Welcome to Career Crashers, where we tell the stories of those who are not content to wait around following rules and hoping for good things to happen. Great careers aren't found, they're forged. It's time to crash the party. Alright, on this episode of Career Crashers, I am joined by Ben Mercer.
Really excited to have you on here, Ben. I was introduced to you by a mutual acquaintance and went to look you up. And man, you are definitely a career crasher. So let's start right with the punchline.
You played professional rugby and then made the transition from that into what? What was that? What came next and how did that go? Yeah, I mean, that's still in progress, I suppose.
But to begin with, I kind of took a while after I took a bit of holiday, after I immediately stopped playing, kind of went away, took a couple of trips. Then I started experimenting, did a couple of months of work in different businesses near where I'm from back in the UK. And since then, I've kind of transitioned into more kind of freelance writing, digital project managing, kind of hybrid role with various different people. So that's what I'm doing in the minute.
So let's wind it back a little bit. How did you get into rugby at the professional level in the first place? Is that something you had as like a childhood dream or goal? Yeah, I mean, I started playing rugby once at school, so I was only about seven.
And once I was kind of in my teens, I started getting picked for like local representative teams and got into the academy system of like this professional club bath, which are one of the bigger teams in the UK. And I got picked in that junior system. So once I was in that, then I sort of developed the goal of playing professionally. And I actually went to university for a few years, which probably delayed that a little bit.
But after that, then, yeah, I got a professional contract. And yeah, I just did that. So this, like most of your childhood and most of your early life and early career, was rugby the only focus? Like, were you thinking then, what am I going to do when I'm done playing rugby?
Or did you not have any thought about that? I was one of those kids, I was probably quite annoying. So I was sort of, I was always in all sports teams, but I was quite good in my schoolwork as well. So I was super busy, I didn't really have any spare time.
So I was always just trying to do my work and do my sports practice. And yeah, I mean, I never had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do for a job, apart from playing rugby. My parents are doctors, so I'd sort of seen their lifestyle and knew that that wasn't for me. You know, I saw how busy they were and stuff.
So at least I knew a few things I didn't want to do. That's a common theme, by the way, that knowing what you don't want to do is more important often early on than knowing exactly what you do want to do, you know? Yeah, yeah. And I found since leaving sport, actually, because it kind of got to the point with rugby where I knew I didn't want to do it anymore.
And then actually, with the kind of little experiments I was doing after I stopped, I was like, okay, well, I like this about that, but I didn't like that. So, you know, like you said, it was just as valuable, funny things I didn't like as things I did. So tell me more about playing rugby at the professional level. I mean, how many years did you do this?
And I'm assuming that means your whole life is essentially about, like, maintaining and taking care of your body and preparing for matches. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, I think that's one of the weird things about sport is, in a way, you kind of think, I'm not actually working that many hours because obviously you can only train so many times in the day and all that sort of thing. But actually, you're being paid for all the time you spend looking after yourself in your downtime, you know, you're being paid to not go out drinking or, you know, to not go skateboarding or whatever it is, you know, that you actually might like to do with your spare time.
So it's a funny way around when you think about it kind of per hour, you know, you're always on duty, really, whereas, you know, other people, they get to go home from work and put it down to get about it. You kind of, you're kind of always on, which is a, which is not where, you know, some of the respect for it. When did you decide it was time to hang up the cleats? I don't know if you wear cleats in rugby.
Yeah, yeah, no, there's no cleats, but, yeah, well, boots. Okay, boots, yeah, yeah, same thing. Yeah, so the last year I was playing was in France, it was my fourth year at the same team, and it had become a little bit like those sort of problems with the money of the team and things like that. And I was getting older, so for rugby to play, you know, in the 30s, you're retiring, and I was turning 30.
I stopped kind of enjoying what I was doing, and the team was quite happy for me to move on to it. And after that, I was a bit like, well, you know, this has gone great, you've had a great time, but it's not going to get easier to kind of change jobs, so you might as well just, you know, take it on the chair and get on with it. Wow, so when you made that decision, did you have something lined up or that you wanted to do next, or what was your immediate sort of next step? No, I didn't have anything lined up.
I looked into playing rugby somewhere else a little bit. There wasn't anything that stood out for me, and there are certain ways about it you can do. You can kind of go part-time, you can find a team somewhere else. So Hong Kong and Singapore are particularly good destinations for that, where people go and play part-time, and they kind of get a job for a sponsor or through the club, and then they kind of figure it out after that.
But I had kind of personal ties back here, so that wasn't really an avenue I seriously considered. So for me, it was more like, okay, you're not in that bad spot, so you've got a lot of runway to kind of take the time and experiment a bit rather than have to kind of get a kind of job immediately, I think. So that can be worse sometimes, too, though, because I know, like, if you're forced to do something, you have no choice. In some ways, it relieves the mental burden of, like, picking the perfect thing.
And I know sometimes if you're in that position where you've got a little bit of runway, you've got some time, did that put a lot of pressure on you to, like, figure out the perfect next thing? Oh, I've got to do something really grand or whatever. You know, what was that process like, and kind of where are you now since then? No, I'd say that's definitely, that's actually a really good point, because if you're kind of forced, you just jump in something, get on with it, and there you go, and then you're just moving.
Whereas, yeah, if you, when you've got a bit of time, you do end up kind of overthinking the next step, potentially. And I am a bit of a procrastinator. I love researching. I'm a big reader.
You know, I'll happily go deep on a topic. So, you know, if you think with careers, you know, I'm pretty happy to sort of do all that. But actually, you're right, sometimes you're best off just taking a bit of a leap in something, and if it doesn't figure out, it's not that big a problem. Whereas, you know, if you have, the more time you have, the more pressure you can put on the decision.
I think I've got to a point now where I'm kind of getting past that mindset a little bit, but that's part of the reason I kind of got into your work and people like Seth Godin, people like talking about shipping work and just getting things done and finishing things and moving on. So that's something I'm trying to kind of improve my own approach now. Yeah, yeah, I'll never forget when I first came across the book, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and I've been challenged by a friend to start blogging every day, do daily blogging. That, like, oh, it's got to be great, it's got to be perfect, you know, everything that I put out has to be this wonderful thing.
And the biggest thing that I realized when I start, and, you know, I've seen this a lot of people, is first you're afraid that, you know, people are going to misunderstand your thing or it's not going to be good. And then you realize that, well, the first problem is that nobody's reading it. First you need to get readers before you can have readers that get upset or dislike you. Okay, so I went on your site, which is beautiful, by the way, very well designed, and you've got all kinds of interesting content here.
You're doing some consulting work, learning a lot of no-code tools to help people in businesses, you know, with the various processes that they're using, optimizing them with some really cool tools. You've obviously taught yourself that. You've got this really cool section on scholar-athletes, and you have all this sort of research you put in on different people. Tell me a little bit more about this idea of the scholar-athlete, and when did this come about, and what are you hoping to do with this, if you know?
Yeah, it's interesting. So there's a Plato quote saying, scholar-athlete is the ideal citizen, the man of thought, the man of action. So, I mean, you could obviously be nice to include women in that as well, and anyone else who'd like to be in there. But it's just, I think, your kind of physical well-being and your kind of mental and emotional well-being, they're all kind of tied together.
And so I was looking for people in particular who are kind of at the top of athletics or, you know, professional sport, but who do have a kind of other outlet or passion that they're kind of pursuing at the same time. And I think partly for athletes, they're sort of almost encouraged to be monomaniacal in pursuit of their sport. And actually, with things that are coming out now, I mean, there's a great book, Range, by David Epstein, that sort of advocates the generalists and how sometimes if you're kind of a multi-potentiate or somebody who can kind of see into various different areas, you might find solutions that, you know, potentially don't present themselves to other people. So I was interested in finding athletes, really, who kind of did have this other outlet for their expression.
So I really like Jalen Brown, the kind of Boston Celtics guy. He seems to have loads of stuff going on, languages, instruments. He's got a sort of investment thing he's doing, I think. So it's kind of people like that.
I was interested in their approach to life. And that's the sort of also the creative approach I like. So my kind of creative hero is Kanye West, you know, who is somebody, people I think get the wrong idea about him. And he's someone who's quite happy to have a kind of beginner growth mindset and go and find other domain experts where he doesn't know anything about it.
He'll kind of join up with them. He'll learn everything from them, support their work, and then he'll kind of integrate that into what he's doing. So it's that approach I find really inspiring. That's kind of the thing I'm trying to do for myself.
Yeah, where that sort of will go, if I can do any kind of professional work in that regard, I'm not sure. But, you know, I'm just going to follow that interest in a minute. Yeah, that is really inspiring. It's interesting.
I've noticed a trend. I'm a big sports fan of kind of all the major American sports anyway. And I've noticed that just so much in recent, you know, years that athletes, professional athletes, one, they have a lot more agency than they ever did before in terms of managing their brand and things like that, even just on the business end of contracts. But two, there's been, it seems, an increasing recognition of the needs to build a more holistic life to prepare for life after sports, for things in addition to sports, even while you're playing.
And I've noticed in like the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem, there's more and more professional athletes are starting to try to get involved in doing like angel investing, which may or may not be a good idea necessarily. But just the concept of being more than just playing a sport and then you're done. And with, you know, I mean, we've all heard this sort of anecdotally, and I think there's some research to back up that like when you retire, like you kind of die, like when you stop working, sometimes literally. And in sports, when that comes so early, 30, 40 at the latest for most sports, you know, that can be a really tough thing.
I remember in previous generations, you'd often see, you know, people who play professional sports, one, they might get like super out of shape, or they just kind of be like washed up and wouldn't have anything to do. I think that's more rare now. There's more of a recognition, but that's only for maybe the higher profile people that I'm familiar with. I know there's tons of people who play at the collegiate level or the semi-pro level or have shorter careers.
And I've got to imagine that's a very difficult transition to make. So I'm curious, what are you, I know you've talked to other pro rugby players or other people coming out of other sports. If you were to like do something or offer some thoughts or advice to people in that situation, like what gets you excited? What do you think needs to happen there to help that occur?
I think, well, there's a great quote about athletes where it could apply to them. Great men die twice, and it's like they die once as great and once as men. And that's the thing, you know, sports people. It's like, you know, you go from being particularly to the top, top level, you know, top of the world, and then, you know, people move on from you very quickly.
But I think the thing that's kind of applicable to anybody is that to hang your hat on one thing is a very dangerous thing for you to do. Because, you know, if that thing falls through for you, and you don't have to be an athlete if that's happened, you could, you know, maybe work your hands and, you know, you can break your hand or, you know, whatever it is. And it's easily done. So I suppose diversifying your identity somehow.
So, you know, joining up communities of people who are into different things or, you know, pursuing other interests, like no matter in sort of how big or small a way, you know, will help you kind of negotiate, I think. So I think the other things with kind of sometimes the athletes, like collegiate athletes, probably an example where, you know, they're not being paid. And I think in the U.S. that's obviously quite contentious.
But I think with those people, they probably identify more as an athlete than maybe someone who's a top athlete because they're somebody who does that thing for free, you know. And a top athlete, you know, they get paid and they get the kind of attendant benefits of sponsors and status and, you know, a really well-followed Instagram account. But I think the kind of people who do things for the love of the game, people who are in a bit more precarious position there, you know, in some ways. I love the phrase you said to diversify your identity a little bit.
I think that's a really good way to think about it. And, you know, it's interesting, as I was looking up your website and everything, you've got all this interesting stuff there. It really coincides with something that I talk about a lot, which is kind of having a body of work and a way that your interests and abilities, things you're learning about are findable and discoverable. Because, you know, everybody, whether you're a professional athlete or you're totally specialized in any one thing, everybody has other interests as well.
And I've often been surprised where I'll talk to somebody and they'll say, oh, I'm really passionate about, you know, whatever, personal finance. And I'll go Google them and I would never know that. And if I could know it, if it was findable, there's all kinds of opportunities that might arise there. And so I feel like a lot of people, they feel like maybe they have to be an expert before they share something.
But as you mentioned, Kanye West is an example, like not being afraid to be a novice and sharing your learnings out loud. Your website has some of that stuff, too. Hey, here's some things that I'm currently learning, I'm currently thinking about. It doesn't mean I'm saying I'm an expert here, but I'm sharing this.
And that way, if somebody sees that and they're like, oh, my gosh, you're interested in this, I was this other guy. Let me connect you. Because opportunities are really, I think those are really important, not being afraid to kind of learn out loud and let your identity, your sort of brand be seen and be known by people. And the generalist idea, too, not just for athletes, but it's kind of what makes us the most human.
You know, when you think about automation or whatever, replacing different jobs and different functions, the more creative and broad and like, you know, the generalist, the tinkerer, that's kind of the human spirit. And keeping that cultivated, I think it's pretty important, you know. No, I agree. I think one of the things is also kind of like, almost like be weirder, like the more disparate things you can kind of combine that you probably already have within yourself, you know, like the more public, like you said, that you can make that, the more interesting you come across and the more people you're going to maybe be able to speak to or, you know, connect with.
Yeah, that's a great point. It's that nexus of interest often. So like for you, now, whatever else you do that's interesting, the fact that you can add professional rugby player and chef or and scholar or whatever, that's instantly more interesting than just one of those things. And I think that's a really cool.
So yeah, especially if you are specialized, it doesn't mean all hope is lost. That could be a huge advantage for whatever else you take that with you into. So give me just a little bit of what are your kind of goals for, you know, the next step, the next unit of time, however you're thinking about it. Yeah, well, this is something I'm constantly kind of trying to figure out for myself.
I just published a book and I'm thinking about how I can follow that up. And it's about playing rugby at the professional level, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's about, it's basically, it's based on the last four years that I've played, which are in France, but it sort of ducks off to talk about, you know, like beyond just myself.
So what it's like to be a professional at that level or, you know, maybe a particular issue around me taking drugs or, you know, like sort of things that crop up as topics around sport and living as an athlete. So I've just done that. And I think what I'd like to do is, I mean, it's partly a sort of project for me to cap my rugby career, which is nice to do, is also a bit of a kind of create your credentials or situation and learn a few new skills. So I'm thinking about maybe doing a few podcast episodes, like expanding on the themes of the book and speaking to different people who could kind of shed a bit more light on things I talk about in the book as well.
So I think as a first, you know, next step, that's something that I think I'm going to pursue. And then beyond that, you know, I'm trying to learn, like you said, these no-code tools and things for that, see if I can kind of spin up some digital products for myself. I love it. I love it.
That's interesting you said that the book is kind of an end cap to the, you know, the rugby. I have come to find that those are really important, kind of those symbolic, like, okay, I'm finishing one phase of life, but doing some kind of recap, writing about it, publishing a book about it, doing something to kind of give it a proper send-off, can be a really nice way to sort of get started into the next thing. So where can people find more about you and find your book and follow what you're up to? Well, people can find the book on Amazon.
It's there. It's called Fringes, Life on the Edge of Professional Rugby. And if anyone's find me, they can go to my website, which is benmercer.me, or they can, you know, find me on Twitter. And the handle is benmercer2, the number two.
Awesome. I'm going to go pick up the book. I'm just browsing the website and everything. You're a great writer.
You're very, like, clearly a good thinker and just an interesting person, so I can tell that you are living out what you're talking about here, kind of being more well-rounded, having a diverse identity. And it got me excited to see just the, you know, the willingness to share that stuff. And I'm excited for you on this next step in your journey. Thanks for joining us, man.
Hey, well, thanks for having me. You've been, you know, like reading your own work's been an inspiration for me while I've been making, you know, like taking these steps. So thanks for that. Thanks for having me.
Awesome, man. Keep in touch. Cheers. Like what you hear?
Go to Crash.co and join the career revolution. You want to share your own career crash story? Send it directly to me at Isaac at Crash.co.