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What if you don’t want to fight the traffic every day, and work in an office from nine-to-five? You can grin and bear it, or you can throw caution to the wind and follow your dreams. It worked for Ben Karpinski.
By Ben Karpinski*
I reached a crossroads in my life in 2009. I had a cushy job, but as great as it seemed, it wasn’t stimulating. I knew I had to change, but the options weren’t obvious.
My love of sport was a constant. I always wanted to write, but never followed through with it. This was my big chance. I quit my job. It felt great. I was going to make a fresh start, and be true to myself.
I was doing something that inspirational posters of beautiful sunsets always tell you to do. Follow your dreams.
But a little thing called unemployment quickly brought me back down to earth. My plan was to wake up and only have to worry about writing about sports. But there aren’t too many jobs like that, especially for someone with no qualifications or experience in the field.
I had never written before, so I worked my way into an advertising agency to learn how to do it. But I sure wasn’t living the life of Mad Men.
I stuck with it though, and on the side of writing adverts and campaigns, I started to write weekend sports previews on my blog, BK Sports. It was all very juvenile. I mostly spammed friends and family over email to read the posts.
I really needed to up my game, so with the help of a friend I created ‘TheBounce’ and developed a blog that looked less desperate. My spamming of contacts over email progressed to engaging with a growing audience on Twitter. After a year of hard work and a fair amount of Super Rugby coverage, I was finally getting somewhere.
I was still trying to be a copywriter to pay the bills, but the lessons were coming thick and fast. I considered writing about a variety of things, but realised the best chance I had was to stick with sportswriting, rugby in particular at the start, and to just speak from the heart. Formalise what the fans were thinking, and create content they would gravitate towards and share, rather than the tried and tested stuff.
It was hit and miss, but I developed a tone I could build on. Twitter continued to help me, as I could learn from others, and get exposed to what was out there. I used whatever people were talking about to build my audience. I live tweeted matches, wrote parody pieces, stats pieces, did loads of interviews, previews and reviews. Anything I could think of to get my name out there.
I won some awards, and my Twitter following went from hundreds into thousands, a big deal back then. I started getting paid for pieces. Me, finally getting paid money, to write about sport!
The paid pieces led to other cool opportunities, and in 2011, a trip of a lifetime to the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. Someone wanted me to go far away and write about sport. I was finally doing what I had set out to do. It was a huge change from the days of sitting in meetings, sleeping with my eyes open.
This year marks my 7th since turning away from the comforts of corporate employment. I now write as well as talk about sport for a living. I have more opportunities for growth than ever before.
I’m not scared of change in the slightest, as it led me to my dream job. I followed my dreams, just like the poster told me to. And I follow them further every single day.
- Ben is a freelance sports writer, MC and offers sports related content campaigns for brands. He is also the sports guy on Gareth Cliff’s morning show on CliffCentral.com where he gets the freedom to air his sporting views and ‘insights’.
- This article first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes. The opinions expressed in this piece are the writer’s own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.
