How To Leave Professional Sport and Build a Company On Your Terms With Alex Shaw

Leaving professional sport is one of the hardest transitions an athlete can make.

On this week's episode, I sit down with former teammate and friend Alex Shaw, owner of Kickback Coffee.

Alex played professional rugby for over a decade. Leicester Tigers Academy. Sale Sharks. Doncaster Knights. England age groups. He had the career, the identity, the structure.

And then it ended.

What he built next says more about him than any of that did.

Kickback Coffee started in a kitchen with a second-hand popcorn machine and beans from eBay. It now spans five sites and 51 people. A brand identity strong enough to attract world-class talent and a clear mission:

To become the adventure coffee company in the UK.

But this episode is not really about coffee.

It is about what happens when the thing you have built your entire identity around disappears.

How you find the next thing.

Why most people wait until crisis to make a decision.

What the internal experience of walking away actually feels like. And why the athletes who leave something on the table are often the ones who go hardest in business.