The most important person in the world to me, my wife, business partner, and a key inspiration in life as well as a key to so much of the success we have experienced. Ashely Marsh (Ash) is a powerhouse lady who has tremendous gifts in creating spaces, places, and environments of beauty. We call her our CBO – Chief Beauty Officer but she is so much more than that. She has co-created and run the platform that supports all of our companies from Financial, HR, Compliance, legal and more.

Ashely is a wife and mom, married to John…you get the picture. She found herself walking on the streets of downtown Opelika in 1994, desperately longing to see life brought back to the community she loved and grew up in. Along with John, and now the team at Marsh Collective, she has pioneered the redemption of Opelika, and in cities across the country. Ashely runs the real estate management, The Southerly event venue and community, hospitality business, and works with the team to foster a generational difference in communities and places. // Curator of all things beautiful. People, places and spaces. – Enneagram: 8 /  5 VOICES: Guardian/Nurturer / Lover of: Fast cars, & pull up bars

• I feel very privileged to be in this life as a businesswoman in the businesses that you and I have created together, and doing what we do best, which is touching on peoples and places, and changing the hearts of people in towns. So, I love it. – Ashely Marsh
• … a lot of times, I had to stay in the background just because the priorities that I chose at the time were to be more at home and be available to the kids.  – Ashely Marsh
• What I’ve found is that I actually was using my giftings all along, and was just pouting about it because I didn’t have any way to frame it in my mind that it was valuable.  – Ashely Marsh
• What we care to do to help other entrepreneurs, business, city, lovers, and leaders, and also couples who long to do work together, who want to do this life together side-by-side, and feel like they can use one another’s gift no matter how diverse they are.  – Ashely Marsh
• (redemptive work) I see it as it helps remind people who they really are. It helps remind us that we’re loved, and that we’re lovely, and that we’re worth it. I believe that it’s really easy to go into areas that are completely forgotten, and they’re falling apart, they’re dying.  – Ashely Marsh
• To me, what we’ve done bringing in businesses or restoring the places, buildings, and really, ultimately, I think restored people’s viewpoint. We restored their ability to have open eyes, to hope, and I believe that that’s the greatest thing that we give. – Ashely Marsh
• I believe we’ve been a catalyst for beauty and for hope. I love the fact that we’re not the only ones doing it now. (in Opelika) – Ashely Marsh
• I say momentum makes us look better than we are. No momentum makes us look worse than we are.   – John Marsh
• We care about taking people on a journey. If you think your city, place or community or even your block or the duplex you happen to want to buy is impossible that you can’t do it, we want to take you from impossible to possible. If we can get you to possible, then I feel probable is an easy step, but once you can take a city or a project or a place from impossible to possible, then people will start investing in it, and then it becomes probable.  – John Marsh (IMPOSSIBLE > POSSIBLE > PROBABLE)
• I say we have to have faith, but we got to be faithful. Faith without works is dead, and our works without faith are dead. We believe it takes both. – Ashely Marsh
• That’s why we think that you could be saving a city, as a developer, or you could be a hit and run developer.  Being a developer that has care, deep care that matches (and exceeds) just a desire for profits is what we want to be.  – John Marsh
• We want to work at the intersection of profits and purpose. – John Marsh
• “Well, do you want me to focus on what can kill us or do you want me to focus on what can make us?”  – Ashely Marsh
• So, I think as an investor, one thing you have to figure out is who are you. So, that way, you can buy the things that fit you.  – Ashely Marsh
• (What gets you excited about beauty?) That I always have an opportunity to show someone that they matter. It’s my greatest form of hospitality I can do is to let them know that I thought about them, but thought about them in a way of how we make them feel.   – Ashely Marsh
• (John) I’ve done promiscuous visioning, “Oh, let me tell you about what I want to do, and go tell everybody else because when I come to you, you ask piercing questions about the clarity that seems to make me angry.”  – John Marsh
• (GiANT’s) Provisional / Plan / and Promise. Provisional is brainstorming, “I just want to talk about this,” no idea is a bad idea, future. People start there. “Plan” is, “We’re going there, but I don’t know-how. It’s still open. We can work there.” Promises, “Come hell or high water, we gave our word. We’re doing this.”  – John Marsh
• “Why are things that are beautiful, not affordable, and why are things affordable not beautiful?”   – John Marsh
• “It’s a bit like getting a bush and calling it a fig tree and going and buying a bunch of figs at Kroger and sticking it all on this bush, and say, ‘Look at our fig tree.’ You keep on buying figs and sticking it on the tree, and pretty soon, somebody goes, ‘Is it really a fig tree if it doesn’t make figs? Is a city really flourishing if it doesn’t create flourishing if people aren’t growing and …'” – John Marsh

• Ashely Marsh
• Giant Worldwide