44: Building Brands and Careers for Athletes: The Transformative Power of Athletics with Ryan Schachtner

Ryan’s journey took a turn when a career-ending injury shattered his dreams of playing professional baseball.

But instead of giving up, he pivoted and started a financial planning firm specializing in helping professional athletes with their financial challenges.

Now, he’s extending his expertise to college student-athletes, focusing on building their personal brand and translating their on-field success into career success.

Outline

00:00 – Ryan’s journey from being a collegiate baseball player to starting a financial planning firm and working with athletes.
01:37 – Ryan’s Perspective on Change and Overcoming Challenges
08:34 – The need for development opportunities for athletes
09:58 – Applying athletic skills to business success
14:30 – Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and its impact on college athletes
16:58 – The Influence of Narrative on Name Image and Likeness
19:18 – Impact of Outside Voices on Coaches and Programs
23:34 – Protecting Reputation and Branding in the Age of Social Media
24:54 – The impact of playing with Michael Jordan on athletes’ performance and brand association.
26:23 – The importance of self-awareness and how it influences future earnings ability.

Quotes

“Brand, I always say, is just a fancy word for reputation.”

“They bled, they sweat, they sacrificed for this pro option and then they get there and they’re like, oh shoot, there’s something after this and maybe I need to start figuring out what I’m going to do.”

“I can either choose to participate in it or I can choose not to participate in it and to me that really means, have a glass half full sort of mindset, let’s make the best of the situation and let’s adapt to what is happening and then let’s figure out how we can move forward in a positive direction regardless.”

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Episode 44 – Full Transcript

Announcer (00:00:00) – New generation leader.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:00:02) – In today’s episode on our Athletics Leadership Channel, Brian and I talked to Ryan Schachner. Ryan was a collegiate baseball player who had dreams and a path to play professionally until a career ending injury sidelined him. With his dream over, Ryan had to pivot and figure out what the rest of his life would look like. He set out on his own, started a financial planning firm, and became known among professional athletes as someone who could fix their financial problems. His clients urged him to take that talent and translate it to college student athletes. Right now works with high school athletes, college athletes, pro athletes. And in this nil era, he’s focused on enabling them to build a brand, to use the expertise on the field, on the court and translate that into career success. We sit down with Ryan for an exciting conversation that covers so much ground. And again, just like our last episode with Coach Regan, no matter what industry you work in, whether you’re in athletics or medicine, health care, construction, it doesn’t matter.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:01:12) – There are going to be insights here for you on building a brand, on telling your story and on leading. Well, let’s dive in.

Jay Smack, Voice of the Show (00:01:21) – Welcome to the New Generation Leader podcast. We’re giving you the tools you need to lead in the digital world, ready to reach your true potential. This is the New Generation Leader podcast.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:01:37) – So, Ryan, your career has been built around change. You’ve personally had changes now in your work with athletic departments, athletic leaders, coaches, players. You’re helping them navigate change. How has your personal perspective on change helped prepare you for what you’re facing and leading people through today?

Ryan Schachtner (00:01:58) – Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And so I think, you know, it’s the adapt and overcome mentality that I bring to, you know, everything that I do. And so to rewind a little bit, you know, I was in full financial advisor mode in 2008, 2009 when that crash, you know, the market crash and the housing and Great Recession and all the labels that they threw on it.

Ryan Schachtner (00:02:24) – And I remember talking to a gentleman that was probably 20 years ahead of me in the career and extremely successful. And I just said, you continue to build through these times. How do you do it? What’s your mindset? And he just made the comment, I choose not to participate. And so that kind of opened my eyes to, well, I can go with it and be affected by all of this type of stuff, or I can figure out what I need to do and double down on it and move forward from there. And so I just kind of took that approach whenever something disruptive happened and whenever change happened is I can either choose to participate in it or I can choose not to participate in it. And to me, that really means, you know, have a glass half full sort of mindset, you know, let’s make the best of the situation and let’s adapt to what is happening, and then let’s figure out how we can move forward in a positive direction regardless.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:03:32) – That’s a powerful thought that we’ve been looking at in terms of leadership and the landscape.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:03:38) – And when you think about innovation, even going back to the printing press, the steam engine, all of these advances and now we’re facing even still as prevalent as technology is, you can participate or people are avoiding and even to the extreme rebelling against it. And Steve Cockrum who Brian and I work with talks about in the printing press people burned books all out rebelled against these systems. So now you’re working with athletic leaders who are facing a similar dynamic of change. What does the average week look like for you in terms of what you’re bringing in, the conversations you’re having with them and and how you’re doing the work you’re doing now?

Ryan Schachtner (00:04:25) – Yeah, I mean, it’s chaos. It’s a little something new every day, but it’s along the same lines of helping the athletic departments that we work with, the coaches that we work with, the players that we work with, really navigate the changes that they’re feeling and going through. Right? So we have name, image and likeness. We have transfer Portal, we have graduating and now being out of competitive athletics.

Ryan Schachtner (00:04:54) – And how do I then navigate that change into life after sports? And it’s chaos. I mean, everything you hear in the media is is true, right? It’s it’s chaos. The Wild West, whatever you want to call it. But at the end of the day, it’s you know, if you calm down and you really look at what’s important to you as an athletic department or you as a coach or as a player, it’s pretty easy to navigate those waters. They just have extra jobs thrown on them. Right. And so it’s it’s helping them figure out what that new job, what that new role is and then helping provide resources that make their lives easier.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:05:36) – I heard that loud and clear from both Coach Regan, who was on episode 43, and Coach Taylor, who will be on episode 45 here, loud and clear that they are facing not only the X’s and O’s, which is what we all think about in terms of coaches and athletics, but they are developing a new generation of leaders.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:06:01) – They’re developing students in not only their physical disciplines, but every part of who they are and facing them head on with the challenges they’re facing, everything that’s thrown at them from from the outside world and and what’s going on inside. And what’s so fascinating to me, you know, I said to Coach Regan yesterday when we recorded that it’s it’s so evident. People love to hear examples from sports and apply them. In any context of life unless you just don’t like sports at all. But those kinds of examples are so prevalent. But as he described not only his team, the women’s basketball program, the players, but the coaches and the overall athletic department and the university as a whole and the community. I saw so clearly the parallels that any leader is facing in building a culture, multiplying that into the people that are leading and doing that in a way that is building, elevating, providing resources, helping people be successful. And that’s such a great motivator when we are facing these changes to see what’s coming down the pipeline, to react and respond and to use your word.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:07:22) – How am I going to participate in building that next new thing? So we’ve talked about you’re a forward thinker, a visionary. You’re seeing things. How do you build that bridge to the people who are are more resistant and aren’t quite seeing how to connect the dots or maybe don’t think it’s relevant to them or today?

Ryan Schachtner (00:07:46) – Yeah, I think it’s making the correlation to what they’re experiencing and how the solutions that we build out with athlete development can help them in their immediate, their immediate experiences, what they’re dealing with on a day to day basis. And so, you know, like a lot of the athletic departments outside of the huge power, five schools that have seemingly endless amounts of money, I think they have like a printing press in the athletic department and like in a locker room somewhere where they just keep churning out money. Right. They were able to win name, image and likeness. And all this happened. They had the staff and the money to be able to adapt to where they saw it going.

Ryan Schachtner (00:08:34) – Right. So that’s happening. You have the mid-majors or the smaller ones, the group of five on down to D2, D3 who are overworked, don’t have the financial resources, don’t have the manpower to kind of figure out what this is. But at the same time, they need to figure out what this is because they’re affected by it. And then you have the athletes who are out there who aren’t getting very good guidance on what they can do, what they can’t do because it’s so new and everyone’s trying to figure this out, right? So you have a lot of chaos. And so what we heard in those early days, just in talking to athletes and a lot of the pro athletes that we know and that we work with is that the things that were really important to them were the development aspects that they maybe didn’t hold out as important when they were at the college level. Right. Because they were so focused on playing in whatever sport they played that that’s all they focused on. And whether you have a pro option in your sport at the college level or not, that doesn’t really change from athlete to athlete gender to gender, sport to sport division to division.

Ryan Schachtner (00:09:58) – Because you’re an athlete, right? You’re focused on participating, getting better and winning and accomplishing your team goals. And so we recognize that there were, whether it was from the athletic department or the school or the athlete piece of it, they weren’t participating or they maybe weren’t offering the development opportunities that once these athletes realize they needed them, it was too late, they were out of school or they were at the next level. Right. And so we’re talking to a lot of these pro athletes and we’re recognizing a couple key themes is they’re all focusing on this chapter that’s next. Whereas they didn’t know that this there was going to be a next chapter, right? They bled, they sweat, they sacrifice for this pro option. And then they get there and they’re like, oh, shoot, there’s something after this. And maybe I need to start figuring out what I’m going to do. And, and then when they do, like you kind of mentioned, sports is a business, but the phases that a business goes through and building a athletic team are the exact same things.

Ryan Schachtner (00:11:08) – It’s just the industry is different, right? One industry is playing a game, but you’re building culture. You’re you have all these things. Well, once these pro athletes realized that they were able to adapt the skills that they learned and refined as athletes to their business success, and they were having massive business success and it just wasn’t, you know, a lot of times it’s they’re more humble with that and they don’t talk about that as much, which I wish, you know, I wish they would fix that. Right? But it was the same things, right? And so then we just said, hey, let’s provide these resources, but let’s do it in a way that embraces the name, image and likeness, the nil era that’s going on. And let’s let’s allow them let’s work with these athletes to where by doing something that they want to do and that’s participating nil, they’re helping themselves set up for something that they need to be doing, but maybe don’t recognize it. And so by doing one, they’re doing the other.

Jay Smack, Voice of the Show (00:12:11) – College athletics is in the midst of colossal changes from nil to the transfer portal and conference realignment, athletics programs are facing mounting pressure. How are these pressure points affecting your leadership? The waves of change require a different approach to building programs, leading teams and departments, developing players, directing coaches, and in how you think about athletics. It’s becoming too easy to leave and too hard to create trust. This requires you to think better, communicate better, lead better, perform better, be better every single day. Better can help better has built the very best of 21st century leadership thinking and tied world class content to simple technology to help aides, administrators, coaches and athletes thrive in the midst of the chaos the athletic world is facing. As a listener of the show, Better is offering a unique opportunity for your college program or high school team. Better starts with you. Learn more at New Generation Leader FMS better.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:13:11) – That’s a really good transformation and and change. And I go back as as you describe all of these athletes in my mind, I’m thinking about names of specific people I went to college with who played sports.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:13:28) – Some of them went professional in their sport at various levels, some even to the NFL and now watching their overall career and then their teammates who went professional in a different career. There’s one guy who I still I cannot get my mind wrapped around him leading the police academy in our county, you know, because for me, I still see him as wide receiver on the team. But that’s an incredible transformation and journey to take those skills. And now. You know, for him, he’s developing a new. New crop of police recruits every year and instilling that kind of discipline. So before I kick it over to Brian, you’ve mentioned it, Coach Regan mentioned it, but we have a lot of listeners who probably are not as well versed in in the lingo. Can you give us the Cliff Notes version of what is name, image and likeness? What does it mean and why is it different from the way things have always been?

Ryan Schachtner (00:14:30) – Yeah, basically it’s allowing college athletes to make money and make money on their name, their image or their likeness.

Ryan Schachtner (00:14:39) – And so I think we see a lot of it manifesting now in collectives, which are just groups of usually boosters that form nil deals for athletes, for mostly the revenue, sports, football, basketball, that sort of thing. And so that gets a lot of the attention. But you get athletes that are creating entrepreneurship opportunities, creating internships, whereas before they were not able to do any of that stuff because it would have been viewed as a rules violation by the NCAA. And then you have they might have to sit out, lose scholarships, all that type of stuff. So basically they’re able to do everything. Now that student athlete or non student athletes have been able to do since the dawn of universities and now they’re able to also participate in it. Only caveat being is they have another platform in which they can leverage that being the athletic platform and their sport and all that sort of stuff.

Bryan Berry, Co-Host (00:15:40) – So many questions. I mean, this topic is so deep and so broad. Try not to take. I feel like we could take the whole day going back to some things.

Bryan Berry, Co-Host (00:15:48) – But one of the things I want to go back to is just one statement you made earlier, Ryan, and it was off the cuff, but I’m going to go back to it because I have a real question about it. You said along the lines of everything you hear in the media is always true, right? I know you didn’t mean that exactly, but I thought it was a poignant point because I’ve heard you on some of your own podcast address this situation of what student athletes here, other athletes are getting in nil deals through the media, through all sorts of media. Can you talk about that? Like how do you work with with athletes to set realistic expectations on what’s what’s out there for them?

Ryan Schachtner (00:16:31) – Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult because the the numbers aren’t public. And so whether it’s, you know, however these athletes are getting deals, right, it’s only the really big ones that make the news. So it’s the, you know, the Livy dones or the, you know, Bryce Young that, you know, they’re getting deals because, well, Livy earned it, right? I mean, she created her following whatever she’s mean magnificent what she’s done.

Ryan Schachtner (00:16:58) – Bryce Young You know, it’s largely even though you know, number one draft pick, largely because he played football in the highest profile position at one of the highest profile schools. Right. And so you see that and that forms a narrative that a lot of these athletes just assume that I either have to be an influencer or I have to be a key position in a key sport at a key university. And that gets the attention because it’s really the most controversial aspect of it, right? I mean, it fits into the narrative of the anti name, image and likeness. People of they’re just paying athletes and you have to be an influencer and all that sort of thing. But then you have athletes like a Chase Griffin out at UCLA, who’s a third string quarterback who started small with really small deals. And he was going out and he was pounding the pavement and getting them and and now he’s grown that into getting equity in companies because of what he started doing, proving to the other companies out there that, hey, this works and what I’m doing works right.

Ryan Schachtner (00:18:09) – Or a Barney Amoore, who’s the punter, former punter at Penn State, who, you know, was getting nil deals and nobody’s giving money to a punter, right? I mean, he’s not the quarterback, right? It’s not a if you know his name, something’s wrong. Right. And so this media narrative is part of it’s true. That is an aspect of name, image and likeness. But there’s also a huge part of name, image and likeness that’s going on that is that grassroots entrepreneurial aspect, the spirit of really what name, image and likeness was, was that entrepreneurial aspect. And it just doesn’t get the it’s not the sexiest story to talk about a lot of times. And so it doesn’t get the hype that some of the others have. But what we do is we just try and change. The narrative, right? We give them examples of athletes that are out there doing it, and then we give them a path and show them evidence that it doesn’t matter division, sport, gender, any of that type of stuff.

Ryan Schachtner (00:19:10) – Your opportunity may look different. It may start different, but it’s really up to you and taking the initiative on on where you take it.

Bryan Berry, Co-Host (00:19:18) – So one of the things and we heard this from from Coach Regan from JMU the other day when we talked to him is about the impact that all of this going back to transfer portal as well, the extra Covid year, nil nil, all of these things and what the impact has been on coaches ability to lead teams as effectively as they did before. So as you’ve gone about and you’ve had conversations with coaches or with that administrative staff, have you had conversations with them about the increased level of noise that they now have to deal with with all of the other things that athletes are starting to hear, like all the outside voices that are going, hey, come here, I’ve got this deal for you. You don’t need to deal with that. Anything like that, share anything you’ve heard about that and maybe coaches that you’ve interacted with, how that’s impacting their ability to coach the way they wanted to or develop programs versus having to put out fires constantly.

Ryan Schachtner (00:20:14) – Yeah. So really, two thoughts on that. I would say. First, yes, absolutely. I was talking to Mason Rudolph, who’s a plays quarterback for the Steelers yesterday, and he was talking about catching up with his former coach, Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State. And their job, I mean, it’s a massive job, right? So if we take the one aspect of their job, which is recruiting prior to Nil and Transfer Portal, it was I’m recruiting high school athletes and that’s I have to develop them when they come in. But it was kind of segmented to that. Now recruiting is, yes, high school athletes, but now you have the retention aspect of I have athletes here and I’ve got to make sure that I keep the ones that I want and that are playing and all that sort of thing. And by the way, I need to pay attention to the transfer portal and look for athletes that are out there that maybe need a bigger platform or an opportunity here at Oklahoma State. And so it’s recruiting, which was call it one dimensional is now three dimensional.

Ryan Schachtner (00:21:19) – But I don’t think that’s any different than any other business, right. Going back to every other business, you have to worry about recruiting and retaining employees. And now that element is more prevalent in sports and now the resources around that, you know, it’s going to have to be a taught skill and develop to how it looks inside a certain school, inside a certain system and with a certain coach. But it’s like any other business, right? It’s the businesses that seem to succeed and excel. They figure out they have a team and they figure out, all right, my team is going to my role. I’m best focused on this and I’m going to hire the best people to manage these other things. And how I hold them accountable is ultimately going to determine success of the organization. And so it’s the same thing when you filter down to athletics. They’re in a new world and now there’s different aspects that they need to plan for. But if they get the right people in the right positions and then manage them and hold them accountable to whatever their standard is and whatever the culture that they want is, they too can see success.

Bryan Berry, Co-Host (00:22:31) – Yeah, I can’t imagine. I remember back 30 years ago just being a student who was interested in the athletic programs where I went to school and knowing then even at this lower level, at that time, Division one, Double-A school, not even FCS at that point as far as classification went. And just the coaches, the head coaches then being so aware of anyone who walked within eyesight of a practice or anything else, fighting to know who their athletes were hanging out with and what voice. I can’t imagine what that is like now. That’s had to have been a major adjustment with all these other things that are out there now. But as you go about when you talk to programs and really at any level, all the way down to high school and you’re advising athletes on branding issues or branding opportunities, what types of conversations come up or what type of guidance do you give them on about protecting their brand in terms of what they do outside now, where they’re seeing who they’re seeing with what they post? Any of the how about, you know, anything that might impact their influence as a brand?

Ryan Schachtner (00:23:34) – ID Yeah.

Ryan Schachtner (00:23:35) – So brand, I always say is just a fancy word for reputation and you know, whereas before social media became huge, our reputation spread by word of mouth. Now we have social media. So yes, it’s spread by word of mouth, but it can be spread globally in a second. And so. You need to protect your reputation. Right. And if we view it that way, you know, I always reference a study that was done and it was with like 11 different companies and they had 48,000 plus hours work hours that they monitor. Right. And they came out with if you’re sitting within 25ft of a top performer, your performance. So your skill set stays the same. All of everything the same. Your performance increases by 15%. So 25 sit within 25ft top performer, your performance, your productivity, all that increases 15%. On the flip side, then if you sit within 25ft of a poor performer, everything decreases for you 30%. And so if we take that to sports and I always use Michael Jordan because in my world, he’s the goat, right? And you’re not going to be able to replace that.

Ryan Schachtner (00:24:54) – But how many household names did playing with Michael Jordan create? And if you look at their output, you know, a Scottie Pippen averaged more points with Michael Jordan then without Horace Grant, Steve Kerr, Kukoc, all those guys had more points when they played with Michael Jordan than when they played without Michael Jordan. And so when you break that down then to a brand level, it’s who do you associate with? And if you are one of these athletes that aspires to create something in nil, you have to be aware that your nil opportunity is going to be 4 or 5 years at most, but your monetization of who you are in your brand is lifelong. And so who are you going to partner up with? Who are you going to be seen in public with? Who are you going to do things with, associate with? Do you want to go with that group that maybe they’re a little bit out of your reach and you aspire to be those people or aspire to be around those people or are you going to hang out with the people that may be hanging on to you and dragging you backwards? Because ultimately it’s going to affect where you end up in life.

Ryan Schachtner (00:26:09) – And so just being aware of that and getting around that right crowd can really, you know, it can make or break your athletic career or your career afterwards. A whole lot of stuff.

Bryan Berry, Co-Host (00:26:23) – Your earnings ability in the future as well. I’m about to kick it back to Aaron, but one of the last points or things I’ll share is a lot of the work that we do with our clients is based on creating a self awareness of how you influence situations, people, everything else, and just becoming very, very aware of how you can have a positive influence. But also with the flip side is if you’re not careful and would imagine that those are the kinds of conversations. Well, we’ve had some with athletes at a couple of different levels now, just about that awareness, just about the fact that you like it or not, you’re influencing someone every time you step on the field, every time they see you out in public. And all of that impacts your future earnings ability. I mean, really, like it or not, it’s kind of like, you know, you could like the electric trains or not, but they were coming, right? So if you were the old coal driven train, it’s like it’s going to happen.

Bryan Berry, Co-Host (00:27:20) – It’s just we talk with people sometimes, you know, the way cars used to be made while cars are still made. But those jobs and the way they’re used, they don’t exist anymore because things just changed. So anyhow. But yeah, I’m going to I’m going to kick it back to Aaron, but your answers are great and it’s provided so much depth and light on on a couple of different situations. So thanks for taking time.

Ryan Schachtner (00:27:39) – Yeah, appreciate that.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:27:40) – So, Ryan, you’ve you’ve talked about a lot of different audiences you’ve worked with that you do work with a lot of different scenarios. Can you kind of summarize who you work with, how you work with them? So for people listening, if they’re thinking, Hey, do I fit into Ryan’s ideal audience, who is your audience.

Ryan Schachtner (00:28:03) – At the end of the day, Who we impact our athletes, right? And so we work with high school athletes. We work with college athletes at all levels, and we work with pro athletes. Now, who ends up bringing us on and paying us and using the platform could be the team that they play for.

Ryan Schachtner (00:28:22) – It could be them individually or it could be a university or something like that that wants to provide this athlete development for their athletes. And so it’s really everything from brand development to aspects of leadership development to how to communicate on social media, how to create opportunities for life after sports, the personal finance aspect of it, and then even how to go out and get nil deals. So we have a four step process to teach anyone how to go out and, you know, get your. And I’ll deal and then build it to bigger and better deals from there.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:29:02) – That’s fantastic. So where where can people connect with you? Find you your podcast as well?

Ryan Schachtner (00:29:08) – Yeah, podcast is nil undressed and we’re in. I think we’re a month in on that and I’m having a blast. We had Mason Rudolph again of the Steelers on yesterday and and you know bigger and it’s basically a athletes collaborating for athlete development purposes right could be nil or just life after sports Instagram is at a must-win or you can hit us on our website Is success beyond game day.com awesome.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:29:43) – We’ll link to all that in the show notes at new generation leader.com/for for great having you on today Ryan really insightful to take headlines and bring it down into the practical understanding of what’s really going on below the surface and and I can see in so many ways I’ve been making all sorts of notes. I’m going to send your way after this of people and places and opportunities and Brian’s got the same going on. So it’s that whole pioneering thing. You know, we’re ideating, we’re problem solving. We’re we’re trying to get into this with you, but awesome having you on. My one final question question I ask everybody is if as you look back in your career, your experience and your own athletic career, what is it that you’ve learned that you wish you had known earlier?

Ryan Schachtner (00:30:35) – Yeah, and that’s a great question. And so I think we all have you know, mentally we hold ourselves back because we think, you know, someone’s not going to listen to me or who am I or, you know, those sorts of things, right? The people that we look up to from a business leader standpoint and they face the exact same thing, but they just went for it.

Ryan Schachtner (00:30:59) – And so it would be whatever those ideas are that you had at whatever age you were, just go for it. Do it right because you’re only going to learn from it may not work out, but you’re only going to learn from it. It’s going to put you in a better position. So get rid of the head trash and just go for it.

Aaron Lee, Host (00:31:17) – It’s awesome. I go back to the beginning, get rid of the head trash and just go for it. And I can choose to participate or I can choose to avoid. So you’re dropping the nuggets here for us. And if you’re doing this for athletes, I know they are unlocking a great potential on their paths ahead of them. So thanks for coming on today, Ryan. Great conversation. Looking forward to continuing to follow along with your work.

Ryan Schachtner (00:31:43) – Appreciate it. Appreciate you having me on.

Bryan Berry, Co-Host (00:31:44) – It just reminds me, Aaron, really quickly that what we tell people a lot of times is the tool we use who says we can’t? So it’s kind of the same concept.

Bryan Berry, Co-Host (00:31:53) – So anyhow, thanks again. Ryan. Thank you.

Jay Smack, Voice of the Show (00:31:58) – Thanks for listening to the New Generation Leader podcast. Subscribe today on your podcasting platform. Download the show notes and unlock your true leadership potential at New Generation Leader FM. Thanks for listening today and we look forward to seeing you next time on the New Generation Leader podcast.

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