This is the Twentieth Lesson in “My 21 Lessons in 21 Years” Series

To celebrate 21 years in business, based on what I have learned from working with accountants, bookkeepers and tax advisors over 21 years I am sharing my journey and some of the lessons I learned along the way. I hope you join me on this journey and maybe learn something along the way too.

LESSON 20: THE MENTAL GAME THAT SEPARATES AMATEURS FROM PROFESSIONALS

20/21: What a Lions Rugby Player Taught Me About Corporate Athletes – And Why Most Business Owners Are Still Playing Like Amateurs

Last year, I had the privilege of interviewing Tadhg Furlong at our ProfitPro Inner Circle Mastermind Retreat.

For those who don’t follow rugby, Tadhg is globally recognised as one of the best tighthead props in the world. He’s played for Leinster, Ireland, and the British and Irish Lions. He’s achieved things at the highest level of international rugby that most players can only dream about.

And he’s from Wexford. From a place called Horeswood, a tiny village not far from where I grew up.

Here’s what struck me most about that conversation: Tadhg doesn’t attribute his success to his outstanding physical ability or natural skill. He attributes it to his attitude, his behaviours, his mental game, and his approach to becoming a professional athlete.

The game, he told me, is won in the head.

And sitting there listening to him, I realised something uncomfortable about myself.

For 21 years, I’ve been running businesses. But for most of that time, I’ve been playing like an amateur, not a professional.

This is a lesson about what it really means to be a corporate athlete. And why most of us are still operating at the amateur level even after decades in the game.

THE MENTAL GAME

Here’s the first thing Tadhg said that stopped me cold:

“You can get a reasonable person of athletic ability, put him in the gym and coach him to a high enough standard where he could play provincial rugby. But as you move up the ranks to international rugby, to Lions rugby, where there’s proper pressure on, it’s all up top. It’s all up top.”

All up top as Tadhg points to his head.

The difference between good and great isn’t physical ability. It isn’t skill. It isn’t talent.

It’s mental.

How you deal with pressure. How you stay motivated. How you work in a team. How you respond when you’re flagging and tired and the gremlins are coming into your head telling you that you can’t do this.

Tadhg told me he’s watched players with far more natural talent than him fail to make it. Not because they lacked skill, not because they weren’t gifted, but because they couldn’t win the mental game when the pressure was real.

That hit home.

Because I’ve spent 21 years believing that success in business was about strategy, systems, skills, knowledge, tactics. All the things you can learn from books and courses and seminars.

And yes, those things matter. But they’re table stakes. They get you to provincial level.

The game is won in the head.

FINDING JOY IN THE MUNDANE

Here’s what else Tadhg said that I wasn’t expecting:

“It’s somewhat boring, to be honest with you. It’s just about the grind every week. It’s trying to hit your markers. What you need to do in a week to get out there on a Saturday and perform.”

Boring.

One of the most celebrated rugby players on the planet just told me his daily life is boring.

People see the Lions tours. The packed stadiums. The Six Nations glory. The Champions Cup finals. They see the highlight reels and think that must be what it’s like every day.

It’s not.

The life of a professional athlete is Monday morning training sessions when your body is tired and you’d rather be anywhere else. It’s repetitive drills. It’s hitting the same markers week after week. It’s finding beauty in the mundane, as Tadhg put it.

That’s what separates professionals from amateurs.

Amateurs wait for inspiration. Professionals show up whether they feel like it or not.

Amateurs chase the spectacular. Professionals master the mundane.

Amateurs think success is about the big moments. Professionals know success is built in the boring daily work that nobody sees.

How many of us as business owners are still chasing the spectacular while ignoring the fundamentals? Still looking for the breakthrough strategy while avoiding the daily disciplines that actually move the needle?

THE HONESTY THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING

The theme that kept coming up in our conversation was honesty.

Brutal honesty.

“You can never lie to yourself,” Tadhg told me. “If you have a clear purpose and you’re going after something and it’s for you to do, if you let yourself down on that, it doesn’t feel nice lying to yourself.”

He said he’s watched teammates lose their way because they started lying to themselves. Telling themselves they were training hard enough when they weren’t. Telling themselves the injury wasn’t that bad when it was. Telling themselves they didn’t need to change when everyone around them could see they did.

“Who are you fooling?” Tadhg asked. “You can get away with it for so long, but over the long term, if you want to succeed, or if you want to lead, you got to do what you said you’re going to do.”

This is the root of all success.

Honesty with yourself. Honesty with your team. Honesty with your coaches and mentors.

I’ve spent years lying to myself about my business. About my habits. About my health. About my patterns. About what was really going on beneath the surface.

The breakthroughs only came when I got honest. When I stopped telling myself the comfortable stories and faced the uncomfortable truths.

COMPARTMENTALISATION

Here’s something Tadhg said that I’m still processing:

“Rugby isn’t my life. Rugby’s work. I don’t bring work home to my wife. I’m pretty sure my wife doesn’t have a clue what I do. I keep the two very separate because I don’t want that to seep into my home life.”

I asked him if all professional athletes have this discipline. He said some do, some don’t, but this is what works for him and his relationship.

Then he said something that hit me personally:

“I don’t think I’d be a great husband if I came home and I was moping and mooching.”

Sitting there, I realised I’ve been the opposite for 21 years.

The work has always come home with me. The stress, the anxiety, the rumination, the replaying of conversations and decisions and what-ifs. My wife Caroline works in the business, which makes it even harder to separate, but the truth is I’ve never really tried hard enough to create the separation that the Pros do.

Tadhg separates ruthlessly. When he’s at work, he’s fully present at work. When he’s home, he’s fully present at home.

That’s professional. That’s intentional. That’s a choice.

I’ve been amateur. Letting work bleed into everything. Never fully present anywhere because part of my mind is always somewhere else.

THE GREMLIN MANAGEMENT

I asked Tadhg how he deals with the gremlins. Those voices in your head that tell you you’re not good enough, that you’re going to fail, that everyone is watching and waiting for you to mess up.

His answer was simple but profound:

“I close the eyes, I say to myself, I’ve done this a thousand times. I visualise, feel what it feels like doing it right, and it kind of eases.”

Then he said this:

“I like being free on match day. I like playing loose and free and moving. I don’t want to feel penned up.”

Loose.

He used that word multiple times. Being loose. Playing loose. Feeling loose.

It’s counter-intuitive. You’d think going into a big game you’d want to be wound up, fired up, tense with adrenaline and competitive energy.

Tadhg does the opposite. He lets go. He relaxes. He trusts the preparation and enters the game free rather than constrained.

“You spike anyway in a big game,” he told me. “You’re alert. You’re full of adrenaline. But you’re just not trying to go over the cliff. You just want to be laser focused, primed.”

This is mastery. Understanding your own psychology so well that you know exactly how to prepare yourself for peak performance. Not copying what works for someone else. Knowing what works for you.

THE ROW ON THE FIELD

Here’s something that really illustrated the difference between amateur and professional thinking:

I asked Tadhg what happens when a row breaks out on the field. When emotions are running high and players are pushing and shoving.

He said he just stands there.

“I just stand there and try to rest up for a little bit,” he told me. “Because all they’re doing now is pushing and shoving anyway. What’s next? How do I get after it? You’re not around, but you’re primed. You’re sharp, you’re ready to go.”

While amateur players are getting emotionally hijacked by the confrontation, burning energy on something that doesn’t affect the scoreboard, Tadhg is catching his breath and focusing on the next play.

That’s emotional intelligence at the highest level.

That’s responding rather than reacting.

This is high performance professional critical thinking at the highest level.

Breathtakingly beautiful and simple

That’s using every moment, even the chaotic ones, strategically.

How many times have I let myself get dragged into the business equivalent of a row on the field? Getting emotionally hijacked by a difficult client, an underperforming team member, a competitor’s move, a crisis that felt urgent but wasn’t important?

While I was burning energy on confrontation, what opportunities was I missing? What next plays was I failing to prepare for?

THE KPIS THAT MATTER

Tadhg told me that professional rugby tracks everything. Sleep monitors, mood monitors, GPS data, physical outputs, tactical analysis. Mountains of data on every aspect of performance.

But here’s what he said about how he actually uses it:

“A lot of internationals, I just do on feel. Do I feel good today? I know when I feel good in the morning. I know what I need to do in training if I don’t feel great. I know if I played well or didn’t play well. I actually don’t really look at a whole lot of stats.”

The data exists. The KPIs are tracked. But at a certain level of mastery, you stop getting buried in the minutia and you trust what you feel.

There are bigger-level indicators that matter. Possession, territory, tackle completion, the metrics that actually determine outcomes. Everything else is noise.

How many business owners drown in data while losing touch with how things actually feel? How many track dozens of metrics while missing the handful that actually matter?

KPIs are important. But never losing the sense of knowing how you feel, how the business feels, what your gut is telling you, that’s what separates professionals from amateurs drowning in spreadsheets.

BLACK BOX THINKING

Tadhg mentioned something briefly that we didn’t explore deeply in the conversation, but it struck me as critical.

He referenced “black box thinking.”

In aviation, after every crash, investigators retrieve the black box and analyse everything that went wrong. Not to assign blame. To learn. To ensure the same failure never happens again.

Tadhg applies the same principle to his performance. After every game, there’s a review. Not emotional. Not defensive. Just honest assessment of what happened, what went wrong, and what needs to change.

“It’s not about being overly emotional about it,” he said. “It’s just matter of fact. What went wrong? What were we feeling? Why did it happen this way?”

This is how professionals improve. They don’t hide from their failures. They don’t make excuses. They don’t pretend it didn’t happen.

They analyse. They learn. They adjust.

And then they do it again. Every game. Every week. Every season.

I’ve spent too much of my career hiding from my failures instead of learning from them. Protecting my ego instead of improving my performance.

Black box thinking is going to be the grand finale of this series tomorrow. Because I believe it’s the key to everything. The willingness to face your failures honestly, learn from them systematically, and use them as fuel for improvement rather than reasons for shame.

THE CORPORATE ATHLETE QUESTION

In their book “The Power of Full Engagement,” Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz introduced the concept of the corporate athlete.

The idea is simple: if elite athletes need coaches, trainers, nutritionists, and mental performance experts to optimise their performance, why wouldn’t business leaders need the same?

Athletes don’t wing it. They don’t just show up and hope for the best. They systematically optimise every aspect of their performance.

So here’s the question I left that conversation asking myself:

Am I an amateur corporate athlete or a professional corporate athlete?

Tadhg doesn’t attribute his success to natural talent. He attributes it to his attitude, his behaviours, his mental preparation, his honesty with himself, his ability to compartmentalise, his mastery of the mundane, his willingness to learn from every failure.

Those are all choices. Those are all things that can be developed, practiced, improved.

For 21 years, I’ve been playing business like an amateur. Relying on natural ability. Winging it. Hoping for the best. Bringing work home. Getting emotionally hijacked. Lying to myself. Hiding from my failures.

Tadhg showed me what professional looks like.

It’s not glamorous. It’s boring. It’s the daily grind. It’s hitting your markers week after week. It’s finding joy in the mundane. It’s brutal honesty. It’s compartmentalisation. It’s emotional intelligence. It’s black box thinking.

It’s treating yourself like the professional corporate athlete you claim to be.

THE BIGGEST LESSON

My biggest learning from Tadhg was honesty.

Honesty with himself. Honesty with his teammates. Honesty with his managers.

Brutal honesty with ourselves and others is the root of all success.

“You can never lie to yourself.”

Simple. Uncomfortable. True.

I’ve spent years lying to myself about my health, my habits, my patterns, my business, my relationships. And every lie cost me something.

The breakthroughs came when I stopped lying. When I faced what was really there. When I got honest about what was working and what wasn’t.

That’s what Tadhg does every single week. That’s what makes him a professional. Not his physical gifts. Not his natural talent. His willingness to face the truth, however uncomfortable, and use it to get better.

YOUR TURN

Be honest with yourself:

Are you operating as an amateur corporate athlete or a professional corporate athlete?

Are you finding joy in the mundane, or are you still chasing the spectacular while ignoring the fundamentals?

Are you being brutally honest with yourself about what’s working and what isn’t, or are you telling yourself comfortable lies?

Where are you getting emotionally hijacked instead of responding strategically?

What would change if you applied black box thinking to your business? If you reviewed your performance with the same rigour and honesty that a professional athlete reviews their game?

And here’s the question that’s still sitting with me:

What’s the lie you’re telling yourself right now that’s costing you more than you realise?

Let me know what you think. You can connect with me on social or directly via my linktree – https://linktr.ee/desoneill

Tomorrow: Lesson 21 – “Black Box Thinking: Learning from a Lifetime of Mistakes” – The Final Lesson