My first one is that surprised me and I really didn't see coming, actually was that After James had had his exit and he'd gone through the normal sort of “oh wow, this is amazing,” and all that sort of stuff.
He says obviously he felt like a bit of maybe a “fraud” if he was going to go and ask somebody for help.
Obviously, he sort of says that he had somebody who previously gone through this, and when he spoke to them, they were like: “Yep, that was definitely going to happen, James. I knew that but you wouldn't have believed me if I told you.”
But it really struck me to go: “Actually, I've never really considered that.”
I've known people who've had significant exits and I've never really thought of or understood that, yes you feel down and then like you say, you don't feel like you can ask for help because people go, “oh yeah, look at your problems with all that money in the bank. “
And I thought that was really interesting to see how James was feeling and how he managed his way through that.
James went through a number of businesses before he's got to one that he scaled successfully and had an exit and it got me thinking and wondering that, is that always the case?
Did people need to have gone through fruit and pain themselves?
Had some failings, had some key learning points and done things wrong? Wrong, might not be fair because that might be what felt right at the time.
It just might be that looking back at it with what you now know, that actually you realize that maybe they were wrong decisions, but actually you are learning from these all the time, and that actually is that the case for the majority of business owners.
Do you need to be going through some degree of learning process where you can then move forward and the better?
Now, it might not be that you need a full business to fail. But actually, I think that when you're looking maybe within your current business and you are looking at things that are going wrong and you're feeling frustrated and there's lots of challenges and yeah, it's getting you down, but actually to go, “hang on, is this just normal?”
That actually if everything was straightforward and simple and I was always achieving success, would I even be doing this?
Because actually maybe everybody would be doing it, so I'd want to be doing something different.
I think my thing is, every time you have a degree of frustration with anything that maybe that's going on, I was going to say in your business, but maybe even in your life, is that actually you need to possibly look at that and just go,
And I think that becomes really clean and clear for me in terms of thinking about challenges and difficulties I got at the moment.
All the ones I've had in the past. And actually, just look at it and just go, how do you make sure that your focus towards, what am I learning in this situation?
What gift is that?
This is a James Ashford quote, so it's fantastic.
James loves to comment and say that “where is the gift?”
Because there's a gift in every situation. You just have to look hard enough to find it, and sometimes the gift is that learning...
I think probably the key with life itself, isn't it?
That you're not going to sail through life without any problems or challenges. There's another thing.
A calm sea never made a skilled sailor.
If you are going to become that skilled sailor, you're going to have to navigate some really choppy waters that are really challenging, unpredictable, and you don't know what you need to do to get through.
Actually, what that will do is make you skilled for the future so that when similar situations arrive and arise again, then you'll be able to navigate your way through them and they don't seem that challenging anymore.
So go find your gift in your problems that you are currently experiencing.
