AI, Adversity, and Ash Smith: The Journey from Zero to Six Figures MRR

Jon Coogan (00:11)
Welcome to Mindset Mavericks. I'm your host, Jon Coogan, and today we're joined by Ash Smith. So who is Ash Smith? Ash Smith's 26 year old entrepreneur who scaled his AI sales company to six figures in monthly recurring revenue before successfully exiting. And he now helps companies scale using business to business sales strategies. But there's a lot more to Ash than just that business that he's grew.

Also works in systems, the UK education secretary was a trustee for seven figure charity at 19 years old. He's got a background in psychology and he's got experience of caring for his family during his formative years. And I know that's going to give him a unique perspective on resilience, sales, personal growth. So welcome to Mindset Mavericks. Thanks very much for joining me.

Ash (00:58)
Thank you, Jon. Appreciate you. Appreciate that very kind introduction.

Jon Coogan (01:02)
Well, what I'd love to do is just, I'll given a bit of background about what you've done in the past, but how would you summarise what you do now?

Ash (01:09)
I'd summarise it now as I help business owners do three things, typically tech, SaaS, AI, software related. I help them do three things because tech people can't Their brains are wired for code and to understand abstract concepts, not to understand what the market desires, what the market needs and what human beings require, what human beings need to understand the magic of what they do. So, number one.

I help them with go to market. So go to market strategy, whatever, putting the outline in place for someone to execute that structure. Second thing they do is if they want me to execute on the structure that I've made for them, I bring in either team. can be a cold calling team. can be a cold DM team. could be whatever it is with AI assisted components, typically looking at top of funnel. So we could bring in an AI.

which can do the first part of DM based conversations, or we could do an AI, which then does a whole lot of pre data collection for cold calling teams, stuff like that. And the third and I think the funnest part of what I do is that B2B influencer marketing. So what that looks like is that I will then go on LinkedIn, I'll find these micro influencers, I team up with them, there'll be hundreds of them and we can do three month campaigns around showing them the tech, showing them how it works on like a demo.

or they can even use it for a very, very low price. And then they can correct posts about it. And then we do revenue share based on the success of those posts. So we're reaching millions of people doing engagement and things like that. And I find that the most fun because there isn't really a B2B influencer space on LinkedIn. I'm sort of making it as I go, which is equal parts fun as it is equal parts thoroughly irritating to know that no one else has done it before.

Jon Coogan (02:56)
Yeah.

Ash (03:06)
So that's what I do for businesses typically obsessed with tech right now. I still help young men, young business people as much as I can, sort of a side thing. And I'm still very political. But that's the answer to your question, Jon.

Jon Coogan (03:22)
I'm intrigued because you mentioned about the business business and influencer marketing on LinkedIn does seem to have lagged behind a lot of the other platforms. Have you got a theory as to why that's the case?

Ash (03:33)
Yeah, because LinkedIn shit is the answer to that question. If you think about TikTok, YouTube, these are the big platforms where the influence space is quite big. It's B2C. B2C influence space is massive. It's so, so, so big. And we've got people to thank for that, which is KSI, which is Logan Paul. It's a big influence of people, But...

Jon Coogan (03:51)
Yeah.

Ash (04:02)
What's lagged behind is the B2B side of things. And you're now starting to see smaller influencers such as Wattifaultist, for example, he's a great YouTuber that I really enjoy. He's doing more and more stuff that's about B2B, B2B sponsorships. But this hasn't come on LinkedIn. And I think it hasn't come on LinkedIn because the typical paradigm of influencers is go to a big influencer.

know, hundreds of thousands, millions of people that follow them and get a sponsorship and then get them to post something about it. But how the LinkedIn algorithm works is that it works in a way which prioritizes relevance over popularity, which is the opposite of TikTok, opposite of YouTube. And I think that's why there hasn't been any traction, because to want it to make it work, have to fundamentally reassess the whole influencer paradigm, which is I'm trying to do.

Because if it's relevance that is the success of these campaigns, then you've got to go for a strategy where there's more people over a longer period of time, rather than one person over a short period of time. It's a marathon approach, not a sprint. And I think that the other influencer agencies that are focused on TikTok and YouTube, they're not going to do well on the platform. They've ignored the platform.

because they can see they're doing success already. They don't want to cross paths. They don't want to cross pollinate. So I think that's why, personally, I think it's just a paradigm shift that other influencers and other influencer companies don't want to move into. I think they're prepared to move into it.

Jon Coogan (05:46)
Yeah, there's a couple of things that you've touched on. know we're going to go into it a lot deeper as well around, particularly with LinkedIn. And you've also spoken about AI quite a bit. So I know that you've mentioned LinkedIn. That's one of the driving platforms at the moment, but I know you've had issues with that for, I think it was a year band. So we'll talk about that. But what I'm really interested in is where that drive to start using AI came from. Can you give us a bit of a background as to your journey, as to how you ended up to building your AI sales business?

Ash (06:15)
Yeah, so when I left uni, my big ambition was to help as many people as possible. And I thought, hey, best way to do this is politics. So I went into government and I found very, very quickly that the bureaucratic minutia is stifling. The only trajectory that I saw as an outsider that the government was going into was a downward one. You know, there is a malaise.

And after 90 days, if probably less than that, I couldn't do it. I just could not do it. So I thought, know what? I'll go into business for myself. So I went into business and I started coaching young men, young people.

Jon Coogan (06:47)
Yeah.

Ash (06:57)
on mindset, skillset, everything else. And then I've realised that I a knack for business decision making and business stuff from my previous experience as being a trustee. And I started to go into that. Originally, for about one and half, two years, I was helping young men mainly get to their first 10k MRR months in business. And I did that quite successfully. If you go onto my LinkedIn, there's a number of names that people might recognise.

that I helped and supported and assisted. And they're very, very successful now, which is fantastic. And then as I was doing really, really, really well, but the eye of Saron which was LinkedIn, saw me and they banned me.

And a couple of days later all my personal accounts were frozen all of them locked I have got three personal bank accounts and they're all frozen because they all operate on the same system and Then I was linked in a allowed to come back on again for a bout day and then I was off again.

At the time on LinkedIn, my name was just Ash. It wasn't Ash D Smith. My phone was Ash D Smith. It wasn't Ash S, it was just Ash. And they said, we have a feature which allows you to shorten your name to, you know, your nickname and the last letter of your surname. So I can be Ash S, but I can't be Ash. Yes, that's correct. Yes. You've banned me for my name just for one letter. Yes, that's right.

Jon Coogan (08:03)
Okay.

Ash (08:26)
obviously I was freaking out. I had to borrow money from friends to keep on going. had direct debits that just weren't going out because when your banks are locked down, they're locked down. Nothing is going in or out. Fortunately, I had my business accounts that weren't affected because it's the business. But all my stuff was frozen. It was frozen for 14 working days.

Working days, three weeks. And in this time, I realized that I cannot carry on. I cannot do it alone. I cannot play small. I have to play big. Bigger the better. And that's when I thought, you know what? I've got all this skills. I've got all this knowledge. I know how to put a business. Where is the wind blowing? So in the middle of 2022, I decided let's try something with AI.

Jon Coogan (08:50)
Yeah.

Ash (09:18)
Let's try something with AI. I made a bet and that bet was AI is going to take off. And fortunately it did pay off. But it was fucking hard. I knew nothing about AI at all. And I had to circumvent a lot of challenges just at very beginning to start off with, So that's the run up.

Jon Coogan (09:39)
That was one of my questions. I know you just said yourself there, you didn't know anything about AI at that point. So how do you actually go about starting a business in something when you don't know what it is?

Ash (09:52)
what I did was quite unconventional. I made a decision that I didn't have the time to learn about code and AI. I didn't have the time to do it. was, you know, I had an amount of cash that was available to me. And so I didn't have any paying clients effectively because I couldn't use LinkedIn to generate more. and I thought, you know what I will partner with.

AI expert and I will see what they're about and what I discovered was that there was a number of AI experts, there's loads of them, with loads and loads of interesting pieces of technology, a lot less than what there is now, even two years ago, and I found one and they could not sell the technology very well at all.

They were selling it for let's say $3,000 a month and they were selling it to plumbers, builders and we started doing the same thing. And we recognized that, hold on a minute, they're missing a trick here. We discovered that actually if we re-niche, if we went down to a different kind of demographic, marketeers that are in cannabis, are in American-based cannabis, CBD, vaping, anything like that.

Jon Coogan (11:14)
Yeah.

Ash (11:18)
they can only use SEO. That's it. They can't use paid advertising. can't do anything like that. So what we had was a different way in which they could get hundreds and hundreds of new clients. So instead of charging three grand, we started to charge seven and then 11 and then 14. And then at one point we got all the way up to $30,000 a month plus a revenue was what we were doing there because we recognized what we could do. That took time.

Jon Coogan (11:23)
Yep.

Ash (11:45)
That took us nine months to reach that place to figure all that out. But as soon as we found something that worked, our first sale, I think, was in February of 2023. And I think we hit our first six figure month of reoccurring amount six months after that point. So once we niche down and once we found a fission, we just carried on moving with it.

Jon Coogan (12:13)
Yes, pretty rapid growth. And did that speed of growth cause you any particular challenges?

Ash (12:19)
Tons, tons. I was working 18 hour days, constantly. Fortunately, I had a fantastic business partner, name's James Bennett. I overthink to James, I won't go into the story now, but I overthink to him. He was ex-Oracle, like senior, senior, senior salesperson. He'd closed over $2 billion worth of revenue in his career. So I had James as my...

who I could rely on, who I could trust to help me with anything that I was struggling with. what he was really good at was structure. What I was really good at was energy and being that guy who sort of put the energy into these things to make it work. know, things don't just happen, right? You need someone with vision, with willpower to make them happen and to bring them into the world.

James was sort of in retirement years, so he was able to bring structure and expertise. I was, what, 24? So I had energy and vision and will, and I willed it into being, and we made a fantastic team. So.

Jon Coogan (13:29)
Yeah.

Ash (13:34)
managing a team of seven people, then managing a team of 12 people, then managing a team of 30 people was a rollercoaster in itself. Figuring out the messaging so that it made sense in a 10 second phone call was a challenge. Going through gatekeepers and knowing what to say to a gatekeeper at different time was a challenge. The learning that we had to be done for every single time we had a cohort of new call callers was a challenge.

you know, we ended up training about 150 to 200 odd salespeople in a nine month period of time. Because if you're doing cold calling, we had commission, we were doing commission only. So we were doing commission only, we were doing 10 % reoccurring commission. So you know, if we were selling for $30,000, that is really good commission for a salesperson. And we were doing all the training with them, we were doing all the support with them. Another challenge that we had was finding a dialer, finding a dialer which

Jon Coogan (14:19)
Yeah.

All right.

Ash (14:32)
scale with us was much larger a challenge than what we thought it was going to be. And even then it was difficult. So tons and tons of challenges, tons and tons of things that we had to overcome to make that happen. The personal challenges, you know, I had times when I hadn't slept for more than five hours in about six or seven weeks. And I had times where James sat me down on Zoom and he said, you are not working today, you're going to sleep. But no, no, can find them. No, no.

Jon Coogan (14:59)
Yeah.

Ash (15:01)
you're going to sleep. I will handle it. Go to bed.

Jon Coogan (15:05)
Yeah, that's great to have that balance as well with a co-founder. yeah, that's, you often see that as the case as well. One person is much more kind of operations based and somebody else who is that visionary, the one who's going to push the boundaries and, and like I say, provide that energy. yeah. And in terms of having that much staff, did you have physical premises or was it remote working? How did that, how did the structure of the business look like during this period?

Ash (15:21)
Yeah, and you need both.

It was all remote. remote. We had people that were dialling from Australia, Thailand. We had one guy, I think, who was in Algeria, know, a in Bulgaria, Europe, America, the UK. We had people everywhere, everywhere that were doing it. we could operate. It was all American market, but we could operate every single time in the States because we have that many people dialling.

Jon Coogan (15:53)
Yeah.

Ash (16:04)
We were doing 3,000 cold dials a day.

And that was just, we know before that we were scraping Google Maps, looking for, looking for stores in America on Google Maps. We did loads of things to go to get for leads. And because we had such a, cause it was all remote. The biggest problem that we had was lead flow was ensuring that we constantly had the ability to dial and to make calls.

Jon Coogan (16:33)
Hmm.

Ash (16:39)
That was so tough. That was so, so, so tough. And I didn't want to reduce the number of people that we had. I didn't want to go down the route of like a hyper elite team of like seven people. I wanted big. And the reason I wanted big was because of the ideas and the sort of energy which was in the room or in these Zoom rooms that was being moved and sort of pushed and funneled and put in place. By the end of it, I had two team leaders, Ryan and Teodor.

And those team leaders were running, they went from being the original cold calling team to running their own teams of, you know, 10, 12, 13 odd people and trying them to be leaders is also a fucking challenge. it's so much all the time. Everything is moving all the time forever and it just never ends.

Jon Coogan (17:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you've talked about a couple of strategies used, such as scraping Google Maps during cold calls. What things did you put in place to generate those leads, apart from those ones you've mentioned already?

Ash (17:45)
So for me, it was all about people and all about training really, really good people. So I was very fortunate to have James who did a lot of training. I did training as well. So I just did something called Vito training. Vito is a very important top officer. So we never bothered with like the VP of sales or the VP of marketing. We went straight for the founder every single time. So every single time we made a call, we went straight for the founder.

whether it was their mobile, whether it was their office number, whether we're going through a gatekeeper. And what we were doing is that we were training people on how to speak to gatekeeper first, straight into the veto, and then from veto to something we'll call a shunt. Now what a shunt is, is something where we ask specifically to be moved to the relevant person in the company. So we would explain what it was in like a 10 second...

Here's what here's what's relevant to you. I wouldn't even say pitch is 10 seconds. Here's relevant to you we then say Let I'd love it you could move me to Jon head of marketing and the reason we asked for that was because If you're imagining that Jon is extremely busy and he's getting hundreds emails a day Well, what email is he gonna prioritize? One's coming from people that are trying to sell to him one's coming from people that he's in charge of

or the one or two emails a day that come from his boss.

Jon Coogan (19:11)
Yeah, it's no-brainer. Yeah.

Ash (19:13)
It's a no brainer, right? So, and we were asking for shunts in the cases where they didn't have like a marketing or whatever went straight to the founder, but that's what we were doing. So we were using scraping as a way to get numbers. Sometimes we didn't enrich the leads so that we could get the numbers for, you know, their mobiles. Then at that point we were going straight to the Vita, we're important officer and then asking for a shunt. That's effectively all that we did. We didn't do any kind of...

Jon Coogan (19:40)
Hmm.

Ash (19:42)
We didn't do any DM cold outbound, didn't do any email outbound, we did nothing like that, it was just cold calling and we were doing thousands of calls per day. I think at our height we were booking something like 70 to 100 cold call, 70 to 100 warm meetings a month in that way towards the end of what we were doing. It was pretty intense.

Jon Coogan (20:06)
Yeah, there's quite a lot already. Just in the short time we've been speaking, that confidence comes through from, I say, being a trustee of a charity to starting your own business, doing these cold calls to top people's and companies. Where do you think that confidence came from in the beginning?

Ash (20:23)
necessity. So as you know, my background was being a carer. So my mum has got epilepsy and she's got a number of things that's wrong with, still with us, but she's still very poorly. And when I was 13, she broke up with her boyfriend at the time who was living with us in like a council flat. She's on benefits, you she's never really worked a big job, she's never been able to.

And at 13, I was thrust into this primary care position for her for when she has a seizure. when, I don't know you've ever seen someone seize, I know that your background is police, but I know if you've ever seen someone seize. It's horrifying. It's absolutely terrifying. And it's even worse when it's someone that you for, one you deeply, deeply love.

And in that moment, in that time, you can either be utterly petrified or you can take control of situation and can potentially save their life. move all of the heavy objects out of their area in case they start smashing themselves to bits with these different things, you know, and then when you stop seeing them, you put them in a recovery position.

At 13 years old, I was put in charge of Mums life when she has these episodes.

Jon Coogan (21:36)
Yeah, that's it. a huge responsibility, especially at that age. Yeah.

Ash (21:42)
Yeah, yeah. So you you asked me where's the confidence come from? It comes from knowing that if I didn't act, someone would die. So when you compare that to business, no one's going to die, right? What's the worst thing that's possibly going to happen? You have an argument with somebody, you tell someone that they're shit and you fire them, they're going to recover. They'll be fine. They'll move on. But if someone is going to, you know,

Jon Coogan (22:06)
Yeah.

Ash (22:11)
possibly die from a mistake or from something you're doing, it puts things into perspective. So that's where it comes from, I think, anyway. yeah, you either fight, flight or freeze, right? And I think that you learn that and develop your reactions to certain events as you grow and as you age and your experiences that you have. And some people just aren't cut out for a leadership position.

Jon Coogan (22:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, do you think there's other kind of qualities?

Ash (22:39)
because of their reaction in highly stressful events.

Jon Coogan (22:43)
I don't know, it wouldn't have been too long after that, you went on study psychology. What was the reason for choosing that as a path?

Ash (22:52)
So yeah, I started studying psychology at 18 for a uni. There's a joke that psychology students tell each other, which is there's two reasons why a person should do psychology. First one is to figure out why their family's so fucked up. Second reason is to figure out why they're so fucked up. And the game you play is figuring out who's who in the lecture hall, right? And the people who were the most put together

Jon Coogan (23:11)
Yep.

Ash (23:22)
come to study both. Because they recognize that actually it's a continuous cycle of fucking up that you want to figure out. So for me, I studied psychology because I recognized in myself that the things that I've been through had created traumatic experiences which had

Jon Coogan (23:24)
Yep.

Ash (23:48)
fueled me in a way, which had educated me in a way, and I wanted to understand what they were and why they're a why, you know. And I also wanted to understand more about my mother and more about my family dynamic and everything else, you know, if you're epileptic and you've never actually had experience in the real world, your way in which you see people and your emotional state is very, different towards normal human beings. My mum

still was and is a highly emotional individual and she struggles with long-term sort of friendships and relationships because of that and it's been a struggle on my relationship with her. I'm not as close to my mum as what a normal person would be because of the strain that her...

of the strain that her personality puts on the people around her. I'm there for her when she needs me, but other than that it's very very difficult for anybody to have you know close close close close ties to her in that way. It's tough, it's very difficult.

Jon Coogan (24:58)
Yeah. And I think one of the things that I questioned myself when we started talking was how you were able to coach people at such a young age around mindset. And I think that's kind of explained a lot of the reason how and why you haven't experienced those caring for your mum and some of those pressures that not many people would have had, especially at that age.

Ash (25:19)
My family was very big on tough love. They gave me kindness and they gave me a place to feel loved and cared for. sorry, Ash. There isn't time. They call me Ashley Mann, Ash. Sorry, Ashley. There isn't time for you to be screwing around.

when your mum is seriously ill. There isn't time for you to be considering, you know, all of the different fluffy things when we've got bigger problems and bigger issues that we're having to deal with that we have to address. There's more important things. Sure, feel how you feel, when you felt how you felt, come back downstairs and actually come and deal with the things that we're dealing with. And you've got so many people that just live in this high

top world where the smallest of inconveniences drive them insane. Weakness. Fundamental weakness. So, a bit of a rant, but I hope that answers the question for you, Jon

Jon Coogan (26:13)
One of the key things you said there is about taking control of your life. So if you're to give somebody a piece of advice on how they start doing that, what would be your first piece of advice?

Ash (26:22)
My first piece of advice to...

Jon Coogan (26:25)
So you've just mentioned about how people need to take control of their life and they focus on essentially what is the wrong things and things that can't be changed. How does somebody start taking control of their life?

Ash (26:37)
The first thing they need to do is to understand that it can be different. There's three stages that we go through when we're making change. The first stage is understanding that change is possible. That there is something different than what we know and see and feel. The second part is understanding how they can do that change, which is more of a practical aspect. And the third and most important thing that people can get stuck on is the emotional aspect.

How can this change work for me? So we're moving through that paradigm of this can be different. How can this be different for me? How can this be different practically? And then how can this be different for me emotionally? So the first thing I'd say is you need to get new friends if your friends all live in squalor like you do. You need to get people around you which don't see the world like you do. If everyone around you is a depressive.

anxious individuals, because you're just going to stay depressed and anxious. I would say that you need to take control over as much of your life as you possibly can do. If you look at depressed people, here's another thought for you. I recognize that energy isn't actually a physical phenomenon. Energy is an emotional phenomenon. If you...

I food is important, obviously, what you put into your body is important, but energy is actually spiritual. It's emotional and spiritual. If you look at depressed people who are fundamentally low, they're eating, they eat, so they've got fuel in the tank, not moving, they're not doing anything. And they're not doing anything because they don't have the emotional spiritual energy or the emotional spiritual drive, that desire for life, desire to live. So they're just sedentary. And they're sedentary.

Jon Coogan (28:06)
Yeah.

Ash (28:33)
and they're not in control of anything. They have the least amount of control in their lives. Their room is a mess, their apartment is a mess, they're a mess. They're not showering, they're not taking care of themselves. So start to take control of these small parts of your life. And the more control that you have over your life, the more energy which you're able to sustain, emotional and spiritual energy of sustain, to maintain that life.

But you have to make a decision. You have to make a decision in this moment, in this time, to be better, to be stronger, understand that there can be something different, to understand that can be a vision in life that can be better for you, for your family, for your friends. And if you don't have family and friends, there can be people out there in the future who can love you, who can be there for you. And if they don't exist, you've got to imagine them. got to imagine that they're going to be pat on your back. You've to imagine that they're going to be saying to you, can...

Jon Coogan (29:24)
and

Ash (29:30)
You can do it, Bill! You can do it, Jon! You can do it! If they're not there, you have to make them there.

Jon Coogan (29:35)
Yeah, it's great to see the energy and this is I'm really intrigued by because I can see how much energy you've got, how much passion you've got for it. I've also seen you've been through some really tough times from having to pivot when your main business is on LinkedIn and that gets taken away from you. You've had personal accounts frozen. How do you keep that motivation even during those tough times?

Ash (29:55)
For moments you don't. For moments you're like, fuck it. I remember when that happened and for at least 48 hours for a couple of days I wallowed in self pity. I built all this, I've done all this work and it's been taken away from me. I've got no money. I'm not even on, I'm not back to square one, I'm like on square minus 20. And that's what my thinking was.

You know, and I played some video games to distract myself. I ain't like shit. With the cash that I had available to me, which was very stupid at the time. And I just wallowed. But I didn't keep wallowing. I think on the third day... On the third day, I think I had... I gave myself a good talking to. And I said, okay. This is the situation you're in. You've banned off this. You haven't got any money in your accounts.

But it will pass. It will pass. You will be allowed on LinkedIn again because you're brilliant, of course. And you'll have your personal accounts again because you do nothing wrong. It will pass and you'll get them back. So you just need to work as if nothing has changed and pivot in the direction that we think we're going to be able to make the most of this sort of situation, sort of change.

Jon Coogan (30:59)
you

Yeah.

Ash (31:20)
And what an amazing story it is to tell in five, 10 X number of years time that this was the sort of peak. So then I started to reframe the challenge. I said to reframe, I you know what? Previously, I'd built this business and I felt a little bit of shame because I had an inheritance. And I thought that, you know, I don't deserve this inheritance. I'd taken care of my grandparents.

You know, I wish they were still here. I didn't wish I had this. I want them. I want them back. You know, and that was shame that I, you know, kept with me for a very long time. And then I thought, hold on a minute, all my personal accounts are frozen. I can never possibly say now ever again that, I had this amount of money. I've got no money. I've got nothing. Let's see what I can do now. Let's see what I can do with this opportunity. Let's see what I can do.

Jon Coogan (32:10)
Yeah.

Ash (32:18)
with nothing except for my intelligence and my drive. Let's see what I can do. And that kept me going. This sort of voice that kept saying, let's see what we can do. Let's see what we can manage. Let's see what we can build. that, yeah. Yeah. And that kept me going until we started.

Jon Coogan (32:32)
Yeah.

create your own story. Yeah. And I think you used one of one of my favorite phrases, which was this too shall pass. And I think that's, that's great. Whatever it is. And I think that's the good times and the bad times, whatever it is, it's only going to be for limited period. And that's actually quite empowering though, knowing things can change, they're going to change. And that's just what life's about. And they did change.

Ash (32:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, have you ever, it did change. Yeah. And there's a TV show I watched recently called Succession. I love Succession. And the main guy, I can't remember his name now, the old man, my favorite quote from him is, everything is moving all of the time forever.

Jon Coogan (33:12)
Yeah.

Ash (33:28)
I had to pause the show like, my god, that's just it, yeah, that's it. No more needs to be said, that's just it. And you just gotta roll with it and do it the best you can.

Jon Coogan (33:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, so as we said it did change. You set up your business that was going successful. You're doing 100,000 monthly recurring revenue. So what was it that made you ultimately decide to leave that business?

Ash (33:56)
When we first started selling this tech, we, you know, we had a number of, of sort of partners. So we, we weren't just saying the tech, you know, we were selling services for, for, for like waste disposal. We were selling marketing services. We were doing all kinds of different things, you know, cause we had the, we had the people so we could use them in a of ways. For a short period of time, we were doing stuff around eco four.

Eco4, was a government scheme for renewable energy. We had callers on that too. At the very beginning when we were selling this technology, what it did was that it allowed the production of hundreds of thousands of websites which all put SEO juice onto one main site, which would be the client site, to produce more visitors.

Because the environment was changing so rapidly, the tech had to evolve and change with the environment. So, you know, five, six months into this, our original customers weren't getting the service that they paid for at the start. It was changing rapidly, rapidly, rapidly. And the distribution agreement that we had with our partner...

We weren't, we were, we we had the clients, we had the customers, we were responsible for delivery, we were responsible for the management relationship, but we had no control over the technology. We had no control over the delivery, nothing. So we saw that if we count as we are, we're gonna get customers that are gonna ask us, why is it changing? What's going on with it? And we were in no position in any way, shape or form.

to be the people to change the technology for them. And we were in this very awkward middleman position. So James and had a conversation and we decided that the best thing for them, for the customers, would be if they had a direct relationship with the person doing the technology rather than with us. So we ended up selling off our clients.

Jon Coogan (35:44)
Yeah.

Ash (36:11)
to the technology person at Airpartner and we then exited outwards. And we made that decision because...

how we'd structured our partnership and our relationship just meant that we were in a very weak position strategically. All it took was for one domino to fall and the entire thing would collapse because of how it was structured. So my biggest takeaway from that whole experience, and it was a lucrative experience, my biggest takeaway from that experience was to ensure always and forever that if ever you're doing a distribution agreement, which is what we did,

Jon Coogan (36:32)
Thank

Yeah.

Ash (36:54)
to ensure that the tech partner is always responsible, that's in contract, always responsible for the delivery. We are just middlemen people that connect the two together. And we try to be more than that without considering what that really looks like further down the road. And that was the, I wouldn't say a mistake, but it was something that we've definitely learned from.

Jon Coogan (37:08)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I do see a lot, particularly now, of white labeling SaaS products. And I think you hit a nail on the head then. It's just not having control over the product. You're essentially selling. So yeah, it's definitely a worthwhile lesson to learn. So in terms of how sales are progressing for the future, where do you see the future of business to business sales now?

Ash (37:48)
So, have this conversation with that belong. If you are in B2C sales, so if you are like a call center or you're calling off of like likes of Vodafone or BT or, you know, your utilities, in the next five years, let's say 10, you will be replaced with an AI. 100%. I have no doubt in my mind you'll be replaced by an AI who is able to do, you might have a small select team of people.

who do stuff at the end, you know, to ensure that things go through properly, but you'll be blessed by that. In terms of B2B, I think that top of top of funnel activities will be replaced via AI within the next two to five years. We're already seeing it. We're already seeing it with chat bots. We're already seeing it in terms of cold calling. We're seeing it everywhere. It's happening. I think that B2B

Sales are going to stay human centric for the most part because you want like human to human relationship or human to human interaction, especially if you're selling complex solutions. I think if you want to stay in sales, you're to and sell more and more and more complex solutions. I think that the simpler the solution that you're selling, the more chance you are being replaced by an AI tool or an AI system.

I mean, right now, for example, I'm building a AI top of funnel conversation bot, which can have the initial conversation for me, which saves me, you know, at least 50 % of my time because it's having the initial conversation. If anyone doesn't respond, well, my AI can just do the response. Anyone does respond, I'll take it from there. You know? So I think that's where it's going to go.

Jon Coogan (39:39)
Yep.

Ash (39:46)
I think that we're going to start living in the age of AI assistance and that those AI assistance will definitely change the way we work. think that, and this, I know you mentioned about SAO specifically, but I'm to go to a slight tangent. I think that as we grow with AI assistance in all parts of our life, we're going to be forced to face a question, which is cool.

Jon Coogan (40:03)
Mm.

Ash (40:15)
We've got all this time now, all this time to do so much of the stuff. But why? For what purpose? What is the purpose of the human being now that the majority of the minutiae and the tasks that we've been doing for millennia are now delegated and automated away? We saw this with Elon Musk's robots, right? What if all of a sudden the cooking is missed in a way with, right? You get these robots to it for you, cooking, cleaning, hoovering, take the dog for a walk.

Jon Coogan (40:38)
Mm-hmm.

Ash (40:44)
All these things in a way with, now you wish you want to climb a mountain, you climb a mountain because the mountain is there. You want to go take your dog for a walk, you take the dog for a walk because you want to escape this peace that you want to get from that experience. I think we're all going to start living so much more.

so much more purposefully than what we have been in the entire time that the human race has existed. Or, that's my utopian view, dystopic view, with all of this free time is gonna be taken up by entertainment and via consumerism, and that actually we're gonna fall deeper and deeper into a consumeristic dystopian view where our entire life is tailored and controlled.

Jon Coogan (41:13)
Yeah.

Ash (41:31)
for dopamine-inducing entertainment devices that we have around us at all times. I don't know where we're gonna go. Scary.

Jon Coogan (41:39)
Yes, interesting. Yes, it's going to happen one way or the other. yes, it can be interesting to see where it does go. So in terms of we're saying about how AI is going to be taken on lot of these roles, but I know you do use influencer marketing. So how much of a part do you see that now in business to business sales?

Ash (41:59)
You know, I made a post on Saturday about an influencer on OnlyFans, funnily enough. And LinkedIn didn't like that very much. And was all AI based. You can actually, and let me just get this up so I don't fudge the name. You can go to a website and it is called, let me find it for you one second, GlamBase.

Jon Coogan (42:07)
Okay.

Ash (42:26)
And GlamBase is all about AI influencers. And they will produce an AI influencer for you, which can basically do whatever you want it to do. You you can have it be pretty and beautiful. You can have them be for sports. You can make them black, you can make them white, you can make them Asian. It doesn't matter. You can do all you want to do for you. I think that there's going to be a period of time where it all stays human beings.

micro and we get smaller and smaller and smaller because we want to make sure that we human beings are speaking to other human beings. But as we move past that and we have generations of people who've just always known AI, we're going to get hyper specific, hyper tailored content for us all. So you won't just see the content feed of people that you want to watch. You will get personalized content.

created by AI for Jon, for Ash. And we won't just have an echo chamber, we will have an echo hole just for us to be in it. I think that we may even stop having shared human experience. think, you know, we might not even, we won't even have movies as we know them, right? We might suddenly get hyper-personalized.

Jon Coogan (43:25)
Mm.

Ash (43:54)
tailored film from Netflix based off of their 10 years worth of watch history and what we've seemed to have enjoyed most. And that is the Jon Cougan movie action film that he loves. The Ash Smith historical flick with the crusade. You know, I think we're going to get there. I think we're going to move there within our lifetime and it's going to be a terrifying place to be. But also it could be an actually liberating place to be because...

Jon Coogan (44:12)
Yeah.

Ash (44:20)
When have we ever had that? Ever.

Jon Coogan (44:22)
Yeah, the speed of growth for AI is yeah, incompensable really. So I know one of the things you talked about before is how AI can actually, knowing too much about AI can actually get in the way of using it or selling it. What's your perspective on that?

Ash (44:41)
The reason why tech people are finding it very difficult to sell their own tech is because they know so much about it that they get bogged down in the features, benefits and minutiae of the technology itself. Whereas, I'm salesperson, I'm not a tech person. So all I care about, I'm very limited into what I care about. I care about what this thing can do.

for ICP to solve X problem. And that's all I care about. So anything else that strays away from that point, I'm not interested in it, right?

It's exactly the same premise with technology. Right, exactly the same.

Jon Coogan (45:25)
Yeah.

Ash (45:29)
Right, they want to tell you about everything this thing can possibly imaginably do and all the wonderful things you can do in the future. Okay. I was what I know about this, this and this to explain it to me. So it can, it doesn't just, it doesn't just can get in the way. It does get in the way and it gets in the way of getting investment. gets in the way of getting sales. gets in the way of developing for future ICP. It gets in the way massively. And that's not even to mention the terminology difference, the terminology gap that an average person.

what an average business owner is going experience when they're talking to a tech person. So that's why I believe it's fundamental when gets in the way. And that's why I try and stay away from understanding how the technology works and focus on how is it going have an impact? What's the bigger impact it's going to have? And by doing that, I get more sales.

Jon Coogan (46:13)
Hmm.

We're just starting to touch on this kind of psychology of selling and getting to the point of just solving that customer's needs. If you were to give some advice around strategies for selling, what would they be if you got a top tip for selling?

Ash (46:34)
always think about the relationship over the sale. Always. I've said this before and I'm going say it again. The best salespeople are farmers. They're not hunters.

Farmers have fields, it's agricultural, and they understand that each field has specialties, it has sort of different kinds of oxidizations, different kinds of fertilizers in the ground, and a different crop would do better in each one of those fields. It might be that they plant the autumn potatoes, or the winter wheat, or whatever it is that they're doing.

And they know that if they take care of those fields, at certain times they will come into harvest. That is the attitude of hyper successful salespeople. They don't necessarily need to have a sow coming today because they know that over the next one, five, 10 years, they've got multiple hundreds of fields that will come into harvest ready to...

be beneficial for them and for the salesperson themselves. So that's the first thing I'd say, because hunter gatherers just burn themselves out. You need long term, you need long term sustainability. And the farming mentality is good at that. That's the first thing I'd say.

second thing I'd say. Find relationships. Find relationships. Leverage the relationships and ensure that they're there for the long term. Always the long term. You want to play long term games with long term people. Right? Because if you're, if you're a, if you're a service person under the age of 35, right, you're probably going to be doing this for at least another 40 years. So

you need to ensure that those 40 years aren't spent consistently trying to get new clientele and new customers. Instead, no matter what it is you do, no matter where it is that you go, you will have the same kinds of people in your network which you can rely upon and draw upon. Because if you can do that, it doesn't matter what it is you do, it doesn't matter what it is you're selling, because you've got the relationships and the trust is already built there. That's what matters.

If you look at, you know, director level people, one of the criteria these now they're looking for is are you going to bring your network with you? That's what's more important. You know, so start building that up early, as early as possibly can do. And that becomes your unique selling point as a salesperson, wherever you go, whatever you do.

Jon Coogan (49:13)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, I love that. Love that analogy you've given about the different fields and the crops. And like I said, people buy from people and it is getting that recurring, as you did with the AI sales, recurring monthly revenues. It's just making sure you've got that repeat customers and people coming back. In terms of different tactics of sales, we've spoken about a number on this conversation already, whether it is influencer marketing, SEO, cold calls.

for a lot of new businesses, haven't got much of a team, haven't got much marketing budget, what area would you suggest they focus on?

Ash (50:01)
Well, firstly, I'd ask them a question. I'd say, do you know who your ICP is? And if they're in business, I'd say, yes, we know who your ICP is. OK, good. Where do they spend their time? On what platform do they spend their time? Is it on LinkedIn? Is it on Facebook? Is it on Instagram? Is it on Twitter? Is it on TikTok? Where do they spend their time? Let's say they spend their time on Facebook. Cool. First things first, go to Facebook.

You need to spend your time on Facebook. This is really simple stuff. It's nothing complicated. Go to Facebook. Once you're on Facebook, go and find groups where these people are and join those groups. Once you've done that, start to post in those groups and start to message people in those groups and start to have conversations with them. None of this costs money. It just costs time. And if you're just starting out, time is what you should have.

And you should be doing this anyway, even if you have got money, because you've got to find ways of getting started and figuring this stuff out. You can't automate anything until you know how it fundamentally works and it fundamentally functions. So, and you can rinse and repeat that process no matter what platform a person is on. So that is what I would say. Use a DM approach with a content strategy. Hone in on who your ICP is.

Solve one problem for one ICP and do not stop talking about that one problem. That's it. That's all you need to do. Do not overcomplicate it. Do not suddenly think that you need to do X, Y, and Z. Focus on one platform, one ICP, and one problem. That's it. That is it.

Jon Coogan (51:47)
Yes, it sounds so simple, but it is. It's take action. Yep, take action, build those relationships and like I say, one foot in front of the other, you've just got to get started and do it. Yeah.

Ash (51:59)
Yeah, yeah, no, no matter thinking no matter thinking it's gonna it's gonna change jack shit Unless you take the action to do it. And look I read a lot of books. I enjoy reading I'm a big thinker. I like philosophy. They were different things, but it doesn't matter if you never execute anything that you learn Doesn't matter you've got to be able to execute Even if it's executing poorly you will execute poorly at the start. You won't know what to do

Jon Coogan (52:27)
Mm.

Ash (52:29)
you'll figure it out as you go and you need to have the bravery and the courage to start to make it happen and that's the easiest way that I know to make it happen the cheapest way just using time

Jon Coogan (52:41)
You know, that's a great  into the next section. It's just a quick fire round Ash, as you brought up reading, I've got a set of quick fire questions I'd love you to answer. And it's just really around mindset and you'll see where the reading comes into play. But is there one thing you do each day to set yourself up for the day?

Ash (53:00)
yes. It's very odd. It's, yeah, I get into an ice tub. No. I go on a jog. No. Every single morning, I don't get up. My dogs get me up. They decide when it's just time to get up if I'm lying in or whatever and they'll get me up.

So every single morning as soon as I wake up, I'm greeted by these two very loving furry creatures. And every single morning I say two things to myself. I say, how did I get this wealthy?

Jon Coogan (53:22)
Fantastic.

Ash (53:36)
Why am I this wealthy? watch the birds in the garden for five or 10 minutes. And then I'll crack on. And the reason I do that is because it grounds me.

Jon Coogan (53:47)
Yeah, essentially it's just practicing gratitude, is, everyone should be doing it in my opinion. Just being thankful for those little things.

Ash (53:58)
It is the little things. It is the little things. In the summer, when the sun is out, because we're in autumn now, so we're not going to see the sun until at least March, but when the sun is out, I'll go outside, I'll sit on a bench next to my greenhouse and I'll eat my breakfast with them. And I'll look at my garden, I'll look at the flowers I've planted and I'll go, I'm so... How did I get this wealthy? How did I do this? Yeah, we only get a few of them. The sun's only out for so long.

Jon Coogan (53:59)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Sounds like a good morning. Yeah. Yeah.

Ash (54:28)
But that's what I do. That's what sets me up pretty much. I do other things as well, but that's the one thing I keep on doing.

Jon Coogan (54:29)
Perfect.

Yeah. And you've mentioned your love of reading. Is there one book that you can think of or one person that's most shaped your way of thinking?

Ash (54:46)
Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche, just... I believe that he is the grandfather of the self-development movement with his idea of the Übermensch, the Matlin of self-overcoming, overcome oneself.

Jon Coogan (55:01)
And final quick fire question is if you could add one person to a mindset Mavericks Hall of Fame, who would it be and why?

Ash (55:09)
that's a good...

someone I've really, really...

started to listen to at the minute.

Rory Sutherland. I love Rory Sutherland. I've recently started watching all of his sort of talks and I started reading some of his books and I think that he is genuinely definitely a visionary of sort of 21st century of that time and is going much deeper psychologically in terms of how these things function, how we work and what we...

Jon Coogan (55:41)
Yeah.

Ash (55:44)
than what we have done before. Yeah, highly interesting person. I would love a voice of the land. Very interesting guy.

Jon Coogan (55:52)
Yeah, it's If there's one takeaway you'd like people to keep from this episode, and from this talk, what do think that should be?

Ash (56:00)
If it's a young person and they're listening to this and they're considering around what business they want to do, so talking to them right now, I would tell them this.

build relationships with people who are.

who are going to still be with you, long-term relationship. Don't worry so much around the product or the service that you're selling. And instead, talk to people who you think could be your ideal customers. They will then educate you on the product or service that you need to offer them. Unless it's visionary, like a car or something at the time when you're...

horse and carriage, but usually it's probably not. That's what I'd to younger people. If you're running a business already and you're looking to go from 30, 40k MRR to 100k MRR, I would say to them, do not be fooled into thinking that you can use a formula to reach the next level. Business is not a formula in any way, shape or form.

You have to keep changing, you have to keep adapting. What got you to your first 10K won't get you to your next 20, what got you to your 20 won't get you to 50. It won't happen. You have to keep changing, you have to keep adapting. And if you've hit some kind of wall, if you've hit some kind of stagnation, something needs to change about the business and about you. It's usually both. That is probably the...

Takeaways that I probably want to impart to people

Jon Coogan (57:47)
That's perfect. I think just hearing your story as well, can see that success isn't, it's lot about resilience, not necessarily knowing the next big thing. It's about staying in the game long enough to seize whatever opportunities that come up. And just as you said a minute ago, it's about being willing to pivot, depending on whatever the circumstances are around you, not being too rigid.

Ash (58:10)
Yeah, not being too attached. People get so attached. A big thing that I've had to do several times is really re-evaluate how I see myself. Who is? I didn't always used to go by Ash Smith. I used to go by Ashley Smith. And then I thought, I'm finding it really difficult to separate my personal life from my business life. My first year and a half of doing business, I lost like three relationships.

Jon Coogan (58:12)
Yeah.

Ash (58:39)
because I wasn't able to separate my personal from my business. The things that you need to do to be a successful business person are very different from the things you need to do to be successful partner. And I wasn't separating the two because they're just the same. So I ended up going, I decided that Ash was going to be the guide to all the business stuff and Ashley was just going to be the guide to all the relationship stuff. And it allowed me to incorporate different, if not sometimes conflicting.

Jon Coogan (58:50)
Yeah.

Ash (59:08)
parts of myself and synthesize them together to come out in different environments at different times. So you've got to keep on being flexible, not just about your business, but who you are, your characteristics, how do you see yourself and pivot that too. Because more often than not, the person who gets in the way the most is you, right? So you've got to keep changing and adapting.

Jon Coogan (59:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, really appreciate you being on today and yeah, love having our conversation. If anyone wants to connect with you, where's the best place to get in touch? LinkedIn, Ash Smith, and I'll put a link in the description as well. But no, coming on.

Ash (59:41)
LinkedIn, place, yeah, just send me message, Ash Smith.

Thank you, Jon. I really appreciate you bringing me on. You've been lovely and more than willing to come on ever again, you ask.