018: Losing Everything to Thriving Business Woman with Ashley Stahl

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned high performance coach. When odds are stacked against us, how do we shift and create everything from nothing? How do we level up when we aren't feeling it yet or we've had a big setback? On this podcast, I'll be talking to some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on this planet who at their worst, learned how to achieve success greater than they ever dreamed possible. Leveling up and creating everything from nothing. After spending countless months creating a webinar, Ashley Stahl had finally cracked the code. In a matter of just three months, she made $5 million with this high performing, high converting webinar. That story didn't end there, though. Ashley lost all of those earnings. You heard me right, she lost all of them. But in that process, she gained more than she could have ever imagined. Thriving today with her business, Cake Publishing, and her podcast, U Turn. Join in today and meet Ashley, who shares how she countless times has leveled up creating everything from nothing. Today, I am so lucky to be interviewing Ashley Stahl. Ashley, thank you so much for being here with me today. I'm so excited to interview you. When I heard your story, I was jumping up with. I wanted to scream, yes, yes, yes. Like, you could hear me. You couldn't hear me. But I won the parallels of what I went through personally and then hearing your story and then just the mindset that it took to. To recreate. So thank you so much for being here today with me.

Oh, it's such an honor. And thanks for sharing me with your world.

Yeah. So, okay, Ashley, so my audience doesn't know you yet, but they're going to. You are fascinating. Can you take us back? Like, I want them to get a good idea of, like, what you were doing before you created everything you have now. Take us back. Like, what were you trained to do initially?

You know, believe it or not, I started off my career, for those of you listening, in counterterrorism, which isn't necessarily working where you'll find a career coach. But that was just the beginning of my path because growing up, I was always fascinated by people. And I grew up in a house where the news was always on. And from a young age, we were talking about politics at the dinner table. And so I formed an opinion, for better or for worse. And that translated into me going to college, not really knowing what to study, and just kind of defaulting into something that was interesting to me. And eventually I ended up at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. working in counterterrorism in my early 20s. But what got me there is what really set me on my journey. So when I had turned around 22, I finished a master's in international relations in London and I came back to Los Angeles and I couldn't get a job to save my life. And I was on my parents couch for like three months and I got to a place where I just said to myself, something's better than nothing.

And so all this training and you're thinking like I should get a job, I'm obviously qualified. And was that a surprise? I mean, it must have been a huge surprise that you couldn't find it anything.

Yeah, thanks for saying that because you know, I think a lot of people have different beliefs about what the workforce is going to be like when they're young. And for me, I was an optimist. I was excited. I thought that I was going to go in and make a mark and be someone. And so for me it was heartbreaking. I remember on the way to a couple job interviews, getting a couple a speeding ticket and not being able to afford my speeding ticket. You know, there's just so many times where I started to make meaning out of who I was because of the results I was creating. And yes, in a lot of ways you can know a lot about somebody based on their results that they're creating because that shares so much about where their mind is at. But in my case I was just finding myself. And so I eventually took an admin job making minimum wage. And for about six months I kind of sat in this cubicle from 9am to 5pm every day, processing an executive expenses, taking Arabic classes at UCLA at night and wondering if I, is this it? Like am I working towards a career that isn't going to happen for me?

Yeah. So what made you stay committed at that point? Like, I mean, because that, that could really wear on you. I mean you're doing an admin job, you're super highly trained like this. I'm seeing, knowing your, your story that you're going to get into that this was your first example of being able to create something from a bad place.

Yeah. You know, I think that at the end of the day, clarity comes from engagement. It doesn't come from thought. Right. And so for me, I spent months sitting in my cubicle trying to think my way into what I would do next. And finally my instinct just told me that I should call my university, ask for a list of everybody that's ever moved to Washington D.C. and I told myself I'm going to use every Single lunch break for the next six months to call every single person on this list. There's like 2,000 people on the list, if not more. And the nature of government jobs is that they lend themselves to privacy. So there's, it's an interesting dynamic because it's one thing to just call somebody cold, that's alumni of your college. It's another thing to call somebody that works in the government, works in counterterrorism cold. Like, who are you calling me?

You know, why are you calling me? What do you want?

What is going on? Yeah, and I'm sure that a lot of the jobs on the alumni sheet weren't even the jobs that they were doing. I'm sure that a lot of people were in much more sensitive jobs that they weren't sharing. So here I am, you know, this 23 year old, like, hi, I went to the same university as you and I'm just curious, like, you have any tips for me? I'm job hunting.

I found you on the alumni list.

You know, I got a lot of hang ups, but what I also got was a lot of yeses, A lot of people saying, oh, you know what, I actually know somebody that can help you. What year did you graduate? So some people were just genuinely nice. And I found that if a lot of people say that your life and your success is directly correlated to the amount of uncomfortable conversations that you've had. But what I found on and on again, is that what's beneath that is that my success eventually was tied to how much I could regulate my own nervous system.

What do you mean by that?

Well, if you think about like uncomfortable conversations, what's really happening is it's uncomfortable because your nervous system is freaking out, you're getting anxiety, you're getting nerves, you're having fear. So what I've learned is how can I take dominion over my mind, over my body, when my biology is panicking? Oh, that's really good. And that has been the question that I've been with ever since I was 22, 23 years old, because I was so making meaning of who I was. Being an admin assistant, making minimum wage, going to a top 25 university in the world. A lot of people were cherry picked out of my university to go into the counterterrorism world. I was never an incredible student. I was a good student. And yeah, I just ended up kind of hustling and making all these phone calls. And eventually my job, it got to a place where I could move to Washington dc. I had an attraction where I had a belief that something could happen for me. Wow.

So that this is really your first step in really this mind body connection and making sure, like, okay, I'm going to believe this. I'm going to connect. I'm going to get outside of my own head and connect and reach out for help. So what happened?

Yeah, exactly. And you know what was so profound about all of it was that I ended up picking up and moving with $3,000 in my bank account and no promise that I would get a job. And the only thing scarier to me than quitting my job and moving was coming back and starting over with no money. So I took my $3,000, I moved into a row house and rented a room on Avenue, and I ended up getting bed bugs in my place. I couldn't afford a nicer place, so I stayed with a friend. And I was just so desperate that I told myself, I am going to get multiple job offers. I don't care if I fail. I don't care if I look stupid. I don't care what people think of me. I'm just gonna push and I'm gonna try. So of course I fell on my face. Of course I failed. But then every few failures, there was one, yes, there was one conversation that got me somewhere. Next thing I knew, I was having meetings with the diplomats in the Department of State, the head of nuclear weapons in the National Security Council, and so many more inspiring people who really held the keys to making an impact on my life. And that was what taught me about job hunting. And what I learned throughout all of this was eventually I got three job offers, I tripled my salary, and I got a management job replacing a colonel working at the Pentagon. So, I mean, a radical shift in six weeks. And it really taught me, like, who I am on Friday doesn't have to be who I am on Monday.

Wow. So six weeks from like, nothing. No, like, to this. This is incredible.

Yeah, well, I was possessed. And I think what it comes down to. And I had the same experience, which we can talk about, when I created an E course. I went from nothing to millions of dollars of revenue really quickly. It's not because I'm magic or that I'm different than anybody. I think it's just like when you have that white hot desire and you just need it like air. And that was how I felt about my job and getting a job.

Well, you've heard that saying, what you obsess, you possess. I mean, that's really what you're saying there. So interesting.

Yeah. Yeah.

So did you know at that time that this would become your next level career? That whole hunting and what you learned.

Through at, you know, what's so interesting is that coaching was kind of on the rise at that time. But what I learned is that if you follow what feels good, your purpose is on the periphery. And I privately coached so many women in their career trying to figure out what they want to do on their job hunt, you know, later in my life. But this is something that I personally experienced and I think that that is why this experience was so powerful for me is to really put myself in the shoes of so many people that I went on to help. And in my case, it was okay. What felt good was getting a job in D.C. and using my degree. Did I know if that was the end all be all? Did I know if that was where I belonged in the world?

No.

But I knew that it felt right. And a lot of the times what feels right is what feels right right now. And that's okay. You know, it's like, it's like relationships. You love somebody until you don't. There's no guarantee. The only guarantee is change. Whether you change together or not, you don't know. It's the same with jobs.

So what happened? Tell us about how did you go from, you get this great career, you do it quickly, you're learning all this information, why not stay in that? What happened next?

So I ended up accepting this role, running a program for the Pentagon. I replaced a colonel who was 65 years old. They told me that they needed somebody with energy and he and that senior level hires were delegating too much. I networked my heart out and once I got this job, I kind of missed job hunting and all my friends from grad school who were out in London, who moved to D.C. you know, with that sunny disposition, hoping that they would be part of the change makers that descended upon D.C. with me. They would ask me, how did you get a job? How did you get paid a real salary? A lot of them were way better students than I was. I ended up sitting down with them at Starbucks. Next thing I know, they would invite their friends, they would ask if we could meet again. And I started to kind of come up with a system of how to get a job. And it kind of mirrored what I did in my admin job. You come up with a list of people, you get clear on what you're going to say to them, you get clear on what you're going to do. So many different things that eventually would Become my job offer academy course, which is for job hunting. And it was just such an incredible experience because it lit me up so much that I would spend my week at the Pentagon working on the Taliban and all sorts of different things with NATO. And I would be thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so looking forward to that copy date, helping all these girls get a job. Yeah, yeah.

That's how you know, that's how you know your passion started. It's like it didn't feel like extra work on the side. You were enjoying it, you couldn't wait to do it.

Well. And they're not random, right? So many people are multi passionate. Like I was like I was interested in government, but I wasn't passionate about it. And I think so so often we confuse. And this is the whole point of even my podcast with U Turn Podcast, it's all about like, how do we harness who we truly are? And what I found is that I'm multi passionate. Job hunting is a part of me, foreign affairs is a part of me. But often we misinterpret our interests and it can be so damaging because we will promote them into a career path when really they're just an interest. And that was really, for me, what happened with the government. Whereas job hunting was like a skill set and a level of mastery and the ability to communicate that was changing other people's lives. It was something that I naturally shined in. Random but great. And so were you getting, were you.

Getting paid for this? You're just doing it for fun right now? Like you just enjoy doing it?

Yeah, Kind of following what was feeling good, like I had said. And then next thing I knew, people were like, you should be a career coach. And the only thing I'd ever heard of was like a hockey coach, you know, like sports coaches. So I was like a career coach. What do they do, cheer you on on the sidelines of your job? Like, what does this even mean? And next thing I knew, I quit my job in counterterrorism, moved back to la. I still had job offers coming in from that six week period that I really hit the pavement. Even one in LA in counterterrorism, which barely exists, you know, so moved home to Los Angeles and hired a coach and just asked her, like, how do I do this? I feel like I'm too young for this. Sold my car to be able to hire her. She was $10,000.

Okay, so wait a minute, back up a second. Because you're in a job, it's obviously paying well, more than you had anticipated getting. You have this passion, you're hearing about this idea of being a career coach. You're not really sure what that is. How do you decide to quit your job? I mean, that's scary. I mean, what do you take to say? I'm going to just go on this chance. I don't even know how I'm going to create this. But like, how did you do that? That's scary. Like you're gonna leave income and I'm imagining retirement and you worked. You know all of that.

Yeah. You know, I tell people this in the job offer academy a lot because a lot of people come to me and ask something along the lines of like, how do I just leave if I'm miserable? And one of the biggest loopholes to not being happy in your job, but being in this transition point, whether you want to start a business or whatever have you, is part time work. And so many people, I think socially and in society as a whole, we have some sort of collective judgment that part time work. I think subconsciously, a lot of us think that those jobs couldn't possibly be as shiny as the full time jobs. When that couldn't be further from the truth. There's a lot of incredible companies that have a really specialized opportunity. They don't need somebody full time and it can pay your bills. So I started to look into doing part time work and moving back to la and the part time work I just wanted to link to a skill set. So I thought maybe I could work in personal development. But I'd gotten another job offer that was pending a while back and I circled back and said, hey, is this offer still open? And it was running an intelligence team for a Fortune 100 company who had staff all over the world. And I thought, you know what, this gets me home. Where my roots are, where my people are, maybe I can find myself there, get a therapist, get a coach or something to just recollect myself. So it's not like I just quit.

Okay.

And you know, I just want to say that for anybody listening, I think that the human condition is such that there's two elements. There's the misery you have in your current situation and then there's the fear of the unknown. And more often than not, people will not step into the fear of the unknown until they are so miserable that they just can't bear their current state anymore. And I was getting to that place where I was like, I am selling my soul to be in the Pentagon. I mean, I'm watching videos of women blowing their head off in the D.C. and Afghanistan. And I'm on military bases and I'm writing a book right now called U Turn Y O U. And it's all about how I made all sorts of different U turns. And this was one of them was realizing everything I thought I wanted wasn't what I wanted. And I had a fundamental misunderstanding about where my interests should be existing in my life. Like I was interested in politics, to read the Economist on a Sunday, was I interested in it, to live and breathe it Monday through Friday? No. And there were certain hints of that early in my life, but I wasn't connected to myself enough to notice that.

That's powerful. So you take this leap of faith. You do part time work so you can get to la, get to where you want to be and start work, and then what happens?

So I heard about a coach who and everybody said, if you want to be a masterful coach, you need to hire a masterful coach. I'm like, this sounds like a pyramid scheme. But then I was just skeptical because first of all, there were no care coaches to millennials. If you think about. And since then I've gone on to coach so many women in their 40s, 50s, on their business, their confidence, their career, but there was none for millennials. And if you think about it, it's like, yeah, of course not. Because I was in my early 20s, the millennial generation was too young to have even really had any career to coach off of. I was in this sweet spot of time where I thought, you know what? I'm just going to bite the bullet. I've always been creative, I've always been a risk taker. And it's funny, I don't really risk my life. Like I don't want to skydive, but I'll risk my money or I'll risk ideas because I'm just so in touch with my youth. I was like, this doesn't even matter. Like, life is short, but it's also long, you know, and I can try something new if it doesn't work for me. So I ended up selling my car to be able to hire this coach that everyone was talking about. And I just asked around, like, does anybody know? Looked at websites, looked at Yelp, and this one woman, she just kept coming up and ended up hiring her. And what she gave me as a real gift was just the belief that whatever I want to create is possible. And she is who supported me in learning how to manage my nervous system. So it wasn't so much about how do I start a business. It was, how do I stop thinking that this isn't available to me?

You know, I love that you just said that because there is such a mindset component to that. And it's not the tactical stuff that coaches typically thrive in. Helping people with. It is that belief in themselves. I hear that over and over again that somebody believed in me, somebody told me I could do it.

Yes, yes. And I don't know, there's also something really inspiring about a person who's truly in alignment with their work. So if you look at the coaching world right now, you know, you have coaches like me. Like I have E courses on job hunting, business, finding your purpose. But this woman is one of those coaches that didn't want to leverage herself. She just wanted to be a one on one coach forever. And you could see her joy in her work and she would bring that extra shine to her work because she was so happy to be there with me. And this woman had invested probably a half million dollars, if not more into upping her own game as a one on one coach. So I mean, my brain rewired with her and everybody in my life noticed it. And to this day, I mean, I've gone on to do so much different personal development, but I still feel like the tools she and I facilitated together of stepping into worthiness, that's been where I've been able to change, help somebody change their life the most is really what they're worthiness. Yeah.

And I love hearing that because it's true. Like you, a good coach is always learning and getting their own coaching too. It doesn't stop.

Well, they can't coach somebody on a blind spot that they're not willing to see in themselves. We're all one, you know, so what happens next?

We're about to get juicy. I know what happens next.

So she, she was saying to me, why don't you be a high end coach? That's what I'm doing. You don't need to do all this Internet stuff. Stuff. But this was the beginning of webinars on the Internet. And I have always, I told my mom, like, it's not that I'm lazy. I just value my free time so much. And I've always needed spaciousness. I think it comes from a young age. I used to get sick a lot and take a lot of time off of school. And it wasn't any severe sickness, just the flu or things that would take me out. And I remember watching my dad say to me, you know, when you're sick as an adult, you're gonna have to tell somebody that you can't come to work, and you only have a certain amount of days you're allowed to be sick. And that's scared the shit out of me. That's not human, you know? So I was scared of the workforce. And I ended up thinking, you know what? How do I leverage myself the most possible? And I was watching all these coaches do launches, and it looked really tiring to me just watching it on Facebook or wherever people were doing it. And I thought there was one guy in the market. I think it was Pat Flynn doing an automated webinar, and he was sending emails about how much money he was making in his sleep. And I thought, like, I've taught that there's no such thing as passive income. There's only active income. That's what I watched my dad earn when I was a kid, is he worked really hard. So the thought of not tying your dollars to your hours blew my mind. But I was so curious about it that even though it felt preposterous, I still wanted to follow whatever that meant. And I told myself, like, I will do anything for this company to work. Like, anything to a fault. Like, I didn't care about my romantic relationship as much as this business. Things have shifted since. My priorities have shifted. But I was just hungry. I was so hungry. And so I ended up really stepping into it and just doing anything I could. And I was kind of like an octopus, reaching everywhere, trying to figure out what I needed to buy or who I needed to hire. And so I made about 100k in my first year private coaching, 300k in my second year, and I peddled every single penny of my private practice straight into an E course. And let me tell you, you know, I bought so many things I didn't need. Sales pages, shopping carts that I didn't need. But I just didn't know.

Girl, I am your soul sister with that. That's what connected me to you. Same exact thing. Love it. I understand your pain. It's that belief of, like, somebody else knows more. It's this tool. If I have that, if this is the way that it'll work, putting money into it. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's even funny because I have different friends with business coaches, Whether it's somebody hiring me or somebody hiring somebody else to business coach. It's just funny because I'm like, look, like I tell my friend, I'm like, just hire them, because you're gonna just save the amount you spent on them in Mistakes, you know, and so that was really what I started to invest in was different business courses, online mastermind groups. I spent everything. And I was in a constant state of being broke because I was just learning. And that was more important to me than having money in my early 20s. So.

Okay, so I know you're about to talk about how this ends up taking off, but I want, I'm curious about. This is the gold question right here. When you don't have, when you are in that, like you said, I'm in a state of being broke. And you have a vision of what you want to create, how did you will yourself to keep going knowing I'm broke?

I think, I think when you deeply connect to your creativity and you're working on yourself like anything is possible. But I think it's both. You can't just be creative and not be investing in yourself in some ways. So to me, I know if I'm not investing in myself, I don't have a soundboard, somebody who's been there and done that. And I hire people who've already done what I want to do. I am just floating. And I learned that through that first coach that I hired. So.

So you have to tell yourself, like, because I know that mindset's powerful. Like you're sitting there, I need to create. I need to create, but I don't have money. I don't have money. You have to shut that up in your brain or what did you do?

I borrowed money from my mom, so. And I totally get that. A lot of people probably are like, how do I, you know, it's a very scary feeling to put money out or borrow money and think, what if I can't pay this back? But the, I mean, and I know people have said this and it's really trite, but I genuinely was more afraid of my life if I didn't try things out. And I see way too many people who play it safe. They don't try things that they want to experiment with. And it's one of the top regrets, you know, it's one of the top regrets of the dying is not having done more things that fulfill them in their career path. And so for me, it was just, I had more fear for whatever reason of not doing the things that I wanted, not self actualizing. It also comes down to my belief system. I believe in reincarnation. So I think life is an experiment and we're all here to just experience it. We're all just souls having a human experience. And so for me, I Was like, I'm just a soul here to have a human experience and to look in the mirror and say, what experience do I want to have?

I love that. I love that.

Yeah. And I just thought, I need to have this experience. My soul needed to know what wealth felt like, what creation felt like, what success felt like. It was almost like a deep curiosity. And I think everybody who's listening right now, they're longing for something. They have, like a deep curiosity. And whether they're in touch with themselves enough to know what that is or not, that's possible for them to touch if they want to silence themselves and really hear their thoughts.

So you invest everything. You get this to go, and what happens with this webinar? You finally get it to work for a year.

It failed. So I invested in Facebook ads. I found a coach. She had a lot of good structures, but she really nothing. We created, converted. I think it's tempting to always blame your coach when something's not working, but what systems work for them would probably work for you. But you need to know there's so many moving parts. There's your lead cost, your audience, your copywriting, your offer. There's so many pieces that move. So I think the biggest thing that anyone going into this needs to do is say to themselves, it is not. Set it and forget it. If you are doing webinars, if you are doing E courses, you are in the game, not just of creation, but in the game of tweaking.

Yes. And that will actually, once you move on, you can't.

Exactly. Exactly. And that's what blew my mind about people who do the launching model, because I'm like, wow, you're doing it once and you're never optimizing it. It's never where it could be. So I had one webinar. I've always been a good writer. I hired everybody under the sun. Eventually, it started showing signs of converting. Like, you know, I'd get a little more sales, but I'd still break even. And I was just running through all my money.

Yep.

And, you know, I just thought, I'm just going to keep going. In worst case, I'm going to get a job. Because, let's face it, usually the worst case isn't that bad.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think so many people stop at this part. Like, I tried, I tried, I tried. It's not working. I'm done. I got. I just. It didn't work. And then they get. They get jaded about it. Negative. Doesn't work. Scam, scam.

It's a scam. Yeah, totally. Or just like it's not. Or even worse, they make us make it mean something about them. So instead of saying it doesn't work, it's like, I'm not cut out for this.

Yeah. So did you ever have those conversations in your mind that, like, maybe I should just quit?

I decided that I was going to give everything I had to this, and I was able to believe in that and commit to that for a year and a half until I had a total breakdown. Rent was due, and I was 100k in credit cards and nothing was working. I remember sobbing on the floor like, I've never had such an ugly cry. And that you wouldn't believe it. I mean, there's always opportunity around the corner. A VA had kind of, you know, we all got a lot, like, love our vas, but we've all had VAs that something happens, you know, virtual assistance, where. And one of them was. And this is just a perfect example of all the different things that I had endured. And it was definitely traumatic. Looking back on it, like, the pain. I can still feel some of the pain of these experiences. Broke. One of my VAs was sending traffic from a Facebook ad to a page that wasn't working. So, like, the page was broken. So I was paying, like, X amount per click, and it was going to a dead link. So she felt. And that happens. But that's. And at the end of the day, nobody cares about your company like you do.

And so out of control. And it brings up that story of, like, only I can do this. I only myself, definitely.

And I think it brought up the story like, people are gonna screw me over. Like, that was the kind of. That was the trauma from all of it. Like, the experience I had with success and with failure and with all of this was the stories that I told myself were not so much about winning money or losing money or because I, you know, eventually made all this money, lost money. It was really the trauma for me was about trusting people to do what they say they would do. And seeing that a lot of people maybe do think they can do something, and then maybe it's out of their wheelhouse. And that was my healing. Eventually was forgiving all of the VAs, all of the copywriters, all of the people that because my money, it wasn't just about my money. It was like, I have X amount of dollars. I'm putting my sweat, blood and tears into working to earn this. And this is going into my vision in the world. And I only have so Much energy to keep doing it. And so every person that would receive my money if they didn't help, it felt like a huge take, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And it's very easy to get resentful with that. I'm so relating to right now.

Yeah. And so eventually it got to a place where that day when I was sobbing, one of the VA's, she's like, I'm so sorry that I did this. And one of my clients is working with this funnels guy, and I think he might be able to, like, really help you. So I'm just going to connect you to him. Usually I wouldn't do this, but I just feel like I want to make this up to you. So she connects me to this guy who later I found out, you know, had all sorts of legal things happen, and that's why he was teaching people and not himself, because, like, I think he'd gotten in trouble for doing something. I still don't know to this day what it was, but he was coaching people and he was super talented. But his integrity, I would find was around zero, you know, all the way from, like, hitting on me. Even though he has a wife and kids.

Oh, boy.

You name it. And eventually he, like, divorced his wife, met somebody on an airplane, and she was like, 23, and he's like 6 years old, and they're off in the sunset. No judgment on that. Clearly he was considering me, I guess was what I realized when that happened. But.

Well, that could have been plan B. You never know.

Yeah, right. I'm happy to be his plan B, but you Better than plan A. But, yeah. So he didn't have a lot of integrity when it came to just how he dealt with me business wise. He also didn't have a lot of integrity with how he wanted to sell online. So a lot of the times he would sit down with me and be like, hey, this is how you write a webinar script. But I was so disconnected from myself that I was so desperate. I was so desperate for something to work. I was like, honestly, I just need to make money. At this point, I don't even care. So when I got on the phone with him, he was like, okay, it's gonna be $3,000 a month for two phone calls. I call my mom, I'm like, let me call you back. I'm gonna do this. I call my mom, like, mom, I need $3,000. She's like, tell me it's not for another coach. I'm like, no, no, no. It's just for Rent. The first and last lie I've ever told my mom. As a grown ass woman, no less.

Yeah. And I told that same lie. So I'm with you.

That's so funny. I want to listen to your story. Yeah, it's like she wires me. She's like, this is your last $3,000. And rent was due that week. So I was like, how am I gonna pay rent? We don't know. So my first call with this guy was, how do I make money today? Because I have.

Yeah, that's where you need cash flow.

Yeah, I need it now. And he had helped me with some sort of private coaching ideas of like landing a speaking engagement that he was involved in. Got a couple clients from that paid the rent. But, you know, I found that risk, you know, and luck. Luck favors the bold, you know, And I kept trusting. And I feel like completely sick by this. But the reality is that every time I've hit the brink where there's no dollars in my bank account and people are sending invoices in, for example, when I start a company and I'm being invoiced contractors and there's not enough cash flow in the company, I've just for some reason gotten much calmer now because I've had enough experiences where I'm like, the money will come. And my relationship with money is one of trust, which I never had before. But it began with this guy. Even though he didn't have good integrity, even though I eventually had to let him go, I was so disconnected from myself. He taught me how to write an incredible webinar script. Next thing I knew, the conversions doubled. It still wasn't super profitable, but it was profitable without refunds. We had a 35 money back guarantee on my job hunting course. So that was the first step. And then we did one thing to the webinar. We added video testimonials. I had hundreds of testimonials who had gone through my methodology on how to land a job with what I do. Even now in the job offer academy. And people went through it and they'd done these video testimonials saying, before working with Ashley, you know, I couldn't get a job for six months. And I was applying online. After working with Ashley six weeks in, I got three job offers. And that was consistent. Like, a lot of people got massive results. And the results sold it on its own.

Oh, yeah, Massive results.

The entire webinar started to convert. So this breakdown I had was in October, the webinar started converting by the end of November. By January, we were tinkering with automating it. And the first time it started converting, I was like, is this just luck? Because 40 people bought on a presentation and the course that I'd offered. Right now I just offer courses that are automated. But back then it had like group coaching calls and all sorts of high touch points. And it was $1,000 course. And then one webinar, after I implemented the testimonials, which there's a lot of tweaks I did over time, we ended up getting 40 buyers and we spent $5,000 on Facebook ads. So I ate times my money.

Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. So you're finally like, this was the best $3,000 a month I've ever spent. I'm sure.

Yeah, I was. I just literally couldn't believe it. And it was one of the loneliest, most confusing experiences of my life too, because, you know, all of my friends from high school and college growing up in Los Angeles, we would have lunch or dinner every Wednesday and they all had corporate jobs and I would sit down and they were kind of used to me being the struggling entrepreneur. I mean, shit, I was used to me being the struggling entrepreneur.

And Here you make $40,000 from a.

Web in an hour. Yeah. And then I thought, you know, I told my coach, I was like, there's no way that this is going to keep happening. This was like a unicorn, you know, he's, oh, we'll see. Watch the next webinar. And he had a little smirk. And I think the guy, you know, even though his business integrity wasn't good, I think he had a good heart. I think he really wanted people to succeed. Even though the webinar script, looking back, I felt so disconnected from myself. There were so many things with urgency and scarcity and putting pressure quickly that don't resonate at all for me now. And they don't sync up with how I sell now. So. Yeah. So next thing I knew, the next week I did it. 40 sales again, like clockwork. And I paid off my debt in two weeks. $150,000 of credit card debt gone. Wow. And it was just the most mind blowing experience to feel like you've gone from such scarcity.

Yeah.

To such success. And I didn't even know how to talk about it.

Yeah. Because it's not a common, like, how do you even talk to friends about it? How do you even. And then you're also battling what you just said. You're battling like the values and like, okay, did I do this? Okay. Like, it's.

Is it going to stay?

Is it going to stay? But also, did I do it sketchy? Is it shady? You know, all of it. I can imagine all of that going through your head.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, the sketchy or shadiness, and there's a lot of gray zones in it, and there still are a lot of gray zones of webinar. My colleagues who have really high performing webinars right now, some of the most respected marketers, I would eventually learn because I scaled my webinar so far. The highly scaled webinars are the ones that the FTC and governments watch and my legal team. I called in lawyers the moment I started to succeed, because I was like, hey, like, I need no money, and I need to hire 10 employees now. Because once I automated the webinar, it became not $40,000 in a day, once a week, it became $40,000 every day.

That's incredible. So you and you and I heard that this webinar ends up making you, like, $5 million, right?

Yeah, yeah. Just a few months. And over that time, I would say about three weeks. The first three weeks, I was just in shock. And I mean, can you. I mean, anybody listening? It's like, those of you who don't have a financial situation you're excited about right now, it's like you imagine you wake up and you look in your bank account, you slept in, and there's like 20 grand from that morning sales. And it was. Set it and forget it.

It was like, I can't believe all this work and this commitment paid off like this. And then I'm assuming you have the thoughts like, how long will it last? Will it keep going?

Yeah. Well, that was my greenness, was that I just thought, this is here, and I'm set for life. Because my market was job seekers. I knew nothing about Facebook ads, so I kind of thought, saw Facebook ads as like a faucet that I just turn on because I have a webinar that converts them into money. But what I eventually found out was, you know, I got lawyers after three weeks of sitting with it in absolute shock, and I started house hunting in Malibu on the beach. Like, it was just such a, like, cluster, you know, Like.

Yeah.

And the lawyers were like, okay, it's gonna take us about three weeks to go through all this. You have a lot of material. And I was like, yeah, I just want to play fair, because look at me. I came from counterterrorism at the Pentagon. I clearly value justice.

You want to be legal and make sure. Everything's good.

When you're making that kind of money, it almost feels like it's illegal. Like, no, there's no way I'm allowed to make this much money in the world. It's just my mindset wasn't there. So, yeah, I ended up getting all these lawyers. They weeded through everything, and they started picking apart the webinar. They were like, well, there's a lot of case law about urgency and scarcity. And given that you're telling people that they have X amount of time to buy, but it's an automated webinar. If they find it again on the Internet, then technically they don't have that amount of time to buy.

Yeah. Which is like what everybody puts on their sales pages and webinars. So this is like. That is what works.

Yeah, it's what works. It's necessary. They were pointing out everything that converted it. Everything that all marketers are still doing right now. But it didn't feel good for me. So it was this weird journey of I got my job at the Pentagon in 2011. I started getting my coach in 2013, 2014, and 2015. Sixteen was when this success blew up. And it was like, oh, my God, it's been such a large journey and painful journey. Nights where you realize your ads are pointing to a dead page and you have no money left, and past $3,000 went to a broken sales page. It's just, yeah, I suffered. I suffered. And, you know, to get to that place and then to look at something that's working, and I asked my coach, like, what kind of revenue do you think this has? My market was job seekers, you know, and it still is with my job offer, which is what I created because of this experience and what I learned from it. But, you know, it was everybody. Everybody is a job seeker. You know, we are such a rarity being entrepreneurs, just because we surround ourselves with so many of them, it feels like everybody's one, you know, but the.

Majority is looking for a job. You're right.

Yeah. And it's the biggest pain point. And we were coming out of the recession, so, you know, it's like, everybody's looking for a job. No. And my poll question on all of my ads was sick of applying for jobs and never hearing back. And it was like such a yes in everybody's head. The ad was performing so well. I was getting a dollar per email on Facebook ads.

You had all these questions going on, and you're like, you're feeling good about it, but you're not Maybe feeling fully aligned. But did you have any doubts about, like, your worthiness of this? Did you, like, what was happening with that?

For the longest time and this roots early into my education, I saw myself as. I always told people I was an A human. And it's funny, I really meant it. I kind of think I'm really great, but I'm not a perfectionist. I'm not detail oriented. So I always kind of saw myself as a minus. Like, you know, I have the nice home, but like, there's like a bunch of shit hiding in the closet. You know, Like, I just don't go all the way to make things beautiful or excellent because I don't know, I. It's just not my personality. Same thing with college. Like, I was never a good test taker. You know, I went to D.C. and I was up against the resumes that went to Harvard. The reason that I was thriving was because I learned how to network. So the recruiter knew exactly who I was before I walked in. So when we would go into a group interview, it'd be like a bunch of Harvard degrees sitting in the Department of Defense waiting to change the world. And then scrappy Ashley who was like, hi, Renee. You know, like the hiring manager, because we'd already spoken. And so I had this ability to be liked. But I still felt like there was something wrong with me. Like there was something broken in me. Like I just wasn't naturally as talented as everybody because I had talents that didn't mirror what society would show you. You needed test taking skills, good college degrees. Like, I went to a small university because I just didn't get, you know, the test scores that would get me into Harvard, you know, And I later would see that this was my benefit. It made me into more of a hustler. And I'm not into the whole hustle movement and work, work so hard and break your back like I did, because I did that. And it didn't really work for me. I was so burnt out for so long. But what I am into is if you really believe in something and you're willing to give more of yourself to it than anybody else in the room, you know, you're that person. When I would go to conferences, I knew I was like, this room's really inspiring and I'm more hungry than everybody here. Like, I will sit here and take notes until tomorrow. Like, I don't know how. I just wanted it so bad. I didn't even care about sleep, which is not something I recommend, but it was just where I was at, you.

Know, you're super passionate about it, so you hire the attorneys, they your.

Break it apart.

Break it apart, yeah. What happens?

I got overwhelmed and then I told myself I was in an abundant mindset and I said to myself, you know what, if I did it once, I could do it again. I'm going to turn it off, I'm going to try their recommendations and if it doesn't work, I could always put the old one back up and run Facebook on like a faucet. That's what I told myself. Well, little did I know. Facebook's algorithm is always changing and everybody knows that now. But Facebook ads were new back then and so were webinars and automated webinars especially. So I was like, okay, this needs to change. And so I spent about three, four months trying to implement their.

So you took down the, you took down the one the lawyers tore apart while this happened?

Yeah, $5 million in. I was like, you know what, I am going to take this down. And by the way, I was just starting to really make profits. There is a payment plan option, so it might cost me $400 to get a thousand dollar customer, but a lot of people were taking that $300 payment plan totally. So I had to wait a month for all my second payments to come in so that I had profit. So I was hitting the ceiling on credit cards to start scaling.

So it wasn't a lump sum of like 5 million. All of a sudden you have no, you have that in sales.

Exactly, exactly in sales. And then it took about a year for all those payment plans to filter through. And in that year I was in so much denial that I had a team that was about $50,000 a month worth of payroll. I had about anywhere between 1 and $400,000 a month of Facebook ads that I was spending. So what I learned during that time was that I'm a lot simpler of a businesswoman than I realized that I value simplicity and it just really didn't work for me. But once I put it back on with all the new webinars that I tested out, implementing their feedback, the lawyers feedback, nothing was converting. Nothing.

Wow. Nothing.

Nothing. It was like negative sales or just one sale and then a refund, you know, it was just. Yeah, nothing was working. It was so painful. I was hyperventilating. I was in a five year relationship with a really good guy who ended up calling my wedding off to because I was like, I was just in a personal chaos and I would go to bed at night, hyperventilating. And I'm not sure if I was hyperventilating because I was losing all of my money, and I didn't know what to do next. I don't think it was losing the money. It was the powerlessness of, like, well, I don't know what to do next.

Like, here I'm doing the right thing. I'm doing what the lawyer said. I'm being gonna be integrity. I'm gonna do everything honest and right, and now it's not working.

Yeah. Yeah. And then to put the old webinar back on Facebook, lead costs had tripled in price, and my profit margins were there, but they weren't as high. So maybe in the past, we'd spend $200,000 a month in my team and in Facebook ads, and we would make maybe $600,000 profits, and then there were refunds, and then whatever was left was mine. Sure, that shifted. You know, all of sudden, Facebook ads got more expensive, so Maybe we'd spend $500,000 a month and make back 570,000.

Yes. And your overhead's 50, like you said. So now you're really like, okay, what. What's happening?

What's happening? I could just take on a private coaching client, you know, and not put all this.

Yeah. So what did you start believing about yourself at this time?

I started believing that I was alone and that success was painful and money is hard and what's the point? And that success sucks. That's what I started to believe. And I ended up going to a business group, and I met Jay Abraham. For those of you who don't know him, he's said to be one of the best executive coaches in the country. He's coach Tony Robbins. He's coaching Daymond John over at Shark Tank. They were all in this business group I was in that I paid to be in. And I remember Daymond John and Jay Abraham were taking questions, and I stood up that day, and I had accrued about half million email subscribers. So I stood up that day and I said, I have a quick question. And I noticed that Daymond John, and Jay, they were, like, burning through people's questions. So I noticed that they are very aware of the quality of the questions they're being asked. And, you know, sometimes when you're in a big group, people want to be seen, and they'll ask a question for the sake of. It totally doesn't add value. So I was really noticing that just from. And I went into counterterrorism because I have social and emotional intelligence. To me, that was something I picked up on, was there when appreciating the questions. So I started to really think about my questions. I stood up and they, they were fascinated. I asked about email lists and how to leverage relationships, strategic relationships, to monetize further an email list, and they perked up. And they ended up using the entire hour and a half bonus session for the business group on me questions. And the more they asked me, the more I started to talk about what I did, because it was just natural. They both looked at me with their eyes, like, dead open, and they were like, how did you get 500,000 email subscribers in three months?

Yeah.

And how did you get this many sales? And how are you resonating with millennials? Nobody knows how to sell to millennials right now. And that was the beginning of me being kinder to myself. And I hate to admit that it came from an outside source and not from my own inner work, but being acknowledged. And then from there, I'd met so many different business people I'd respected. One of them was Jason Fladlin, one of the top webinar writers in the world, Craig Clemons. And I'd handed them my webinar script. And as a favor in the business group, they said, well, quite frankly, we want to see your webinar. We want to know what performs so well. And one of them, you can pay to rewrite your webinar. I think you get to a million dollars in royalties or something. They said, hey, will you look at it and see if you could work with me? He looked at my script and he emails me the next day and he says, I can't help you. And I was like, what? Why? And I get on the phone with him and he said, this is so well written. I can't take your money. I'm not even gonna give you enough of an improvement. Wow. It was like such an acknowledgement of my own skills and the timelessness of your skill set. You know, money comes and goes, but who you are, what you can do, your perseverance, your resilience, your belief in yourself, all the things that it took for me to get there. And I wasn't the same person, you know? Yeah, I felt kind of like a blueberry and a Vitamix in my smoothie. Like, you know, like, that's how I come. But I also felt like I have an audience, I have respect, I have a community, I have a network. Like, I haven't left empty handed.

So, Ashley, this is huge because you're seeing your worthiness and how talented you are and all that, but, like, the money's not matching right now, so what do you do with that? Because I get that, like, you're. Okay, fine. They're recognizing and I'm doing the right thing now, and I did this, and that's amazing of me, but, like, now I'm not making any money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so I went back to private coaching, and that was really fast cash. I had an email list. Luckily, there was a lot of other things I did because I wanted to just. I was ended up with probably $400,000 in debt, which eventually I paid off in a year of vigorous private coaching. I started Cake Publishing, my ghostwriting house, because every time I turned around, people would say, who's your ghostwriter? Who's your copywriter? Who's your publicist? And I referred my people, so many people, that suddenly my publicist was too book for me. My ghostwriter was too booked for me. They raised their rates. So I told myself, I am going to turn all these best resources I have into a company. And that was what got me to take publishing.

Okay, let me ask you a question right here, because this is something that I personally have struggled with. I want to hear your take on this. So when you have massive success and then a failure, and then massive success and then a failure, do you ever start thinking that that success was accidental? Did you ever struggle with that?

I didn't have that belief. I think we all carry different beliefs. I felt very much like the success I had was on purpose, but I did think that it was, like, not a freak accident, but kind of like, oh, well, that was my pinnacle. I definitely felt that.

So when you got to that 400,000 in debt, you just knew that you would find a way back? It didn't occur to you, okay, I'm not a failure. I'm a failure. I shouldn't be in these groups anymore. You went right to that. Did you have to trick yourself into that? You have any.

How did you do that?

How did you create that mindset?

The weirdest thing, but I've only realized it recently. It was through men that I healed a lot of my mindset about what money I do or don't have. And here's why. First of all, being in that business group got me around a lot of men, and I was dating at the time, who were billionaires, and they had created some of the most influential companies of our time, like ones that we all use in our business every day, whether it's PayPal or Uber or Whatever.

Yeah.

And these men would see me and ask me out, and I would sit down with them and have to admit that I lost all my money because it just felt inauthentic after, like, six dates. Not be like, by the way, all that success you see on my website, I have none.

I'm 400,000 in debt right now. Yes.

And to sit there and feel that vulnerability, there were so many in my love life and my friend's husbands, that was another area. They would look at me and say, okay, but you created that one, so you're gonna create it again.

Wow, that's powerful right there. Because I do know people get stuck in the, wow, I was successful, but now I'm not. So maybe I never really was.

Well, here's the trick, and this is where people get stuck, is people think. And I hear this all the time, even from a private coaching standpoint, is people will say, I used to be so motivated. And that's the biggest misunderstanding, is that you're used to be anything. You always are what you are. You're always all of the things that you are. And it's more whether you're tapping into those things. So it's like, if you're a go getter, the go getter inside of you is always there. It's just a matter of if you want to bring her out. And for me, at that time, I was just burnt out. So they'd be like, well, you did it once, you could do it again. And I'd be like, but I'm tired. I want to be saved right now. I would joke like, I just want to be saved right now. And they'd be like, that doesn't sound like you. And everybody in my life who really knew who I was was like, ashley, you're a go getter. That person inside of you never died. Like, give yourself six months and you're going to bounce back. Call your credit cards, do some sort of debt repayment program. I called American Express, who had most of my debt, talked to them, they put me on a payment plan, and I kind of restarted my life. Started cake publishing, had some really big wins with big ghostwriting deals because of the business groups that I made my way into. I had a lot of different companies hiring us for 50 blog posts a month or whatever. And I just bounced back and stopped focusing on the debt and started focusing on moving forward. Oh, I love that.

So gold right there. Because what you focus on is going to keep expanding.

Yes. And my friends husbands helped me with this too, because my closest Friends, a lot of them I met through these business groups over these past few years. And their husbands just happen to be super successful. And as the dating friend at that time, I don't know what it is about dating. I think so much of your worthiness is tied into your romantic relationships as well. And you know how you. The stories you make about yourself and who you deserve. A lot of my friends husbands were these amazing, successful men, and they would be like, what do you think about Ashley for this guy? And their husband would be like, he's not good enough for her.

So you started believing. What you should have believed is that you're good.

I'm worthy with money or not. My worthiness and my bank account don't have to be tied. And to see men with the biggest bank account see my worthiness and for the men to see their friends who had all the success and say, that successful guy isn't worthy of Ashley.

And Ashley, what would you tell somebody that's, you know, maybe they don't have those men in their lives right now and they're struggling with this, like, they start believing that worthiness about themselves?

Well, I would say first things first is worthiness is your birthright. And anyone who's listening right now, you have no idea what you're here for. About five I was like, maybe three to five months ago, I was walking down the street on a phone call, and a woman almost got hit by a car. I pulled her onto the sidewalk. She would literally have definitely lost her life. The car is going so fast. And I had this moment where I was like, maybe that's why I'm here on the planet. Maybe I was just here for 3pm on a Monday to pull this woman out of traffic because I don't know what her mission was, what she's doing in the world, what impact she's making. But because I grabbed her, she didn't get killed by this car in dead traffic. She just wasn't paying attention. I pulled her, we both fell on the sidewalk. I crushed my phone, you know, and I just walked home and thought, worthiness. It's such bullshit what we tell ourselves about what makes us worthy. It's like you don't know if because you crossed the street that day, you shift the gravitational pull of traffic. And because that somebody, you don't know what. But energy responds to other energy. So you don't really know what your being here is doing. And so I think the question of worthiness is so much deeper than what we see in the physical that a Lot of the times we're just tying it in things that are a misunderstanding.

So powerful. Ashley, this is amazing. Oh, my gosh. I say this to other people, but I mean this. With you, I could talk for hours. I have so many questions. We're already almost out of time. I have. I've got to know some final things, though. So. Okay, right now, like, what's the happy ending? Because you're in the happy ending right now. What did you learn? Where are you right now? What are you doing?

Well, when I was five years old, at my preschool graduation, they made us all step up to a mic and say, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I walked up to Mike, age 5, and said, I'm going to be a mom and a writer. And I just got my first book deal to write. U turn. Y O. U turn. Two words. And it's. And then I named the podcast after it. Podcast has been growing at like 30% a month. The book I've been writing and this has been probably my highest calling. And it just goes back to what I said. When you follow what feels good, your purpose is on the periphery. The course felt good. The webinar felt good. Now I have the book feel that this was where I always wanted to be since I was a kid.

Amazing. And you have cake publishing so people can find you there, correct?

Yeah. And I ended up partnering with my little brother, who is such a tech whiz, and relaunching a job hunting course, which is the job offer academy I've been mentioning. And I'm doing it right. I'm selling it in a way that feels good, it's making an impact, and I'm no longer abandoning myself. So I have all of these assets, but now I am healing whatever experience I had with people who I've worked with that I didn't feel like the integrity was there because I'm working with my little brother, somebody who. So much integrity. So I think, you know, it was all just an experience. And I'm so grateful for having lost every penny. I'm so grateful for who it's made me. Because I can look in the mirror right now and tell you, if you take my house, if you take my car, if you take my company, I am okay. I'm not going to lose it ever again. I suffered enough where I will never. It just left my body. That kind of desire to suffer.

That's amazing. Okay, I do have a final question for you. So if there was. If somebody was in rock bottom right now, coming to you. So maybe they had that $5 million webinar and it's gone. They have a failed business. Or maybe they just don't even know where to start. They don't have anything right now, but they're in a rock bottom bad place and they need to level up. They just don't know how to. What's three pieces of advice you would give them to start creating everything from nothing.

Get really clear who you're friends with and who you're surrounding yourself with. You can so much as know how you feel about somebody based on their name and your text messages. Do you feel expansive? Do you feel contraction? Because who you're surrounding yourself with is so underestimated for the kind of energy you get or lose, I would also say so just do a reality check like who's in your life? Who are you spending your time with? Secondly, I would journal every morning from the part of you that feels like a failure or feels like you're at the rock bottom. Give that part of you a voice. Write every day in a journal. Freeform. So channel it. I'm a failure. I'm not worthy. I can't do this. Nothing's going to work out for me.

Me.

Whatever this part of you has to say. Freeform, right? And get it out because it's just energy that needs to be burnt off from there. Like star whatever things you wrote that feel the most painful and forgive yourself for that belief thing. I forgive myself for buying into the belief that I'm a failure, you know, and then update it with the truth. The truth is my worthiness has nothing to do with what I do.

Yeah. Well that's good.

Thank you.

I love it. Ashley, where can people find you? Where do you want them to find.

You for one on one mentorship? I still do a little bit of that every year and it's such a passion project. Ashley international.com for my podcast U Turn podcast Y O U T u r n podcast.com and for job hunting, job offer academy.com you're awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me. This was such a nice time.

Thanks for leveling up with us today. Please share this episode if you found it helpful so others can join in. And don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss out on future shows. And if you would leave me a five star review. I appreciate those so much. I read all of them and it's how I know that I'm giving you information that you find valuable and come interact with me over on Instagram at Natalie Jill Fit. I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day. Create creating everything from nothing.