Latest / Career Clarity with Athletes: A 2ndwind Podcast with Ryan Gonsalves / 200: Desleigh Owusu & Finn Alexander - The Career Question Most Athletes Avoid

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200: Desleigh Owusu & Finn Alexander - The Career Question Most Athletes Avoid · Career Clarity with Athletes: A 2ndwind Podcast with Ryan Gonsalves

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, over years of sailing and years of being an athlete, I had heaps of contacts and I just started picking people off.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Hey, you want to get a coffee coffee?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get coffee.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I I had no idea what I wanted to do.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I did a business degree because I didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I left sport because I had no idea what I wanted to do.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, I've got to figure this out.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I just I started meeting with people in my network.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of them were sailors, and and that was sort of how I started to piece it all together.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_05: Who are you beyond the game?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_05: I'm Ryan Gonçalves.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_05: I became a professional footballer at 16 and eventually had to answer that myself.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_05: This is Career Clarity with Athletes from Second Wind Academy, a show about career transition.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_05: This season I'm sitting down with athletes still competing, athletes years out, and the sports psychologists, coaches and practitioners who guide them.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_05: We get into the decision, the identity, and the practical work of building what comes next.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_05: Athletes hit this earlier than most people.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_05: But what they learn works for anybody.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_05: Each episode, a story, and where it goes from there.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_05: Let's be inspired by the stories of others.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_05: So Desley, I invited you up first, so I'll give you that mic.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_05: So Desley, I introduced you as a triple jumper.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_05: But tell us a little bit more about what makes up your week.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my week is quite busy.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my day today was a busy day.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: I have a flight to catch in a few hours, actually.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: But usually I train in the morning from around 9 a.m.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: to 12 p.m.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then I go straight to work from midday to around 6 p.m.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: So some days can be a little bit different.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, on Mondays, I actually start training at 6.30 in the morning.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm out of my house by 5:45.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't come home until around 7.30 p.m.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: So they are very long days, but for a good cause.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I'm in the middle of those days and I'm like, is this really worth it?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when I need to get up on cold mornings.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it's lots of fun at the end of the day.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I have Saturdays off.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: I train six days a week, about 20 to 25 hours a week.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then I also work 25 hours a week.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you could say I work 50 hours a week.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_05: That's quite impressive.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_05: And all of that to pursue and live that dream of elite sport of representing your country overseas.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_05: And I think what we often forget is the amount of, I guess, effort and I'll say dual career in that regard.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_05: It's very much a single career, but just maybe two jobs or three jobs coming in there to try and make make ends meet, right?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_05: So the purpose of doing all of those hours and all of that training is to go away and then represent Australia like you've just done at the Com Games.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_05: What happens to work when you're doing that?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: I am very lucky.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: There aren't many athletes in my position, but my workplace is so supportive of me.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're very flexible.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: If I need to go, if I need to drop everything and go to a competition next week, they're like, yeah, definitely go ahead and do it.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm lucky as to the point where when I go overseas, I can actually still work admin.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I work about 10 hours a week while I'm overseas just to keep the money flow in.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And also it's a really good time killer.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: When you're overseas competing and training, you literally train, eat, sleep, train, eat, sleep, repeat.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it can get very repetitive and very boring sometimes.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: So when I have that work, it kills a lot of time for me as well.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_05: That's great.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_05: I'll just ask you to pass the mic to Finn.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_05: So, Finn, you retired a year and a half ago from Team Australia, and now we went to the world of professional sailing.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_05: When you look back at your time in uh Team Australia, you're doing a lot of study at that time.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_05: Typically, doing a degree takes about three years.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_05: What was that experience like for you?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Took a while.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Took me a long time.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was always something that I wanted to do alongside the sailing and had some influence from my parents as well.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: They they said, yep, you should definitely go and study as well.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So started a bachelor of business at UTS, would have been about 2018.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I just chipped away at it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was, in my mind, I was trying to do the bare minimum just to keep by, but not impact the sailing as well.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was always tricky because you you're trying to get some progress done with uni, but at the same time not impact your your sport and what you're trying to do as well.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it was always hard.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: For a lot of years, felt like I wasn't ticking the needle at all.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, eventually finished it off and got it done last year.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_05: Congratulations on working through both the sailing side, but also getting a degree, which is just fantastic.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_05: When you think about the time it takes for you to join that degree, for most students, they go in the full time, they can focus in on it, and that's pretty much all they do.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_05: You've got the to try and balance the two.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_05: What type of support did you get from university to do that?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was lucky.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had really good support from UTS.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: They were always on board with it.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Remember sort of hearing the speech, UTS is a young uni.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think Lucy's here right now.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Shout out, absolute legend.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_05: Many advisors that got to work with you, you must have been there took that long that you went through three of them.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_05: That's what I'm hearing here.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I'd sort of be welcoming at the door saying, but no, heaps of support.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was always, always a conversation, always an open door saying if you need help with anything, an assignment moved or a clash or whatever, um, there was always help there, which wouldn't have been able to do without without that support.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: There was usually more support for the studies from obviously the uni than there was from maybe the sailing side.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you're like, okay, great, I've just got to leverage it and use it as best I can.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_05: Talk to us a bit about that.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_05: You spoke there about support from the university from an elite pathway perspective.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_05: When we look at sailing Australia, what kind of support were they trying to deliver to you from a well-being perspective?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's tricky because from my experience, I felt that you're sort of getting pulled different directions.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You've got your coach of your sport, so my sailing coach, they want you to go sailing seven days a week.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh you've got the federation, and they want you to give all your time to the sport as well.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: You might have a job, so they want you to give some time, and then you've also got uni as the brand of university going, hey, you're a full-time athlete, uh full-time um student, um, you want you you've got to study.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I always felt there was a bit of tension and some conflict, and just trying to juggle the priorities.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like for myself, I've got to try and figure out what do I actually value here, like what am I trying to juggle and kind of go from there.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was lucky as well as sailing.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of well-being support managers.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was with the sailing team for over 10 years, so there was quite a few people who came through the door there as well, and just lucky to have the support.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: I always just felt like I was so lucky to have all of the the physios, physiologists, well-being, everything.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like, well, I I gotta use them.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, very fortunate.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_05: That really is and it is fortunate, and I'm sure during those 10 years, the way that that support shape was shaped uh shifted as well.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_05: And I see Desley see you nodding there when he talks about that well-being support.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm curious, because you are a current athlete, how does that support show up for you?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I've tapped into it a little bit more recently, but a lot of athletes see the well-being side of things and they're like, oh, like I'm fine, I'm chugging along, I don't really need any of that.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I think they can help in terms of things that you actually didn't think they could help with.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, when I was in uni, a lot of my assignments were submitted quite late.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: So they helped in that side of things where they would um approach the uni and just say, hey, look, she's actually on the elite athlete program, and this is why it was late, and things like that.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: So they helped in that sense.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: When I finished uni, I was like, oh, what could I possibly use them for now?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: But it was actually in my career side of things.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was, I guess, trying to balance the work and the training, I would actually approach them, like, I need help with my schedule.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: How can you help me?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we would sit down and they can help me in that sense.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they can help you in financial aspects of things as well.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if you need health insurance, for example, I didn't know that was a thing for elite athletes, but apparently every elite athlete needs health insurance, which I did not have, but now I do.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: So they help in that sense as well.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been good.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_05: You mentioned that you use it more now than you did before.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_05: So you think I'm interested as to why.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_05: Was it a sense of awareness?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_05: Did you know they were there?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_05: Are they is it at presence?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_05: Is it feeling that hey, I've got this, I don't need that support?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_05: Why is it that early on you perhaps use them less than you do today?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think I just said to myself, like, closed mouths don't get fed, and you don't know things until you actually ask.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so I actually started just to ask, what can you actually help me with?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because yes, I can do things on my own, but I would like some help if I could get some.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when they're like, Well, we can help you here, here, and here.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Oh, okay.
• 9:25
  unknown: Yeah.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_05: That's funny.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_05: I can think of probably only a week or so ago, an athlete coming and saying, What are you gonna do for me?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_05: It's just like, right, okay.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_05: So now I'm imagining that's what you were doing to your well-being person.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what I was saying.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_05: But it seems like they helped.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they did.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, they did.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_05: And listen, Finn, I know that we've spoken a lot about well-being and and load, and you know, myself, um, in fact, we're having a conversation today about often from a well-being perspective, from a career support, it's about the strength of the relationships that we would have as practitioners with the athletes or with the individuals.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_05: We've spoken before about sailing, that's sometimes a challenge to be able to do that.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about that, I think the natural journey of an athlete at the very beginning of their career, they're very performance-focused.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the well-being is like, well, no, I'm I'm good.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm competing, I'm going hard, everything's good.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as time goes on and you get a little bit older, I was well, I found myself that there's other things going on in my life, and I definitely found towards the end of my campaign that the well-being side and that support were one of the few people that was genuinely in my corner.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: A really good advocate for yourself within an organization, but just you as a person.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I definitely found the last couple of years were you know challenging for any athlete campaigning, but I was like, I had someone there who was just checking in and going, Oh, are you are you okay?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are you good?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless of results on the on the water or uni or anything like that.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like just someone to check in.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_05: And I think one of the challenges that often is faced when we certainly here we're going down, I'll call it an Olympic route or training and athletic pursuit, a lot of that is self-funded.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_05: And a lot of it is self-managed.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_05: And well, selfishly, I see that as great project management skills, which helps me from a business advisory side, hence uh definitely work with a lot of athletes.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_05: But I'm interested in some of the challenges that you face.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_05: And we'll start with you, Finn, but faced in terms of managing budgets, managing time, for you as well, it's not a case of getting uh football boots in your bag in order to go and play a game overseas.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_05: You've got a boat and stuff like that to figure out.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um how did that work out?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Turns out there's a lot of transferable skills that go from sport into project management or consulting.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Budget is one of them.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I didn't even realise I was doing it, but I knew that I'd I was given a pool of money by the government at the start of the year, and you've got to make that stretch and go as far as you can.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of how much money are we talking about to help you?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: It would be around 15 to 25% of your campaign costs.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it may sound like a lot of money, but it's probably like 35 grand a year.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hold on.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_05: So you think about what your campaign cost is.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_05: And so from your campaign cost, that's for you to compete around the world.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's to do your your full campaign.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So a campaign for a year, typically, depending on what boat you're in, could be 100 to 150 grand a year.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a lot of money.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Australian sport doesn't cover all of that, so there's naturally gaps.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the budgeting comes in, and you go, okay, well, there's your gap.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to figure out how to fill that in somehow.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: How'd you do it?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you gotta be gotta be savvy.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sponsorship was hard.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sailing's not an overly visible sport in the media, it's not insanely attractive or anything like that.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really niche sport.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, the best way to fundraise was doing the professional sailing.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So very lucky in Sydney.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's um there's owners who own these racing yachts, they pay sailors to go and race the yachts with them.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I got into that when I was when I was pretty young, and it's it's just a big networking game.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not sometimes not what you know, it's who you know.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Try and get on the boats, and I was kind of making a living sailing around the world as as well.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd typically go and do my Olympic sailing over in Europe, do three months of of regatters in a hit, and then if I could tag on a bit of pro sailing at the end, then then I could kind of make ends meet.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: What was the hardest bit of trying to do that?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: You'd have a pretty low bank balance at some point.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the hardest thing, like campaigning is hard.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's so rewarding and so good, and it's what you want to do.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, you get out of the other side and there's more to life.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: You have other values going on in life.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I found that I had missed every birthday and every wedding and celebration.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I spent a lot of time away from home.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was typically on the road for eight to nine months of the year, um, come back into the Australian summer, and then you'd be on the road again.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, it was something that I kind of wanted to shift away from a little bit as well.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that I found that really hard.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I bet you did.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_05: And look, we we'll come back to then this the transition out.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_05: I'm interested because Desley, you are in your campaign.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_05: This is you are um still going from strength to strength.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_05: You've just come back from Com Games.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_05: We spoke about you having to keep work ticking over.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_05: I'm interested in what the job is that you do and how it perhaps supports you.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I work in HR um for a disability company, local disability company.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: I started as a support worker, and then I started into admin, and then after admin, I am now in HR.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been with them for about five years now.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that it's pretty rewarding.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: It consists of lots of hiring and behind the scenes things, but now I know all of my clients and the support workers, and I can, I guess I have both experiences.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I have that hands-on experience with the clients and helping them in their day-to-day life, and then I've got the back end of things, and because I've been with the company so long, I see the growth in the clients as well, and it's actually very rewarding and amazing to see.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but they support me in so many different ways.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think the first one is just being flexible.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: I hear a lot of my teammates say, like, oh, I think I'm gonna get fired.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh well, that doesn't sound good, does it?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I've never I've never actually had that experience before.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: They've recently actually helped me with my just petrol costs, for example.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: So they've covered that for I think it's been six months now on petrols and tolls.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a really, really big cost for me.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was driving about three hours a day every day.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, I've been more than happy to.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, thank you so much.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how can I repay you?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, you don't need to repay us, just come to work.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, okay, great.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that's been really good.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I've actually been able to move out now, and now I live closer to work and training, which has helped a lot.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_05: Now I'm interested in how you got into that job.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_05: Was it how intentional was it for you to move into support services?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've always known from when I was little, before actually I did want to be a fashion designer until I was about 10, and then that ship sailed.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I always knew that I wanted to help people in some way.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do, but I wanted to help people and I wanted to help vulnerable people.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: When I went into university, I still had no idea what I wanted to do.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I started a bachelor's of social science because I knew that whatever I go into, I want to help people in some way.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: So when I had this opportunity to become a support worker come up, I was so excited.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was nervous, but excited.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then we just hit the road and started running from there.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_05: And it it's often something I I I speak with athletes.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_05: I know we we speak a lot about the intention and choice of where your career goes.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_05: You found yourself working in an area that supports people or helps people, which is what you said um was really passionate about.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_05: How do you think you will continue in that path after sport, or do you think you will shift into something else?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really good question.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think that cause is very close to my heart.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, with my workplace now, we are a disability support company, but we're trying to expand our services.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And my boss has actually given me quite a bit of autonomy to do that.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, one of my passions is to work with women impacted by domestic violence or children in care.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, if that's what you want to do, let's do it.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's try and do it.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: I work for a small company of about 50 employees.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a family-run business.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: So she's like, Why not?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's try it.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, after sport, I hope that that's something I can really put my feet into and actually make an impact.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I see, or I hear actually and see that a lot of people in those situations always say, like, they say there's so many different services that we can go to or that are available, but none of them are actually helping, or none of them are actually getting down to the root cause.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I hope that I'm not just another number or another person that people see, but I can actually make an impact in some way.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_05: That's beautiful.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_05: Do you know?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_05: More than just an athlete.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_05: So on this whole career path, Finn, if I I turn to you and I'm interested now, at what point did you start to realise, hey, I'm gonna leave Team Australia sailing and do something else?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_05: It's a good one.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_05: There are too many stories of bankruptcies, mental health issues, and unfortunately suicide.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think it's time to act.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_05: Every year we see thousands of athletes that reach a point where they need to consider their life activity sports.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_05: This might be a retirement, injury, or they need to juggle your careers between sport and a job.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_05: As a former English professional footballer, I have somehow managed to transition from sport into banking, strategy, innovation, and now life coach, career practitioner, and founder of the Second Wind Academy.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_05: So I want to help those around me find their career secondwind.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_05: Find me on Insta or through my new Facebook group, Second Wind Academy, where I'd love to know your thoughts and suggestions.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of two two parts of an answer.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was something I always knew.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: I always knew no matter what, there was there was something more than the goal, which was an Olympic gold medal.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it was in sailing, I had other sailing goals, and I I also wanted to get out and do something in a career.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Had no idea what that looked like.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I I started to seriously consider it probably about a year out or even six months out, sort of got to the end of the Paris Olympics, and I was like, well, all right, what am I gonna do?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna sign up for another four years.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: In that case, it could be unsuccessful.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm like, well, then what am I doing?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my thought process, really, from that six months out.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_05: And in terms of that thinking, that thought process, were you able to discuss it with anybody else in your circle to make it a little bit more certain?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Parents, massive one, close friends, something I'd I genuinely discussed with the well-being side with the team, but it was also something with a greater network.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I had some of the owners that I was sailing with who were already in business and that kind of thing, that I was starting to pick their brain a bit more and was just trying to see what else was out there.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: I just had spent a lot of time being an athlete and I didn't even know what else was out there, so I was unsure.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_05: So once you had the idea, time to leave, gonna have to do something else.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_05: What's the first thing that you did?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_05: I drank a lot of coffee.
• 20:59
  unknown: Okay.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_05: I was wondering where that was going.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean you drank a lot of coffee, Finn?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: So drank a lot of coffee, and I say that because all of a sudden, over years of sailing and years of being an athlete, I had heaps of contacts, and I just started picking people off.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Hey, you want to go to coffee coffee?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get coffee.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I I had no idea what I wanted to do.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: I did a business degree because I didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I left sport because I had no idea what I wanted to do.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, I've got to figure this out.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I just I started meeting with people in in my network.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of them were sailors, and and that was sort of how I started to piece it all together.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_05: And how did it start to come together?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_05: We talked today about you being in project management and consulting.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_05: Talk me through, or talk us through how did you make that happen?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was just a bit of a chunk of the people that I had chatted with, um, those people in property development and project management and construction.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's That sector was covered, and there was people representing it and going, Yeah, this is great, I love it, you should give it a go.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know any different, so I was like, Great, let's do it.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'd already started trying to apply for different jobs, super challenging.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not having any talk to us about that.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: What made it challenging?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: No degree, no experience, and you're a full-time athlete at that point.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Not exactly desirable.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was just trying to piece it together and try and get some experience.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: But getting your foot in the door, like with your network with people you know, that's how you're gonna make it happen.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you get your foot in the door, Finn?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, funny that this point, probably about a year ago, maybe a little bit more, I was I was casting the net, stringing heaps of coffee, and I was casting the net.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was I was sending LinkedIn requests to people, I was jazzing up my LinkedIn, I was doing, I was applying for jobs.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I applied for two jobs simultaneously.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: One of them was with a project management company in Sydney, uh run by a guy, Melvin Fenn, and Maria's in the room today.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I applied with him and and had a chat with him, and he was keen.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: He loved the idea of having an athlete work with him.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thought that was cool.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then simultaneously, I also messaged Ryan on LinkedIn.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think I followed the podcast for a couple of years and I was like, what's going on?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's chat.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I was casting the net pretty wide at that point, just trying to have conversations.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_05: And so last couple of questions that I've got, first for you, Finn, and then for you, Desley, before I open out to the audience.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_05: The role that you got, the first role that you were successful in, was not based on practical work experience.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you think helped you get that role?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: It came from two sides.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to find an employer who gets it, who understands that there's a that call it the athlete edge, that there's so these skills that athletes bring.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: But as an athlete, you've got to you've got to sell yourself and you gotta realize that all the stuff you're doing as a campaign as an athlete, that all transfers into something else.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd realize pretty quickly that I was like, hey, I'm shifting boats around the world, okay, logistics and management, and hey, I'm doing a budget, okay, financial.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then I could start to sell that story a little bit.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_05: Good man.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_05: There's a lot just in the practical things that you do as an athlete that are very transferable, but often we just need a different perspective to help us to see that.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm glad you've you've managed to get that and begin the next part of your career, your second win in a good style.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_05: Deslie, my last question to you.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I say that, I might ask more, but last question really is so when you think about your career at the moment, you've got representing your country and a sport you love, and you've got work.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_05: How do you see pulling those together can help you when it's time to move on to your next chapter?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think probably within the last two years, I actually really now understand that I'm a person before I'm an athlete.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, you need to remember that athletes, we do this every single day.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people say, oh, don't make it your identity.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're more than your sport.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: But when you do it every day, it's actually harder said it's easier said than done.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's easier said than done.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I think because I've built such a good community outside of my sport and I have such a good team at work, I always say to myself now, like, if this gets taken away from me tomorrow, I will be okay.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the end of the world.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, it's just sport.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: When I lose, that's what I tell myself, at the end of the day, it's just sport.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: When I got fourth place at the Commuth Games, which was very heartbreaking, at the end of the day, it's just sport.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think with this new mindset, it'll be a lot easier for me to transition out of my sport.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_05: Wonderful.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_05: Well said.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna open it up to the to the floor since we have everybody here.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_05: What questions do you have or thoughts that perhaps um came about from listening to Desley and and Finn share a bit of their story?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be shy.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: It goes to the skills that you developed in your athletic to career as a sailor and thinking about how they apply to business and how they apply to the employment that you go into.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: And for context, I've supported athletes with athlete development, trying to educate them around there's gonna be an inevitable retirement for you at some point.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: So, what are you gonna be doing when your retirement comes?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: Think about skills that you've got and that you're developing now as an athletic.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: How do you use those skills when you go into your in career endeavours once you stop the sporting pursuits?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Good question.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like your point that sport will end at some point.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds doom and gloom, but it's it's so true.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: At the start of my career, I I would have this conversation with whoever it was, and and I just wouldn't believe it.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And even up until two years before I I stopped, I didn't believe it.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: But it does, it does end, no matter who you are.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter if you win a gold medal at the Olympics, it's it it ends, and that's and that's fine because it's just sport, right?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, using the skills and going into more business context, just an interesting one.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: You you're trying to find the parallels and see what do you like, what are you what are you good at.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I I think the most important message and something that I like looking back in hindsight was beneficial.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was like you gotta just have a crack.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: The amount of athletes still that I I chat to don't know what they're gonna do, but they're they don't know how to start.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't matter what it is.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like even if you're gonna fail on the first time or or you don't figure it out after the first time, like you just gotta try.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um you just gotta, yeah.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it doesn't matter if it's a like a conversation with someone trying to get your foot in the door or you actually have a job.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's just you gotta you gotta be open.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's a good question.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_05: And uh in terms of those transferable skills, and I'd I'd add to it, we you everyone who works with me knows I'll always use sporting analogies with everything.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_05: And the beautiful thing about youth fin is you literally were on the boat.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_05: So when you talk about strategy, when you talk about teamwork, are you on the boat or off the boat?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_05: And it's very good, you're able to do very well when we talk about command and control, and if the captain's directing everyone towards a North Star, but other people are pointing the sail to go somewhere else, you've got to try and reset that strategy.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're we're tragic sports references, and uh even in uni as well, if there wasn't a concept that I couldn't quite get, I don't I'd try and go, all right, like if this is a strategy concept and I'm on a boat and I'm literally working with a team, because that that's typically my role is the tactician and strategist on a boat.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, if this works on a boat, great.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: How do I apply it?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it was always a really cool transition that you'd see that.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, getting to work with teams now in business, it's like this is a sports team or this is a sailing team, and you can you see it from that lens, and then you can you can really get to play.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_06: Question, uh, probably to both of you.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_06: What what about the influence of other athletes?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_06: Do you see layers of athletes that had created I'm not saying mallocks, but had other things ticking on in their life to create some identity?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_06: Do you look at them and see they were more successful or they seemed happier in their in their sport?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_06: You thought, I want to be like that that had something else ticking along, or or did you see other athletes that were all in?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_06: So that's that's just what you have to do.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_06: Um just influence that maybe you've had on other people and then influence that others had That's a really good question.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: In a perfect world, I would be a full-time athlete because I think because I work, there's a lot of things that I can't do.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I can't recover as much as I want to and things like that.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: But on the other side of that, at the Commonwealth Games, we had a few athletes who are actually doctors or starting to be nurses and things like that.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was so interesting hearing their perspective because they really like the balance.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think sport can become very overwhelming sometimes, and having that balance helps.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have athletes who do so many different things.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Some athletes don't work at all and they just train full-time and that works for them, and other athletes work two jobs or one job and that works for them.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it really depends on the person themselves.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: I personally like having a balance because I can shut off and actually just work or go to training and shut off from work as well.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's a duality that I really like in that.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: I saw the inverse.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I saw a lot of athletes go all in.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was one of them.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, one or a couple definitely come to mind.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Won a gold medal at the in Rio, first gold medal, and I'll I'll never forget.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: But he's told me that you're only a gold medalist for six months after you win it.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he thought that the phone was just gonna start ringing as soon as he had the medal around his neck and it and it didn't.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then he got back and the ticker tape parade's over, and then it's like, now what?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, am I gonna still be an athlete?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then he really had a challenge to build himself up again and and start that, and yeah, he's just said, Yeah, you're a gold medalist for six months.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's tricky.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_06: All of us probably work in this space, we we try and say it's not gonna detract performance just by having something else.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_06: So it's whether or not as happy to generally believe that or whether people are taking you easy options and say I've got to be hoary.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it just depends who you ask, right?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like it some people are gonna say it it is a distraction, and you can argue, yeah, it probably is, probably is a l small distraction.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Some people, that's a really good thing.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: You need a distraction in your life to keep your brain ticking or tr do something else.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: But and for other people, they need to be all in.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: So depends who you are.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Depends who you ask as well.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, correct.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_07: I didn't like the aspirin skills that you were talking about.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_07: Wow, I think that's really important, and you would see that like in your jobs or maybe into like more uh standard like workforce environment.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_07: And these um all the skills you learn as professional athletes, they're really like skills that executives and business owners need.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_07: Like you're highly resilient, you perform under pressure, you have like this these amazing skills.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_07: So you kind of already mature it really early, and you're already at that stage that a lot of these executives are business owners, or want to be executives and business owners, they're not they are not there yet.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_07: So I think um you're kind of like the end of the curve, you just maybe you don't have technical skills, which you can obviously learn um as well.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_07: But I think um would you agree or disagree with that?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_07: Like do you think like all of the training and all the situations and experiences you've been in have put you in a situation where you partly do have those skills maybe ahead of other people in the nation?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'll challenge this and I'll actually disagree.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Really interesting one because yes, uh in some ways I totally agree.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Transferable skills spoken about that.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the the challenge of transferring, found it really hard as an athlete.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: I had faced all the adversity, the training, could tell you stories, I've put myself in life or death situations, all that sort of stuff.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I found at work that I was stressed, and I had to take a step back and go, like, why is that?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've I'm so used to dealing with stress and pressure, but now it's something different.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's uh it was an interesting one that it kind of caught me as you're feeling different emotions, you're overwhelmed, trying something new, you're jumping into the deep end, that kind of thing, that all of a sudden maybe it doesn't transfer as easy as you think.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's all possible, but yeah, it was a it was an interesting experience because it's like, yeah, all of a sudden I I was putting a wetsuit on six days of the week, and then now I'm now I'm sitting in an office.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's totally different context.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, interesting challenge.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Such a great question.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_05: Do you feel ahead as you come out of sport?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_05: Do you feel ahead of your peers?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_05: Because a lot of the soft skills that in the corporate world we go on retreats for, we'll spend a week away, we'll go doing executive courses and fly around the world in order to be better leaders, work better as a team, focus on elite performance, deal with pressure.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_05: You did that day in the you did it six days a week in a wetsuit.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_05: You do it at least 50 hours a week right now, but to get to where you want to get to.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_05: I guess, yeah, do you feel ahead of your peers because of that?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm, it is a good question.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say in some instances, yes.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, I'm a big believer in having short-term memory.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: So if something bad happens.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry, what did you say?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, if I go through something bad or something's happened, I can shake it off and just keep going or keep focusing on the task at hand.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I've noticed that um sometimes my peers will dwell on it for a very long time.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I'll just be like, Can you get over it?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, can you get up and dust yourself off and keep going?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I think sport has really taught me resilience and not just in my sport, but in everything.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a big one when it transfers into the workplace.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one thing where I would say, definitely, but I think I definitely have to keep having some life experiences to fully answer that question.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_05: Wonderful.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_05: Great, great question.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_05: Great questions from everybody.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_05: And look, I'm I'm also conscious of time and I'm aware that Desley has to catch a flight uh very soon, very glam.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_05: There we go.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry, happy dash.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but look, Desley Finn, I just want to say a massive thank you for being up here today, sharing your story, dealing with my questions and the questions from the audience, and really appreciate you taking the time out today.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having us.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for listening to this week's episode.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_05: Reshaping a career is a team sport.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_05: Don't do it alone.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_05: If you want help working out your next step, it's all at secondwindadvisory.com forward slash academy.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_05: Book a conversation with me there, and the link is also in the show notes.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_05: Now, a couple more things.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_05: Send this episode to the person you thought of while you were listening.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_05: That's how this show reaches the people who need it.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_05: I'm Ryan Gonzalvis, take it easy, and I'll see you next time.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, before I do go, I want to drop a short thanks to Claire at Betty Brook Design, Nancy at Sabit Podcast Solutions, and to read at copying content by load.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_05: Without them, this show would never have got together.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.