Ash Smith

TLDR

Currently helping Tech companies scale using B2B Influencer Marketing and Sales Strategies which got me to $100k MRR

26 Y/O business Owner, scaled an A.i Sales Company to 6 figures MRR and then exited. Keen interest in politics worked for the UK government as Assistant to the Education Secretary. At 19 a Trustee for a 7-figure UK Charity. Psychology Grad.

I spent my early life caring for my Grandparents and Mother. I am a keen gardener and badminton player, and I mainly live in my library.

My Story:

All good stories start with a defining moment, mine was when I was 4 years old.

I had a very fortunate upbringing, I was raised primarily by my Grandparents as my Mother was often ill. It was truly a team effort and I'm grateful for the time I got to spend with the people I loved most of all in my early life.

My Dad was never around, as far as I know, he's in prison somewhere.

My Mother has always done her best, but she has several illnesses and epilepsy is the main one. All I knew when I was 4 was that every so often she faints and makes these funny sounds and shakes A LOT.

One morning she comes downstairs into the Kitchen, my grandad and I eating breakfast together as we always did. In one hand an empty wine bottle, it was Lambrini...the working-class white wine!

She placed it on the side and as she was getting her morning tablets I ran up to her as I usually did, in excitement!

Then she started to twitch, and my grandad noticed instantly, after over 30 years of experience you just know, he tells me to come to him but I don't listen.

She starts to have a seizure, right in front of me, for the first time ever...I still remember it vividly...collapsing on the floor, arms flying outwards in a clasping motion...she ends up grabbing the empty wine bottle and as she seizes smashing her head with it over and over and over again.

The next thing I know my grandad shouts my name to go upstairs and to only come down when he says so.

I spend what feels like hours in my room...not understanding...not knowing what's happening. I have never felt so powerless in all my life than at that moment. My understanding of the world was shattered.

Looking back now, that's when it all started...a drive to never feel powerless ever again. A desire to be more and do more.

My mum was okay, a bit battered and bruised but otherwise okay.

9 years later I'm 13, and I'm living alone with my mom on the ground floor of a Council flat on an estate (Social Housing in a 2-story apartment for my American friends!) and that's when I became her full-time carer.

I see many many more seizures and begin to juggle school life with being a carer...at 16 my nan starts to get ill as well and I start caring for her...then at 18, my grandad gets sick too.

At 18 I start studying psychology...I don't live at the University...I commute every day by train. 2 hours there, 2 hours back. My day usually went like this.

Wake up at 4 - Breakfast for the family and me, First train at around half 6, in Uni for half 8, lectures till 3 - back home for 5, dinner for the family and cleaning till around 7, uni work till 10, bed at 11. REPEAT.

Nothing creates a work ethic quite like taking care of the 3 most important people in your whole universe.

By the time I was 20, I had lost both my grandparents...both of them died almost a year to the day of one another with my grandad going first.

When my grandad passed away we had carers in for my Nan full time, which meant for the first time I could spend more time at university...that's when through a variety of creative campaigns I became a trustee of the students union. A charity organisation worth well over £4 Million.

I poured myself into it, being responsible for almost 100 employees and working at the strategic level of a 7 figure organisation was the most fun I'd ever had. I knew my calling, I wanted to solve bigger and bigger strategic challenges.

So what institution solves the largest challenges?

Government.

I set my sights on working in one of the several government departments. I ended up working as assistant to the Education secretary.

And that's when for the second time my world was shattered. I discovered that the government machine was barely holding itself together, and that change was almost impossible if that change was in any direction that wasn't downward.

I left 3 months after I started.

I then started my first proper business at 21. I turned down working as an Estate Agent and I started coaching small business owners around mindset...I figured that with what I had been through I had a good basis to help others!

3 months later Covid hit. Covid was the best thing that happened for me and my first business because it meant that I could work from home and everyone was struggling to find their feet. It was a reset which equalised everyone.

So I started cold calling, 120 calls per day, every weekday for months. It's how I got my first 100 meetings and honed my sales skills...It was also when I met my first business and Sales Mentor, James Bennett.

I can talk about what James has done for me for hours...Before James retired, he closed well over $2.5 Billion in sales working at Oracle, he taught me everything I know about Sales and I've used the knowledge ever since...

I did this for a few years, focusing on Young Male business owners who hadn't broken 10k MRR. That was until mid-2022.

Most of my leads were coming from LinkedIn...and then...without reason...I was banned from the platform and I had all of my personal bank accounts frozen.

Yes, you heard it, I had all of my personal bank accounts frozen and at the same time, I lost access to my main lead source.

I have a few theories as to why this happened...but safe to say I had to pivot...FAST!

I realised that I was extremely vulnerable...that I had to find a better way to make money and think much bigger than just myself.

That's when I took a moment to understand the market, at the time A.i was just starting to become a talking point...so I took a bet...

I bet that A.i will take off soon and that many people would want to use it. This was before the explosion of chat GPT in early 2023 so a lot was riding on my bet!

The first problem I had was that I knew nothing about A.i

The solution I came to was to form a distribution agreement with an already-existing B2B tech company. That way we could mark up the service and would only need to sell it!

After I found a partner an A.i partner, it wasn't smooth sailing, my first business partner stole almost £10k from me in November 2022 because he thought he knew how to run a business better.

I was left with barely any money and being so close to Christmas it was almost impossible to make more. This was a very cold Winter for me.

So much so that at the end of 2022 I had no money. I was looking for pound coins around the house to pay for food at Aldi.

2 things kept me going. My new business partner, James. And my belief in myself. I was all in, I believed in the business and the idea 100% and I knew I just needed to wait it out before I got a bite.

In January soon after Christmas I was visited by the debt collectors...It was a rude awakening, I had to borrow money from friends to stay afloat and I re-doubled my efforts.

Then, a miracle happened...Chat GPT was EVERYWHERE.

A.i was a talking point that everyone was interested in, I had 7 commission-only cold callers at the time and we changed all their scripts to talking about A.i.

We started booking more calls and closing more deals...The coldest winter of my life was over, and we found a formula that worked.

We went from $0 revenue in January to well over $100k MRR by June. By that time I had a team of 30+. 2 Team Leaders, 4 closers, a co-founder, myself and the rest cold calling. We had found a rhythm and over 12 months after I was banned from LinkedIn...I hit my goal of having a successful AI business.

But I made 1 big mistake. The distribution agreement that was signed left all the responsibility for the A.i success and failure on our shoulders, and yet we had no control over the product. This meant that when there were tech problems (which is inevitable) we were powerless to do anything about it.

The A.i had to keep changing and shifting in order to be effective, which meant that what early customers bought was no longer the service they were receiving.

This was an untenable position.

So in August 2023, James and I decided to exit the company and sell all 19 of our customers to our tech partner.

By October, we were out and James retired thereafter. I took the rest of the year off to rest and re-consider my options.

Now, I'm using what I've learned to help Tech companies grow via Sales consulting.