Founder, Ignis Advisory Group
Max Learmonth
Max has spent his career building, scaling and leading high-performance businesses and teams.
Coming from an elite sporting background, he developed an early obsession with performance, accountability, marginal gains and the standards required to compete at a high level, principles that have shaped his approach to business ever since.
Max joined Robert Half as a trainee and progressed over seven years to become its youngest Director, building and leading high-performing teams across multiple locations.
He later moved into the SME market, playing a key role in scaling a recruitment business from 15 to more than 50 people across three locations, gaining first-hand experience of the infrastructure, leadership and operational challenges that come with rapid growth.
In May 2023, Max founded Forge Talent.
Starting from zero, Forge has grown to a team of 18 in just over three years, becoming one of the fastest-growing specialist Accounting & Finance recruitment businesses in the North of England and working extensively with high-growth, PE-backed and privately owned businesses.
Through working closely with CFOs, CEOs, investors and leadership teams, Max saw a bigger opportunity.
Businesses were growing faster than their infrastructure, outdated systems, inefficient processes, structures that no longer fit and increasing pressure to transform at pace. At the same time, there was growing frustration with traditional consultancy: too much hierarchy, too much theory and too much distance between those selling transformation and those delivering it.
That became the catalyst for Ignis Advisory Group.
Max founded Ignis to create a different model, bringing proven operators and subject-matter experts around complex business problems from day one, connecting transformation across People, Process and Systems.
His role is to challenge the problem, bring the right experience around the table and keep Ignis relentlessly focused on execution and measurable commercial outcomes.
