Second Opinion — What Coca-Cola and Virgin Teach Founders About Diagnosing Their Own Growth

Hugo Brooks is an Ambition Strategist, speaker and author who helps founders, business leaders and ambitious creatives rethink one of the most powerful forces shaping their lives: ambition.

After more than 35 years building, growing and selling brand, innovation and communications businesses, Hugo reached a turning point. Having advised global organisations including Coca-Cola, Unilever, Nestlé and Virgin while navigating the highs and lows of entrepreneurship himself, a single question from his wife changed everything: "Are you sure you want to do this again?" That moment led him to step off the entrepreneurial treadmill and dedicate his second career to helping others build success that is consciously chosen rather than unconsciously inherited.

Today, through coaching, speaking and his book, Ambition: Redefining Success for a Restless Age, Hugo challenges the conventional belief that ambition is simply about achieving bigger goals. Instead, he argues that ambition is a powerful human force that drives almost every decision we make -and that the real question is not how ambitious we are, but whether our ambition is taking us where we truly want to go. Drawing on evolutionary biology, neuroscience, social history and his own entrepreneurial journey, he helps leaders understand the hidden patterns that shape their choices and shows how to align ambition with the life they genuinely want to build.