Selling Is Service: James Ashford on Closing Deals, Building Culture, and Exiting to Sage

an hour.

So I'll get myself out of it quick.

I won't have a bad day.

I'll have a bad hour, but I'm not going to have a bad day.

And then I just, this smile came on my face.

I was like,

where's the gift?

Where's the gift in this? And for two days, I asked it with real curiosity and with real intentionality.

And I found it.

I found where the gift was.

And I prevented us losing any customers.

I developed a new product that counted what they'd just done.

We launched it within three months.

And then shortly after that, our revenue, I think it increased by 10K a month rather than lose any customers.

And when we sold the business, the business was worth millions more because of what we developed, because of the market that we just opened up because of it.

And so whenever anything happens, however bad it is, you just lost your biggest client.

You've just lost a key member of staff, whatever it may be.

There is bad in that situation, but there is also good in that situation.

And it's the ability to find the thing that's going to best serve you is what I'm good at.

Do you think you had that naturally or is that something that had been taught from following Tony Robbins, going to his events? I know you went to some a few years ago.

Is it something that he's taught you too or do you think you had it naturally as well? Just needed to sculpt it a little bit.

I don't know if it's natural.

My parents are quite pessimistic and my dad especially.

He's got better in recent years.

But when I was younger, I remember having a big argument with him once.