and that's a very real part of my journey is like testing in real time and, and like allowing that information to inform where you're going and decisions that you're making in your business.
It's just like a part of business, you know? Yeah. so yeah, I mean, testing, testing, testing, that's just been, that's
Jordan: been the thing. Yeah. I mean, and even when it does, this is what I think it's missed because even when you do the testing, which a lot of people don't even wanna do the testing, they just like want something to work.
Like it, it's probably not every once in a while, the first thing that you try is gonna work. Fantastic. but usually it is more experimental. Like, I feel like everything that I do in my business is an experiment. And even when we have, I mean, some of our offers have been around since essentially the beginning of this business.
We've still, they're like, they're night and day. The actual structure and the facilitation and the price point and the, all of the things involved in that one offer are totally different than they were when we started. Like you're, we're still experimenting. We change things all the time. and, and like you said, that's just part of it.
But I think what actually gets missed in this experimental, like, mindset towards business is you may find something that works, but it may not always work. You know, like we have launched a ton. We just had a launch that we did a few months ago. It was like a total flop is, I mean, we made money, but I, to me, it felt like a flop for, for what I wanted to come out of it.
and, and that happens like just timing. Just timing can totally, drastically impact your live launch. You could launch the exact same thing with the exact same content, the, the exact same audience or so you think. and it look totally different. The outcome be totally different. Mm-hmm. , even with ads, you can turn your ads on in one month and have a totally different result than when you turn 'em on during another month.
Like it just, you j it just is, it just is part of it. and that's why you have to keep testing and trying different things. yeah,
Ashton: I like, I actually really love this conversation because we also did a launch in January and I went into it like, this would be great if. You know, hit all these goals, but it was, I'm gonna test this.
I've never done this before. And it, it wasn't the best performing launch that we've done and we've had a lot of successful launches. and I think that like, there is this huge misconception, especially for people that don't have a business background, that you're just gonna create something and you're gonna do something and you're gonna find what works and then you're just gonna sit it down and then it's just gonna always be there and always working.
And it's like, yeah, that is just so not how business works. Like even now, like with like our economy and the online landscape changing, like we as a team are trying so many different things right now. Cause I'm like, I wanna test this. I wanna improve this. What if we try that? And it's not to say that you should spread your effort so thin that you don't actually provide depth.
But it is to say that there's always this level of like, testing, experimentation, adaptability. Mm-hmm. like that is entrepreneurship. Yeah,
Jordan: totally. And, and, I, the way that I like to think about this in our business is diversification and not just diversification of your revenue streams because Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Everyone knows that. Like diversify your revenue stream. Okay, great. Diversify your lead gen and your marketing. Like, I don't know why more people aren't talking about this. I think it's one of the most comforting things about my business is that I know my ads work. I know that, you know, doing collaboration and networking works.
I know that doing do, doing guest podcasting works. I know like there's like 10 things that we're always doing all of the time at different levels every single month that bring in people to our different offers. And that is like extremely comforting, I think, and I'm not saying you have to be doing all of the things every.
If you know me, you know, I'm actually very against doing all of the things. But you eventually build up to that and you're able to figure out, okay, these are the like five to 10 things that I know work for my business. So again, like for us, it's guest podcasting. It's networking and collaboration. I just, I, I'm doing a big, focus on joining networking groups and memberships and things like that this year, because I know that it works when I get in the room with people, I meet people who I can collaborate with and who become clients and I become their client or they refer me I know that there are certain things in my business that work, and you just have to figure out what those are and constantly be trying new things and doing, doing those things to the, to the best extent that you can.
Like, I don't always have ads on, I don't always do a guest podcast every week. You know, like you don't have to be doing all of them all of the time. And there are lots of things that I know would work that I don't do. Like I was just, I'm embarrassed to say that we do nothing with seo. Like I, I haven't spent a second on it.
I haven't diverted like a minute of my team's attention to it. Like, we just don't do it. We're not doing it. And I know that it would work, but we're like, we just don't have the bandwidth to do every single thing. And, and neither does anyone listening. You just have to figure out how can you diversify?
Like just a little bit at the beginning after you figure out what's working. Yeah. So critical. Uh,
Ashton: that is such a, such a good conversation too. We started rolling out. , our larger omnichannel marketing plan about a year and a half ago, and it has been like the most freeing thing to know that we have multiple channels and places working for us.
And I love that you mentioned proactive networking and collaborations and even being in person and finding people in your local area. Like I cannot stand it when I talk to entrepreneurs and they're like, you know, we just, you know, we haven't had any inquiries come through, but we're, we're just kind of hoping, hoping this will be a good month.
I'm like, no. Like you are the one that has the responsibility of making shit happen and like supporting your team if you have a team, and I don't mean to like fear monger, but it's more of like, no, take ownership and always have something that you have control over. I don't like, The whole, you know, perspective of only relying on attraction based marketing and attracting people.
Like you need to have something that you have control over, like you mentioned ads or being a part of networking groups, attending local events, like proactive sales conversations. You know, like you need to have control over your legion and sales process. Yeah. In some way at all times.
Jordan: I, I love that you used the word control, because I think the word control gets a bad rap, but it's actually extremely freeing once you accept the fact that if you're not selling, people aren't buying.
Like, that's, that is it. It's that simple. If you are out there selling your shit, people will buy it. If you're not selling it, no one's gonna buy. No one's gonna magically happen upon you on the internet from nowhere for no reason, from nothing that you did. Like that is not a thing. Stop waiting for that to happen.
If you want people to buy your shit, you have to actually go sell it. And once you know that and you accept it, it's like, oh, well if I wanna make sales, , I better go do some, some sales activities, you know, and sales activities can look like a million different things. It doesn't have to be like a scary thing with like, it's just that I have to have sales calls.
I mean, for some people that has to happen, but, it just has to be sales conversations. You have to be inviting people to buy your stuff. You have to be telling them about it. I just ranted about this in my mastermind with some, some folks that were asking about selling because it, again, like selling, selling itself gets a bad rap too.
And I think people are trying to like, bring attention to the fact that you can sell with intention and you can sell in a way that's not sleazy. Like I, I feel like I see that marketing all over the place. And it's true, like you have to invite people to buy your stuff and tell them what it is because.
They don't know. They don't know your stuff. Like you know your stuff. That's your job. Literally. Your only job is to like tell people how they can work with you . Like that's like your number one job because they don't know what you do. And I get frustrated being like, because I think about this stuff a lot.
I get frustrated as a consumer when I go show interest in someone and like I DM them and I'm like asking about their services. If they never actually say, okay, this is how you can work with me and this is how it works. I get so frustrated. I'm like, this isn't my job to ask you if I can work with you.
You're supposed to tell me like, Hey, here's how I work with people. Like think about it, if you're the consumer and you're having to like beat down someone's door to like have them sell you something, how uncomfortable is that? Like you're doing people a disservice if you're not telling them about the thing and inviting them.
It makes it feel like you don't want me to buy from you. You know? Mm-hmm. I think it's easy to forget that that's like actually a service. Actually, I think somebody coined that term selling as a service. That's a thing. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. I feel like I've
Ashton: heard that somewhere, but it's true. It's good.
It's good. Yeah.
Jordan: Sorry. That was, wow. That was, I was really ranty about that. That's, been on my mind.
Ashton: I love that too. I, I feel like so many people think that selling is like a bother, and people are so, like, they just overthink selling and they almost are a little bit too, like, they just are a little bit too sensitive about that topic.
And this is coming from like, I'm the most empathetic person ever, and I am very sensitive. And in the beginning I did struggle to sell because I didn't wanna come across the wrong way. But it is a service to communicate how you can be of service. You know? Like this is a business, this is not, I mean, unless you're just.
I don't know. I'm like, we're not, we don't just exist to like, share content forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Like at the end of the day, our content is a way to serve Yes. But to also show how we can further be of service. Like that's what we're doing here. Yeah.
Jordan: Yeah. I mean, we're, we're businesses newsflash everyone.
You're running a business and that means you've gotta sell shit. I'm sorry. You have to. I think it's fun. I think it's, I think it's fun. I, I think, I think everyone overcomplicates it. I, I see sales really as just me, matter of factly telling people what I do and how I do it. That's, that's all it is. It's, there's nothing, there's nothing more like fancier and mysterious about it.
It doesn't need to be like super, like strategic and perfectly, perfectly structured or like, I, I don't know. . I just tell people what I do and how I do it, and, and that's, that's a sales conversation. It, it's that simple. I don't know exactly. Yeah. Okay. Back to your story. Thank you for like, , I don't know, you keep like, initiating so much stuff that I wanna rant about, which is always fun for me.
back to your story, your trajectory. do you still have each of these three offers in your business? You focus on them equally? I do. How does that work?
Ashton: I do, I actually have all three of those in our offer suite. They've all changed like drastically. do I focus on all of them equally? I feel like, you know, some, in some seasons an offer is going to take the back burner.
And I'm actually in a season of really trying to reprioritize some things and, and focus, for example, more on our membership. Cuz that was like where we started. And I love our membership community, but as we've grown and I have a lot of one-on-one clientele, as you know, like. You love being in the trenches and you love working so intimately with people.
And so, but yeah, I have all of those offers this year. Our big thing that we're introducing, I mean, I don't know why, but we have followed the year, the one year thing, like I just, I don't know. Oh my gosh, I don't know how it's happened. . It has, actually last year though, we didn't launch anything new because we were really rolling out our omnichannel plan.
So we just kept our three primary offers, with the exception of we have intensives as well. and we focused really intentionally on our omnichannel plan this year. You know, we're focused on that, but also collaborations and pr. but this year our big thing is we're rolling out our v i p experience, which is an in-person experience.
and so that'll be like our big thing for this year and kind of like testing and perfecting that with our first few clients. So, yeah.
Jordan: That's super cool. Cool. That's, I mean, I think you can count like a totally new marketing. approach and plan as a new thing. Like, I, I think actually people discount how some of those things, should be treated as, as offers, you know, like, it, it takes a massive amount of time, energy, and effort to roll something out like that and actually stick with it consistently.
so I wanna take it back real quick to the beginning, because you mentioned a lot of things about networking and collaborations and kind of like a, a very grassroots approach to building out your membership. I'd love to know like some specific things that you did that you think worked.
Ashton: Yeah. So literally from a content perspective, it was email and Instagram, like I said.
But Instagram was really my thing. Like, I spent, I mean, a crazy amount of time every day on Instagram, but. For the purpose of like networking, like I was damning people. I don't even know if they had voice notes at the time. I don't think they did. but I was literally just, you know, everyone talks about, like an engagement routine, a nurture routine, which we still do that.
but that's all I did. I did that myself. I communicated, I, I started a lead list, and just like really focus in on nurture for a while. And then I would proactively, like, as we would launch, we had several launches we did that year in particular. I would invite people, I would, I would literally sell them, you know, in a way that was just very natural and relational.
and that's how we built that base. I also did, like some collaborations in terms of, IG lives and story swaps and things like that. and the other thing that I did too, as we built our base of members is I was very, very, involved in communicating with our founding members, whether it was, you know, gathering market research from them.
I even set up, one-on-one calls with our, a lot of our founding members to ask them like what they liked, what they used, what they didn't like, what they wanted to see. And so it was very grassroots and it wasn't very sexy. but it was so helpful to hear like in real time from people how to continue to make the membership better.
And because we went that approach and I was so hands on in establishing those relationships, pre-purchase, post-purchase, we had an affiliate program that worked so well for the first couple years. and so we continue to grow through like that word of mouth as
Jordan: well. Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. I, are you an introvert or an extrovert? Introvert. That's so interesting. Like all of that that you said sounds so exhausting to me. , which I am, like literally like right on the line.
It's funny, I was just talking to my friend about this, the other, the other week probably, and I used to pop as a introvert on, on the, all the tests and now I show up as an extrovert, but it's only like, what, by 1%? And so it, it's like a really weird, bitter space to live in. but I find engagement on social media to be absolutely exhausting.
Yeah,
Ashton: well, at this stage we have someone that helps with that, obviously, because it's such a time suck. I think for me, like I am, I'm definitely an introvert, so when it comes to like in-person settings, like I'm the person, like I just wanna sit and like listen. And I, I hate being the center of attention, but I think what worked is, number one, like my drive, I was just like, I have to make this work.
And I started to see results from it. And number two, I think it, it's almost like I had a layer of protection because when, when it comes to social, it's not like you're in person. Like you can step away anytime you want. And there's a certain level of intimacy that you get in person that you don't get in the online space if you have boundaries.
Whereas if I were in person and having to do that, it would probably wreck me. Yeah. but yeah, I think's one of the
Jordan: reasons it worked, I, if you think about social engagement though too, like. That really is more a of a one-on-one experience. Like if you're going and you're having DM conversations with people, that's not really necessarily an extroverted activity.
Like that's you having a one-on-one intimate conversation with someone where like you are totally focused on like that conversation with them versus like pushing out content or like, I, I don't know, like that feels, that feels to me a little bit more extroverted, a little bit more like being the center of attention, showing up on social versus engaging on social.
I've never really thought about it as like two distinct things there, but, I find the engagement to be very exhausting, which is, yeah, different. I would much rather just like push out content. I don't know. Hmm. yeah. Social is, such a beast. Do you have, how has your strategy changed just in terms of social since you started?
Ashton: Yeah, so definitely less time spent actually on social. we're in a lot of different places as well. So really how it works at this point, I handle all of the writing and then I hand everything over to our creative director and she creates all of the visuals. She creates, you know, reels, YouTube, Pinterest, she schedules our blogs, she schedules for Instagram.
She schedules our email. So like I only have to touch the writing that gets passed to her. Then things go on social. We have an engagement specialist that focuses on Instagram. and then I kind of pop in, you know, I pop in a few times a week to have intentional conversations cause I still. , it still works for us, and I still enjoy doing that, but I just don't have the level of capacity that I did before.
I would say my effort also goes towards like collaborations and like scheduling folks for our blog and jumping onto podcasts and just like that networking element, but in a different way than like the meticulous DMing used to
Jordan: be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. you've mentioned a couple times your, your new approach, your omnichannel marketing plan.
Can you tell us more about that and how that came about? Yeah,
Ashton: so a year and a half ago, I just got to a place where I was like, everything's working, but I know that this won't work the same way forever and I am ready to expand. And we had the bandwidth. That was the other thing we're coming up on. two years that, our creative director, which is also my sister, she's been full-time with us.
And so we finally had the bandwidth to do that. That was my big thing cuz I don't like starting things and stopping. I'm just like, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna go all in and I'm gonna do it. And so that was the big turning point for us. We finally had her. And so we started kind of slowly integrating these new pieces.
so we had email, Instagram, I think the next thing that we introduced was the blog and Pinterest, cuz those two kind of go hand in hand. last year we introduced YouTube, and of course I got a LinkedIn up and running as well. And then this year, as of like the last two to four weeks, this is still very behind the scenes and I've told no one.
But I'm gonna tell you guys, we're going to start our podcast. So it'll be a video podcast since we already have YouTube set up. And then of course it'll be on podcast platforms. but that's kind of like how, how it worked. And the reason I wanted to do that is I just, like you said, I wanted to diversify and I didn't wanna have all of our eggs in one basket.
And I, I wanted to get our message out in more
Jordan: places. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I love that you mentioned not wanting to do something unless you could go all in. I like totally. I'm, I'm the same way. And that's why I resisted doing a podcast for so long because I was like, man, this is gonna be, this is a big commitment and I want to do it right.
And I know that it's like time, energy, effort, like all of these things come and it's not just, it's not just the actual recording, it's all the other things that come with the production and the promotion and the sourcing the guests and the do like it, it's no joke, like running a podcast is no joke, but I, it's my most favorite place to show up.
And, and I think if, if people would, use that frame before deciding to do these new marketing efforts, it can be really helpful to make sure that you're not over-committing, because that's a lot of platforms that you just named off. But it sounds like you, you approached them one at a time and figured out how they were gonna all dovetail together and like, what makes sense and how can we be strategic?
and that's the way to do it. Not to like, Who could roll that out like day one and be like, we're gonna be on like these six or seven platforms. Like, that's not possible , because you have to do them each well. Otherwise, why would you do them? That's
Ashton: the other big thing. I'd much rather go deep and do things well than do a ton of things.
Not very well. And, you know, we've mastered well, I, I don't wanna, I don't wanna say mastered, but we are mastering, I'm declaring it, repurposing. Like that's a huge thing. And even one of the reasons why we're introducing the podcast, cuz it's gonna fill a gap for us in anchor content. Yeah. And we're gonna be able to repurpose so much.
Yeah. So
Jordan: yeah, it's, it's a game changer in terms of content. did you say your, human design? I don't think you did. Oh yeah. You're projector. You're projector. Okay. Yeah. The, the podcast work really works really well for me because, My strategy is to respond. So it's at like, as you have seen in real time on this podcast, like people say something and then I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go down there.
Like that sounds fun. cuz otherwise it's really hard for me to create content like just in a vacuum. It doesn't work for me. anyway, I won't go down the, the rabbit hole of creating content because that is like its own beast that I think is super interesting. But there, there's just so, so much nuance to it and there's so many different ways to do it.
So, I am very aware that I asked you a question about revenue and then like went on 800 different tangents and maybe didn't give you a chance to come back around to answer that question. so just wanna flag that and then I. , I think we will have closed the loop on all of the questions that I had asked
Ashton: Yeah, you're good. So, like I said, initial goal for us, so I'll kind of walk through the trajectory. So, initial goal for us in 2019 when we started this business was I wanted to replace my full-time income. So it was working up to three to five 5K months. After that when we introduced coaching, that really opened up a whole new world for me from like a revenue perspective because I had had my membership that was like low ticket for forever.
and so I did charge a lot less when we introduced coaching. Cause I, I almost introduced it as like a beta offer for testing and improving. I would say in 2020 we, we were getting up to like the eight K per month mark. And then 2021 was the first year that we started hitting consistent five figure months.
and then at that point, going towards, so last year was 2022 last year going towards the 20 K mark. And so now we're at a place where I'm really wanting to focus on getting to that 500 K per year mark. Yeah, that's like the new goal. But I think even sharing that trajectory for me, like when I hear stories like that, it's always so helpful because it's like one step at a time, it's one project at a time, it's one offer at a time.
versus feeling like you have to go out of the gate and be like, I wanna hit 10 K months or 50 K months, whatever it is. It just doesn't happen like that. And you won't be able to sustain it if you don't take steps to get
Jordan: there and build. Yeah. And you can't even, like if I think back to my first business, I couldn't even wrap my head around like these numbers, like you're brand when you're brand new.
Like what the hell's a 10 K month? I didn't even like, I don't know, like it just didn't compute for me. And I think it's partly not know. , how you're actually gonna get there like 10 K month. Like what does that mean? I i, if you, if you don't have an established, validated offer and have any consistency to your revenue, like it's, it's just not even the right thing to be focusing on.
I, I don't think, you know, at that point, it, it's, it's just, at least for me was kind of like a distraction slash trigger for feeling like I was a failure. so it, I don't know. It, it's, it's a totally different ballgame when you're just getting started and you're trying to figure out where your money's gonna come from with your different offers if, if they're not established yet.
And then once you're actually bringing in money, and I've talked about this on a couple different podcasts, I always found it helpful to like, think in terms of quarterly goals because a lot of people are doing some type of launch or, they're opening up swaps for one-on-one that maybe last for a quarter or maybe somebody's paying in full.
Like it's just so. , it's so variable that it can be weird to even think in terms of like your monthly income. Mm-hmm. , because it can be so different. And, and I know even, even at the start of this business, the start of this business, I, I just, I don't know, I, I, I think it's maybe partly cuz we grew really fast, but I couldn't even, I don't even ever remember setting monthly goals.
Like, I don't even remember doing that until I looked and I was like, holy shit. Like I just signed a 10 K client. I should probably like think about how much money we're gonna make. You know, like, what, what are my goals here? What are we trying to get to? Then you can like really start to think about how you can stabilize some of that.
Because I agree the, the variability, can be. a mind fuck a little bit because you, because you hear everyone online talking about, I made, I'm, I do 50 K months and I hit my first 50 K month. And it's like, well, I don't really know . Like, what does that mean though? How much money are you making? What does your team look like?
What does your team look like now that we're talking about it?
Ashton: Yeah, for us, so we have one person full-time, so it's Jordan. We have an engagement specialist that we, we contract out that work and then, my husband handles all of our development, so we've got the inside scoop
Jordan: with him. Nice. Yeah.
That's awesome. That's awesome. I love it. okay, what else do you think we need to talk about before we wrap? Anything else on your mind? So like, that's
Ashton: probably good. I feel like we covered everything and I loved all the sassy rants the best. Oh, okay. ,
Jordan: thank you. It was more, more than usual. Like I said, getting back into the groove of the long form.
So hopefully everyone enjoyed it. This was a ton of fun. We'll have all your info in the show notes so people could find you. but thank you. This was, really fun. I hope everyone enjoyed the conversation.
Yeah.