"I've lost my confidence."
That's the text John Haime got at 3am from a professional athlete. His response: let's stop right there.
Because here's what that athlete is ignoring — the best at every level they've ever played at. A prodigy as a kid. Top of their college program. And out of the roughly 1–2% of college athletes who ever turn pro, they made it.
You don't get there without building something. John calls it a wall — confidence, built notch by notch, over years. It doesn't disappear in a slump. It's still standing.
The only real question is what you do with it in the moment it matters.
Embrace it. Or let the doubt talk you out of what you already know is true.
Which one have you been choosing lately?
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The Business End
Where sport, business, leadership, and elite performance collide. Podcast & business network hosted by Justin M.
Fitzpatrick, former Irish international rugby player turned business leader, and Liam Mooney, ex-professional athlete and m 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 identi
26/06/2026
Pressure exposes leadership and performance.
It's true on the sports pitch, and it's true in business. The difference is that elite sport plays every moment under pressure — so it's the clearest lens we have on how leadership holds, and where it cracks.
That's what The Business End is built on. And on 4 September, we're bringing it to Brighton. A leadership lunch with Andrew Gomarsall MBE, England's 2003 Rugby World Cup winner — unpacking the pressure moments of his career and what they teach business.
60 seats only. Harbour Hotel, Brighton.
https://business-end.com/agomarsalllunch/
Confidence Doesn't Matter. What It Reveals Does.
It's tempting to read John Haime — twenty years coaching athletes inside the world's top 50, and leaders at Microsoft, GE, KPMG and RBC — as another voice telling you to be more confident. He isn't. Listen closely and he's saying the opposite.
His own definition gives it away: confidence is simply "knowing you can do it" — and you only get there by putting in the hours. Which means confidence isn't a thing you build directly. It's what's left over once the competence is in place. Chase it on its own and you get the hollow version — the kind you have to announce.
That's the real weight behind his sharpest line:
"built confidence is quiet and borrowed confidence is loud."
The quiet operators aren't winning because they feel confident. They're quiet because the work is already done, and the certainty is a by-product they have no need to perform. The loud ones are broadcasting precisely because the foundation underneath is thin. In both cases, the volume isn't the cause of anything — it's a readout of what's been built underneath.
There's a sharper edge to this, and it cuts toward the people doing the promoting. Most advancement systems are wired to reward the loud one. The person who puts their hand up, broadcasts certainty and fills the room gets seen. The quiet operator — the one whose work is already done — gets overlooked, not because they're less capable, but because they don't perform their competence for an audience.
Which means the trait you're selecting for at promotion may be the exact one John is warning you about. You're not filtering for built confidence. You're filtering for volume — and volume is the tell of the borrowed kind.
Spotting confidence that doesn't announce itself is a leadership skill in its own right. Most never develop it. The best build it into how they decide who rises.
So the leadership question isn't "who's confident?" It's a worse one to answer and a better one to ask: when the pressure lands and the result goes against them, who holds their process — and who abandons it to protect their ego?
That's the thing that actually moves outcomes. Confidence is just the visible tell. Manage the system underneath, and the confidence takes care of itself.
22/06/2026
Think about your highest-stakes moment this year, the one where everyone was watching and the whole business was riding on the outcome. Did you trust the plan you and your team had built, or did you step in to be the hero, the one who saved it? Some of you are facing exactly that call this morning.
An Olympic champion gave us the sharpest answer we have heard on this last week in Monaco. At his home Games in Paris, in front of an entire nation, Antoine Zeghdar told us the real danger was never the pressure. It was the pull to become the hero, to step outside the plan and try to carry the whole moment on your own back. And that impulse, he said, is the precise moment you stop performing. The leader who grabs the spotlight under pressure is telling everyone in the room they don't really trust what they built. The one who holds the line is the one who actually does. That was Antoine Zeghdar, Paris 2024 rugby sevens gold medallist with France, at our Leadership Lunch in Monaco.
But here is what most people don't see about The Business End. The lunch isn't where the work ends, it's where it begins. Everything Antoine told us gets mapped against 24 years of business interviews, more than 50 podcasts with elite performers, and our own research, looking for where his thinking echoes, sharpens or challenges everyone else we've sat down with. What comes out the other side isn't a write-up of a nice afternoon. It's a leadership playbook our members use to make sharper decisions under pressure, built on a pattern drawn from the best people we've ever spoken to rather than one person's opinion. Every attendee in Monaco gets their copy this week: ten business lessons they can put to work. That is what membership actually is — a seat in the room, trusted connections and the intelligence that comes out of it.
One of our guests summed up the whole point better than we ever could. She told us afterwards that she knew nothing about rugby, and yet it was one of the best conversations on leadership she had been part of. That's exactly it. These are leadership lunches, and sport is simply the lens — because everything in sport happens under pressure, and pressure is where leadership and performance is made or broken. You dont need to understand sport.
Thank you to Antoine, to Mark Thomas for joining the panel, and to Ivor Alex, Thomas Antognelli and John Donoghue for their support. Finally and most importantly, thank you to everyone who filled the room for a glorious afternoon overlooking the Med. Some people travelled far to attend & it was great to see some of the conversations sparking debate with business being done.
We are in Brighton on 4 September, Exeter on 11 September, Monaco at the end of September. London on October 22. We will finish up the year in Toronto, Jersey & Monaco. Plus many more venues.
19/06/2026
The Business End Live — Monaco 🇲
Antoine Zeghdar, Paris 2024 Olympic gold medallist with France Rugby Sevens, was the catalyst for a brilliant conversation on elite performance and leadership.
But it’s always the people in the room who make it. We’re lucky to meet so many wonderful guests and speakers through what we do — and this one was special.
Thank you to all who joined us. Back in Monaco later this year.
Networking
19/06/2026
Yesterday we brought The Business End Live to Monaco, and what a setting for it.
Antoine Zeghdar — Paris 2024 Olympic gold medallist with France Rugby Sevens — was the catalyst for a brilliant conversation on elite performance and leadership, and what business can learn from sport. He was joined by Mark Thomas ex Wales rugby 7s international too. But as always, it was the people in the room who made it.
We’re lucky to meet so many wonderful guests and speakers through what we do, and this lunch was a reminder of exactly why we do it.
Thank you to Antoine, to everyone who joined us around the tables, and to the wider Monaco network for bringing such a strong group together.
More analysis to come — and we’ll be back in Monaco in late September early October.
18/06/2026
🎙 The Business End | Episode 40 | John Haime | LIVE 🎧
Most people think pressure creates failure.
John Haime believes something different.
Pressure simply reveals what was already there.
A former professional golfer who spent years chasing the PGA Tour before injury ended his playing career, John has since become one of the world's leading performance coaches, working with elite athletes, executives and leadership teams across the globe.
And this conversation is packed with lessons every leader, entrepreneur and high performer needs to hear.
We explored:
🏌️ How an injury changed the narrative in his head and ultimately ended a lifelong dream.
🧠 Why confidence is not something you find.
It's something you build.
🎯 The difference between borrowed confidence and built confidence.
⚡ Why the most dangerous thing leaders do under pressure is delay decisions.
🔄 Why resilience isn't getting knocked down.
It's how quickly you get back up.
👂 Why listening remains one of the most underrated leadership skills in business.
And perhaps the most powerful lesson of all:
Most people don't fail under pressure because they're not capable.
They fail because they abandon their process to protect their ego.
John's perspective is refreshing because it strips away the mythology around performance.
Confidence isn't loud.
The most confident people rarely need to tell you they are confident.
As John put it:
"Built confidence is quiet. Borrowed confidence is loud."
For leaders navigating uncertainty, athletes managing expectations, or entrepreneurs carrying the weight of difficult decisions, this episode is a masterclass in self-awareness, resilience and performance under pressure.
One insight particularly stood out:
Your identity must be separated from your outcomes.
A poor performance does not make you a poor person.
A setback does not define your future.
A difficult season does not determine your worth.
In a world obsessed with results, John reminds us that sustainable performance comes from understanding who you are, protecting your confidence and trusting your process.
A timely conversation with a man who has spent two decades helping world-class performers navigate the moments nobody else sees.
🎧 Episode 40 with John Haime is now live.
🎙️ THE LIONS LESSON EVERY BUSINESS LEADER NEEDS
In 2001, Matt Perry was selected for the British & Irish Lions.
The best players from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
World-class talent.
World-class experience.
Yet something wasn't right.
Looking back on the tour, Matt said:
"I think what happened on that tour was the philosophy did not work."
Not because the players weren't good enough.
Not because they weren't committed.
Not because they lacked talent.
The reason was far more interesting.
"The game plan wasn't co-designed with the players."
Slowly, cracks appeared.
"There were separate groups. People used to go a separate way."
And that's the leadership lesson.
Most organisations don't fail because of capability.
They fail because people stop believing.
The strategy might be brilliant.
The vision might be compelling.
The talent might be exceptional.
But if people don't feel ownership, commitment begins to fade.
Matt's advice was simple:
"Design the game plan with the team."
Because when people help build something, they fight harder for it.
When they understand the framework, they commit to it.
When they believe in the direction, they pull together.
Too many leaders assume their job is to provide all the answers.
The best leaders do something different.
They create clarity.
They create ownership.
They create belief.
As Matt put it:
"You've got to get everyone believing in the framework."
And perhaps the most powerful line of all:
"The players know how to play."
Leadership is rarely about telling talented people what to do.
It's about creating an environment where talented people can do their best work together.
Because the real role of leadership is understanding how to get the best with, for and from your people.
That's as true in the boardroom as it is on a Lions tour.
16/06/2026
Thursday in Monaco. We sit down with an Olympic champion.
Monaco is a tiny country, a microstate sitiuated on the Mediterranean cost bordered by France. It's too small a nation to field a rugby side at the highest level on it own. So one its sons go elsewhere to chase the summit aged just 14 and against the odds.
Antoine Zeghdar — born and raised in Monaco — pulled on the French jersey and came home an Olympic champion. The principality didn't put him on the podium. But it made him.
On Thursday he sits down with us at The Business End ⚫ — not to tell war stories, but to open up to the business community on the things that separate the people who deliver under pressure from the people who freeze.
How do you make the biggest call of your life in a heartbeat, with a nation holding its breath — and get it right? How do you lose in front of your country, feel it land, and walk back out to go again? And why is staying calm under fire is not a nice-to-have trait for a leader, but is essential as the consequences of not having it are real and instant. We're not handing you the answers in a post. That's what the room is for.
We'll do the lunch in two languages, French and English, side by side, for the first time. Because pressure feels the same in every language. Sport is the one truly universal business language. It is the best educator for leadership and performance in business. On Thursday we will prove it again in a different country and culture.
Expect the unexpected and welcome to all who will be attending.
16/06/2026
80%+ of professionals are avoiding at least one difficult conversation at work right now.
The promotion ask. The underperformer. The co-founder who's outgrown the role. And underneath all of it, the cost of saying nothing.
This isn't a soft skill. It's the most consistently avoided, most expensive behaviour in professional life — and avoidance never holds the line. It compounds. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Tolerated becomes authorised. Authorised becomes culture.
The trap most leaders fall into isn't silence — it's the half-measure. Being upfront, then softening it until the message disappears. The research is explicit: withhold to stay 'nice' and you fail at being both honest and kind. You owe people the clarity, delivered well.
We brought in Ben Franks — double Rugby World Cup winner, All Blacks 2011 and 2015 — to lead a private session on exactly this, then tested it against the leading research in the field. His instincts on performance under pressure held up.
The full framework went to members on 11 June. We don't publish the method — but if there's a conversation you're weighing up, send it over and we'll run it against the framework.
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