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A former professional cyclist turned broker is planning to roll out a new program that will provide financial education to young athletes.
Speaking to The Adviser, former Australian National Road Race championship and new-to-industry broker Travis Meyer said that he aims to offer financial education to young athletes through junior development cycling program XSpeed Australia.
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In The Adviser’s Elite Broker podcast, the Finance Detective broker said: “[There are] some things in the works, very early stages, that I’m discussing with XSpeed Australia about rolling out some information sessions for athletes to give them a more rounded approach about their sport but also trying to give them a bit of financial understanding as well.
“I think that’s pretty important that kids understand the financial side, but also being young athletes specifically, making sure they understand there’s important things they need to take into account if they’re going to go down the path of being a professional athlete and having that back-up.”
He added: “[The program] is very important to me and something I want to be really involved in.”
The WA-based broker believes that XSpeed Australia, developed by Amanda O’Connor, “takes a holistic view of young athletes’ lives” to ensure that they have a “good life balance”.
The executive also spoke about the struggles he faced when he retired from professional cycling, and he hopes that his new finance program will equip young athletes with the tools necessary to overcome similar challenges.
Mr Meyer shared: “I guess at a certain point, it was a few years before I actually retired, I was struggling to find a new team and a new contract in Europe and that was what really sort of frightened me quite a bit. And I went through a bit of a tough time in that period because I didn’t have the understanding that if cycling ended for me, I didn’t actually have anything else.
“I just assumed that I’d be racing until I’m 35, make a ton of money and retire and do what I want, but that’s not the reality for 98 per cent of people.
“So when I was young, it would have been really great to have a program like [this] that has a more rounded approach instead of going straight down the line of feeling like a professional athlete when you’re a kid.”
Mr Meyer also noted that he wasn’t surprised that so many former athletes like rugby league icon Steve Menzies and former Olympian Michael Delany were transitioning into broking. He believes that the attributes possessed by athletes are suitable for the finance industry.
“[If] you look at [the] brokerage industry, it’s all about having drive, commitment, being stable and riding those waves. So, I think there [are] so many different things that athletes can transfer across,” the broker said.
“It’s actually transferred even more than I initially had thought.... In this industry, there [are] just ups and downs on a consistent basis. So, one week you can be having a blinder and the next week everything is sort of going pear-shaped. Whether that’s applications moving through to settlement or different issues that can occur, that is your day in, day out life as an athlete as well. Things can happen that are outside of your control, but for whatever reason, you’re not performing, etc. So, I’ve managed to carry over a lot of those same attributes to broking, and I think it is an industry that requires all the same sort of things, just obviously not from a physical sense!
“But in terms of getting out and about and having those goals to reach, it’s exactly the same mindset and you need to be very disciplined and need to be very stable to ride the waves of the ups and downs.”
Find out more about Travis Meyer and what he thinks of his first year of broking in this week’s episode of Elite Broker.
[Related: From professional cyclist to mortgage broker]
