The Entrepreneur Experiment

James Haskell has spent most of his life performing under pressure.

He won 77 caps for England, toured with the British & Irish Lions, played professional rugby around the world and then had to figure out who he was when the game stopped.

Today, James is an entrepreneur, broadcaster, author, DJ and co-host of The Good, The Bad & The Rugby. He’s also building Blackeye Spirits alongside Mike Tindall and Alex Payne.

But this isn’t really an episode about rugby.

It’s about building a better founder, not just a better business.

We talk about why self-awareness may be the ultimate competitive advantage, how elite sport teaches you to handle brutal feedback, why ambitious people struggle to recognise when enough is enough, and how James rebuilt his identity after rugby.

We also get into focus, saying no, buying back your time, therapy, accountability, personal branding, choosing business opportunities, the creator economy, why information is becoming free and why implementation is becoming more valuable.

James is candid, funny and completely unfiltered throughout.

If you’re ambitious, stretched across too many things, or trying to work out what success actually means to you, there’s a lot in this one.

In This Episode

We cover:

What professional sport teaches you about business

Why “you can lie to everyone else, but you can’t lie to yourself”

How to receive feedback without letting your ego get in the way

The four things James believes you can actually control

Why achievement can leave high performers permanently unfulfilled

The difference between chasing outcomes and mastering process

What Eddie Jones taught him about excellence

Reinventing yourself when your first career ends

Why James started preparing for life after rugby at 20

Learning to say no to opportunities

How he decides which businesses and projects deserve his time

Why he refuses most equity-only deals

Authenticity, personal branding and protecting audience trust

Why information is becoming free but implementation will remain valuable

Therapy, mental performance and changing your emotional state

His approach to focus, batching and avoiding distraction

Why even a former professional athlete pays someone to keep him accountable

Buying back your time

Defining how much money is actually “enough”

Turning The Good, The Bad & The Rugby from a podcast into a media business

Why modern podcasts need to think beyond audio

Building Blackeye Spirits and the mission behind the Blackeye Rugby Fund

Links & Resources

James Haskell: official site covering his rugby, books, music and other projects. James Haskell official website (https://jameshaskell.com/)

The Good, The Bad & The Rugby: James hosts alongside Mike Tindall and Alex Payne; the show describes itself as the world’s biggest rugby podcast. The Good, The Bad & The Rugby (https://goodbadrugby.com/)

Blackeye Spirits: James, Mike Tindall and Alex Payne’s spirits business. The brand says its Rugby Fund aims to eventually invest £1 million annually supporting injured players, research, risk reduction and recovery.
Blackeye Spirits (https://blackeyespirits.com/

James’s books: What A Flanker, Ruck Me and Approach (With)out Caution are all featured on his official site.

This is one of the most personal founder stories we’ve recorded on The Entrepreneur Experiment.
Danny Buckley is the co-founder of ADHD Now and a 2026 EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist.
But the company exists because of a far more personal story.
Danny spent much of his life struggling with distraction, emotional dysregulation, anxiety and a lack of structure without understanding why.
His wife Simone believed he had ADHD. Danny dismissed it.
Then life changed completely.
After years of serious health challenges, Simone became critically ill. The day before she died, she told Danny that life was short, that he needed to stop inflicting suffering on himself, get help for his ADHD, understand who he was and back himself.
Danny eventually followed her advice.
His diagnosis at 32 gave him a new understanding of himself, but getting there exposed another problem: accessing ADHD assessment and support was extraordinarily difficult.
Danny saw an opportunity to change that.
Together with his co-founders, he built ADHD Now around a simple idea: people should be able to get answers in weeks rather than wait years.
We unpack how they found clinical capacity, built the technology and processes, generated demand, scaled the team and created a service that expects to see 13,000 patients in 2026.
But this conversation goes far beyond business.
Danny speaks openly about grief, becoming emotionally available for his son, sobriety, faith, asking for help and learning to live with structure and discipline.
We also explore why ADHD appears so frequently among entrepreneurs, how hyperfocus can become both an advantage and a liability, and why Danny eventually had to recognise that not every exciting business opportunity deserved his attention.
His personal framework is beautifully simple: desire, hard work and help.
And each morning, he returns to his Three Cs:
Connection. Compassion. Contribution.
This is a story about what happens when you finally understand yourself, accept what you cannot control and put your energy into what you can.
As Danny puts it:
“Life is short. Enjoy the life you’ve left.”
IN THIS EPISODE
Danny’s experience of living with undiagnosed ADHD
The final conversation with his wife Simone that changed the direction of his life
Why he travelled to the UK to receive his ADHD diagnosis
How diagnosis brought structure, discipline and emotional awareness into his life
Why getting a diagnosis is only the beginning
Turning his own experience into the idea for ADHD Now
The stranger Danny met outside the hospital who would later back the business
How ADHD Now went from idea to launch in a matter of months
Recruiting clinicians when the healthcare system was already at capacity
Using technology and systems to reduce friction for patients
Why private providers may form part of the solution to healthcare waiting lists
The relationship between ADHD, hyperfocus and entrepreneurship
Why Danny bought two bakeries while scaling a healthcare company
Learning when ADHD-driven curiosity becomes distraction
Danny’s formula of desire, hard work and help
His Three Cs: Connection, Compassion and Contribution
The moment at EY Entrepreneur of the Year when Danny finally felt proud of himself
Why he rejects the idea that founders have to be miserable to succeed
Faith, fatherhood and redefining what success means
Why “action removes anxiety”
Our Sponsors:
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🔗 Links & Resources:
ADHD Now: https://adhdnow.com/ie
Danny Buckley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danibuckley90
Danny Buckley on LinkedIn: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/danny-buckley-84840b2a0
Book recommendation – Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss: https://amzn.to/4dshO2a
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Podcast: https://www.mrgaryfox.com/podcast

Building a trusted brand rarely comes from one viral moment. It comes from showing up consistently, solving real problems and earning people’s attention over time.
In this Mentor Moment, Laura Dowling shares how she built credibility by making complex health information easier to understand and creating content that genuinely helped her audience.
It’s a valuable lesson for any founder or creator trying to grow a brand: trust compounds, consistency matters and meaningful impact will always outlast a temporary spike in views.
🎧 Listen back to Laura’s full conversation in Episode 466 of The Entrepreneur Experiment for more on her journey from pharmacist to educator, entrepreneur and trusted voice in women’s health.
Follow and subscribe so you never miss a Mentor Moment.
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In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Gary Fox sits down with professional heavyweight boxer and Thirst co-founder Thomas Carty to unpack how he built one of Ireland’s fastest-growing hydration brands while pursuing a career in professional boxing.

The idea began with Thomas’s own search for a convenient electrolyte product to support his training. When the brand he relied on stopped shipping to Ireland, he decided to create his own. Within just ten weeks, Thomas and his business partner had developed and self-funded their first 300 boxes—but producing the product was only the beginning.

After pharmacies, health shops and supplement stores refused to stock them, Thomas loaded the boxes into his car and began selling them one at a time to coffee shops and saunas across Dublin. Today, Thirst works with more than 20 distributors and is stocked across Ireland in hundreds of cafés, vending machines, gyms, forecourts and major retail groups.

Thomas shares the reality behind that growth: the uncomfortable early sales, the importance of moving quickly, how founder-led content helped build trust and why the right business partner allowed him to balance building Thirst with training up to 11 times a week.

If you have an idea you’ve been waiting to launch, this episode is a practical masterclass in product development, distribution, founder-led marketing and getting started before everything is perfect.

🎧 Show Notes:

In this episode, we cover:

🥊 How Thomas’s Olympic ambitions led him into professional boxing
💡 The sauna conversation that sparked the idea for Thirst
🤝 Finding a business partner with complementary skills
⚡ Developing and self-funding the first product in just ten weeks
📦 Starting with 300 boxes across three flavours
🚪 What happened when pharmacies and supplement stores refused to stock the brand
☕ Creating a new route to market through coffee shops and saunas
🚗 Driving across Dublin to sell one box at a time
📱 Using social proof and founder-led content to build trust
🎙️ The podcast appearance that created a major spike in sales
📈 Growing from one distributor to more than 20
🛒 Designing packaging specifically for convenience and retail
🏪 Expanding into hundreds of cafés and vending machines across Ireland
⏱️ Why speed has become one of Thirst’s greatest advantages
🧠 Balancing a growing company with 11 boxing and training sessions each week
📓 The physical diary Thomas relies on to manage his life and workload
🌍 Why export—not launching a canned drink—is the next priority
📣 Why social media remains the most powerful free tool available to founders
🚀 What Thomas would do differently if he were launching Thirst again
🔥 Why blind faith and hard work form his personal formula for success

💬 “The secret sauce is graft. There’s no secret.” – Thomas Carty

🔗 Links & Resources:

Thirst: https://thirstlife.com
Thirst on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thirst.life
Thomas Carty on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_thomascarty
Thomas Carty on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-carty-775516162
Book recommendation – Relentless by Tim Grover: https://timgrover.com/relentless/

Our Sponsors:

Nostra: https://bit.ly/nostra26
Azure Communications: https://bit.ly/azure26

Follow The Entrepreneur Experiment:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/entrepreneurexperiment/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@entrepreneurexperiment
Podcast: https://www.mrgaryfox.com/podcast

The biggest opportunities in your career rarely arrive with a perfect plan.

In this Mentor Moment, Mark Breen, founder of Safe Events Global, shares how saying yes, staying open to unexpected opportunities and being willing to follow where the work led helped shape his career.

It’s a powerful reminder that progress is not always linear. Sometimes, the next step only becomes clear after you take it.

🎧 Listen back to Mark’s full conversation in Episode 463 of The Entrepreneur Experiment for more on his journey, the growth of Safe Events Global and the lessons he has learned along the way.

Follow and subscribe so you never miss a Mentor Moment.

*Our Sponsors *
Nostra: https://bit.ly/nostra26
Azure: https://bit.ly/azure26 

Follow The Entrepreneur Experiment:

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