High-performance coach Rachel Lilley was rejected from a Premier-One hockey team but stayed with her club and earned a spot through perseverance. She believes talent is built through deliberate practice, not innate ability, and that 30-minute daily actions compound into exponential results. Her core principle: win in your mind before you step into the arena.
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Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Rachel Lilly with us. She is a high performance coach working with athletes to build their mental strength so they can compete with confidence to win. So welcome to the show, Rachel.
Thanks Tyler, thanks for having me on. I'm really excited to be here.
Of course, and we're excited to have you on, Rachel, and We'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Great. So picture this. It's, you know, in a sporting sense, it's preseason hockey trials. That's field, not ice. I've just been trialing for half an hour or so with a bunch of other goalies, and the selector calls my name over, and I walk past them all. We get called around to the side of this building. I'm fighting for my spot in the Premier One team. I'm already there and I'm fighting to keep it. So, I walk around and I've known this guy for years and he kind of looks down at the ground and then he looks up at me and he goes, "Look, I'm really sorry, Rachel, but we've decided not to go with you this season. So, you weren't as strong." He gave me some reasons why and just finally said, "We're going with this other keeper. She's just a bit better." than you, and I was gutted, absolutely gutted, dropped. So this came off the back of me being away playing for a week for representing my sort of region in Masters sport, Masters hockey, where we finished third. I'd had a great week. The year before, I'd played in our sort of highest domestic sides for my region in Wellington, New Zealand, where I'm from. I was in super good form. I was really looking forward to having another great year and looking forward to perhaps even making that domestic side again. But, you know, in that very moment, it turned out I wasn't good enough to keep my sort of premier spot. So I was pretty gutted. You know, you never want to cry in those situations, but sometimes it just happens. And he could see I was upset, so he tried to fix the situation a little bit, and I just kind of walked off. So, you know, at that point, I was kind of stuck with a decision. Did I leave my team, my club that I've been playing with for I don't know, 16 years at that point, and move over and play at a Premier, the Premier 1 team in another club, or, you know, did I drop down a grade and, as it turned out, play for the Premier 2 team that at that time was really struggling for a goalie. So it became this real interesting mix between doing something for myself or doing something for the club, neither of which was an ideal situation for me to keep competing at a really high level. So, you know, You know, I finally in that time, I decided I couldn't leave my club at all. And so I went and played for the team in the grade below. And, you know, we ended up winning the championship that year and we had the best defensive record of the competition. So that was pretty awesome. But, you know, that year I was so incensed, I think, with just trying to, you know, keep pushing forward, being the best that I could, really kind of proving to myself that I still had it even in my, you know, mid-30s. And so I still went on to trial for that, that top-level domestic side, and I worked super hard over the 3-month trial period. I attended every single training game, I pushed myself to improve every time I took the field, you know, I got feedback from the coach, and finally my determination paid off because I successfully beat out 5 other goalies to make a spot in the team. And to the best of my knowledge, I'm still the only lower Premier 2 player to have ever been selected to play for that side. So that's my story.
Yes, thank you for sharing that. That is awesome. The next one I have for you, Rachel, is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
That no one is born with talent. You know, I think it's very easy to look at people who are really good at things and say to yourself, man, they're so lucky, I wish I could do that. And you can, you know, it's something that you can create and develop with deliberate, focused practice by focusing on the right things and working on them systematically. You can be world-class at what you set your mind to if you take that approach. So, you know, if you really want to do something, figure out, figure out how to do it.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry-specific.
Action and consistency pay off. Absolutely. Your memory fades over time, so you sometimes don't really remember all the hard work that you've put in to get to the place that you are. And so it can feel like you're not going anywhere at all, but if you're consistently taking action every day, even just 30 minutes, what happens is, is that grows exponentially over time and you start to see, you start to see massive results. But it can be hard when you're not seeing those results immediately. So it is just a case of taking consistent action, even 30 minutes a day.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
When I was growing up, my younger self was very much forced down a path through my parents. You know, you go to school, you get a good education, and then you go and get a career. I would definitely tell my younger self that there is so much more to this world that you can see from where you are right now. You know, be curious, read everything you can, focus on expanding your horizons, make make sure you are taking information from all different industries, from all different sports, from all different ways of life to put into, to help shape who you are and who you want to be. You know, don't just put everything into a box. Explore, be curious.
And in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
In my opinion, the key to happiness is focusing on the journey that you're on definitely not the destination, you know, enjoying the ride. If you don't— I spent time focusing on the destination and it didn't work. You know, you feel empty, you always feel like you should be doing more and that things should be better, and you succeed at something and then you're still empty. So if you focus on the journey itself rather than waiting for this flood of happiness, you will, you know, you'll be happy every day, you will be learning something every day, always looking for the silver lining in what you're doing, the achievement that you're making on a daily basis. So focusing on, focusing on the journey, and then you will, you'll stay happy.
And what is the best book that you've read, and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
It's a book called Letting Go: The Pathway to Surrender by Dr. Richard Hawkins, and it's all about how we tend to repress or suppress our negative feelings or our negative thoughts. And quite often we think by doing that we, we're dealing with them and that it's sort of problem solved, but really they become sort of unconscious unconscious baggage that drags us down. So, you know, sometimes it's, it really just is a case of staying with that negative thought and waiting for it to sort of disappear on its own, not forcing it away. And that will help, help keep you in a really positive space and not end up with some of those sort of unconscious thoughts or programs that run in the background that kind of shape who you are without you really understanding why.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
My favorite quote is a paraphrase of Sun Tzu. It's, "Win in your mind before you step into the arena." Battles are won before you even fight them. And I think this is where your mental strength plays such a massive part and enables you to do that, whether it's sports or business or job or, you know, even just sort of life situations. You can win in your mind before you step into the arena and it makes things infinitely easier.
Yes, I love it. Thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where's the best place for people to find you online?
The best place to find me online is my website, rachelilly.com. That's R-A-C-H-E-L-L-I-L-L-E-Y. And if you head over to rachelilly.com/blast, you can get access to my free ebook, The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Mentally Strong Athlete.
Awesome. Thank you for the gift as well, and we'll talk with you soon, Rachel.
No worries. Thanks, Tyler.
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