Ascent with Tom Foxley

You’ve built the business everyone admires, yet you wake up most mornings without the drive that got you there. I’ve spent eleven years coaching people at the very top of their fields, from special forces operators to founders, and the ones living the lives others envy all break three rules that everyone else follows. None of the three looks rational on a spreadsheet. You’ll also hear why I left for the remote mountains of Pakistan when my wife was four months pregnant. And there’s a client who had it all by his early thirties and still couldn’t find a reason to push. Recorded live, this is a conversation about founder psychology, mental fitness, decision-making, drive and what it takes to climb the second mountain.

Your gut says one thing, the experienced voices in the room say another, and you go with the spreadsheet. Dan Williams co-founded WIT, the fitness retailer that grew to 20 million in revenue in four years before its very public collapse. He’s now building The Fifth, a space that combines a high-performance gym and workspace. Dan talks openly about the decision that felt wrong from the start, the three years it took him to admit it, and what he’d say to himself in the darkest stretch after he walked away. We cover Dan’s early days at inov-8, where he spotted the CrossFit opportunity years before the big brands moved in, and why his best business decisions came from gut feel while his worst came from a spreadsheet or someone else’s influence. We talk about what it feels like to override your instincts, how a growing business brings more senior voices into the room, and how chasing revenue can quietly replace the purpose a company was built on. Dan also shares how he rebuilt his confidence after leaving WIT in 2022, why well-paid but transactional work left him flat, and how a passion for fitness and entrepreneurship became The Fifth. Throughout, we explore founder decision-making, the loss of self-belief after failure, and what success means to him now.

The numbers keep climbing and everyone says you’re doing brilliantly, yet you’re quietly bored of the life you built. One plateau shows up on the spreadsheet, while the other only shows up inside you, and the second is the one that matters most. I tell the story of a client with a business making half a million a year in profit and a two-day working week, who felt as if he was living someone else’s life. I also share what his wife told me, completely out of the blue, six months later. This episode explores boredom after success, and why a bored founder stops committing fully and starts playing small. It also covers the difference between an objective plateau, where revenue, clients and team stall, and a subjective plateau, where everything keeps growing on paper while the man behind the business feels disconnected from his own life. I draw on Tolstoy’s crisis of meaning at the height of his fame and wealth, and on Iain McGilchrist’s research into how the two hemispheres of the brain attend to the world. I explain why a life spent solving complicated problems leaves you badly undertrained for the complex ones, like how to live, what matters and where to go next. It is a conversation about the first and second mountain, mental fitness, and finding adventure again once the business is built.

The results are good and the strategies are in place, but you sit at your desk feeling nothing for the work you once loved. I tell the story of the honeymoon that ended my first business, and the autopsy I carried out on it in the frightening weeks after I shut it down. Then I share a conversation over pizza in Portugal with three driven founders that changed what I believe a business is for. It had very little to do with money. My first business coached elite CrossFit athletes, some of them to the podium at the Games, and for years it was all I wanted to think about. Losing the drive for it had nothing to do with tactics, mentors or discipline. It came from the business drifting away from who I really was. This episode explores why a business should be a reflection of the person running it, what Naval Ravikant means by work that feels like play, and why growth sometimes asks the old version of you to die so the real one can emerge. I also walk through nested goals, the framework I use with clients to connect unifying purpose, values, vision, goals, daily process and character, and why ambition, wealth and being a good father belong in the same conversation.

Mike Samuels spent two years on a business plateau. Revenue was steadily creeping up, he was working 30 to 35 hours a week, and on paper everything was fine. Underneath, he was wrestling with self-doubt and a real values conflict, because the next level meant becoming someone he didn’t want to be: hiring someone to do his job, chasing corporate pitches and living on Zoom calls. So he didn’t go bigger. He stopped measuring himself against everyone else’s version of success and built a business that fits the life he actually wants. Mike started as a personal trainer in 2009, took his business online, and went all in on copywriting in 2016. A decade later, he writes for clients, coaches other copywriters and consultants, runs ultras and has a book on the way. In this conversation we get into: Why boredom, not laziness, is often what quietly kills your drive How he went from copying his mentors to writing in a voice that’s unmistakably his own Chasing excitement instead of setting goals The craftsman versus empire builder choice, and why he chose depth over automation Refusing to self-censor, including publishing an essay on grief after his mum died What ultra running and journaling give him that business never could How getting his money working for him removed the scarcity that keeps so many founders chasing the next deal If you’ve built something that works and you’re privately wondering whether “more” is really what you want, this one is for you. Find Mike Book (out 17 November): backpackbusinessbook.com Instagram: The Coffee Shop Copywriter LinkedIn and Facebook: Mike Samuels

You’ve had a good year, and if you look at the accounts, the clients you’ve helped and the business you’ve built, you’d have to admit it. But there’s no real joy in it. The satisfaction you used to get from a great result has faded, your mornings start slower than they used to, and you find yourself putting off the work you know matters most. You know you’re capable of more and you want to give more, yet the drive that once had you jumping out of bed to build this thing feels like it’s gone quiet. If that sounds familiar, nothing is wrong with you. You’ve simply summited the first mountain. The fear and urgency that got you here have done their job, and now you’re living in a version of success that no longer asks anything of you. In this episode you’ll understand exactly why that hunger has faded, so you can stop wondering whether you’ve become lazy or complacent and start seeing it for what it really is. You’ll learn how you’ve outgrown the identity that built your success, why ambitious men start protecting the lead instead of going after what genuinely excites them, and how to find the next adventure worth committing to. By the end, you’ll know how to bring the excitement back into your business and your life, so that next year becomes the year you go again rather than a repeat of this one.

Last year my accountant sent me a message to congratulate me. He meant it kindly. It sat in my stomach for weeks. The business was fine. Good months, okay months. From the outside it looked like I was pushing hard. On the inside I’d started asking a question I would never have said out loud: am I getting lazy? I’d already done everything you’re supposed to do. Mentors, books, podcasts, new offers, new systems. I bored every successful friend I had trying to work out what they knew that I didn’t. The numbers barely moved. What eventually changed it wasn’t a tactic. It was one reframe from a client, and a decision I’d never made in ten years of running a business. Since then my average monthly revenue has gone up nine times. I love my work again, and I’m actually present when I’m home. In this episode I tell you what that message said, why the things that built your business stop working at a certain point, and what’s really sitting between you and the next level. It’s not another strategy. It’s also the reason this podcast is changing. If your year looks good on paper and you still know you’re playing smaller than you could be, this one’s for you.

You've hired the mentors, read the right books and you're still working incredibly hard. The business is good, but it isn't growing, and you aren't building a life you love. This episode is for the business owner who wants to finish the year strongly but has lost the drive they had in the early days. I explain what's happening in your brain when you plateau: why you can't grow despite wanting to, why you underperform relative to what you know you can do, and what's happening in the brain that is creating this block on your growth. Then I explain what gets you moving again, and how to apply it to your life

You're with your kids, but your head's at work. You're at work, but you're thinking about home. Then something tips you over, you snap at the people you love, and the guilt sits with you all evening. This is a real coaching session with a driven business owner and dad of a young family who wanted to separate his work brain from his family brain. What we found underneath wasn't a focus problem at all. In this episode: Why telling yourself to "switch off" works for a day, then fails How to find what your stress and anger are trying to protect you from Treating the parts of your mind like a team you manage, not enemies you fight The four stages of building a new relationship with difficult emotion Two five-minute practices you can start today

This is how to handle the next stage of growth in your business. The greatest challenge you'll face comes from within and this is a story about how to handle that.