For 21 years, I’ve been building OmniPro Group, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about time, it’s this: entrepreneurs have a fundamentally broken relationship with it. We see the future so clearly that we convince ourselves it’s closer than it actually is. We mistake vision for reality. We confuse what’s possible with what’s probable.

Over the 21 days, I’m sharing 21 lessons from 21 years of building this business. Some came from wins. Most came from losses. All of them cost me something to learn.

This is Lesson 17, and it’s about the day my financial controller told me a truth I wasn’t ready to hear.

The Reality Distortion Field

Steve Jobs had a “reality distortion field.”  

The story goes like this: Steve would look his engineers in the eye and tell them to do the impossible—to create a computer that fit in your pocket, to build a phone without buttons, to design interfaces that felt like magic, and always in unrealistic timelines. His interpretation of the time and resources needed to achieve anything was fundamentally distorted. And somehow, against all odds, they’d do it. Not because it was actually possible, but because Steve made them believe it was possible, and that belief became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But the legends leave out the cost. What they don’t tell you is the other side—the burnout, the missed deadlines, the broken promises, the toll on the team when reality keeps proving itself stronger than the distortion field. They don’t tell you about the engineers who worked hundred-hour weeks and sacrificed their health and families to meet deadlines that were never realistic in the first place. They don’t tell you about the cost of operating in that distortion field, about what happens when people are constantly asked to do the impossible and feel like failures when they can’t deliver on timelines that were never achievable to begin with.

I didn’t know I had a distortion field. I didn’t understand that the very quality that makes entrepreneurs special—our ability to see what others can’t—is our greatest liability.

Yet again the lesson that our greatest strength is often our greatest weakness.

I was about to learn that visionary thinking without a grounded plan isn’t leadership. It’s a hallucination.

The Whiteboard That Never Lied

My nephew Gavin was our financial controller. Smart, detail-oriented in that way that makes you simultaneously grateful and slightly annoyed because he won’t let you get away with the optimistic accounting that entrepreneurs love to use to make reality look more like our vision. Gavin had been beating me and anyone else who every played him in Monopoly since the age of 8. With that kind of money sense he was an ideal financial controller

Gavin could spot a problem in the numbers three months before I even knew there was a problem to spot. He could look at our cash flow projections and revenue forecasts and see exactly where we were headed, where the gaps would appear, where the pressure points would emerge.

We were in one of our quarterly reviews, looking at revenue targets, comparing what we’d said we’d do against what we’d actually done, when Gavin said something that stopped me cold.

“Des, we always hit the numbers,” he said, and I felt a surge of validation because that was true. Every single target I’d ever put on that whiteboard with a confident deadline attached eventually got crossed off. “But it usually takes us six to nine months longer than you say it will.”

Six to nine months.

Half a year to a full year longer than the timeline I’d confidently announced to the team, the timeline I’d used to set expectations with Caroline as co owner, the timeline I’d factored into our cash flow projections and hiring decisions and all the other commitments we’d made based on revenue that I was certain was just around the corner.

I pushed back immediately. “Show me one target I put on a whiteboard in 20 years that we didn’t achieve,” I said, and I could hear the defensiveness in my own voice even as the words were coming out.

He couldn’t, because we did hit them, every single one. And that felt like proof that I was right and he was missing the point.

But Gavin wasn’t missing the point. I was. The fact that I was so quick to defend myself should have been a clue that he’d touched something I needed to look at more carefully.

We’d hit the targets, absolutely. I was proud of that. But the gap between my timeline and reality was putting real pressure on the team, on cash flow, on Caroline, on Gavin who was trying to manage our finances based on income projections I kept pushing back, on everyone trying to execute the vision I was painting with such absolute confidence.

The gap was creating stress I didn’t see because I was so focused on the destination that I wasn’t paying attention to the journey. I wasn’t noticing the toll it was taking on everyone who was rowing the boat while I stood at the front not just pointing at the horizon but reaching for it.

I was so focused on the fact that we eventually got there that I completely missed the cost of how we got there—the stress and strain and scrambling that happened in the months between my optimistic projection and the actual result.

The Problem with My Goals

I knew about SMART goals—every business owner does. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed. Five criteria that are supposed to keep you grounded in reality while you’re reaching for the stars.

My goals were always specific. Crystal clear. I could articulate exactly what success looked like, could paint a picture so vivid you could almost touch it.

They were measurable. Quantified down to the last euro, broken into key performance indicators and milestone markers.

And they were timed. Always with a date attached, a deadline that created urgency and focus.

But achievable? Realistic? Those two criteria in the middle of the acronym, the ones that actually matter most when it comes to execution?

That’s where my reality distortion field kicked in. I saw the possibility, could see it as clearly as if it had already happened. I saw what could unfold if everything went right, if we caught every break, if the market cooperated and the team executed flawlessly and nothing unexpected happened to throw us off course.

I was creating SMT Goals

I saw the horizon and convinced myself it was closer than it actually was. I used my ability to envision the future to essentially lie to myself about how long the journey would take. And then I expected the team to row the boat at the speed I was imagining, not the speed that was humanly possible given the resources we had and the reality we were operating in.

The Impact Filter

It wasn’t until I found Dan Sullivan’s Impact Filter that I understood where I was going wrong.

I used to think delegation was just telling people what I wanted. But I was skipping the most important part.

The Impact Filter forces you to clarify two distinct things:

1. The “Why” (Purpose & Importance): What do you want to accomplish and what difference will it make? I was great at this. I could sell the dream all day.
2. The “What” (Success Criteria): What specific results must be true when this project is finished?

This is where I failed. I gave the team a vision; I didn’t give them criteria. I never defined what “done” actually looked like.

Because I hadn’t defined the Success Criteria, my team had to guess. And when you make smart, cautious people guess, they over-engineer everything. They build the Rolls Royce when we needed a bicycle.

I learned that if I couldn’t write down the specific success criteria, I had no business assigning the project. I wasn’t delegating; I was dumping my anxiety on them.

The Gap and The Gain

The stress I was feeling—and the stress I was putting on the team—came from one specific mental error. Dan Sullivan calls it The Gap and The Gain.

Your brain processes progress using three points:

1. The Start: Where you came from.
2. The Actual: Where you are now.
3. The Ideal: The horizon you are chasing.

The problem is the Ideal is a mental construct. It is not achievable. It is like the horizon—no matter how far you walk, it stays in the distance.

I was constantly measuring The Actual against The Ideal. I was looking at where we were versus where I wanted us to be.

This put me in the Negative Zone (The Gap). I felt frustration, disappointment, and failure. Even though we were hitting record numbers, it never felt like enough because the horizon had moved.

Gavin was right. We were late compared to my fantasy timeline.

But if I turned around and measured The Actual against The Start, I saw the truth. We had built a multi-million euro firm from nothing. We had created products that didn’t exist a year ago.

When you measure backward, you are in the Positive Zone (The Gain). You feel satisfaction, confidence, and optimism.

I had to learn that the Ideal is for inspiration, but the Start is for measurement.

The Reckoning

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then: your timeline isn’t just about you.

When you set aggressive goals, when you create that reality distortion field and convince everyone that the impossible is possible and we just need to work a little harder and move a little faster, your team feels the weight of them. Your cash flow feels the pressure of them. Your family feels the cost of them.

You can push people to do more than they think is possible—that’s actually one of the valuable things a leader does. But if you push without considering what’s actually realistic, without accounting for the resources and constraints and human limitations that exist in the real world, you don’t build momentum.

You build burnout.

I had to learn to hold two things at the same time: the vision of what’s possible, the ability to see the horizon and articulate where we’re trying to go, and the humility to know it’s going to take longer than I think. To accept that reality has its own timeline and no amount of willpower or conviction can completely override the fundamental constraints of time and resources and human capacity.

I still set big goals. Still aim for the horizon. Still push the team to reach for things that seem just barely out of reach.

But now I try build the plan with my team, not just for my team. That one little word, that shift from “for” to “with,” makes all the difference in the world.

I ask the hard questions I used to skip over: What’s realistic? What resources do we actually have? What’s the timeline if things don’t go perfectly, if we hit the normal obstacles that everyone hits?

I balance the gap with the gain. Keep one eye on the horizon and one eye on the rear-view mirror. Measure progress in both directions instead of just one.

Stretch forward, always, because that’s what entrepreneurs do and should do. But always look back at how far you’ve come, because that’s where you find the evidence that you’re capable of reaching the next milestone.

The Lesson

Possibility without a realistic plan isn’t leadership—it’s a distortion field. And distortion fields only work until they don’t, until reality reasserts itself and everyone realizes they’ve been chasing something that was never actually achievable on the timeline you proposed.

You can inspire people with a vision, can get them excited about what’s possible, can paint a picture of the future that makes them want to be part of building it.

But you build a business with executable steps, with realistic timelines, with plans that account for the messy reality of limited resources and competing priorities and the simple fact that things always take longer than you think they will.

SMART goals aren’t just a business school checklist. They’re a reality check, a discipline, a practice that keeps you connected to what’s actually achievable instead of just what’s theoretically possible.

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed.

Don’t skip the middle two just because you’re excited about the last one.

And here’s the other lesson: celebrate the gain as much as you chase the gap. Because if you don’t, you’ll burn out, your team will burn out, and you’ll never actually enjoy the journey you’re on.

The horizon is always going to be out there, always beckoning, always promising something better if you can just reach it.

But the distance you’ve traveled? That’s real. That’s measurable. That’s worth acknowledging and celebrating and using as fuel for the next leg of the journey.

Your team needs to see it. Your family needs to hear it. And honestly, you need to remember it. You need to give yourself permission to feel proud of what you’ve accomplished instead of always feeling like it’s not enough.

Because the reality distortion field works both ways—it can make the impossible seem possible, can inspire people to reach higher than they ever thought they could.

But it can also make the progress you’ve made seem invisible, can trick you into thinking you’re standing still when you’re actually moving forward faster than you realize.

Don’t let it.

Questions for Reflection

Before you move on, take a few minutes with these:

1. Think about your last three major business goals. Were they specific? Measurable? Timed? Now be honest—were they actually achievable and realistic given your resources and team capacity? Or were you operating in your own reality distortion field?
2. Who is your Gavin? Who in your business or life tells you the truth you don’t want to hear? And when they do—do you listen, or do you get defensive?
3. What’s your average “timeline gap”? When you set a deadline for a major goal, how long does it actually take compared to what you projected? Three months longer? Six months? A year? What’s the pattern telling you?
4. Where is your distortion field creating pressure right now? On your team? On cash flow? On your family? On yourself? What’s the cost of that gap between your projection and reality?
5. When did you last measure the gain? Turn around for a moment. Look at where you started. What have you actually built? What have you achieved that would have seemed impossible five years ago? Ten years ago? Write it down.
6. What would change if you built your next plan WITH your team instead of FOR your team? What hard questions would they ask that you’ve been avoiding?
7. Are you celebrating progress, or only chasing the horizon? When was the last time you genuinely acknowledged how far you’ve come—to yourself, to your team, to your family?

What’s Next?

Tomorrow, I’ll share Lesson 18, and it’s going to be different from everything else in this series. It’s about the day I discovered something about my own mind that explained twenty years of patterns, struggles, and breakthroughs I never fully understood. It’s about finally having language for why I operate the way I do, why I’ve always felt like I was playing the game on a different level than everyone else, sometimes to my advantage and sometimes very much not, and what changed when I finally understood what was actually happening in my brain.

It’s the most personal lesson in this series, the one I’ve been most nervous about sharing, and it might be the most important one.