Scale To Win with Dominic Monkhouse

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 (they'll poison your culture regardless of numbers)

📊 Everything in business is connected (sales problem might be a marketing or business development problem)

🧠 The accidental diminisher (you're scoring highly on all six ways to diminish your team)

👵 Your grandmother's fruitcake (why business owners won't delegate—need for significance)

🎯 Set the standards, inspect what you expect (granular playbooks + inspection processes)

📞 Mark Garwood's 10-year deal (best salesman he knows, took decade to land £5M contract, doubled to £10M in 2 years)

Book recommendations:

Multipliers (Accidental Diminishers) - Liz Wiseman - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multipliers-Best-Leaders-People-Think/dp/0061766879

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alchemist-Paulo-Coelho/dp/0062390007

The Four Agreements - Miguel Ruiz - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Four-Agreements-Practical-Guide-Personal-Freedom/dp/1878424319

James Ashford is an entrepreneur, consultant, and speaker who failed many times before building a software business that ran without him and sold to Sage for an eight-figure exit within five years of starting. His "Go Proposal" software was designed to solve a specific problem he saw in sales: the proposal sitting in the client's inbox, disappearing, never being reviewed. He built it so proposals could be created, accepted, and paid for during the meeting itself. That business took him through a rigorous exit process and gave him the clarity he needed to step back from being the constant rescuer and bottleneck in his own business.

Now he works with business owners and consults on the psychological and operational foundations of sustainable businesses. He's most known for his contrarian beliefs about commission, culture, and what actually drives business growth—which is rarely what people think.

Business leaders need the greatest awareness of themselves. Your belief system shapes everything. The psychology underneath is what actually drives business success, not the tactics or strategies.

Connect with James Ashford - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesashford/

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Chapters:

00:00 Intro
01:14 James Ashford introduces his entrepreneurial journey
02:38 Importance of firing disruptive high performers
04:11 Alignment with significant other crucial for peace
07:54 Balancing love for business with family expectations
10:58 Cultural norms and their influence on business
13:45 Overcoming limiting beliefs in scaling a business
19:10 Questioning the effectiveness of sales commissions
21:09 Rethinking sales strategies and customer trust
25:18 Avoiding accidental diminishment of the team
32:28 Importance of radical truthfulness in high-performance teams
37:45 Building trust through honesty and psychological safety
41:51 Handling resistance to change and truthfulness in business
44:28 Recommendations on business books and personal development

In this episode, Nikola reveals his contrarian belief that AI can be better than humans at customer service (not instead of humans, they'll do very different work), why he spent two hours on the phone with Vodafone when he got their confirmation email with someone else's name on it (and why that's not really about AI or humans), why they built a "token leaderboard" internally to track which AI tools they're using most, why junior developers will definitely beat senior ones at learning these tools (plasticity just goes down as you age), how AI gives him superpowers as a CEO (a chief of staff reminding him he promised something 4 days ago), and why their business model is "Rolls Royce for large enterprises, BMW for everyone else." He also shares his journey from a Serbian family to the University of Cambridge, how his PhD supervisor convinced him not to do a PowerPoint job at McKinsey, and why he ended up founding a voice AI company instead of working in finance (he wanted to be "a proper monkey" as well as a PowerPoint monkey, in his words).

What you'll learn:

🤖 AI can be substantially better at customer service (humans already lost their role long ago in most companies)

📞 The Vodafone example: edge cases, six different humans bouncing you around, why most companies lack taxonomy of failures

💼 Rolls Royce + BMW model (premium high-touch implementation + self-serve platform for SMBs)

🧠 Plasticity matters: junior devs will beat senior ones at learning AI tools (nature's law—ability to learn new things decreases with age)

⚡ AI superpowers for CEOs (chief of staff reminding you of commitments, transcription of meetings, Slack tracking)

🎯 Why Google can't compete (they care about ads and compute use, not customer service—you go down their priority list)

📊 "Token leaderboard" to track which AI tools you're using most

🏢 From consulting motion + tech to becoming a platform business

About the Guest:

Nikola Mrkšić is CEO and co-founder of Poly AI, a Series D company building voice AI agents for enterprise customer service. The company is a spin-out from the University of Cambridge where Nikola met his co-founders and the whole senior research team. They'd all worked on building really good voice agents for their professional and academic lives. The business started with an idea to prove voice technology can be a good thing in people's lives, not just "that pesky thing that gets you to not speak to a human when you really want to speak to a human."

Connect with Nikola Mrkšić - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikola-mrksic/

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Follow Dominic on LinkedIn:

https://linkedin.com/in/dominicmonkhouse

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction
01:17 Series D company background and voice technology focus
02:33 AI surpassing human customer service capabilities
05:18 Personal story of frustration with customer service
08:07 Successful AI implementations in hospitality and finance
10:58 AI handling sensitive customer service cases
13:16 Broad societal changes due to AI integration
15:00 Impact of AI on workplace efficiency and team dynamics
19:30 Young people naturally adapting to AI tools
23:30 Discussion on younger generations and AI fluency
24:46 AI improving individual weaknesses in the workplace
29:10 Transition of Poly.ai to a more platform-based model
33:01 Challenges of scaling B2B SaaS in different markets
36:01 Immigrant perspective in building successful companies
40:08 Nikola's educational journey and serendipitous career path
48:21 Competitive position against major tech companies

Setting up a business is a major life decision that should not be taken lightly—it is incredibly painful. The ups definitely outweigh the downs, but the downs can be dark. Having a co-founder makes all the difference. Matthew Duhig, CEO and co-founder of FX Digital, started the business at university with his co-founder Tom, to build a website for his sister's bridal shop for free. Fifteen years later, they've grown from £1.5M to approaching £10M revenue, from 20 people to nearly 80, and they've built connected TV applications for major media and sports companies. Along the way, they had one major near-death experience when a single client became 80% of revenue, then in-housed the work down to 60%—leaving Matt and Tom with no personal wealth or assets, living together, staring at the barrel. But they believed in their proposition, backed themselves against the wall, and won 4 of 5-6 bids they needed to win, which launched them into major tech company work and one of their best years ever.

In this episode, Matt reveals his four contrarian beliefs about building businesses: (1) Running a business is incredibly painful and decision should not be taken lightly; (2) Vision comes from consumption (reading, listening, watching—not plucking it from air); (3) Don't make promises you can't control (resentment is harder to overcome than anything else in teams); (4) The job of an entrepreneur is to reduce risk (not take risks). He shares why he's an absolute delegator (sometimes great, sometimes backfires), how he managed to get off the tools when billing five days a week, why he stays in touch with 5-10 people at any given time who might be future hires, and how Barcelona became their second office (Jack the QA lead asked if he could relocate and Matt asked him to set up an office instead).

What you'll learn:

💼 Why having a co-founder is massive (not dark and lonely on your own)

🚨 What near-death looks like (80% revenue from one client, they in-house the work at 60%)

📚 Vision comes from consumption (read, listen, watch—a year of immersion in industry)

🤝 Don't make promises you can't control (resentment is the hardest thing to overcome)

⚙️ The job of an entrepreneur is to reduce risk (not take them)

🎯 Delegation as core skill (sometimes great, sometimes backfires, but necessary)

📞 Keep a pipeline of 5-10 potential hires always (chat with them, stay in touch)

🌍 Barcelona expansion lesson (talent + cost benefits + less competition than London)

Book recommendations:

The Intelligent Entrepreneur - Bill Murphy Jr. - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intelligent-Entrepreneur-Bill-Murphy-Jr/dp/0805094296

Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits - Greg Crabtree - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Simple-Numbers-Straight-Talk-Profits/dp/1600374514

Simple Numbers 2 - Greg Crabtree - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Simple-Numbers-Straight-Talk-Profits/dp/1600374514

About the Guest:

Matthew Duhig is CEO and co-founder of FX Digital, a business that builds connected TV applications for media and sports companies. He started the business with co-founder Tom at university when Matthew was 20 years old—Tom was away due to a bike accident in London ("Tom get well soon"), so they're running it together remotely. They grew from £1.5M revenue (7 years ago) to approaching £10M now, with headcount from 20 to nearly 80. The business evolved from web design work for his sister's bridal shop (free work) to building websites for a few years, then in 2015 they stumbled across connected TV—creating applications for TV like you create mobile applications, then launching them onto streaming platforms. That niche and doubling down on it propelled their growth.

Connect with Matthew Duhig / FX Digital - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/matthewduhig

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Follow Dominic on LinkedIn:

https://linkedin.com/in/dominicmonkhouse

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction
01:03 Starting FX Digital and early challenges
07:15 Surviving a critical business downturn
12:59 Personal sacrifices and work-life balance
17:10 Stepping back to foster leadership growth
22:25 Delegation and leadership management strategies
28:34 Benefits of hiring fractional leaders
32:48 Building and automating key business systems
35:03 Establishing a Barcelona office for expansion
37:30 Talent acquisition benefits in Barcelona
39:42 Influential books and educational resources
41:28 Sources of ongoing inspiration and learning