James Haskell: The Hard Truth About Success, Reinvention & Life After Rugby

My dad taught me a very salutary lesson, which was you can lie to everyone else, but you can't lie to yourself. If you're going to deliver feedback, look at the people you're going to deliver feedback to. Are they able to hear it? Are they able to listen to it? The thing with it is when you've got your own business, nobody cares about your business as much as you do. Because I didn't want the brand to look Rolls-Royce, but you've got a lawnmower engine. I wanted it to be Rolls-Royce branding, but Rolls-Royce interior. And if you are not creating conversation in 2026 when everyone's offended even by their own shadow or has an opinion about everything... You really are making contact. James, welcome to the pod.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. An absolute pleasure to sit down with you. I really was keen to talk to you because, like, I think you symbolize what a modern founder is. You wear so many hats. We were literally just talking about it before we hit play. You wear so many hats. But I want to just start back at your sporting career in terms of sport and business because the two of them overlap so much. When you were within sport, what's one lesson every founder can take directly from professional

sport? So I think the self-awareness and feedback point is really, really essential. I think that, you know, in a sporting environment, because of the linear approach to kind of success is what I was very attracted to. And actually, I was a big rugby fan. I was a big WOS fan. But I think what drove me later in my career was not necessarily the passion for the sport, but was the sort of instant feedback repayment. So you train hard, you work hard, you sacrifice, you get results, you change your body, you perform, you get selected, you play well, you get selected again. And then there's a quite clear approach to higher honours, you know, your county, your club, your club first team. winning trophies, England, England maintaining a position, Lions trophy. It all goes very quickly. Whereas in the real world, it's very difficult to decipher how and when you're successful. Clearly, if you're a multimillionaire or billionaire, you've reached a level of success. But for most people, where's the success come from? On what timeframes you put it? Is it money in the bank? Is it partner? Is it the car you have? Is it the house you have? So I found that transition quite difficult. But I think... What I enjoyed about sport was the fact that you would have to listen to feedback, selection, coaches, opinions, people, be able to decipher whose feedback you value, and then the self-awareness to listen to it and to change. And, you know, there was two or three big moments in my career where I perhaps – my ego – didn't want to listen to what had been said. And I went away and my dad taught me a very salutary lesson, which was you can lie to everyone else, but you can't lie to yourself. And I think people would suggest things you might rail against it and then sit on your own time and go, is there any truth in that? Is it right? And I think, as I said, there's probably three occasions in my career that then changed the way I performed, what I did. um that really