Reuben Williams
Last week, I was lucky enough to chat to one of the best storytellers of our time. No, it wasn’t Quentin Tarantino, but Reuben Williams: the founder of SportsGrad and an all-round great guy. SportsGrad is a podcast and membership community of over 800 people that provides coaching, networking and insights to help individuals break into the sports industry and land their dream job.
In 2005, alongside 83,000 others, Reuben was lucky enough to watch the Socceroos beat Uruguay and qualify for the FIFA World Cup after 32 years of disappointment. Firsthand, he saw the euphoria, connections and passion that sport can evoke; people high-fiving and hugging whoever was sitting next to them, jumping around as if they had won the lottery. It was then that he knew he had to be a part of the sports industry: he wanted to contribute to something able to unite people in this way.
In an industry known to be relationship focused, Reuben began networking during his Sports Management degree in 2017. His friends were keen on hearing what he was learning from these coffee chats, so he began recording and posting them on YouTube. This was the beginning of SportsGrad. At the end of that year, he secured his first job at Cricket Australia but wanted to continue helping students so he began career coaching after-hours from the Deakin University Library. Reuben did that up until COVID hit – a difficult time that turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Reuben saw COVID as an opportunity to go all-in on SportsGrad and develop it into a podcast after he was stood down from Cricket Australia for 10 weeks. At the end of that time, he was sadly made redundant. The week after however, ironically as a now unemployed individual, he officially unveiled SportsGrad to help others find a job in the industry. After only three days, the podcast was #1 for ‘Careers’ on iTunes.
After looking back on his journey so far, Reuben is always motivated by the impact he can make on other people’s lives. For example, he got to watch SportsGrad’s first member land his dream job in the Commercial Team of an A-League club and celebrate their title with the entire team. However, Reuben faced many challenges to get here and believes that staying true to SportsGrad’s initial purpose was the hardest. Indeed, he recognises that this is a test for all startups, as hefty investments and commercial opportunities can become tempting. But, the occasional wrong turn is all part of the ‘founder experience’ and he may not be where he is today without them.
For Reuben’s story, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge his first mentor - Wayne. They met in 2016 when Reuben was networking to break into sport. Wayne did not just agree to meet him over coffee but rather initiated a second meeting and a third and more; effectively, he took him under his wing. Since then, it’s been a relationship that Reuben has relied on many times, saying that whenever he needs an injection of self-belief, he turns to Wayne.
Reuben’s goal is to expand SportsGrad internationally over the next five years. When asking him why, he answered in true Reuben style with an anecdotal story. Upon discovering Reuben was visiting India for the first time, one of his SportsGrad members offered to pick him up from the airport and take him out for dinner. The two had never met, and Reuben had never even seen his face. In any other context, this would be considered a dangerous endeavour, but his blind faith in the power of sport to unite and connect meant he saw this as an opportunity, not a risk. Indeed, to have connections all over the world willing to help in this way, Reuben thought “Wouldn’t it be great if everyone had that.”
