John Ashworth
Market Maker · Selective Partnership · Chicago
What this is
This is not a job application. It is an offer extended to a small number of firms whose growth is being limited not by the quality of their work — but by what happens in the room when it matters most.
I work alongside select firms as a market maker. I come in when the stakes are real, read the room before anyone else does, build trust faster than anyone in the building, and move conversations toward decisions. I do not need a title. I need access.
You have probably tried this hire before
Somebody smart. Somebody motivated. Somebody who interviewed well and made you think — finally, this person gets it.
And then you watched them get in front of a real prospect and lose the room. Talk too much. Ask the wrong things at the wrong time. Leave you calculating when to step back in and save it.
It is not that they were not capable people. It is that reading a room, building trust in the first 30 seconds, knowing exactly when to push and when to go quiet — that is not something you learn in a sales training. Most people spend an entire career chasing it and never find it.
I have been doing it for 30 years.
Four industries. One truth.
The buyer will not move until they trust the person across from them.
Luxury Automotive
Lexus, BMW, Mercedes. Buyers who had seen every pitch. The ones who closed were the ones who felt understood before they felt sold.
High-End Fitness
A decade running a premium personal training studio. Long-term clients closed on trust, not features. The relationship was the product.
B2B Technology
Helped scale a SaaS firm to a dominant market position by understanding the buyer's world as well as the product being sold into it.
Professional Services
Built revenue systems in the most emotionally complex sales environment that exists. Earned trust in rooms most people cannot survive — and closed.
What does not show up on a resume: the ability to ask the right question at the right moment. To know when to go quiet. To sense what a prospect actually needs before they have said it out loud. That is not taught. That is 30 years of being in high-stakes rooms and paying close attention.
How this works
Structure
Retainer or base plus performance on revenue generated above your current baseline
Capacity
I work with a select number of firms at a time. When I am in, I am fully in.
Commitment
A minimum 25% increase in revenue. That is what I am willing to put my compensation behind.
Your risk
Minimal. You pay for access to someone your competitors cannot hire because they do not know this kind of person exists.
Most firms at your stage have never had someone in the room who could walk in cold, earn trust before earning the right to ask anything, and close. That is a different experience than what you have had before. It is worth a conversation to find out if this is the right moment for it.
I am also, for what it is worth, a graduate exercise physiologist, a lifelong athlete, and someone who has never once done this the expected way.
John Ashworth · Chicago
Available for a limited number of partnerships