In the 2019 Rugby World Cup Final, South Africa’s coaching team did something nobody else was doing with their substitutes bench. Instead of picking for balance, they went six forward replacements to two backs. Deep into the second half, when everyone else was running on fumes, South Africa could send on six enormous, completely fresh players at once and simply overpower whoever was left standing. It became known as the Bomb Squad. It won them the World Cup.
What I find fascinating about it isn’t really the tactics. It’s the principle underneath. Nobody on that pitch was expected to survive the full eighty minutes alone.
I think about that a lot when I think about the strangest, most disorientating pivot of my own career, when I stepped away from professional sport to help my husband with his family business. It felt like failure at the time. Like I’d lost my identity and let go of everything I’d spent years building.
In this episode I’ll tell you how we relaunched the business website within a couple of months, why I ended up in front of the camera myself after a rocky start with social media, and how our Instagram followers went from two thousand to over twenty one thousand in three months.
I’ll also tell you why none of that pivot happened on my own, and why identifying your own Bomb Squad, properly, today, matters more than you think.
One lesson from sport. One story from me. One thing you can take away and use today.
Press play. I’ll see you in there.
