Today’s guest is Abbey Ashley, founder of The Virtual Savvy.

Abbey helps virtual assistants launch and grow their business from the ground up.

We talk about her background and how she got started in 2013, her main source of income while getting started, how she started mentoring others using courses, what her launches look like today, how she started generating $10,000/month while using Deadline Funnel, and more.

Watch the video of my interview with Abbey or read the transcript below!

Links

The Virtual Savvy The Virtual Savvy Facebook Page The Virtual Savvy Free Training The Virtual Savvy YouTube Channel Deadline Funnel

Transcript

Jack Born: Hello, everyone. This is Jack Born. I’m the founder of Deadline Funnel, and I’m here with Abbey Ashley, who is a Deadline Funnel client. She reached out to us and said, “Hey, I’m having great success with Deadline Funnel. Love what you guys are doing,” so we asked her to join us on this case study call. So here we are. Great to have you here, Abbey.

Abbey Ashley: Thanks so much. I’m excited. I’ve had so many good experiences with Deadline Funnel, so I’m excited to share.

Jack Born: Awesome. Well, why don’t we start with a quick background about your business and how you got into it?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah. Currently, I teach people how to become virtual assistants. That all started because I was a virtual assistant in 2013. I started my own virtual assistant business just as, like a lot of us, a way to make money from home. I was about to have my first daughter, so I actually started the business when I was eight months pregnant, not very smart, but I did what I had to do while I was on maternity leave to the point where I didn’t have to go back once my three months’ maternity leave was over.

Abbey Ashley: I ran my virtual assistant business for a few years and, in 2016, I had a lot of people asking me how I did this thing, how I made money from home as a virtual assistant, so I launched an online course to teach other people how to become virtual assistants. That has just continued to grow over the past two years to the point where that’s my main source of income now is really just the teaching of the strategies how to become a VA.

Jack Born: Very cool. Let’s go through real quick, a lot of people will ask us all the time what are the software tools that I should use? So I’m curious, what tools do you use for your online course from email software to, I know you use Deadline Funnel, but so email software and, say, membership paywall for learning management system?

Abbey Ashley: I will note, too, as far as the structures of how I sell my course, I do live launches of my course every year. So January and then like July or August, I will launch my course live, open the door and then close it. It’s like a 10-day launch period.

Abbey Ashley: But then this year, so early this year, about January of this year, I decided to do an evergreen enrollment, too. So I would sell my course, basically the first time somebody comes to my website, they have a seven-day opportunity and it’s an actual real seven-day opportunity because the page goes away because I used the Deadline Funnel where they can buy the course as well. If they don’t buy in those seven days, they have to wait until my next live launch. So that’s worked really well for me.

Abbey Ashley: The tools that I use to do this whole thing, my course is on Teachable, I use SamCart for my payment processing and then all of my pages are built out in Leadpages. Then my email software is ConvertKit. The most expensive tool that I use right now is ConvertKit. That’s only because my email list has grown so much, but it’s been so worth it. So, overall, I’m spending a really, really small percentage on software compared to the amount that’s coming in in sales.

Jack Born: So give us a quick thumbnail sketch of what problem were you trying to solve that led you to Deadline Funnel, so what sort of frustration or obstacle did you have, and then how was it like after you started using Deadline Funnel?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah. I built out an evergreen funnel, so I built a way for people to find my course, even in-between those launch periods. I went ahead and I built that without Deadline Funnel and it did well. I was already getting some organic traffic to my website. So I turned on the funnel and immediately it started making about $10,000 a month in sales. Awesome. I’ve worked pretty hard for the past few… It’s not like, oh, I was overnight success. I’ve been working, building my email list for quite a few years to get to the point where my organic traffic could produce those kind of results. But I still felt like I was really leaving money on the table and there wasn’t a real reason for people to buy right then. I kind of said, “This is the last email you’re going to get from me.” Or I could put like a countdown timer on the page, but then nothing really would happen except they would… I could maybe redirect them, but there was no true urgency behind people buying right then.

Abbey Ashley: I do have a coach, and she said, “You have to try Deadline Funnel. It’s going to change the way that your funnel operates.” So she came in and she changed a little bit of the wording and things like that, too, and we decided to put Deadline Funnel in place. And I’m not kidding you. Overnight, that funnel… I was doing anywhere from 10 to 12,000 a month in sales, January through, let’s see, it was probably around June, I think is when I made the switch and put in Deadline Funnel. The first month that I put in Deadline Funnel, with no extra traffic, I haven’t ran ads to this or anything, I made $60,000 in sales in my funnel.

Jack Born: Whoa.

Abbey Ashley: It was crazy. I mean, I reached out to you guys to tell you. I was like, this is insane how much of a difference. I mean just night and day adding true urgency. Yeah, it’s been incredible.

Jack Born: Wow. High five. That is fantastic. Good stuff. By the way, let’s give a shout-out to your coach. Who do you use as a coach?

Abbey Ashley: Mariah Coz.

Jack Born: Okay. Yeah.

Abbey Ashley: Yeah, I work with mariah.com. She’s phenomenal for anyone wanting to create and launch an online course. I’ve had some other mentors throughout the years who’ve been great, too, but this specifically for my funnel, she’s been such an awesome influence.

Jack Born: Well, fantastic. I met her in Vegas. I’ve been meaning to meet her for a while, so that’s so great that things come full circle. Yeah, she’s great.

Abbey Ashley: Yup. Well, she represented one of your products, so make sure…

Jack Born: I love her even more. Well, that’s terrific. So thank you for sharing that. Are there any lessons learned or any tips that you could share for anyone who was looking to implement Deadline Funnel that you just felt like now having done it would be helpful for someone to know?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah. I think that scarcity and urgency are just so important and I feel like once I had a funnel that provided true scarcity, I think I felt better about promoting it as well. There was a shift that maybe happened in me that I became more confident in my product because I felt like I was giving people a real opportunity to be a fast action-taker. And if they didn’t make it, they would have to wait possibly six months until my course would be open again. I felt like once that was actually true, like I wasn’t just like, oh, you really could find this in a backend, whatever, I became more confident in my product.

Abbey Ashley: So, it made such a difference not only in the sales themselves, but I think how I feel about my funnel and the way that I sell things as well. It just seems a lot more genuine which I’m happy about. I think that goes along with my personality. I tend to be a genuine person, so I feel like it just helped me promote it a lot more.

Jack Born: Yeah. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, having faith, not just in your product, but your offer and the way that you’re presenting what you do is really, really important for you to enthusiastically put your heart and soul and so that makes total sense.

Jack Born: Real quick, could we just get a thumbnail sketch of when someone comes into your funnel, are they going through an email course? Is it a webinar? What sort of process do you use to educate and to build authority and then transition to the offer?

Abbey Ashley: When people come to my website, they have an opportunity to download a freebie. So I have a checklist for them. It’s my checklist and starter kit for becoming a VA, just a PDF. After they download that on the thank you page, and this is actually something that Mariah suggested that we test and it’s been working really well, surprisingly, so people get one hour right after they download my freebie, literally they just found out who I am, they have one hour to purchase my product at a rate that I never show them again. So my course is usually 997, and this is for 897 or 10 payments of $97 as opposed to 13, which I usually do. That again, I use Deadline Funnel to give them a one-hour decision time to buy my fairly expensive course. So after that, if they say no, no problem, they get their freebie.

Abbey Ashley: Then a couple of days later via email, I will invite them to a prerecorded webinar. So on that webinar, same thing. We give them, after that webinar, seven days to purchase a backdoor entry. Again, it’s not discounted price at all. So the scarcity is that, hey, if you buy now, you won’t have to wait possibly six months until our next launch.

Abbey Ashley: So, that’s where we use Deadline Funnel. The second time is in that webinar. Then there’s a couple of emails just to follow up with them if they didn’t purchase live on the webinar.

Abbey Ashley: My webinar is really jampacked with good information. So even if they don’t buy my product right now, it’s still a lot of value to them. And I give them some tips that even if they can’t buy right now, then hopefully they can use some of the tips in my webinar to make some money where they can afford my course by the next time.

Jack Born: Speaking of the next time, I would be willing to bet, but tell me if I’m correct, that by having that authentic… If someone passes on the offer the first time, but they see, yep, she closed it when… That was an opportunity to buy, it’s gone so they wait for the next time and then you do one of these twice-a-year launches, they know that your deadline is your deadline.

Abbey Ashley: Oh, she’s for real. Yup, definitely so.

Jack Born: Fantastic. Well, this has been so great. Thank you so much for sharing this information.

Jack Born: Oh, I want to, before we go, I want to make sure that we have an opportunity to share your website. So if anyone is looking to become a VA, or I know that a lot of my clients are interested in having VAs. You told me before we started the recording, that’s not your core business, but as a service to your clients, there is a way that you connect them. So why don’t you talk about that?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah. So if you’re looking to become a virtual assistant, there’s tons of free resources over @thevirtualsavvy.com. And if you are looking to hire a virtual assistant, you can go to thevirtualsavvy.com/hire. I have a Facebook group of over 25,000 virtual assistants so I can definitely be the connecting piece between you and finding the right person for your business.

Jack Born: Fantastic. I was just talking about this recently in emails, some emails that I sent out. Most of my team actually, all my team, is full-time, one part-time person. But anyways, the point is that having that team that can support you is really, really important. So I know finding a high-quality virtual assistant can just absolutely change your business if you hire the right person for the right task. So, yeah, if you’re looking to take your business to the next level and you feel like you’re doing everything, it’s probably because you are so go build out your team and reinvest in your business. So why don’t you give out the website URL one more time?

Abbey Ashley: Yeah. So The Virtual Savvy @virtualsavvy.com/hire would be for those looking for a virtual assistant.

Jack Born: Perfect. Awesome. Again, thank you so much for sharing your success story. I really appreciate that.

Abbey Ashley: Thank you for Deadline Funnel.