For those of you who are not that familiar with who I am, let me, to paraphrase a certain Robbie Williams, introduce myself.
As well as, I hope, entertain you a little bit as well?
My name is Paul McVeigh. I used to play professional football for a living, including for Tottenham Hotspur and Norwich City. I also made 40 appearances for my native Northern Ireland from 1999 to 2004.
My career in professional football saw me compete with and against some of the best players in the world.
Rio Ferdinand, Steven Gerrard, Thierry Henry, Andres Iniesta and Jurgen Klinsmann.
Plus Cristiano Ronaldo. At Old Trafford. And I scored.
How lucky have I been?
Lucky?
Yes.
Because what better environment could have given me the lessons I needed to understand and appreciate what it takes to be an elite performer on a global scale?
Talking about the experiences of being able to do that is not an opportunity that many people will ever have.
And that’s where I have been lucky. Not only in my previous career but the way in which I have been able to carry over what I did, achieved and, most of all, learnt, over two hugely enjoyable decades spent in professional sport.
But being able to talk about it now and, I hope, for another twenty years and beyond.
My credibility as a speaker comes from this unique combination of skill sets that I have, from reaching the pinnacle of top level sport as well as being the first Premier League player to academically qualify with a Masters Degree in Psychology.
From when I first started my career in football as a nervous yet very ambitious teenager with Tottenham, all I ever wanted was to improve in whatever it was I was doing.
I wanted to be the fastest.
The strongest.
The fittest.
All of those and more.
It paid off.
But I didn’t want to stop improving once I retired from the game.
After all, I’d only retired from being a professional footballer.
I hadn’t retired from life.
That led to my entering higher education, getting my degree and building my career in performance psychology.
For me it’s all about evolving, continuously improving. Reaching the top of whatever mountain it is that I’m climbing and then looking for another one.
A higher one.
I’m still lucky today.
Why?
Because I now work alongside a world class team of elite performers, united in delivering numerous leadership programmes to the executive committees and senior leadership teams of multinational companies all over the world.
All of whom want me to share my thoughts and experiences with their teams.
Like I said, how lucky am I?
We are able to demonstrate how the mindsets of world champions work and transpose that into a methodology that will inspire those leaders and their teams in the same way it did some of the most famous and well respected people it did in other businesses.
I’ve recently worked with Aviva, Barclays, Cisco, Deutsche Bank, KPMG and Microsoft.
All of whom have people wanting to tap into the mindsets of champions and to bring a little bit of their way of thinking into their own lives.
Being able to do so is an absolute privilege. And I am as grateful to each and every one of them for sharing some of their time with me as they seem to be to me for doing so with them.
But I never forget one thing.
Which is just how lucky I am to be able to do so.
Paul McVeigh
Drawing on his experiences of competing in one of the most demanding leagues in the world, Paul speaks to audiences about understanding the choices you have, how to deal with pressure, and working to defined objectives, with everyone playing their part.
To enquire about Paul speaking at you next event or to get advice tailored to your specific needs, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!