Rob Spitz: Finally working in a field of passion and why I joined Globatalent for Blockchain Sport Decentralization

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Globatalent

9 min readMar 28, 2018

Despite being a young age, I had given up on my own personal career dreams and resigned myself to never having the opportunity to work in a field where I have the belief and passion that the work being done is going to make a change to an industry that I love. In this article, I wanted to share my personal story, reveal my own reasons for joining the Globatalent team and illustrate how career aspirations can come true.

I felt inspired to tell my story after the news broke that Reading FC have dismissed their manager Jaap Stam after a series of bad results. Nostalgia kicked in when I realised how instrumental Jaap Stam and his teammates of the 1998/99 treble winning Manchester United side were to moulding my life and the passion that I have embroiled deep inside of me. As a very young child, I never showed too much interest in sport despite having an influential brother who was obsessed with football, cricket, tennis, badminton and any sport he seemed natural at conquering. My brother persevered throughout my childhood for two reasons, firstly because his brotherly love was so strong he wanted to share his interests with me and secondly because, despite a seven year age difference, he wanted someone to play the sports with. Growing up in 1990’s Manchester meant that our older sister was far more interested in the music scene and listening to Oasis and Take That over playing games in the rain with her younger siblings.

My brother regularly tried to get me to show an interest in football and when I was 7 years old, he told me that every single person in the world had a football team that they supported and I had to make my choice. I remember clearly as he pinned me to the ground and told me that I had to make the decision — “United or City?” he asked. “Which one do you support?” I immediately threw back at him. “Manchester United” he answered with a proud glare in his eyes. Always one to start a revolution, cheekily and without a thought I declared “Then I will support Manchester City!” My brother quenched his fist and hit me on the top of my right arm. From that moment, I was a Manchester United fan and I only have him to thank for bringing such a passion into my life.

Growing up, I knew about George Best, Sir Bobby Charlton and Denis Law from the stories that parents and elders would tell. I was too young to remember Eric Cantona as a footballer — he retired in 1997 but thinking back to that time, I always remember the excitement and passion people around me had about him and despite knowing near to nothing about football, it was hard to escape the chants of “oo aah Cantona”.

The summer of 1998 is when football changed from being something I pretended to care about for my brothers sake to a genuine passion of mine. The World Cup was in France and as a child, the summers seemed longer and filled with more time than the reality. As a geek and a statistician, I decided that this World Cup for me was about learning trivia and enjoying sharing my pointless facts with my peers around me who did not have a care in the world for the words that came out of my mouth.

I was bought a France ’98 football from a relation visiting from the United States and I remember clearly watching the first match of the tournament. Brazil played Scotland and won 2–1. John Collins scored a penalty, Tommy Boyd scored an own goal and I was fascinated that several of Brazil’s players only had one name while Scotland Goalkeeper Jim Leighton only had one tooth. The World Cup continued and my family continued to indulge my new love of the game, I was bought a special book which you filled with collectable coins of all the England team and I was bought various magazines about club football. That summer, Jaap Stam signed for Manchester United, joining new players Jesper Blomqvist and Dwight Yorke to form a historic Manchester United squad. I had been to Manchester United games before but never showed an interest and that year I was fortunate to go to several more. I even had the opportunity to see Eric Cantona create an XI to play a special match to commemorate the 1958 Munich Disaster.

The history books explain the rest, in my lifetime, our current form is the only time Manchester United are not dominating. From the first year I decided to follow club football, my team won everything year, after year, after year. Unfortunately for me, my success on the school pitches and in the parks were the complete opposite. During a lunchtime break, I scored one of the best own goals my school friends ever witnessed, a success/failure that I have never forgotten. Despite not having the natural ability, my brother got the little brother that he yearned to play in the garden with and my personal sporting successes include smashing a penalty past him (despite me being half his height) along with spinning a cricket ball through his bat and onto our homemade stumps.

Sport never left me as a child and as I entered my teenage years and carried on into academia, I did not know what to study. I had no real interests other than football and television. I carried on in education and studied subjects I had no actual passion for but still had strong interests in, in particular, politics and criminal law.

Leaving University, like many others, I initially struggled to find the right career path for me. I chose to work in the sales department of a company within the finance sector — throughout my studies I always worked in jobs that involved me dealing with the public, whether in retail or working in pubs which I would deliberately choose because they showed the football matches that I wanted to see. The first ‘serious’ job that I had after University was filled with great working achievements, exceeding all targets and KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) with minimal effort. An incredible confidence boost to my natural sales ability as I was working in a very tough environment where staff members tend not to stay within the business after three months due to the competitive nature of the sales job. After a year had passed, I was to have my first appraisal with a manager who was still in her 20’s and I walked in with a huge level of confidence as I had had an incredible working year. She treated the appraisal as a ‘life lesson’ and I remember very clearly that we did not talk about the numerous achievements that I had completed that year, instead she wanted to know about me and what I wanted in life. Eventually she asked the dreaded question “What are your passions?”, I knew I couldn’t say “sports” so I whimpered “I don’t know”. We talked for over an hour and we still could not come to a conclusion of what I was passionate about on a working level, I was lost and did not know what to do. I searched deep inside of me to find out what passion I had that I could work in and I knew there was nothing as I couldn’t be a sportsman, an event that caused me to express emotion as soon as I was alone in my room.

Several years have passed since that moment, I had accepted the reality that I could not have a career I was passionate about. I did several different sales, account management and business development roles but I found myself always bored and in a position where I would never talk about my job with anyone I came across in my life. Secretly, several years ago, while working full time, I was approached by a man who edited a football blog and he offered me the opportunity to write for him in my own time. I jumped at the idea, It was fun and I was loving writing about my passion — the articles were short and often to just name the team sheets or reproduce another media outlets transfer speculation but I would find that when given a task from the editor, I would drop any social plans and rush straight to my laptop. I only shared these articles with my closest friends, one of which studied journalism and as a result found scrutiny when I was searching for praise. The constructive criticism received then has made me more determined when I write nowadays to impress and prove how far I have come.

Only last year, when I moved to Barcelona, I remember explaining to new friends that I work in sales because I have accepted that I can never work in an industry where I have passion. It never deterred me and even though in the past I have sold products I strongly didn’t believe in, I have worked to the best of my ability and tried to show that my work attitude overrides the lack of passion and belief I had in the product that I was selling.

Over Christmas 2017, I had the first conversation with my now CEO Sunil Bhardwaj. He told me about his project within the sports industry and how he needed someone who could take control of several aspects of the business including social media, content writing, english translations, media communications, PR amongst others. As I read about the Globatalent project, the excitement of what they were doing made me realise that this opportunity was one which I had to take by proving that I am capable and talented. That day, I saw one of my oldest childhood friends. I showed him the Globatalent website and we watched Globatalent videos instead of catching up about our movements over the previous twelve months. He looked at me with shock, as he has known me since we were toddlers, he had never seen me passionate or excited about work before. With one stare, he made me realise that this was my dream opportunity. I knew that I had found a company that can utilise my skills and I would naturally work harder as this would be my first time working in an environment that I am passionate about.

Career aspirations can come true

He pointed out a hurdle, I may love sports, I may live sports, I may know their vision and I may be able to see how they will change the sports industry but I know absolutely nothing about blockchain. The discussion from Sunil was that he will teach me and I will learn, which I have. Now I share the same vision of the whole co-founding team, I can truly see how with blockchain decentralization, the sports industry will change and now I have an additional passion. I am passionate that Globatalent can create a blockchain platform that will change the sports industry for the better. I share the passion that Globatalent will offer amazing athletes who currently can not make it in their chosen sporting field due to economic reasons the opportunity to do so due to the Globatalent platform. I also share the vision that we will be giving sports back to its true owners — the fans, if I was not fortunate enough to be a part of this project on the back end, I would be working in a job that I did not like and I would be given the opportunity to use the front end and have the ability to contribute to my passion. I believe that there are many people in the world who have jobs and careers that they struggle to truly care about because their only passion is sports and the Globatalent platform allows these people to experience a new level of contribution to their sporting passion that they could not before.

For me, I have the excitement of being able to announce first to the world that we have official supporters such as FC Barcelona’s Luis Suarez and Real Betis defender Marc Bartra. I wake up every single morning thinking about our project and what we are going to do to change the industry, I talk about the project to everyone I come across and due to finally working in my passion, I live and breath the project that I work for. I contribute evenings and weekends to this project because I truly believe that Globatalent will not only change athletes lives but will change the ordinary working person’s life whose main passion is sports.

I wanted to share my story because like the athletes that Globatalent will be helping, each and every one of us is fighting for their dream. I have been fortunate to enter into a company that fulfils my dream and in turn I will strive daily to make the project a success and help fulfil Globatalents purpose; to fight to make these talented young athletes achieve their sporting dreams. Blockchain decentralization is going to change the sports industry for the better and I am proud to be a part of the team that shares this vision.

I welcome anyone to get in touch with me via rob@globatalent.com and if to join the Telegram Network Group where you will receive daily updates about Globatalent from myself.

By Rob Spitz

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