Georgia Hunter Bell
Georgia Hunter Bell has finished on the podium at Olympic, world, European and Commonwealth level but previously worked in cyber security tech sales. The middle-distance runner reflects on her past life in the latest Side Track.
What was your past career and how did you get into it?
I used to work in cyber security tech sales and there’s no direct line to it. It wasn’t like I grew up thinking I wanted to work in cyber security tech sales when I was a kid! I went to the University of Birmingham, and did geography there then went to Berkeley in California for two years and did a masters out there. There was someone in my masters group who had just started working at Darktrace, which is a UK-based cyber security tech firm but had a San Francisco arm as well. I went for an interview, got the job and worked in that industry for seven years.
So were you US-based rather than UK-based?
I spent one year working and living in San Francisco, in the North Beach area. It was really cool and such a fun year for me. I had quit running and was actually very happy that I’d finished running at that point. I was ready to be done with it, it hadn’t been going that well, I’d done it my whole life and I was ready for a fresh start. It felt like going to a new school but I was a working girl in San Francisco and had lots of friends, and absolutely loved it. After a year my visa expired and that’s when I moved back to the UK working for the same company. That’s when I started to really miss running, I was asking, 'is this my life now, did I have it better before?'
I imagine it was a pretty steep learning curve.
Almost immediately, you’re going to big boardrooms to talk about cyber attacks and their impact on a business. So it’s heavy and big already but I liked being thrown into it. The first year was a bit of a learning curve. The first year of sales is always hell as you’re building a pipeline and also learning the product and the industry. It’s only in years two and three that you start to see the impact and, by year four, I was the No.1 sales rep. But that first year I constantly worried I was going to get fired as I was not hitting my quota.
Was that work journey similar to the return to athletics from year one onwards?
Yeah, I think so. Experiencing what I did gave me some perspective with my running as well because the pressure in both is quite high, and I understand that running is a high-pressure job. With both, it’s a case that you have to get on with it no matter the scenario and that does help with the running. So, it doesn’t matter if a race goes wrong or you don’t get into the position you want, you just have to find a way out of it.
What makes a good salesperson?
A lot of stuff, and again that’s relatable to running. You need to put in the hours, you need a big pipeline of opportunities so that means constantly reaching out to companies, meeting companies, having lots of options to turn things into opportunities. You need to be very well prepared once you get in the room with a company, do your research on them, understand their weaknesses and how that impacts their business if they don’t do this. We’d plug in software, they’d trial it for free and find all these problems. At that point, you’d think it was an easy sell as seeing is believing but often they wouldn’t have a budget for it. So, you need to work with the team to create a budget. You also have to be creative, persistent, make people your friends so people want to pick up the phone when you call. You are helping them solve a problem but you’re getting a deal at the end of it. You were genuinely selling something they need. You could work for six months on a project and the person you’re working with might get fired so you start all over again.
It must be a buzz when you pull off a big sale.
Oh yeah. I closed a very big deal with a big tech company in the UK which had taken a year and a half of work. Everyone in my organisation was across it in some way up to the CEO so there was quite a lot of pressure. When it did come off, that was very cool and also cool to get pay cheque as it’s commission-based!
Is it similar to a race win?
It is like that. And again it’s similar as you can go in with a strategy and hope it comes off but then the race goes differently but it still all comes together. So, it’s about doing all the prep - that’s why when I’m racing I like to go in feeling really prepared. So for the Commonwealth Games final the other day, I met with [coaches] Jen [Meadows] and Trev [Painter] and spent nearly an hour going through scenarios that might happen and what I should do. So on the start line I felt very calm as I felt whatever way the race went I was ready for that and I wasn’t going to be caught short in any way. The race didn’t go as I expected but it was fine.
You were clearly enjoying the work but when did the running itch come back in?
The first year of the job I wasn’t doing any kind of sport as there was a lot of schmoozing so drinks with clients which wasn’t conducive to being an athlete. Back in London, I started to go for more runs. Then I got into duathlons - running and cycling - so I remember speaking to my boss saying this is what I’m doing outside work so I won’t be doing any evening events but I'm happy to do breakfasts and lunches, and I’ll need to take time off to do races. So it was always on their radar and they were really supportive. But it changed at the World Indoors in Glasgow, I told them they could watch it on the BBC. That’s when they really started to say, 'ok, she is actually really good'. And I think Steve Cram said on the commentary, as I came fourth, ‘Georgia Bell must know that she’s good enough to make the Olympics if she just quits her job and takes it seriously,’ and so that kind of did me a solid. So I spoke to them and asked to take a sabbatical with the plan to come back in September. I said, 'I don’t know if I’ll make the Olympics but I need to try; I need this time off to go to prep camps and do the work'. They were very supportive. They said, 'absolutely, go for it'. They had a sweepstake at work of whether I’d come back or not after I got bronze, and most people thought I wouldn’t. Obviously after that the contract changed with Nike so I was able to make the decision to leave.
Do you ever wonder what might have happened if you’d done it sooner?
Of course, you think what could have happened and what I could have achieved. I was with Trev when I was younger before I went to the US and he was confident he could make me into a world-class 800m runner. He wanted me to move to Manchester and I wanted to live the American dream. I came back to him and obviously I’ve been running well but I feel it wouldn’t have worked for me then. I wasn’t mature enough plus I would not have met my husband!
Do you miss your old job and life at all?
The first year no, I look back and think how on earth was I doing that? Towards the end, I was training like a full-time athlete but working for a pre-IPO tech start-up company where it’s sales so you can never be doing enough. So I really did feel like I was burning the candle at both ends. That first year I couldn’t believe it when I could just wake up at nine, go for a run, go for lunch, go for physio and I just absolutely loved it. This past year I have started to miss elements of it - more just the stimulation probably for my brain. I’ve missed that side of it. I’ve missed some of the urgency even if it can be unhealthy and stress you out. But I do like the idea that there’s a big project deadline and you have to do some critical thinking around it, and the buzz when that comes together. I really have to work to activate my brain now.
Might you go back to that after the track career?
I could see myself going back into that in the future. It’s incredibly interesting. I’ve had lots of good connections with my previous employers, I’ve gone back to do talks or just to see them. I hope there’d be a route back in. But who knows where running will go? In my mind it used to be just track and plan to do that through to LA and beyond but then there’s the whole thing with the roads, and I love the running lifestyle so we’ll see year by year.
Do you ever get a chance to reflect on your journey?
I do a bit, and I carry that perspective quite a lot when I race. I think that’s one of the things that makes me quite a good competitor because I can see beyond the race in a way that lots of people I line up with can't. All they know is running and that's all they’ve done whereas I’ve worked a 9 to 5 job for seven years in an office and I think that means when I step up to race, I’m going to take the moment with both hands and not leave anything out there, but I also know that if it goes terribly wrong, it’s going to be OK. So it’s a nice kind of freedom in racing which I think works really well.
What do your former work colleagues make of all your success?
After winning Commonwealth Games gold, I had a load of messages from people I used to work with saying, 'what the hell, I can’t believe you’re here'. Some came to the Commonwealth Games, some to the London Diamond League or the Diamond League in Zurich. I have quite a nice community.
