Olympic Gold. World records. Trophies, championships and banners. After The Win, Where To?
These tangible symbols of victory are all attained through the intangible qualities of the athlete – tremendous dedication, sacrifice, indomitable will and relentlessness towards glory.
We hold athletes to high standards, but what’s easy to forget is that for every competitor that wins a medal, there are scores that don’t place, qualify or make the team.
Not everyone can be a Phelps or a Bolt – that requires one of a kind talent, drive and skill.
Even if you do win Olympic Gold, this doesn’t guarantee security. Spending your life dedicated to a specific physical action or movement won’t necessarily translate to success off the track. With time-ticking on one’s athletic prime and external factors such as financial mismanagement and mental health coming into play, life for many sportspeople can prove to be the toughest challenge they have to face.
Patrick Glennon is the Senior Vice President for the IOC & IPC Athlete Career Programme with the Adecco Group. His primary task is to help elite athletes transition to a life from sport into the workforce, and secure a steady, financial future. The ACP is highly successful, having reached over 35,000 athletes across 185 countries.
We talked to Patrick to talk about the pressures that elite athletes face, adjusting and pivoting to a new field, and lessons we can apply to our own individual adversities.
Where did your work with athlete to workforce transition originate?
I would say that I got involved in supporting athletes early in professional sports in the US, specifically with American football.
The majority of players would retire and within 3 years they were a combination of bankrupt, divorced and/or depressed. In professional sports, we were recognising that a lot of players were having difficulty with the transition.
The genesis on the Olympic Committee started around ‘02, when the first IOC Athlete Commission held their a forum and said, “This transition is really a difficult thing for athletes to go through.”
So you have both the athletes, as well as Adecco recognising that athletes were having this difficult transition. We came together to develop a program first on the Olympic side and then in 2007, we extended that and we signed our first agreement with the Paralympic Committee. Adecco has been supporting athletes with this transition since ‘05 and we have agreements through 2020.
There’s a big statistic that 60% of NBA players are broke five years post playing career. Antoine Walker played for the Boston Celtics, made over 100 million dollars but his earnings are gone and squandered. How does that happen?
Let’s say you go into the league [the NFL], and in American Football you make the league minimum, which is about half a million dollars. Let’s say you make double that – a million.
The average career of a player is about 3 and a half to 4 years. You go in and you start making a lot of money. All of a sudden you go from nothing to a lot. You buy your mother something expensive – a house, a boat, a car. Your girlfriend wants to spend money. You elevate your spending habits. Then what happens is you get caught. The money goes away, but you don’t want to give up the life so you continue with the spending. So now what you’re spending is exceeding your income.
Antoine Walker was worth 100 million but went to zero. Mike Tyson was worth 300 million and he went from that to zero as well. I can’t even think about anybody who can’t think about how to manage 300 million dollars without losing it. I won’t put a judgement on that but I just can’t picture it.
It’s bad investments and bad spending trends. A lot of players might say, “I’m going to buy into a franchise.” But they don’t know that to buy into a franchise takes work. Then they go bankrupt. Do that a few times and you lose a big chunk of change. There’s a lack of financial planning.
The root cause of all this is that you go from nominal money to a lot of money with no planning on what you’re going to do afterwards, little planning and no training of how to manage your money.
For those athletes that do encounter a substantial amount of income, preparation for the next phase in your career is crucial. What steps should athletes take to secure a sound financial future?
I’ve worked with everybody from those who are wealthy to people that have had to sell their Olympic paraphernalia – their opening ceremony jackets put on eBay at the end of the Olympics to pay their next month’s mortgage. Money does play a part, but what’s more important is learning how to transition the goals from an athlete perspective to what you want to do next.
The first thing to do is help an athlete first identify what their next goal possibly can be and the tools they need to do to try and get there. At the same time, recognise that their backgrounds are different from everybody else. Rather than looking at that difference, and saying it’s a detractor – how can I look at that unique experience and say, “How could I use that to leverage to more success in the future?”
Put a plan in place, and learn the tools to prepare for what they want to do next. Start doing it as an athlete, so that when they retire, they have a toolbox of value already to go.
How does the ACP help athletes translate to the workforce?
The ACP talks to companies all the time. We share with them that normal HR practices could potentially exclude some of the best candidates because for example, Olympic and Paralympic athletes would be most likely dropped out in that process, because they’re not what you’re used to looking for.
So we promote with companies, the value of looking for sometimes that employee that has the potential – more potential going forward, but they may have a different background. By working with both the athletes and employers, we try and find good fits that add value to both the athlete and the employer.
These athletes have drive and tremendous focus that can translate into the workforce. However an athlete that has been, for example 10 years running track, they might not necessarily have the skills required for a workplace. How can they up-skill?
It’s a very good question. Internships are always a good opportunity and we offer a number of internships within Adecco.
What you can’t do with somebody that has those skills, is teach somebody to be in charge, to drive, to win and to never give up. So what we try and do is find jobs that are a good fit. That can use a combination of what they’ve done on the field, combined with their passion. Then add some type of on the job training. When you bring those together, you can create a powerful aspect.
It takes working with the athletes to really recognise what they want but also to find out what they have done, and figure out how to help them translate. Gap analysis is important as that says, “This is what I’ve done and this is what I’m missing.” Figuring out where there’s a good fit.
It seems like this is drawing the skills from the past, combining that with their current drive and focusing into the future.
Exactly. And there are two things that are interesting in this. A lot of athletes I meet with when I ask them to write a CV they say, “Well I have nothing, ‘cause I’ve been an athlete for the last 15 years.” Then you work with them on, “Well, what have you done?” From an employer persepective, there’s a lot of employers that say, “Well they’ve been an athlete, so why would I ever want to hire them, because they don’t have the experience?”
The other thing an athlete has to do is not only understand themselves, but then help them understand how to translate that into the language of business. Demonstrate to an employer that they have value, then it can open up a nice discussion.
Typically speaking, what are the sort of common jobs that athletes tend to transition into?
Athletes are as diverse as every other population. A number of them do like to stay in the sporting industry as coaches, trainers and assistant coaches – there’s a good group of them that end up there. But if you look at the current President of the IOC, he’s a lawyer. The last one was a doctor. I have placed accountants. I have placed work with auto mechanics. Sales. Insurance salesmen. I could go down the list. There’s entrepreneurs that are out there. It’s very diverse in terms of what they jobs they get.
For current athletes, what sort of advice would you impart to get them preparing for the future?
The most important thing is every year, work on something towards what you’re going to do when you retire. Have a CV right away. You can always change it and update it. You need to have a CV or a resume ready.
The other thing is, you never know when you’re going to retire. It’s competition, you’re going to get an injury or something else. Start thinking about what you want to do after sport. The average life, or the average age of an Olympic athlete is 25 to 30. A Paralympic athlete is slightly older.
If you wait until you retire, and then wait another year – it’s going to be very challenging., Start to develop an eye for some things you may want to do and start networking with people who are in that area, three years before you retire. Then start up-skilling yourself.
One thing is definite – is death and taxes. The thing that’s definite for an elite athlete is death, taxes, and that they will retire and need another job.
Athletes spend so much time trying to shoot for gold, that immediate goal is right there in sight, but they don’t really know think of the life post playing, and how big of a goal that is too. And does a gold medal create financial security for you?
No, not necessarily. I would say no it doesn’t, period. Now there are some people like Michael Phelps and a few that leverage it really well. But in the majority of cases, a gold medal might give you a few dollars. In my eye, the only thing a gold medal may do is open the door to an employer. But even if the door is open, you still have to sell yourself on why they want to work with you. It has to be a value based proposition.
For somebody who isn’t an Olympian, what can I take away from an athlete that has made a successful move into a career post training, post Olympics, post sport?
That’s actually the first time anybody has asked me that question. But I like the question. One of the reasons athletes have succesfully transition is that they were prepared. They made a move into where they were going, they knew the strengths that they had. They typically have an idea of what they want to do and they’re able to articulate it into where they want to go.
A lesson to derive from athletes that have successful transitions is this – when you are in a current job, give it your best. That’s why you’re an elite athlete. You’re in this position, you’re in a job, you’re giving it your best. But you’re also not solely focused on only one thing. You have the ability to multi-task and think beyond this particular task as well. It’s that ability to give so much that you can be great, but then also be prepared to leverage what made you great for your life. Not just for one experience.