LY Podcast: Ep. 36: When to Quit Your Product with Ashley Cox

Melissa Anzman (00:00): This is the launch yourself podcast, episode 35 with Ashley cop. For more information, including show notes and resources, go to launch yourself.co/ 36. Welcome to the launch yourself podcast. My name is Melissa Anzman. I'm a bestselling author and the CEO of two businesses, an employee experience company, and launch yourself where I help entrepreneurs diversify and scale their business by launching digital products each week, you'll hear mindblowing interviews where we peek behind the curtain of other people's launches, as well as actual tips and strategies that you can implement in your daily work life to create launches that actually make you money. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let's get started.

Melissa Anzman (00:51): I am so excited. Welcome Ashley Cox to the episode today, Ashley is an HR consultant just like yours, truly. And she also works with entrepreneurs as a leadership coach, and I love what she shares with us today. It's really exciting. But before that, I want to share a little story of how I know Ashley. I'm sure I mentioned it, but let me just tell you, she is a friend from Instagram. Did you know, you can make real friends and Instagram and we've been friends ever since because she has so many interesting things to share. Ashley is a leadership mentor for female founders, an author, a speaker, and a workshop host, and an HR consultant. She believes that leadership is about building relationships, nurturing those. We spend our days with and creating an environment where everyone is able to do their very best, including ourselves. She's the author of an awesome book for every single female leader out there called transform your stories.

Melissa Anzman (01:59): And she believes that if you're not having fun, you're not doing something right. She believes that women are more capable than they give themselves credit for. And that giving back and being an active member of the community is important. I hope you enjoy this episode. Let's dive in. Welcome to the podcast. Ashley. I'm so excited to have you here now, for those of you who are listening, Ashley and I, I met her on Instagram in a really weird roundabout, only in social media world way. So I actually found her because she was attending a conference that I wanted to go to, but miss the deadline on. And as I was following along the hashtag of the conference, I stumbled upon Ashley posting about it. And I looked at her profile and we were in the same space in HR. We had the same type of background doing HR work, which for those of you in HR, there's not a lot of you who listen to this podcast from my other one, but it's rare thing. Like it is rare to find a soul in the online space who does good HR work. So I was obsessed. That sounds bad. Sounds worse than it really was, but I reached out and we finally got to talk and we'd shared book editors and experiences, and now online friends and I am so excited to welcome Ashley to the podcast. Thanks for coming. Thanks so much

Ashley Cox (03:25): For having me, Melissa, what a heck of an introduction. I mean, basically we are obsessed with one another, so it's okay to say that

Melissa Anzman (03:33): My friend Ashley is one of those people that when we finally did talk, it was like, Oh, we were meant to be friends, which is even better. Like when you're online, friends are like true to who they should be. So I'm excited about that.

Ashley Cox (03:45): The internet works in strange ways, right? It's really, really,

Melissa Anzman (03:49): Yes. And if you, as every time I break something like down, I'm like, Hmm, maybe I shouldn't share that story. Cause that sounds

Ashley Cox (03:56): Weird, but that's okay. We're here. We are here and together.

Melissa Anzman (04:01): Fantastic. So at launch yourself, we really like to dig deep on launches and digital products and understand what's working and what's not working. So if you could just explain a little bit about your business and then we're going to, I'm going to ask you to go deep about a specific one.

Ashley Cox (04:17): Oh, I'm so excited for this conversation today. And I hope that everybody that's listening is just as jazzed once we get into it. Um, so a little bit about me and my background. I spent the first 10 years of my life, you know, doing the corporate thing, high heels, pencil skirts, super profesh. Right. And, uh, I spent a lot of time in leadership and HR and learning all the different facets of HR. Um, and there were things about HR that I really, really loved. And there were things that I just really, really didn't love. Um, but when I started my own business, I thought it was such a great opportunity to bring those elements of what I enjoyed doing into my business. And just like you said, at the beginning, Alyssa, it's so rare to find people like us with our backgrounds, doing the work in the space that we are.

Ashley Cox (05:10): And of course over the last four and a half years or so, my business has evolved and changed and I've dropped off some more of those, a done for you type of services, like writing job descriptions and handbooks and things like that. And leaned a lot more into the leadership side, uh, which is just where my heart has always been. And I've always been a leadership development trainer, uh, in the corporate world. And now that's what I do in my business. So I work specifically with women who own businesses and have teams of employees. Uh, we work on everything from skill-building to confidence, developing, um, and just finding ways to lead like yourself. You don't have to be someone else. You don't have to implement a strategy that doesn't feel good. Uh, you don't have to be a tough guys. So to say, uh, and I love working with women because we have these perceptions about how we have to lead because of what society says because of what our culture has taught us, because we haven't seen strong women come before us that aren't in, you know, the shoulder padded power suit with, you know, the like real helmet hair guy, helmet, hair, look, and persona.

Ashley Cox (06:21): And women had to do that in order to fit in to make that space for themselves and to get that seat at the table. But I'm all about building your own dang table, like get your power tools out girl, and let's build that table. Okay. So men we're just over here having all kinds of, uh, having all kinds of fun, just being ourselves and leading our teams and, and leading from whatever those natural strengths are for you. So a lot of what my strengths are, empathy and compassion and connection. And so those are what I leverage, but that might be different for you. And that's okay. Um, so that's a little bit about me and, and I've really just got up on my soap box there. So anytime you asked me about what I do, it's kind of, kind of where we're going. I love it now.

Ashley Cox (07:04): I love it because I mean, I know firsthand that your work is desperately needed and as somebody who has personally been different than everybody else, um, and everyone else's expectations in corporate and in the online world and in my family, even it's, um, in a good way, right? But not such a good way in corporate. They don't know how to deal with me. They don't understand my personality. They don't understand if I am the B word or super good at my job. And so I love that you are teaching women specifically how to be a leader by who they are like showing up as themselves, without any of the other nonsense out there dictating to us who we should be and how we should do it. Yeah. I love it. I need it. So let's talk digital products. Um, so I think this conversation is going to be crazy good because we are going to talk a little bit about products in a different way.

Ashley Cox (08:10): So if you could share with me what you want to talk about today. Yeah. So we're going to be talking all about blowing up your membership program. So yes. Okay. So for our listeners, a membership program, I know most of you know, but in case you don't a membership program is something where you subscribe to it and you pay a certain amount of money each month to become a member. And inside of the membership, you, you know, each one's built differently, but essentially you have community in there. You also have a monthly trainings or topics or lessons, maybe swipe files, but you get something new each month. It's like a drip content place, subscription where people hang out. So you are blowing up your membership. So tell me a little bit about what your membership site is like, how much is it what's, what's your content, drip?

Ashley Cox (09:05): What does that look like? Yeah. So the way that I have my membership site structured, uh, is that it is $50 a month and you get access to our private community where you connect with other women who are leading teams, growing teams, stepping into those leadership roles, and you get a new training every month, either with myself or a guest expert. So depending on what's kind of coming up in the group has been how I've been choosing the trainings or what hot topic has, is most relevant at that time. Um, and then from there you also get a monthly mastermind call where we get on and we really dive deep into, you know, a specific problem or a, you know, situation that you're dealing with. Um, we also have a monthly coworking time, um, where we just kind of get together on zoom and we have the opportunity to carve time out of our schedule to work on what's most important.

Ashley Cox (09:59): Uh, because one of the things I found is that a lot of the times as leaders, we are putting off those most important projects because we're not carving out the time for them. So I carved it out for you. You just gotta, you just gotta join. Um, and there's all sorts of other things that happen. I'm trying to think of everything right off the top of my head. Um, you know, there's just all, so there's all sorts of things. There's a lot going on in there. Um, which is probably one of the, one of the issues that I've got to blow this thing up. Yeah, no, I mean, membership sites are hard work. They CRE they need constant curation, constant high touch, conscious, ongoing new content. And depending on how you set it up really dictates kind of the outcome and the longevity of how much you can do it.

Ashley Cox (10:48): So you're doing a lot of high touch things inside your membership, which means a lot more you time, which isn't very scalable. Right? Yeah. So what is your current churn rate in the membership? Like how long do people tend to stay in? Like, how does that work? Well, I've had the membership for about a year now, so it's not been around for too terribly long. Um, but I have, I mean, I still have a handful of, of ladies who joined at the very beginning, um, who are still in there, whether or not they're participating. And I don't want that, you know, I don't, to me that is churn even though it's not checked out. Yes. Checking out is worse than just quitting, quit the whole thing. Um, because it, it really, isn't helping you to grow and to learn and to develop. And it's not helping me help people who are, you know, invested in growing and learning, developing.

Ashley Cox (11:48): Maybe it's not something you need and that's okay. It's perfectly okay to strip things out of your life, out of your business that are really giving you a direct ROI, um, in that moment. And so the, the other kind of the more trackable churn rate is usually, um, probably would stay in for about four months is kind of what they're averaging, um, which is enough time to kind of figure out is this what I need? Am I actually going to show up and participate? And if not, then that's okay. Like I'm just, let's bless and release folks. Okay. Like, just go about your business. Um, so it's pretty average. Like I'm just three wide, four months is, is pretty normal for a membership. Um, I love that. And here's the thing, one thing that I'm just going to share about Ashley, if you couldn't pick up on it, um, during the conversation she deeply cares about your success and a membership site is one of those things where you kind of have to let that go in some regards, because that, it's more about that person who joins fishing and making sure they're continuing to do the outreach and showing up live and attending, whereas you as the host or the holding the space owner to use coaching, whereas which I can't even believe I just did that.

Ashley Cox (13:10): But, um, to like make sure that you get good stuff out there and what they do with it's up to them, which for me surprises me because you're very much about community, probably more so than anyone I know of just, you know, that is your thing. You're super active in your local community. You're super active in the entrepreneur community. You build communities. And so having a membership site where content is basically supposed to be thrown out there for someone to receive, it seems like a mismatch in a way. Oh yes. Oh yes. And so here's, here's the thing we're just going to share all the dirty secrets about the membership today, because I don't want you to fall into the same trap that I did. Right. As, as the listeners, I don't want you guys to fall into the same trap because I very much thought this membership was going to be very much community driven and, and that it was going to be something that with, with fulfilling was within alignment with what I enjoy doing.

Ashley Cox (14:19): And I just so appreciate your kind comments. And I just, it's just nice that other people see that because that's very much my personality, the connection, the community, like relationship building really pouring into people. And so here's where I got myself into a little bit of trouble with my membership. I'm going to spill the fee on my bill. It spilling it, spilling the tea. Um, I have a tendency to over-give and I have had a tendency since my membership has been small and I've been trying to nurture and to grow it to maybe not have super healthy boundaries around who can contact me and how and when and what kind of questions they can ask. And so what I created was a super low price point to have full access to me. And that's not fair to my clients who are paying premium pricing, and it's not fair to me because I'm not that that program wasn't designed to be a premium price program, but that's how I've been, how I've been showing up.

Ashley Cox (15:23): And it's a mistake that so many people make. I was telling Ashley right before this call, this is the third conversation about a membership site that I've had the same feedback this month. Like no joke that I have said, you're giving too much, you're doing too much. You're doing too much high touch for your price point. Like there are different types of memberships and you've created a mastermind with a community, so to speak at a subscription price. Yeah. And that's frustrating. Yeah. That's not scalable at $50 a month. Like that's nothing for the amount of attention people are getting. Yeah. And, you know, even for like my ideal client pool size, I mean, there's still thousands and thousands and thousands and probably a million women out there who fit into my ideal client profile. However, there are far more women and other business owners who fit into that, uh, you know, that lower newbie kinda starting, I'm just getting my business up and running.

Ashley Cox (16:30): And those individuals and even people who are scaling up to six figures are generally the ones who are investing in those, um, membership type models. My ideal client is looking for that more personalized one-on-one high touch, high quality experience. And you're exactly right. I totally built something for them. And then just slap the $50 price. Let's go ladies. And that was, it was, it was totally wrong. And, but here's the thing. I don't mind sharing that if it's safe, someone else, the pain of having to go through that a hundred percent and it's not wrong, it is a test. And it's a test that you learned a bunch of stuff. And you're like, okay, well now I know what I need. What I, don't what works for me? What does it, what my clients need and don't, and how I feel when I don't have boundaries and how we're never going to set that up again and price point.

Ashley Cox (17:27): I know girl, never girl. I still struggle with it. Like I still have to, like now I asked my assistant, I might, can you just make sure that, you know, and she's like, are you really I'm like, yes, you are still the frontline here because I will over deliver over commit. So you learned a bunch. The other point that I think is so important that everybody hears is what's working out there for other people, especially big name gurus is not necessarily going to work for you and your audience, and it may work for you or your audience, but it has to fit all of the things that drive you and your audience for success. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I've just thought of a really great example of, uh, almost that moment. I had this epiphany that this wasn't working out for me. Um, so I'm, I'm actually in a membership program that is 30, 30 or $32 a month with Amber McCue, who is, Planathon the Planathon.

Ashley Cox (18:39): And she is a amazing business strategist and expert. And she's just really, really smart. Here's the thing. Her membership has one training a month. That's already being delivered to her higher level programs. Cause she's not creating anything extra. She's just allowing access to something that she's going to be creating anyways. And you just get that one thing, you get that one training, it is live it's on zoom. You get to interact and it's fantastic. It's great training, totally worth 30 bucks a month, but that's it. You don't get any more access to her. You don't get any more access to anybody else. And so that one was, was my epiphany. Uh, earlier this year, when I looked at that, I was like, wait a second. Things are not equal

Melissa Anzman (19:28): Broke in here. Okay.

Ashley Cox (19:28): What am I doing here? So it really, it helped to look at somebody who was doing a membership model very differently than what I had experienced in the past, or had been a part of in the past, in other people's programs where now looking back on, then I'm like, Whoa, they were really, over-delivering no wonder they were worn out. No wonder they needed that month. Long vacation, no wonder they disappeared from social media for six months. Um, but you know, like there's like, you know, signs, red flags y'all uh, so we, we really need to just be kind of aware of what is, what is happening, what are we creating? And women especially have a tendency to overdeliver, overdeliver, overdeliver. I have to prove my value, my worth to all the people. And it's exhausting it for sure. It is. And especially while you're doing that, you're, you're, you're over delivering over proving while also trying to get new people in because it's never enough, particularly at $50.

Ashley Cox (20:29): You're, you know, you can't sustain that as a business and it's just such a churn. Okay. So I want to talk about wire, what we're doing instead of what the blowup is going to look like. But before I do, I just want some deets on the actual membership. What systems and tools do you use for the membership site? Oh, it's real simple. It's just all in Facebook. Um, I do recordings on zoom and I just put a link in, um, Oh, I just fell out of my head Dropbox. Um, yeah. Um, I just put the link in Dropbox. Here's the recording. If you want to watch it, you can join live and, you know, drop those zoom link into the Facebook group. But there's not really a sophistic, which I'm actually really grateful that I didn't heavily invest in systems and tools and equipment and this and that and the other I'm, I'm really, really strategic with my overhead and my overhead is insanely low.

Ashley Cox (21:25): Um, so I'm, I'm really glad that I just didn't go hog wild, getting all the equipment and tools and systems until I had tested it out. And that was the thing I said, okay, I'm going to give this thing a year. I'm going to try it out. I'm going to see, you know, am I committed? Are they committed? Is this working? Do I like it? So it's not like I just decided to do it on a whim and then quit after two or three months. Like I've been in this now for a year. And I feel like not all quitting is bad. There's, there's quitting, that's quitting because you just can't follow through or you, you know, it's hard, it's hard. And you're like, yeah, do it. And it's like, yeah, we've all been there. Um, but then there's quitting because it doesn't make sense.

Ashley Cox (22:10): And, you know, I was looking for that recurring revenue model and I was looking for the sustainability that it could provide. And I was looking for the stability that it could provide. I was like, Oh, that sounds amazing. I can make money regularly. Awesome. But it didn't align with my other values, like freedom and flexibility. And it just really made me feel I'm trapped in this structure that I couldn't get out of. So common. Okay. What is the blowup mean? What are we doing? Tell me all the dirt. How are you going to execute this? Blow up? Yeah. So this is the first time I've shared it outside of my super, super small, like two person conversation for the record. I was not a part of it.

Ashley Cox (23:06): I was like, well, I've literally only shared it with two people. So, um, yeah, so I have my book that's available. It's already out. So that's tier one. That's a nice entry-level way to get exposure to me and kind of see what I'm all about. It's just like, you know, sitting down and having a cup of coffee with me and we're just chitchatting through the book and that's, that's the starting point. So the free content blogs and Facebook lives and stuff like that. And then the book is the first purchase point. Um, and then I'm working on a, um, my very first digital course, which I'm super excited about and it's going to be all about foundational skills and the things that you need as a leader that are going to like simple shifts and things that you can implement that are just going to make the most impact possible. These are going to be the game changers, you implement this thing and I promise you, your life is going to change immensely. Um, you know, we deal with things like time. Oh, I, I hired employees because I thought I would get time back in my schedule, but it's actually 10 times more work than I thought it was going to be. Yeah, we can. There's a couple things I can help you with there. So yeah,

Melissa Anzman (24:24): Also that employee, just for the record, doesn't actually know what they need to do until you drain them and invest some time in them just right.

Ashley Cox (24:31): So, yeah. So we're going to talk about stuff like that in the corporates and I've, I've got the content all mapped out and it's, ah, it's so good. I worked with, uh, um, Emily Walker with modern leaders collective she's amazing. And she really helped me map out a very intentional and bite-sized program. So that way it's not adding more to your plate, but it's very, um, concise information. It's very actionable there, specific steps. Like here's the thing you need to learn. Here's the step you need to take. Now, what result did you get? Uh, so that way it's, it's tangible and it's moving you forward and you're not just listening to a bunch of great inspiration and inspiration content. And then you're like, great, what do I do with that? But it's a resource that you can come back to time and time again. So we go through things like leadership mindset.

Ashley Cox (25:21): So there's a lot of toxic stories and imposter syndrome and negative self talk that, especially, again, we, as women are telling ourselves about our ability to lead our teams or what our role is in leading our teams. So we do, we do the mindset work first, and then we talk about, you know, creating your CEO's schedule and how do you get your team to actually do the work that they're supposed to be doing? And what is that work that they're supposed to be doing? And we talk, we talk about building culture and what culture actually is and what culture actually is not. Um, and so it's, it's, I'm so excited for it and, uh, and I'm going to run it as a live round first. So that way I can get some feedback on the content and make sure that it's, uh, it's nailed down. Um, so if, if you're like really interested in what we're talking about, like you want to get in on the live round, it's going to be good,

Melissa Anzman (26:12): Excited for it. I'm so excited for you. And we'll definitely include all the links that you've talked about in the show notes for you. Okay. Your course.

Ashley Cox (26:22): Well, you're doing it live. Have you figured out the systems tech tool pieces of it yet, or is that still in progress as we're talking, that's still in progress? Um, I'm doing some research right now. I do plan on running it again as alive a group, the first go round. So that'll probably just be in a Facebook group, but then from there, I'll do some, some professional dish calling me, and we're going to talk, I'm going to talk to Melissa and we're going to be doing some, you know, DIY professional ish looking things. Um, but I do eventually want that course to be, you know, up and running and sustainable on its own and, and we'll have some sort of community component to it, but then the third tier. So what I'm really excited to build after we get the course up and running and, and that'll be the point where we get more of that in depth, really neat, connected, uh, you know, community and masterminding and coaching, and really just taking a lot of those elements from the membership that I'm blowing up and just building it right into a high level premium service for a small group of women.

Ashley Cox (27:35): Um, I'm still building, I mean, I'm literally in the process of, uh, creating this strategy and designing it and making it something that these women are going to be excited about, but they're going to get a ton of value out of because, um, you know, my ideal clients, they're losing time in their, in their home lives. They're losing time in their businesses. They're losing brain space. They barely have enough space in their brain to juggle all the things that they're doing. Let alone, continue to dream and think about the future and put strategies together that are actually going to be revenue generating. And it's not just living in the weeds and tasking every day. Um, so I'm really excited to help, help these women get more time and more money in their businesses.

Ashley Cox (28:20): I'm so excited. I like, I am

Ashley Cox (28:22): Smiling ear to ear. I think this is going to be great. I love that you figured out what works and what doesn't early on. Like if you've done it enough to have true information, true value, and that ton of content and feedback, um, to be able to say, you know what, this isn't how I want to serve, but let me package it in a different way, which is what I talk about all the time. And you're going to package it in a course, which I love and doing it live. And you already have your Ascension model set up. I love everything about it. So thank you. Super exciting. Yeah. I felt really good about it. And I think, I think that's a, that's a good lesson for, for that we can share is that it's okay to try things out and they not work. Yes.

Ashley Cox (29:09): So what lessons are you taking from those? And also you can't blame your clients. I'm not blaming the people in my membership. They are wonderful, lovely, amazing women, but I'm the one that created those. And so it's my, you know, I own this. I have to take responsibility for this. I have to take ownership of it. And, and that's something that as a business owner, it might be new to you. Um, maybe, maybe, you know, you, haven't had to really like own a big, I'm not going to even say it's a mistake. It's just a great learning lesson. It's, it's a, it's like being a scientist. You put your scientist hat on. I tried this experiment. It didn't work and I'm going to test another one. It's okay. Um, but you have to give yourself permission to just try things out and know that not everything's going to work, not everything is going to stick, but the lessons you take from that are going to be absolutely invaluable and take you a step closer, 10 step, closer, 15 steps, closer to creating the thing that's going to not only serve your audience, your clients really, really well, but it's going to feel amazing because business doesn't have to be hard and it doesn't have to suck.

Melissa Anzman (30:18): Yes. Love it. Okay. What advice would you give somebody in this space?

Ashley Cox (30:24): Um, or maybe it's, it's, they're just

Melissa Anzman (30:27): Not feeling a match with what they're doing. What advice would you

Ashley Cox (30:31): Them first look at your, your personal values? What is it that you value in your life, in your business? Um, you know, I mentioned earlier two of my values are freedom and flexibility. And if I don't have that freedom and flexibility, I feel suffocated. And then I hide and then I don't want to show up and do things and that's all a bad cycle to get into. Um, so really know yourself. If you need to take a personality assessment or you need to do some journaling or maybe ask one of the things I did, I think it was maybe three years ago now was actually asked 20 people that was a mixture of friends, family, like best friends, acquaintances, people who were in my audience or my community. I just chose 20 people like two to three for each category. And I asked them, what are the three traits you think of when you think of me? Oh my God, that was the easiest and most valuable exercise that I ever got or that I ever did. And just seeing how other people perceive you and seeing those similarities that can give you so much great insight into things that are going to align with your personality and align with your value system. So I would start there know thy self first. We love it.

Melissa Anzman (31:42): Okay. Ashley, where can people find you online?

Ashley Cox (31:45): Yeah. I have a website over@ashleycox.co, and I'm also on Facebook and instagram@ashleycox.co. I tried to make it super easy. Um, and if you are, you know, into LinkedIn, I'm over there, but I got a little, a little change for you. That's Ashley in Cox. So, you know, but you can find all these links on my website. So all you remember is Ashley cox.co you just, you just go there and find me and we'll get connected. Amazing.

Melissa Anzman (32:12): And we'll of course include all the notes and links to your book and your course and all that fun stuff in the show notes. It has been amazing having you on. I really appreciate you sharing your story and your membership site blow up and walking through what's next.

Ashley Cox (32:21): Thank you so much, Melissa. This has been so much fun and I just, I hope you guys find a lot of value out of this conversation and just remember you're the boss. You do whatever you want. So blow it up.

Melissa Anzman (32:42): To join the free workshop where you'll learn why your digital products aren't selling nearly as much as you planned for and how to diversify and scale your income by launching the right way. Text launchyourself, all one word to: 44222.