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Do You Really Want to Do This Again? | The Entrepreneurial Journey

Hugo Brooks · 9 September 2026

Entrepreneur · Author · Executive Coach · Leadership · Life Coachin
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Key topicsWhy your greatest strength can quietly become your biggest addictionThe same ambition that helps people build successful careers can gradually become impossible to switch off, leaving achievement feeling less like fulfilment and more like obligation. Hugo shares how ambition can shift from being a powerful source of growth into a compulsive cycle of dissatisfaction, drawing on both his personal experience and the research behind his forthcoming book Ambition: Redefining Success for a Restless Age. Rather than encouraging listeners to lower their ambitions, he offers a new way of understanding and directing that energy before it begins to define their identity. Audiences will discover why sustainable success depends less on Creative people don't fail because they lack talent-they struggle because ambition pulls them in two directionsDesigners, writers, founders, and creative entrepreneurs often feel trapped between producing meaningful work and building a commercially successful business. Hugo understands this tension from decades spent leading international creative agencies, where artistic integrity and commercial reality constantly collided. Rather than treating creativity and commercial success as opposing forces, he explains how a healthier understanding of ambition allows creatives to build businesses without losing the very identity that made their work valuable in the first place. It's a conversation that speaks directly to ambitious creatives who want success without sacrificing themselves. Cruise Control — Why Founders Chase Goals Someone Else Set in MotionHugo Brooks spent 35 years building and selling brand, innovation and communications agencies before he noticed how few of his own goals he had actually picked. He advised Coca-Cola, Unilever, Nestlé and Virgin while running his own firms, and he argues that most founders are executing a plan they inherited from family, industry or their younger selves. Drawing on evolutionary biology, neuroscience and social history for his book Ambition: Redefining Success for a Restless Age, he separates the ambition a founder owns from the ambition that owns them. He explains why the milestone that was supposed to feel like arrival keeps moving, and what to check before committing to the next one. Listeners leave able to name whose goal they are actually chasing.View all topics →

About Hugo Brooks

Hugo Brooks, podcast guest

Ambition Strategist & Author

35+ years Building, growing and selling businesses4 global brands Advised Coca-Cola, Unilever, Nestlé and VirginPublished author Ambition: Redefining Success for a Restless AgeMagnetic North Coaching practice

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.

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