In the last quarter of the last meaningless preseason game before the 1999 N.F.L. season, Leonard Wheeler, a defensive back with the Carolina Panthers, injured his knee as he sprinted down the field on a kickoff. He had never had a knee injury before, but as he lay there on the field, an ominous feeling came over him.

"I remember laying on the field and thinking that my knee was gone—and what is my next step?" says Wheeler.

Wheeler came back from his injury, eventually retiring in 2001. Since then he has established himself in the corporate world as the C.E.O. of Wheeler Enterprises, a company that specializes in corporate and personal coaching. Their previous clients include organizations like Capital One, the Stanford Group, and M.I.T.

He has also appeared in the movie Radio, with Cuba Gooding Jr., and the television show One Tree Hill.

Wheeler was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in 1992 and played there for five years before going to the Minnesota Vikings as a free agent. After a year, he went to play for the Panthers until his retirement.

As a football player, Wheeler was never one of the stars on the team, but he found that by focusing on the value he brought to the field, he was able to make himself an integral part of the team. He also knows that in understanding his unique contributions, he understands his weaknesses as well.

"I have applied that lesson to my second career as far as understanding myself and my strengths, understanding my blind spots, understanding the things I do well, understanding the things I don't do well," he says. "And then putting a team around me that's phenomenal in those areas. I always surround myself with people that are a lot smarter than I am."

Wheeler has also stayed close to football, heading the chapter of the N.F.L. Players Association Retired Players chapter in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. He feels that he's taken many lessons from the football field to the world of business, the most important of which is to be better prepared than the competition.

"As a personal coach and executive coach and speaker, I understand that there are competitors there," he says. "But what is it that I can bring, what is it that I can prepare for that can put me above my competitors?"

Wheeler says that what he brings to the table in his business practice is an attention to detail and a willingness to do the little things—the exact same things he brought to the football field.

In college, a coach told him to take pride in playing special teams, the mundane task of guarding kickoffs and punts. When he got to the N.F.L., he was determined to be the best special-teams player on the team.

"People understand that success is in the details," he says. "Doing the little things well equals being successful in the bigger things."