by Stuart Weir
Lauryn Williams – financial planner
In her late teens, Lauryn Williams set herself the goal of attending college, getting her degree, and becoming a financial planner. She achieved her goal and currently runs her own financial business, but it didn’t quite happen as expected. Becoming the fastest woman in the world (winning the world championship 100 meters in 2005) and winning medals at Summer and Winter Olympics were never really in the plan.
“When I was probably 19, I had no idea I could be a professional athlete. The one thing that my parents definitely instilled in me was that education is the thing that can take you places. So while track and field took me a lot of places, I didn’t know a path other than education would be the thing that could give me what I wanted. Even when offered a college scholarship, I saw running as something that would give me a free education. There was never really a ‘I want to do track and field because I want to do track and field. It was like this was a means to get me the education I wanted because education would be the key to anything I wanted to accomplish.
“I enjoyed the competitive aspect of track. I enjoyed trying to be the best, but I hadn’t really been exposed to the Olympics in the same way that other people had. I didn’t really see the path for it. Professional sports were not really on my radar until my junior year of college in 2004, when I ran the second fastest time in the world. There was a lot of hullabaloo about it, like, who’s this little young girl who just ran so fast? She’s now the fastest American this year, the Olympic year. So that’s when it came out like I could represent Team USA in the Olympics”.
When in June 2004 she ran 10.97 to win the NCAA in Austin, Texas, her life changed: “Overnight. Funny how the Lord works, right? It happened overnight. The night before, I went to bed just hoping to win the NCAA title, hoping to run just a little bit faster than my main competitor at the time, Muna Lee, who had been my competitor all through my childhood. I won the NCAA title and ran the year’s second fastest time in the world. And it was just like get to the finish line first, but it opened up a whole new world, a whole new set of doors, and completely changed my life that day”.
Overnight, she went from being a typical student, short of money, driving, in her words, “an old car on its last legs”. Shoe companies were suddenly knocking on her door. She decided to sign with Nike to forgo college eligibility – in those days, you had to choose one or the other – but she would complete her degree, remembering her parents’ advice that she needed a college degree to prosper. He had it written into the contract that Nike would pay for the last semester of school that she had to complete. Overnight, as she puts it, “one day to the next, you’re kind of a broke college student just making ends meet, doing your best to compete in your sport. Now I had to make good decisions with the funds I’ve been given”. What she needed was a financial planner to help her! She did OK buying a house and a new car.
She completed her degree and an MBA and ran professionally from 2004 to 2013. She started her finance business based on her experience as an athlete: “I started the finance company because I had a financial advisor during my career that didn’t seem to be tuned into what I needed, as a young person and athlete. And I felt like we deserve something better. The more I started to learn about finances, the more I realised I didn’t know what was happening in my financial world. Then I started to ask my friends and realized I was not the only one who didn’t know. Athletes were making gangs and gangs of money, but it is such a short window for you to earn well in track and field. But most people only have 2-3 years of a career”.
In the second article, she recalls some of her great races.
