About Us...
Experience delivered by people who have scaled successfully....
Ascender Consulting Limited (ACL) was set up by Steve Daly in April 2020. Drawing on the experience of starting, scaling, managing and eventually selling a successful multi-million-pound, multi-national business, ACL can help business owners and directors with the general challenges of running their businesses.
Some background on Steve Daly - Principal Consultant:
Steve's professional raison d'être is to solve business problems. He enjoys deconstructing challenges, planning strategies, and implementing actions to result in stronger, fitter and more focused businesses.
He graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1999 with a BA in Electronic Engineering, a BA in Mathematics, and a MA. Post university. Steve spent 5 years in network engineering roles. This gave him a great foundation in problem solving. He did not realise it at the time, but he was training his mind in to think in a certain way.
Steve joined a London based management consultancy to broaden the field of play in which he could solve problems. He spent some of the best years of his career learning with over 50+ client’s assignments internationally. He understood his role and impact on teams, and the approach he used within a team environment. He was introduced to some great frameworks and mechanisms, and he also learnt about the soft skills required to different approaches. It is the people that solve problems in business and you must work with all types!
Industry and Management Experience:
After half a decade of consultancy, Steve joined ID&C in 2008, and within 3 years he was running it with his business partner (and brother-in-law), after a management buyout. ID&C is a tech-enabled wristband and accreditation provider to live events ( sports, music, conferences, shows etc)
In the first few years, he introduced better processes, clear lines of communication, developed new products and drove revenue growth in Europe whilst establishing a platform for expansion. This included on-boarding a management team and a new Financial Director.
In 2015 he founded and implemented the US office based out of Sarasota, FL. It was an idea he had been harbouring since 2011 when he first started selling to the US market from the UK. ID&C started to trade in April 2016, once the UK team was stable with a solid management team.
This period of Steve's professional career was by far the most testing, time consuming and rewarding. He lived at the coalface of growing a business and all the challenges it brought with it – the tears & emotion of the failures and the laughter & euphoria of the successes. All business owners can empathise with both sides of that story!
Exit:
In 2020, the US business had 26 employees and operated out of a wholly owned purpose built 15k sq. ft. facility in Florida that ID&C had acquired. Having grown the revenues rapidly, yet selectively, to $10 MM in 3 + years, and remaining highly profitable and cash generative, ID&C was approached in 2019 and subsequently sold to CCL industries [CCL: B (TSE)] in Jan 2020 just before the COVID19 crisis.
They say timing is everything and this had never been truer in this context. ID&C was the leader in its market in both the UK, USA, and many other countries that we exported to.
Steve now lives with his wife, two daughters, son and dog in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK He enjoys much of live sport with a keen interest in rugby and golf. You may also find him walking the south downs or south coast, making sloes gin, and enjoying wine. .