About this episode

James Ashford discusses his unconventional beliefs about sales, hiring, and business alignment, emphasizing the importance of service over commission and the interconnectedness of business problems.

In this episode, James shares his challenging beliefs about sales (selling is service, not commission-driven), hiring (fire high performers who are dickheads), business problems (everything is connected—you might think you have a sales problem when it's really a marketing problem), and alignment (you've got to be aligned with your significant other first, or you can't build the life you want). He also reveals his journey from being an "accidental diminisher" of his team to understanding that his need for significance was making him the bottleneck, uses his grandmother's fruitcake recipe as a metaphor for why business owners don't delegate, explains the difference between paying for performance (waiters and tips—doesn't work) vs paying good salary (the restaurant owner who tips upfront gets great service), and shares why Mark Garwood's 10-year journey to a £5M contract that doubled to £10M annually proves that sales without commission works. What you'll learn: 💼 Selling is in the service of others (be willing to say "don't buy from us") 💰 Don't pay sales commission (85% of salespeople don't hit quota anyway—data shows it doesn't work) 🔥 Sack the dickheads, even high performers…

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