THE ROOM. 4 SEPTEMBER. BRIGHTON. WITH ANDY GOMARSALL MBE. NOW LIVE.
Fifty plus senior people in one room on Friday. This weekend we switched on the AI that decides who among them you should be talking to.
Here is how it works. Every attendee's profile, sector and table sits inside the platform. A member answers three questions: what they are working toward, who they need in the room, and where they are in their journey. The AI then reads all fifty profiles against that answer, alongside the member's own profile, and returns the one to three introductions genuinely worth their time.
Each introduction is personal. Why this person matters to you. Why you matter to them, drawn from your own background rather than invented. A first line to open the conversation, written for a lunch table rather than a LinkedIn inbox. And the table they are sitting at, so you know where to walk.
It only knows the room, so every match is between two real people who will be in the same building on Friday. And it is honest. If nobody in the room fits your ask, it says so instead of manufacturing a third name.
Every request is logged, so the introductions that do not happen over lunch are the ones we broker personally afterwards.
The network is one of our products. This is how we make it work for each member individually.
Our thanks to the sponsors who make Brighton possible: Cathedral Wealth Management LTD, our headline sponsor, WineVistas, and Cormack Advertising. And to the fifty founders, owners and senior leaders who have taken a seat, we look forward to seeing you.
Finally we look forward to welcoming our special guest, Mr Andrew Gomarsall MBE We will be talking to him about leadership and elite performance under pressure. Andy was involved in two world cup finals for England and now runs a successful business. All attendees will receive a playbook afterwards that will showcase what business can learn from Andy.
The room is now live for every single member on our Business Intelligence Platform. Link to membership and the TBE Intelligence Platform are in the comments below.
The Business End
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The Business End is a private business intelligence network where we use the lens of sport to sharpen the leadership and performance of our members.
It's built for Owners, Founders, C-suite and senior business executives who share a passion for sport. The Business End is a leadership intelligence company. We analyse leadership and performance under pressure by studying elite sport and business environments where decisions are public and consequences are real. Through podcasts, curated events, and applied insight, we identify leadership pattern
28/08/2026
Two Fridays. Two cities. Two very different rooms.
But both are being built around the same idea:
The right room can change the trajectory of a conversation, a relationship, or even a business.
On 4 September, The Business End ⚫ heads to Brighton with England Rugby World Cup winner Andrew Gomarsall MBE, alongside an exceptional group of business leaders and decision-makers.
Seven days later, on 11 September, we're in Exeter with Gareth Steenson and Tony Rowe CBE, two men who had very different roles in one of British sport's great transformation stories.
Different cities.
Different stories.
Different people around the tables.
But the same philosophy.
We don't want to build bigger rooms. We want to build better ones.
Because in business, as in elite sport, volume doesn't necessarily create value.
Density of relevance does.
It's why we deliberately keep our events intimate.
It's why we curate the tables.
And it's why we think as carefully about who's sitting in the audience as we do about who's holding the microphone.
The sporting names may open the conversation, but they're only part of what makes these rooms work.
The real value is often found in the conversation across the table.
The introduction you weren't expecting.
The perspective that challenges your thinking.
The relationship that continues long after lunch has finished.
That's what we're trying to build with The Business End ⚫.
Not networking for networking's sake.
Rooms where interesting people have conversations worth having.
Brighton. 4 September.
Exeter. 11 September.
Two rooms. One week apart. One ambition:
Put the right people together and see what becomes possible.
If there’s someone you think should be around one of those tables, tag them below or introduce us. And if you’d like to join us in Brighton or Exeter, you can reserve your place at business-end.com.
27/08/2026
🎙 THE BUSINESS END | EPISODE 45 | NICK EASTER | LIVE 🎧
Some careers are built on a straight line to the top.
Nick Easter’s was built on refusing to disappear.
He didn’t follow the traditional pathway.
No age-grade England honours. No academy fast track. He was working in London and playing club rugby before finally turning professional in his 20s.
Then came 54 England caps. A World Cup Final. A Six Nations title. 281 appearances for Harlequins. A Premiership title.
But the numbers only tell part of the story.
After the 2011 World Cup, a leaked confidential report and a comment stripped of context became part of the narrative around Nick.
England moved on.
For more than three years, the door stayed closed.
Nick kept playing. Kept training. Kept holding himself to the same standards.
Then, at 36, the call came again.
He returned to England, became the country’s oldest-ever try scorer and, at 37, finished his international career with a World Cup hat-trick and Man of the Match award in his final Test.
As Nick tells us:
“I’d earned everything I’d got, and it was up to me to earn it again.”
That philosophy runs throughout this conversation.
We talk about self-belief when nobody is opening the door, maintaining standards when the reward disappears, handling rejection, performing under pressure and knowing when your career is really beginning to end.
And then we move from player to coach
Nick takes us inside the collapse of Worcester Warriors, when a promising new coaching chapter suddenly became unpaid wages, uncertainty and the very real question of how to support a family.
From there came Chinnor.
Two wins from 11 when he arrived.
Then a remarkable turnaround, a National One title and promotion.
His philosophy on building teams is characteristically direct:
“You’ve got to be tough because cowards get you beat, and you’ve got to be intelligent because dumb guys get you beat.”
But his definition of toughness matters even more:
Enjoy the pressure moments. Embrace them.
This is a fascinating conversation about reputation, resilience, standards, culture, coaching and rebuilding when circumstances knock you sideways.
Nick is candid, funny, thoughtful and refreshingly direct throughout.
For anyone interested in leadership, elite performance, rugby, culture or what it takes to stay in the fight when the obvious path disappears, Episode 45 is well worth your time.
🎧 The Business End | Episode 45 | Nick Easter | OUT NOW
Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Link in the comments.
MARTIN JOHNSON HAD TO GO.
Northampton v Leicester.
One of English rugby’s fiercest rivalries.
Ash Rowden had already sent Neil Back to the sin bin.
Then, off the ball, another incident.
This time involving Martin Johnson.
Ash hadn’t seen it.
His assistant referee had.
And that created a leadership decision far bigger than the card itself.
Ash could have second-guessed his official.
He could have hesitated because of the player involved.
He could have taken the decision back into his own hands.
He didn’t.
He trusted the person he had put in position to make the call.
As Ash explains:
“You support people who you put in place to make management decisions, and what you don’t publicly do is go against them because that just undermines them and they lose confidence.”
That principle travels a long way beyond rugby.
If you give someone responsibility, but overrule them the moment the decision becomes uncomfortable, you haven't really empowered them.
You've simply delegated until it mattered.
Great leaders don't build teams by asking people to make decisions and then publicly second-guessing them.
They put good people in position.
They give them authority.
And when the pressure arrives, they back them.
Even when the person heading to the bin is Martin Johnson.
🎙️ Ashley Rowden | The Business End
25/08/2026
The Business End is a business intelligence network for business owners, founders and C-suite who share a passion for leadership and elite performance. Three things sit behind the membership: leadership intelligence sharpened by sport, drawn from 24 years of senior interviews, honest analysis of where you are and the risks ahead, and curated connections, peer-level operators across 44 countries, anywhere where our networks extends.
Next rooms: Brighton, 4 September. Exeter, 11 September.
Membership is £50 to join and then £30 a month. Every application reviewed personally. Scan the QR code below to join.
There’s no such thing as a controversial decision. Only a wrong one.
That is the philosophy of former Premiership referee Ash Rowden.
And it is a fascinating way to think about leadership.
Ash spent years making decisions in real time, under enormous pressure, with players, coaches and thousands of supporters ready to question them.
Yet he says he never feared making the big call.
Why?
Because avoiding it cost you something far more important than popularity.
Respect.
As Ash explains:
“You actually get respect when you send players off… because they know that when a big call needs to be made, you don’t have a problem making it.”
There is a powerful leadership lesson in that.
The controversy surrounding a decision and the correctness of that decision are two completely different things.
Great leaders still listen.
They still challenge their assumptions.
They still make sure they have the evidence.
But once the right decision becomes clear, they cannot allow the fear of reaction to determine what happens next.
As Ash puts it:
“It might be a big call to make, but it’s not controversial because it’s the right call.”
That is easy to say.
Much harder when you are the person who has to raise the card.
Do you agree with Ash?
If a decision is ultimately the right one, can it ever truly be controversial?
🎙️ The Business End | Ashley Rowden
🏉 EXETER | FRIDAY 11 SEPTEMBER
We’re delighted to have Gareth Steenson joining Tony Rowe CBE for what promises to be a very special Business End Leadership Lunch at The Stand Off, Exeter.
Few sporting stories demonstrate the power of long-term vision, leadership and belief quite like the rise of Exeter Chiefs.
Tony helped build it.
Gareth helped deliver it on the field.
Together, they’ll take us behind the success and into the decisions, setbacks, standards and relationships that helped take the club from the Championship to the summit of English and European rugby.
And as Gareth says in the video, there will be plenty of stories along the way!
This isn’t just a rugby lunch.
It’s a conversation about leadership, business, resilience and building something that lasts — surrounded by a room of business leaders, entrepreneurs and sports professionals from across the South West.
📍 The Stand Off, Exeter
📅 Friday 11 September
🎙 Gareth Steenson & Tony Rowe CBE
❤️ Supporting the Exeter Chiefs Foundation
We’d love to see you there.
Places are limited. Clink the link to secure your place 👇
We are investing heavily in The Business End ⚫ Platform, with a simple ambition: to build a global leadership intelligence network that senior leaders actually use and adds visible value to their bottom line. The first of a series upgrades was completed over the weekend, and there is alot more to come over the next 30 days.
Members can now see everyone who has been in the room, at every lunch we have held (regardless of whether they attended), and every one of them is one click away. If you see someone you should know, you open their card, request the introduction and tell us why. We make the approach on your behalf within two working days. Requests are entirely private, and nobody knows you have asked until we have brokered the introduction.
It is also worth saying that you do not have to attend our events to be a member. The full intelligence archive and the whole network are available online, wherever you happen to operate in the world. Our leadership lunches just one of six doors into the club.
The decisions that define leaders are usually the ones nobody wants to make.
The employee everyone likes, but whose standards have slipped.
The client everyone wants to keep, but who is damaging the business.
The strategy everyone supported, but which is clearly no longer working.
The conversation everybody knows needs to happen.
Leadership becomes difficult when the right decision and the comfortable decision stop being the same thing.
During our latest conversation on The Business End podcast, former Premiership referee and businessman Ash Rowden summed it up perfectly:
“If you want to get to the top in anything, you have to make big decisions.”
Ash spent years making those decisions in environments where hesitation was immediately exposed.
Thirty players.
Thousands of supporters.
Coaches scrutinising every call.
And sometimes only seconds to decide.
In this clip, Ash recalls watching a referee faced with what he believed was a clear red card.
Instead of making the decision, the referee searched for reassurance.
The assistant couldn't help.
The red became a yellow.
Ash's point goes far beyond rugby.
Avoiding the difficult decision rarely makes the problem disappear.
It simply transfers the consequences further down the road.
And often, in trying to keep one group happy, you undermine the confidence of everyone else.
As Ash puts it:
“Not making a big call, either in business or in sport, you're just opting out… and you're actually not doing anyone any favours at all.”
The strongest leaders aren't those who make every decision perfectly.
They're the ones prepared to make the decision when the evidence is clear, the stakes are high and the easier option is to avoid it.
Because sometimes the most damaging leadership decision isn't making the wrong call.
It's refusing to make one at all.
🎙️ The Business End | Ashley Rowden
What difficult decision are you avoiding because the easier option is to wait?
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