74: Abbey Ashley: Multi Seven-Figure Business Owner With Just an Online Course & Membership
Abby Ashley: Multi Seven-Figure Business Owner With Just an Online Course & Membership
My guest today is Abbey Ashley. Abbey is the Founder of The Virtual Savvy. She helps aspiring virtual assistants launch and grow their own at-home business from scratch. Abbey started her own virtual assistant business in 2015 and was able to double the salary from her full-time corporate job, working only 20 hours a week... in just 30 days! She's since gone on to grow a multi seven-figure business and retire her husband all from her at-home business.
Episode Highlights
Six months into her journey as a VA she landed her dream client who introduced her to online course creation
The popular concept among the online course community “validate before your create” helped Abbey launch her own online course business
By following proven strategies and learning from the top coaches, she has built her business, most recently, a $750,000 launch
It's now her passion to help others start their own VA business so they can taste the freedom and flexibility of entrepreneurship as well.
Listen in to learn how Abbey has grown her online course and membership business and is on track to earn multi seven-figures this year and have her first $1M course launch.
Mentioned In This Episode
Transcript:
Speaker 1 (00:01):
And today my special guest is Abby Ashley. Abby is the founder of virtual savvy. She helps aspiring virtual assistants launch and grow their own online at home businesses from scratch. Abby started her own virtual assistant business in 2015 and was able to double the salary from her four time corporate job working only 20 hours a week in just 30 days. She has since gone on to grow a multi seven figure business and retire her husband all from working at her home business. It is now her passion to help others start their own VA business so they can taste the freedom and flexibility of entrepreneurship as well. Abby, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited to be here with you today. I can't wait to hear a little bit more about your entrepreneur journey and how you got to where you are today.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, thank you so much. I'm super excited for
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Our chat. So why don't you take a few minutes and walk the audience through you can go back as far as you want, but walk them through your entrepreneur journey and tell us a little bit about how you got to be a seven figure business owner.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, so, I mean, I've always been an entrepreneur. I don't know if anybody listening is the same way, but I am just I have ideas all the time. I have a notebook full of ideas that I probably never will do and probably never should do. But I've always just had this entrepreneurial brain. My dad was an entrepreneur and we would just sit and chat about business ideas even when I was a teenager. And I, you know, but I don't know if I actually ever imagined that I would be an entrepreneur. I just had all the ideas, but I don't know, for some reason I kind of went the traditional work route. Whenever I graduated college, I didn't start a business necessarily right away. And then I ended up becoming a mom and I, you know, had a young kid at home and got pregnant again very quickly.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
And so at this point, I'm like, I need to find something to to do for myself. Number one, I was bored. If I'm being honest, I was sitting at home very pregnant you know, with a two year old at home just saying, Oh man, I've got to think of something to stimulate my brain a little bit because I feel like I had just been in like talking to a toddler for the past two years. And I also, you know, I mean, financially, we weren't doing super well off. I was a stay at home mom, so we were living off of one income. My husband had gotten a huge pay cut. We're living in this basement apartment and in a super expensive area. We lived in Northern Virginia which is just a very expensive area to live. And so I'm like, I need to think of something that I can do to work and also provide for my family.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
But I had dreamt of being a stay at home mom that was like my dream. So I didn't want to give that up. So I thought, what could I do? And I went down several paths. I sold jeans on eBay. I, you know, started trying to make like freezer meals for people. And nothing really took off a friend of mine suggested, Hey, have you thought about becoming a virtual assistant? And if I'm honest, I had never heard of that. I didn't know what a virtual assistant was. I didn't know what they did, how they made money, but that night I went home and I just scoured the internet. My husband was working late. He'd have to drive two hours to and from work. So I had a lot of free time at the time. And I, you know, just scoured the internet, what is a virtual assistant?
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And I, you know, read what one was, which if, you know, if you're listening, you probably know what a VA is for listening to this podcast, but you know, essentially a VA is any remote freelancer that can do admin marketing, creative tasks for you. So things like blogging, invoices, social media posting, I mean, there's so many different skills that you can do as a VA. And I thought, I don't know how to do all these things, but I know how to do some of these things that I'm sure I could learn the rest of them. So I literally started calling myself a virtual assistant. The next day went to some local networking meetings, was able to find clients. And it was just amazing when I showed up and announced here's who I am and what I do, people actually needed it. And I think that that's one of the great things about virtual assistants is that people really need it.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
It's just, you're, you're saying I'm going to come here and I'm just going to help you and business owners need help. That is one thing I've learned. So so yeah, I went on and it was incredible because pretty soon into my journey, probably about six or eight months into becoming a virtual assistant I ended up landing this dream client. It was a guy that I had read all of his blog posts, you know, every social media posts, everything that he, all the content he put out, I just consumed. Cause it was just really good rich content, all about email marketing. And so his name was Brian Harris and he at then had a business called Videofruit. Now it's called growth tools. And I thought this is my dream client. Well, I ended up sending a pitch to him that I worked about two weeks on.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I'm like, I'm going to blow his socks off. I'm just going to show up and be like the best thing that's ever happened. And so I came up with this pitch that showed a ton of value and he said, we've got to get on the phone and chat. He ended up hiring me on the spot to be a copywriter for him. And so I worked for him for a while. And what was so cool is that at the time Brian was doing these course launches, it was the first time I really got introduced to course creation. He would launch these courses and make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a couple of weeks. And not just that, I mean, he was getting results for our students. He was very focused on his team and team development. Like the whole thing. I'm just like, this is magic.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Like I love this environment. Like this is what I want, you know, and I didn't know, it's what I wanted until I was really in that environment where, you know, he had this thriving business that, that was able to accomplish so much and really help people and all of that and provide like a awesome team environment. So essentially I, you know, started building an email list. It started very small you know, asking my mom to be on my list, all my friends to be on my list, creating a little freebie and you know, trying to get a hundred people, 200 people once I got to a thousand people on my email list. And I was talking about everything under the sun, anything I knew about I would talk about. So even though it wasn't a branding expert, I'd tell what I knew about branding.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Even though I wasn't a LinkedIn LinkedIn expert, I'd talk about LinkedIn. Like anything I slightly knew about, I'd say, well, here's what I know on the subject. And that's kind of how I got people on my list. And so I honestly didn't even fully know who was on my list. It just had grown kind of from there. And so what I did at a thousand email subscribers, I asked my list, I emailed them. I said, what do you want to learn from me? You know, I'd love to develop an online course to help you guys, what do you want to learn from me? And it was overwhelming the response. People wanted to know how I started a virtual system business. And honestly, I didn't even know that's what people wanted to learn from me, but I can teach that like, I know how to do that.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
And so one of the things that I learned from Brian and, and I think is kind of popular a lot of times in the online course community, which I am a total fan of is to validate before you create. So rather than you know, spending six months creating a course and then launching it, hoping people would purchase. I said, Hey, this is the first time this course is ever going to happen. I created like a little sales page for it. You know, here's what I'm going to teach over the next 12 weeks, but it'll be kind of a live experience. And my plan was to record it and then, you know, eventually do it not as a live program, but so in my head, I thought, I think all eventually sell this program for a thousand dollars a piece. I'm going to sell it for 497.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
The cart's open for two weeks. Let's see what happens. And I was literally terrified. I'm pretty sure I had my first ever like real life panic attack. Like I went to the urgent care thinking I was having a heart attack. She was like, no, this is a panic attack. I mean, I literally, he literally had one. I literally like, I'm like laughing about it, but it was like a serious matter, like really like had a legit, my first ever panic attack during that, because I just I'm like, what am I doing? Like, I felt so out of my element and I don't know it was scarier like the launching or that people were actually buying. I'm like, Oh my gosh, people are buying this. And I think that that's honestly, one of the sales started coming in is when I went to the ER thinking I was having a heart attack because I I, it was just this overwhelming like, Oh gosh, can I do this?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Right? Like this imposter syndrome setting. And I'm like, okay. Oh, I just sold the course. People paid me $500. Now I to teach them something, what am I doing? Right. But it was so incredible. And like I got to help these students and it was something I knew how to do. Right. It was starting a virtual assistant business. So I created the content got these students, like they started celebrating their wins, you know, like I got my first client, I, you know, some of them went on like a month or two into the program to quit their jobs and all my goodness, it was incredible. And so at that point, I said, all right, this is it. This is what I'm doing. I love this. I love every part of this. And so I really reinvested that money back into the business.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And a lot of what I did, I kind of took off of what Brian did and what I knew how to do, which was content. Like I was a writer. I knew how to write. So I'm like, well, I'm going to blog. I don't really know how to get that blog out to people. So I hired somebody to do Pinterest for me. And so this was 2016, kind of the wild West days of Pinterest, I think. And so that was a huge source for the next few years of our traffic to the site was just, I had an organic Pinterest strategy. So I'd write these 1000, 2000 word blog posts. We would promote them organically on Pinterest. People would come to the site. And so I just continued to grow my, my list. Every six months I would launch the course again.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
So we went on and we did our first, you know, I I'm, I'm going to try to remember these numbers correctly, but, you know, we did a my first launch was about an $8,000 launch. And then the next launch, I think it was like 20 something. And then the next one was like 60 something. And then I had my first hundred dollar launch and then we had a $200 launch. And so it just kept, you know, or $200,000 launch. And it kept increasing and increasing to where, you know, our last launch was about a $750,000 launch was still blows my mind. And we're hoping this July to hit our first million dollar launch. I know Traci, the sales director on my team now that's like his big goal. He's like, we're going to do it this year. I'm like, it's okay if it doesn't happen, but it would be pretty cool. So yeah, this, this little, you know, company that I started with a laptop that I got off of Craigslist in my basement apartment has grown into, we're a $4 million online course company now, or we're on track to do 4 million this year. So and then we, you know, we have 20 full-time employees. We have contractors, we're training contractors, and it's just it's really been a whirlwind. So that is, that is a kind of a lengthy lengthy version, but that is the beginning to where we are now
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And Abby you gave us a lot to unpack here so we can just dig in. Cause I know that's all good stuff. So I guess my first question is how long was it before, you know, somebody came to you and said, you know, why don't you try out this VA thing? And you went to some of these events, right. And said, I can do this. I'm I'm out here. I can do this for you until you started working for Brian. And the kind of the light bulb went off and said, this online course thing is what I really want to do. What year was that? Do you remember?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
My virtual assistant business in 2015. And I started working for Brian in 2016. So it was about maybe nine months to a year in.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Okay. And so you were working for Brian and then at that point, what did, at some point you stopped doing the VA type work and we just went all in into building your email list and you had that first course, course launch, right. You had a thousand people on your list. What year was that?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
No, that was in December. That first real course launch. It's a funny question. So I will, I will answer it completely. Honestly, the first course launch where I made the $8,000 in a week, that was December, 2016. What I didn't mention is that I had actually tried selling a course before that it was before I had a thousand email subscribers. It was you know, it was probably early 2016. So probably right around the time I started working for Brian, I'm like, I wanna, I want to do courses. Let me, let me just create a course. And so I literally spent like three months creating a course, selling it to my list of maybe like 500 people blood, sweat, and tears into that thing, you know, like just, just grinded it out on a course. And I had one guy buy and that was it. And I was like, I don't think anybody wants this course. And then like, I think I named it like passion to profit and realized that that was trademarked. And then I got like a cease and desist letter. I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing here. Learn how to create a course before I just jump in and start doing it. So that's, that's kind of the untold story of my actual first course launch. I should probably start with that version.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
It helps me also relatable to people. Right. I mean, a lot of people can relate to what you just did. And then I liked what you said about validating before you create, and you kind of took a different route, right. With your, you know, with your next one. And, you know, basically said, what's this created your sales page and that's when you had your $8,000 launch. Now, today you've walked us through, you've had several different other launches. Are you, does your team only do the, the courses or do you also also offer VA services? Tell us a little bit more about your business model today.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, so, so as of now we're a team of, like I said, about 20 all across United States and we we still sell that same course. I mean, it has gone through updates and reiterations we've changed the name of it. We, you know, have updated the videos. They're not filmed my Craigslist laptop anymore, but essentially we're teaching the same principles and the same things and that wash, rinse, repeat and has really served us really well. And for the longest time we just sold this one product over and over and over and over. And eventually a few years in, we added a secondary product, which is a membership. And so people can pay $47 a month to get access to tech courses. So we have over 60 tech courses in this membership and we add a new one every month. So Canva convert kit, MailChimp, you know, Facebook ads, Pinterest management, just different services and software that you would potentially use as a virtual assistant.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
We release a brand new course every single quarter. So we also have a membership now. But they're both that online course format. We don't do services ourselves. So we don't, we're not a virtual assistant agency. We literally just train our students and say, Hey, you go out and get the clients. We don't take a percentage of their income or anything like that. It's literally just a online course format and you go on and, and provide your services to students. So we have the two courses now and that's, that's really been, that's just been it like, it's a very simple streamlined model. And even, you know, we still do these course launches and every single time we're like, all right, how can we, how can we make it better this time? Let's how do we build upon what we have? And I think that that's, I think that's been a huge part of our entrepreneurial success is that, you know, we just, rather than completely scrapping everything we did and starting from scratch, we pivot, you know, like, Oh man, this, this was good, but how can we make it better? We'll pivot a little how can we make this better now? And we'll pivot. And we've essentially been wash, rinse repeat, been doing similar things for years and just building upon it. And I think that that has really helped us.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
And I love the membership and what you kind of, how you've packaged that. Let me ask you this do people go through your first, your course first and then move into the membership or can people just sign up for the membership, but not ever take your course? How do you have that kind of structured?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
So, I mean, a lot of times when people are talking about like course creators, they talk about a product ladder, right? Like have something for the people who are just starting and then something that you can advance and, and, and is a little bit, you know, for them to take after they're finished with the first thing and then something for them to finish after that and take people through a journey. I think that is a great idea. It's not necessarily what we do. And I think it was more just a, like, what does our community need? Because we do have that giant Facebook group. And so we can literally just ask, what do you guys need? So for us the next logical thing for people to grow their business was this tech membership now because we have a big audience, some people are successful virtual assistants, and they really they, they didn't take our course.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
And so they, we let them just jump into membership without ever taking our course. Some people what we do is when you purchase that signature course on how to become a virtual assistant, we say, Hey, do you want to just bundle these two things together? 50% of people who buy our course bundle with the tech membership. So it's a great upsell in a sense from a, you know, a marketing standpoint, but it also helps people because really tech is one of those things that you can use to Uplevel your services, or you can use it in the beginning of, you know, well, I want to start posting myself on Instagram, or I need to learn how to use Canva. And I would be able to help my clients more, or maybe get more clients if I did this LinkedIn training or whatever. So it really, it pairs well for if you're just beginning or if you're more advanced. And it's something that people end up keeping for a long, a long time. Our churn rate is very low just because we, you know, it's something that people kind of hold onto in their back pocket, no matter where they're at in their journey.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So let me ask you this, you have a goal or your, your sales manager has a goal of having a, a $1 million launch coming up this year. I think fairly recent. It's coming up soon. Right? So July will be our launch. We'll see. Okay. Walk us through. So you're planning for it now, I'm assuming walk us through kind of your launch strategy. What are some, you know, things that you have planned? What are some things that you're gonna try and tell us a little bit about how you launched you do a five day challenge, a webinar, and what do you do for your launch?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Great question. So I love talking about this by the way,
Speaker 1 (19:22):
My favorite thing, I know everybody's going to want to hear about a million dollar launch coming up,
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I'll preface with this. You know, cause as you listen to my course launch strategy, it is prob you know, people listening. It's probably very easy to think like, Oh, let me just replicate that same thing. And I will say this like my methodology when it comes to any strategy, right. When it comes to content creation or ads or social media or course launches or whatever it may be is like, I am going to learn from the best. So I will, I will always follow a proven strategy. So I, I invest in courses. I invest in coaching. I do all of that. Right. I learn proven strategies, but then we also like myself and as a team, we go now, now is there anything we should maybe tweak because we really know our audience. Right? And so I learned a lot about course launching from some of my mentors and different courses I took and things like that.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
But like for my audience I'm essentially selling a like a B2B product at a B2B price by business, a business to a B to C customer. Like I am selling let's, let's be honest. It's a fairly expensive course. My course starts at a thousand dollars can go up to $2,500. Like it is, it's a fairly high price course for somebody who's like a stay at home mom or a 20 year old wanting to travel. Right. And so, because of that you know, a lot of like mentors, they, I would look at their course launch strategy and their cart would be open for one week. And we have just always said, I think our people need two weeks. Like our people need two weeks to like get their money together. They need two weeks to talk to their spouse or whatever it may need.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Another thing is that like you know, we have, we have a pretty open course refund policy because we just understand like a lot of the people, again, they're not business owners with like the six figure businesses that it's like a thousand bucks. It's like for some of these people, if they get in and 30 days in, they don't have a client which is one of the things that we say like, Hey, you know, we don't guarantee you get a client in 30 days, but if you don't and you're like, I just don't know if this is for me, no questions back asked money back guarantee. And for some people they're like, that's crazy. But for our audience, it resonates really well because they're putting a lot on the line to invest in this course, you know? And so there's a couple things that we've done that it's like, maybe like the experts would say, don't do this, but for us, it's like, Oh, we just know our audience.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Right. And so I think that's a big, important part of this is like follow a proven strategy, but then talk to your audience, get to know them, know their, their pain points and their desires and things like that. So what we do with all of that prefaced is that we we do a, a lead-up series. So our course launch essentially is a three week process. It is 21 days of intensity. So we do a week where I am going live every single day, engaging our Facebook group you know, going live on my Facebook page and groups. We will like, you know, sometimes boost those posts with ads. We haven't done a whole lot with paid ads. Most of our strategy is organic, but we've experimented a little bit. One of those levers that we're starting to pull is paid ads. And so you know, I go live every day.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
So I'm showing up getting, getting people, you know, and they know, I mean, we say we don't hide it. Of course it's launching, it's launching, it's launching this Friday. So on the Friday of that live stream is when we say the cart is open, you know, come on in. And we do a little like early bird bonus. So that first weekend, Friday to Monday, Monday ending at 8:00 PM, early bird bonus, it's open, you know, scarcity and urgency. Those are some of the two most important things you can do inside of your launch. And so we have little like spikes of scarcity and urgency throughout it. So we do that. And then we focus that week kind of on just telling stories. That's kind of like once early bird bonus, you know, things die down a little bit. There's not scarcity, there's not urgency.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And so that's where we kind of put the heart into it. And we, we have like some video testimonials and we'll go live with the students with some students who have been through the course and really give kind of like the story element of the course during those couple of days. And then on Friday we launch a weekend bonus. Okay. So we do another, we do another kind of spike of sales right at the weekend because we have some kind of a bonus that will say, Hey, if you purchase this weekend, you're going to get XYZ. This bonus bundle, we've put together for you. Now we, of course everybody who's already purchased the course. We send them a private email and say, Hey, we're going to give it to you guys too. We're not going to like reward or, you know, not reward you guys for, for purchasing early.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
So so we give people a weekend bonus, then the weekend bonus cuts off, right? And then we invite everybody to a webinar. So the next two days is a private webinar. And essentially what it is, it's the same training that I did the Friday of open cart. But it's like, if you missed that webinar, if you weren't there, if you wanted to watch it again, because it's crazy how many people show up to this and literally rewatch the same webinar we're going to invite you to kind of this private webinar and on that private webinar, we give them back the weekend bonus. We say, Hey, if you miss this weekend bonus, you know, if you buy live on the webinar again, scarcity and urgency, right. And of course their marketing tactics, but I have found for me it's those people that they, they know they want to take it and they just need that kind of extra push, you know?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And it's, it's in a sense helping them push and say, yup, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to take the leap by offering these little incentives so we do. You know, we're bringing back the weekend bonus just for tonight. If you didn't purchase before, this is your time. Get in now, before this webinar's over. Right. And so we'll have a little spike on sales on that Wednesday. And then we close cart on Friday. So of course there's another spike on Friday. That's Hey, it's the last day. We're not going to open this course again in six months. And so that is essentially how we do our full 21 day course launch. It's it's intense, but it's, it's good.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I love that. And thank you for walking us through that. I love how you are going live in your in the Facebook book and on the Facebook page. And it's a three week process. So that just kind of goes to show how many, how many touch points you need to reach your clients and to help kind of help them through that decision making process. So I guess a question I have for you, and I love your rinse and repeat model that you have in your business. I think it is, you know, so many of us try all the different things and, you know, and if they're not working, we kind of move on to the next thing. But I like how you have, you know, focused on, you know, helping the virtual assistants that you have and kind of perfecting that process. What do you see as next steps in your business for the rest of the year?
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah. So, I mean, I will say this and I think it's interesting that you bring it up. I I don't know if you're, if you're in any Enneagram fan at all, I'm an Enneagram seven, which means I just have all the ideas all the time, like literally all the time, so the hardest thing is cause FOMO like crazy, the hardest thing is for me to say no, but I think that that is, you know, I'm also a very high three and I have looked and I'm like, man, some of these people that just kill it, in course launches, they just launched the same. And I'm like, I, I think I just need to say no to almost everything, you know, and let me use my creativity and my ideas to think of more ways we can build upon the same thing that I'm selling over and over.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
And I really like, it's been so hard, but I've done it for a long time. Since 2016 now just said, no, no, we're sticking to this, we're sticking to this. Let's, let's build upon this, build upon this and it's worked right. And so I'm very excited because one of the things, again, we've kind of pulled our audience. We've realized our own pain points as, as a business, you know, as we've grown is hiring VA's and so, and creative freelancers. And I feel like a lot of the marketplaces out there that where you can hire freelancers are very impersonal race to the bottom dollar. It's hard for you to find somebody I'm like, I just want like a team member. Like I want somebody to love my business and care about my business, like I do. And so we have actually decided to build out a freelancing marketplace.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I'm literally doing something brand new, it's a SAAS product or building a freelancing marketplace. That's focused on culture and connection and long-term team fit. So that's kind of its own beast. And that's one of those things that, you know, I've been able to now grow a team of employees and contractors that that mostly runs the business for me, if I'm being honest, because we've just done the same thing over and over it's wash, rinse, repeat. I spent less than five hours a week in my business. And so it's now given us the margin to go, I can finally do something new and I was so excited. Cause if you know any of them sevens, we love new things. So yeah, we're launching a SA, I took my COO with me and she and I together are launching a marketplace for you know, virtual assistants, creative freelancers and clients to connect. So that'll be launching February 20, 22, but yeah, so that's what we're working on.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Oh man. So I'll have to have you back on the podcast at some point. So you can talk about that. Cause I love it when these online course creators are launching the SAS products. I'm actually interviewing another one who has done something similar with hello audio. So I'm like so fascinated by, by all of that. So super interested in what you have going on there. So my closing question for you, Abby, is what advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Hmm. So we have core values in our company. We talk about our core values all the time. We literally have like, we have a Slack channel and every, every weekly meeting we say, okay, what's the, what's the way we've seen our core values this week. Right? So our core are very important to us. One of our core values is action over perfection. And it is the one that just sticks us in the gut sometimes because it's, it's, you know it's very difficult, but I think that so often we get stalled by our own fear. Either, you know inadequacy or comparison of like, Oh, I can't, I can't launch this yet. I can't put it out yet. Whether it's a website or a course or whatever, because it's not perfect yet. And if there's one thing that has served me well over these past few years, it is just embracing action over perfection, knowing that mistakes are gonna happen along the way. And trust me, we have made some big mistakes. At one point when our list was 40,000 people, we accidentally tagged every person on our list with every tag that we had. So all 40,000 people in our audience got about 50 emails from us all at once saying,
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Congratulations, you purchased this thing, you purchased this thing, you canceled this, how is this? Like every email secrets we got got true. Like we have made some very big mistakes along the way, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Action over perfection. You just keep moving forward. And yeah, so that, that's probably my biggest piece of advice for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
I love that. Can you let people, by the way, tagging everybody just so people know that was a big one. That was a real, we call, I was in Chicago at the times we call it the Chicago fire, which is probably not a good thing, but that's what we're like. Remember the Chicago fire because it will literally, Oh my gosh, it was so bad. It was on that. But we made it through, you know, and our audio, we, we lost probably about five to 7,000 email subscribers in like a day
Speaker 2 (31:21):
And there, and, but, but we recouped, we came together, you know, at the time there were just three of us. There's 20 of us. Now it'd be a lot easier to recoup. Now.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
There were three of us at the time working on this little business, but we, we sent out emails and we responded to angry people thinking we had charged their card when we had it
Speaker 2 (31:40):
And we got through it. So, you know, no matter what you're facing, always remember you didn't tag every person on your list with everyone
Speaker 1 (31:52):
And that's one good, good takeaway from this. Abby where can people find you? So the virtual savvy, if you, you know, maybe you're newer to the online course world
Speaker 2 (32:05):
And you're like, I just need money fast. I personally believe that virtual assistance is the fastest way to make money online. So we have a free checklist. It's the virtualsavvy.com/checklist. And then if you're interested
Speaker 1 (32:18):
In hiring VAs, we
Speaker 2 (32:21):
You know, it's not launched yet, but hello, savvy.com is our waitlist, it's H E L L O SAV V Y. Hello, savvy.com. We are launching
Speaker 1 (32:32):
A marketplace and it's going to be amazing. I'm speaking in faith because we're building that thing right now. And it's,
Speaker 2 (32:40):
It's fun. It's fun to go on a new adventure for sure.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
And I'm definitely going to sign up for hello savvy. Cause I'm always looking for virtual assistance and various things. You know, some, a project will come up and I'm like, who has expertise in this? So we're always searching for that. So thank you for that. And I wish you the best on your new adventure. I think that's going to be so much fun for you.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Thank you. I'm very excited for it.
New Speaker (33:04):
So Abby thank you so much for joining me today. I loved hearing about your journey from being a stay at home mom, to launching this multi, you know, seven figure business that you have and everything that you've accomplished. I love your kind of rinse and repeat type model that you have. And definitely wish you the best in this SAS product that you're working on.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.