Waking Hours

With tennis pro turned entrepreneur James Cluskey

Iwake at 6am. I live beside Fitzwilliam Tennis Club, so I go there to play from 6.30am to 7.30am. I pretty much play tennis every morning. It was terrible during Covid-19 when there was no tennis. I tried to run instead, but I didn’t enjoy it that much. Tennis is my background. I’m an ex-Irish professional tennis player and I represented Ireland in the Davis Cup.

Now I play tennis for my mental health. I get out and hit a few balls and it sets me up for the day.

Tennis is very appealing because you are meeting someone and you can have a chat. If I’m going for a run or to the gym, there is more of a chance that I won’t go, whereas if I’ve committed to meeting someone in the morning, I’m not going to cancel. It keeps me disciplined. It’s what I’ve been doing since I was six years old in the parks projects in Swords. My mom was into the sport and she introduced me to it, and it went from there.

I love getting the rhythm of hitting the ball up and down and the mental release of it. Tennis gives me headspace. I plan my day ahead as I play.

When tennis courts reopened, the club was unbelievably busy. Since Covid-19, there have been a few changes. There is no water fountain and you don’t shake hands with your opponent. I’m very lucky that it’s a sport you can play at a physical distance.

For breakfast, I usually have porridge. I open the laptop and check the news here in Ireland, in the UK and the US too. I like to keep up with the American news because I studied business management on a sports scholarship for tennis in Louisiana.

My time in the US was a life-changing experience, not so much for the academic side but for the lifestyle about training. It was a very professional set-up over there. I was training every day in 35-degree heat and humidity. If you were late, then the whole team had to run [as a penalty]. As a result, I’m always on time. I’ve kept those lessons with me. I also like the American entrepreneurial mindset.

When I first stopped playing tennis professionally, I was burnt out. I had to figure out what was the next mountain that I wanted to climb. Finally, I found my calling. In 2018, I set up my company, High Calibre Collective.

I was always interested in performance and getting the best out of people. The seed was sown when I spent some time on Necker Island coaching Richard Branson on tennis. He told me that he was looking forward to learning from me. I thought that line was very striking coming from him. He played tennis with me twice a day for 28 days. He said that sport was a non-negotiable part of his day, as it helped him perform better in his work.

While there, he would host these little groups which would discuss topics like leadership and climate change. I really enjoyed them, and I came back to Ireland and started to host my own events, bringing CEOs together for small, intimate discussions. It was a peer-to-peer thing about what worked for them and problemsolving. That then stemmed into them asking me into their organisations, so I built the business up after that.

I link the business with my tennis in terms of being a high performer. A lot of the CEOs would be into that, and I give keynote talks on goal-setting. Since Covid-19, I’m doing webinars for companies and I’ve pivoted the business to create a learning and development platform.

More people are starting to work remotely, so the idea is that a company will give an employee a learning budget, and then that person has autonomy on what they want to learn. On my website, they can access executive coaches, nutritionists and counsellors and sleep experts. Mental health is going to be important, especially with Covid-19 and people working from home.

I have written a book, Advantage, which is about stories from my own experience in the tennis world and how I moved up to be 145th in doubles in the world. Exercise helps your performance because it is good for your mindset. I ask, ‘What is your vision? Now, work backwards from that.’ Covid-19 has changed things because it’s hard to set long-term goals. In certain business spheres, there is so much uncertainty, so a month’s goal is probably the most we can set because we don’t know what’s going to happen.

You never know what’s going to happen in life. We saw that in our family. When my brother Stephen was 17, he had a farming accident where he fell off a hay bale and he was paralysed from the neck down. It was a traumatic period for all the family, but we all coped. I threw myself

“With Covid-19 and all the uncertainty it brings, you can only make month-long goals”

into tennis and trained really hard and my brother went on to set up his own company — Mobility Mojo — around accessibility in hotels. My parents were incredibly positive and they continued working hard and getting on with it.

You never know what’s round the corner and Covid-19 has taught us that, too.

I’m pretty clear that whatever I do, whether it’s in an office or not, I want to be happy and fulfilled. So my focus is on my life and what I’m doing right now.

In the evenings, I watch documentaries and I love watching sports. I’m delighted that they have started to come back.

I used to do a lot of travelling abroad but since Covid-19, I’ve been in Glendalough and Fermanagh doing long walks. This summer, I’m going to holiday at home and support Irish.