Whenever you go all in on one thing and that
becomes your full focus,
I think you derive most of life's most important lessons
from that.
I was tunnel vision focused on doing this one thing,
and to do that you have to build discipline.
You have to build grit.
Having that thing to fully focus on,
I think I learned all the helpful life lessons that
will be transmittable to anything I do for the rest
of my life.
My name is Jake Spotswood.
I'm 25 years old and I'm currently training for the
pole vault for the
2024 Olympic Trials.
My end goal is really to qualify for the Olympic
Trials.
It's to go compete with those guys and then whatever
happens happens.
Currently I work in strategy consulting as an analyst with
our federal clients.
It could be doing some kind of research.
It could be writing requirements for different software releases,
communicating with developers, even getting to help on some of
the business development for our account.
My sources of income for
2024 will be #1 my salary from strategy consulting.
I have sponsorships for the season that pay to fund
the season,
and then I also have my personal training service online.
My biggest monthly expenses are definitely my rent and then
probably auto and transport.
I currently live in Fairfax,
VA and we have a townhouse with four total guys,
so myself, three others and I pay
$700.00 flat. That includes all utilities,
Wi-Fi, trash, everything. I typically keep my food bill pretty
low for the month through a few different things.
So I buy pretty cheap groceries that keep me for
lunch,
canned tuna, fruit, Greek yogurt,
things like that. And then we also have food in
the office a lot of times,
so they provide 30 meals a month in exchange for
social media content.
So I'm typically going there at the end of the
day having a bowl.
Moving on,
I typically save around
$2500 a month from my paycheck to my savings account
and then reoccurring from my savings account is
$3000 that gets split into these different investment accounts that
I have.
My family was very frugal for the most part.
My mom used to tell us,
you know, you have to save your money,
you can't just get what you want.
So we would wash cars,
dog sit, do all this kind of stuff around the
neighborhood and she would have our bank account,
which was her jewelry box.
So we would take all of our cash and give
it to her and we would save it up and
maybe buy something for ourselves down the road.
Or just continue to say while we were kids,
we were at the local high school playing football with
some friends and I saw some kids over on the
pole vault,
runway pole vault thing with the track coach and it
looked like so much fun to me right when I
saw it.
And it turned out that the high school I was
going to had a strong pole vault program.
When I was finally finished with college athletics,
I was a two time all American,
six time school record holder,
three time conference champion as a team.
At the end, when I finally was ready to,
you know, hang up the spikes on college athletics,
I felt like I had done most everything that I
wanted to do.
After, you know, my collegiate career ended,
I kind of had a sit down with myself and
started asking what do I want to do?
How do I want to end this athletic career?
The pole vault has always been a special event to
me.
I love doing it. I love training for it.
It was always my best event.
So why don't we just give ourselves one more season
to train for the pole vault and see how high
we can jump
this season already I've set a personal best in the
pole vault,
continuing to improve. The end goal being I've always wanted
to jump over 18 feet and I'm right there.
I'm getting pretty close and I want to qualify for
Olympic trials and compete.
And you know, once I can do that,
I can hang up the spikes and call it good.
I typically spend probably 2 hours of my week creating
content for sponsors.
The contracts that I negotiate are one video and three
stories a month.
It's really just been having client calls in the evenings,
seeing if it's a good fit,
seeing if we want to work together.
And then on the weekends I'll build out their training
program,
what they're going to be doing workout wise every day
of the week,
a meal plan if they want it.
And then I have them set up my fitness pal
that connects to the app and then I can track
their nutrition and they can also message me whenever they
have questions.
So I'm hoping to work up to 10 clients,
kind of hold there for a few months,
see how that goes, and then if I can get
up to 20 then I think that would be ideal.
I typically wake up around seven,
45750, get ready, grab my coffee,
get on the road, get to work,
work till a little after 5.
From there, I commute straight to the track and typically
start around
556 o'clock. And that's either sprinting,
pole vaulting, lifting, some kind of gymnastics or different things
like that.
And then I hop in the car.
I'll grab my dinner, I'll eat it in the car
really quick.
I'll come straight back home and whatever time I have
for the rest of the night,
that's when I do my social media work.
I'll typically work until around 11:00 PM or so,
and then I'll go into my nightly routine.
I'll prep for the next day so everything goes smooth.
We get to use the facilities,
we get to use the coaching and in return,
when we're doing our sessions,
we will film for the other kids.
We'll help coach, We'll give some tips.
It's busy, but it's fulfilling.
It's fun.
I wanted to give myself one more season,
so I kind of saw
2024 as this is the last ride.
Let's see how high we can go,
let's see if we can get done.
You know, I'll kind of reassess at the end of
the season and see how much I progressed,
see how much potential we think I have and then
kind of go from there.
But at this point, I think this might be my
last dance.
I think my biggest advice would be find what you
like and focus on that.
Don't think about what everybody else is doing,
don't get distracted. Just go all in on what you
like and what you're passionate about and at the end
of the day that's what's going to make you the
most happy and you're not going to be living somebody
elses life.