Gary Peter Ashworth

Gary Peter Ashworth (born 23 April 1960) is a British entrepreneur, investor, business coach, author and property developer. He moved to London in 1978 to work in accountancy recruitment and, at age 21 in February 1982, founded his first company, Abacus Recruitment. He floated Abacus on the London Stock Exchange in September 1995 and sold it to Carlisle Holdings in 1998, a deal reported to have generated a roughly tenfold return for initial investors. He exited Abacus in 1999 at age 39.

In November 2001 Ashworth founded InterQuest Group, a technology staffing and digital recruitment business that he built into one of the UK's leading specialist technology recruiters, operating multiple brands and reaching more than £100 million in turnover before he sold it in 2024. Over roughly four decades he says he has started or backed more than 30 businesses across recruitment/staffing, healthcare, property and consultancy. He continues to serve as chairman and investor of InterQuest Group, Albany Beck Consulting (a banking/technology consultancy whose value he says he grew by around £7m over three years) and Positive Healthcare. In 1999 he took a joint stake in Lionheart Management alongside investors Jim Mellon and Luke Johnson, and has held an associate role at Risk Capital Partners LLP.

Beyond business, Ashworth is an award-winning theatre producer. He co-founded Third Stage Productions and was involved with Edinburgh Festival Fringe and West End work, including "Anonymous Society" (a musical based on the songs of Jacques Brel), which won the 1999 Total Theatre Award for best overall production. He also co-produced the Slava Polunin "Snow Show," "My Name is Rachel Corrie" (Playhouse Theatre, 2006) and "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" (Lyric Hammersmith, 2013).

More recently he has focused on coaching and financial education, authoring the Amazon bestseller "Eat the Pudding First," creating the "Double Up Money Mastery" (DUMM) method and founding the DUMM Club. He describes himself as a non-executive director sitting on multiple boards and an advisor/coach to CEOs looking to increase the value of their businesses.

• Backs and chairs founder-led services businesses — recruitment/staffing, healthcare, property and banking/technology consultancy — where he can take an active operator-investor role rather than a passive stake.
• Describes his approach as systematic value-building: find undervalued assets, improve/restructure them, leverage, and sell after materially increasing value ("Lasting wealth isn't built on gurus, hype, or gimmicks. It's built on a boring, proven system").
• Frames wealth creation around compounding and repeatable doubling: "If you double $10,000 just ten times, you get $10 million."
• Prefers businesses he understands deeply; openly cites past mistakes "chasing unfavourable opportunities and investing in poorly understood industries" as the reason he now works within a defined methodology.
• Values active involvement — chairman roles, board seats and coaching CEOs "to move beyond stagnation toward measurable success" — over pure financial angel investing.