The Ascent – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Adie Shariff is a performance psychologist with over 25 years of experience helping teams and individuals operate at their best when it matters most. From elite sport to business and the military, his approach is grounded, practical, and built on proven frameworks. In this episode, Adie unpacks the five core mindsets of performance, how to align teams through structure and accountability, and how to make change stick. A must-listen for anyone serious about elevating performance.

David Hopley OBE brings three decades of elite military leadership to the table - from commanding the UK Special Forces to mentoring leaders in business and sport. In this episode, he shares battle-tested insights on trust, decision-making under pressure, and the difference between managing and truly leading. Whether you're building a team, navigating challenge, or striving for high performance, David’s philosophy of creating meaningful step changes will leave you inspired.

Guy has a lively conversation with the ebullient Keith Abel, founder of organic veg box trailblazers Abel and Cole, and, since 2014, Chairman and investor in Freddie's Flowers, a business which enjoyed exponential growth during 2020 and is accelerating plans for major expansion across the globe.

After failing his Bar exams, Keith started selling potatoes door-to-door in south London and grew Abel and Cole into a business worth nearly £40m in 2007. He sold a stake to private equity firm Phoenix that year, but profits plunged and, in 2010, control of the business was passed on in a debt-for-equity swap. He bought back in shortly after and managed to turn the business around again, before going on to lend Abel and Cole alum Freddie Garland £10k to start his eponymous flower box delivery business in 2014.

Keith’s is a rollicking tale of highs and lows, and his conversation with Guy is packed with invaluable learnings, from the value of door-to-door and face-to-face marketing versus digital and social, to exploiting a highly-engaged customer base to raise investment and grow a business, and how to convince someone that they simply have to have a product they never thought they needed.

Guy’s guest, Caroline Plumb, is a serial entrepreneur and CEO who founded rapidly-scaling FinTech business, Fluidly, after experiencing first-hand the pain point of managing cash flow in a growing business. Fluidly was named one of 2018’s ‘Hot 10’ European FinTechs by the FinTech50, and featured in WIRED’s Top 100 Hottest European startups.

Caroline’s first business, Freshminds, came into being just weeks after graduating from Cambridge, and in the intervening twenty years, she has - amongst an embarrassment of achievements - completed a stint as one of the Prime Minister’s Business Ambassadors representing the Professional Services sector, been appointed as a non-executive director to AIM-listed Mercia Technologies and awarded an OBE in the Queen’s 90th Birthday Honours List.

Guy’s interview with Caroline is, as you would expect, full of invaluable advice and learnings, not to mention some quotes to live by - our favourite being “if two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary”, courtesy of William Wrigley (he of the chewing gum fame).

Bill Collis, former CEO and President of visual effects software behemoth Foundry, one-time Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and Tenzing Entrepreneurs Panel member, tells Guy about unwittingly finding himself creating FX for one of the most iconic films of all time… his passion for using maths and algorithms to solve real-world problems… how to take on software pirates and emerge victorious… the value gained from working with multiple private equity backers… and the joys of stepping back from CEO to take up chairperson roles.

Learn about how Tenzing helps companies to grow at: www.tenzing.pe

Titus Sharpe, lead generation and ad tech pioneer, former CEO of MVF – winner of The Sunday Times Best Company to Work For award – and member of Tenzing’s Entrepreneur’s Panel, tells Guy how he’s been in business since day one (if selling home-made slime in jam jars in primary school counts…), how he almost invented social media… how being at the bleeding edge of his industry means access to new Google, Facebook and Instagram products way in advance of the competition… and how Tony Robbins helped him transform his tough start in life into an insatiable drive for success.

Learn about how Tenzing helps companies to grow at: www.tenzing.pe

Tenzing’s very own Entrepreneur-in-Residence and retired CEO of Reward Gateway, Glenn Elliott talks about his high-yield teenage entrepreneurial endeavours… the importance of listening to your gut, having faith in your beliefs and being comfortable ignoring the received wisdom… and how being endlessly curious, and relentless in the pursuit of simplicity, is key to doing things differently, successfully.

Learn about how Tenzing helps companies to grow at: www.tenzing.pe

Guy talks to Pierre Dubuc about his incredible, 20-year journey building OpenClassrooms from a hobby teaching school friends to build websites, into a $60m online education platform. After a few seismic shifts in their business model, and coming close to throwing in the towel, Pierre and his business partner, Mathieu, settled on a vision that felt authentic and impactful, and watched the business soar. Today, their five-year plan is to train, help graduate, and place in the workforce, one million students per year. It’s a long way from Googling “how to write a business plan” while still at college…

Learn about how Tenzing helps companies to grow at: www.tenzing.pe

Guy enjoys a lively and insightful conversation with digital media innovator, serial investor, and Tenzing’s Entrepreneurs Panel member, Louise Rogers. He dives into her key milestones, including making the move from architecture journalism to business mover and shaker… life as an internet frontierswoman in an embryonic Silicon Valley… and turning Times Educational Supplement from print media dinosaur on the brink of extinction into a billion-dollar juggernaut, beating off not one, but two, attempts by the government to derail her plans along the way. Louise’s insight into how she gets to grips with a new business or market is particularly salient.

Learn about how Tenzing helps companies to grow at: www.tenzing.pe

Guy’s first guest is Dean Forbes, one of the UK’s pre-eminent private equity CEOs, having built a formidable reputation for transitioning leadership over from Founders and notching up three hugely-successful exits. He’s currently President of Access People, and was recently named one of the UK’s most influential people on the Black Powerlist 2021. His journey has taken him from humble beginnings to the highest heights, via a stint as a professional footballer, and – being addicted to the challenge of building high-performance teams and realising the potential of the company and the people in it – he can’t resist climbing even higher… if Dean has anything to do with it, next time it’ll be a billion-dollar exit.

Learn about how Tenzing helps companies to grow at: www.tenzing.pe