Ryan Schachtner: The Framework for Winning After Your First Career Ends | E9

Business MVP

Ryan Schachtner, a former collegiate baseball player whose career ended due to a shoulder injury, shares his journey from athletic failure t

Key takeaways

• Athletic identity often becomes tied to career aspirations, making injury-induced career endings emotionally devastating.
• Failure in sports builds mental toughness that is essential for long-term business success.

Main topics

• Transition from athlete to entrepreneur
• Mental resilience after career-ending injury

Notable quotes

You put all your eggs in that basket and that suddenly becomes your identity.

It's a sport built on failure, right? And so you get really accustomed to failing the majority of the time and learning how to adapt from failure.

Conclusion

Ryan Schachtner's story illustrates that the skills forged through athletic competition—discipline, resilience,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I blew out my shoulder my last game of my freshman year of college and that was it. I was lost. I probably spent a year to two years just trying to figure out. What am I going to do with my life? Speaker 2 (0:10) Brian Schochner is a former collegiate baseball player and major league prospect who had his career ended by a shoulder injury. You Speaker 1 (0:16) put all your eggs in that basket and that all of a sudden becomes your identity. Speaker 2 (0:21) With no plan B, he pivoted into financial services and spent the next 20 years building Carolina Asset Management, one of the fastest growing financial planning firms in the Southeast. Speaker 1 (0:30) We built out a tool that can measure the 20 key performance behaviors, communication style, and learning style. So the last four and a half years, we've worked with... NFL combine guys and 32 % of our guys get drafted around higher than they were projected at. What Speaker 2 (0:45) were you doing differently that made athletes trust you with their money? I Speaker 1 (0:48) got introduced to a number of current and former pro athletes that Speaker 2 (0:55) Brian Schochner is a former collegiate baseball player and major league prospect who had his career ended by a shoulder injury. With no plan B, he pivoted into financial services and spent the next 20 years building Carolina Asset Management, one of the fastest growing financial planning firms in the Southeast. But what he's done since is what makes him a business MVP. Today, he's known as the athlete financial whisperer. He's the author of Foundation for Financial Excellence, an international bestseller. He's been named one of Entrepreneur Magazine's top 10 finance entrepreneurs to watch, and he's building the financial literacy infrastructure for student athletes nationwide through a must-win in Success Beyond Game Day. Ryan Schachner, welcome to Business MVP. Speaker 1 (1:34) Hey, Sammy, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to dive in. I Speaker 2 (1:39) am too. Thank you so much. So I want to start off, I read that you ended up at an Atlanta Braves collegiate tryout at age 13. How does that happen? What happened? Tell us about that. Speaker 1 (1:52) Yeah, it was a complete accident. So I was a catcher, and I was practicing on a field that was right next to the field that they were doing the tryout camp. I had no idea they were doing it. It was just, you know, young and we're bored in the summer, so let's go play baseball. And so they were short on catchers to catch all the pitching prospects. And so one of the scouts walked over and asked if I could help out. And I had no idea what was going on and ended up doing pretty well in it. And that kind of put me on the map. So yeah, it was just a happy accident. Speaker 2 (2:31) That's wild, actually. That's really wild. So you were on a path to the pros and then a shoulder injury ended everything, it seems like, right? You were just finishing freshman year of college. So tell us about that. And then how did you mentally get through that moment? Yeah, Speaker 1 (2:47) I mean, I think like most athletes, when you're performing, right, when you're in your sport, even though you're in college, right, you're so focused on your sport and excelling at it that you block everything else out. And so I, you know, blew out my shoulder my last game of my freshman year of college. And that was it, you know, reconstructive surgery and, you know, all that fun stuff. And it was hard, right? Because we're so bought into, especially when, I think, when in baseball or some of the more revenue-producing sports, you get labeled, right? Like you're a prospect, you've got a shot at going to the next level. You put all your eggs in that basket. all of a sudden becomes your identity. And so when it happened, you know, I had done just that. I had put all my eggs in the basket of I'm going to be a professional baseball player. And for me, that meant not focusing as much as I should on school and, you know, all the really important stuff. So when it happened, I mean, I was lost. I probably spent a year to two years just trying to figure out, like, what am I going to do with my life? Because You know, going through school, you're defined by your GPA. And that wasn't something that I wanted to broadcast. And so, yeah, it took me a while to figure out, all right, how am I going to do life moving forward? Speaker 2 (4:22) Yeah, that makes sense. But I'm sure that also prepared you for the next chapter being so mentally tough after that. So that's pretty wild. As you said, you know, you were 100 % focused on baseball growing up. And so what did that intensity and discipline build in you that translated directly into business later on? Speaker 1 (4:38) Yeah, I think when you're going through it as athletes, I mean, especially a lot of the work that we do now, you know, it's validation of... The fact that we do so much to prepare for life after sports, but it's connecting the dots that what you did in the past through sports actually applies to life after sports. And so, you know, it's the extra practice that you put in. Baseball is a sport where if you get a hit three out of 10 times, you go to the Hall of Fame. And so it's Speaker 2 (5:14) a Speaker 1 (5:14) sport. It's really a sport built on failure, right? And so you get really, really accustomed to failing the majority of the time and learning how to then adapt from failure and keep on pressing on and, you know, showing up when you don't feel good. And so it's all the things that regardless of sport, right, regardless of gender, sport, level you play at, you've built through. your athletic career. And so I think the main ones that resonated with me was just practice, right? And so when I got into the financial services space, which quite frankly was the only place that would take me at that time, because again, bad resume. I started working on a commission-only basis. they didn't have to pay me anything, right? I mean, that's like the ideal situation. You get someone to work basically for free. And if they don't produce, then you're not out any money. But it was having to learn the skill sets and knowing that as I made phone calls and I reached out to people, I was going to fail more than I was going to be successful. So there's a lesson right there with baseball. The practice aspect where you have to refine your swing or your throwing or, you know, the over and over the repetition of it, which was the practice of, all right, I've got to learn how to talk to people, how to learn about them and do it in a way that doesn't come across like I'm just trying to sell products. And so it was just the practice and the blue collar kind of nature of. you know, doing the hard work and embracing it and, you know, combined with adapting quickly when you're failing. And, you know, I was fortunate enough to turn it into a long career. I Speaker 2 (7:10) love that. So speaking of failure, what was your biggest failure as an athlete? Speaker 1 (7:14) Well, to me, if you, that's a great question. I think not making it, right? Even though it was the injury and it was beyond my Speaker 2 (7:21) control. Right, not your Speaker 1 (7:21) fault necessarily, Speaker 2 (7:21) right? Speaker 1 (7:22) Yeah, Speaker 2 (7:23) it Speaker 1 (7:23) was not living up to, you know, my potential and, or, you know, what was the perceived potential that I had. So I think to me, if you would ask me that, you know, to me, that's still the biggest failure. And listen, it's always going to haunt you. right? Those, those big losses or the things that you don't accomplish that you wish you had a second chance at, it's always going to haunt you. Just like a lot of the pro guys that we work with talk about, you know, I mean, heck Brady talks about the, the, the games, the Superbowls that he lost. Speaker 2 (7:56) Right. And they still Speaker 1 (7:57) haunt him. And so, especially the Giants helmet catch one. And so it's, it's, that's always going to, it's always going to live with you. So I think that that's probably. What could I have done had I not gotten injured? So I think that would be the biggest failure. Speaker 2 (8:14) Yeah. So how did that help you handle failure in business then, you think? Just having had that experience, so you knew how to kind of fail your way forward? Or how did that translate for you in business? Speaker 1 (8:26) You wake up the next day, right? The sun's going to come up tomorrow. And that whatever happens, as big or as detrimental as it seems at the time, It's not going to ruin you. And you're going to get another shot at something. It may not be what you want or what you thought it was going to be, but you're going to get another shot at something. And, you know, it's not the end of the world. And so pick yourself up, get yourself together, figure it out, and press on. I mean, it's, you know, I don't know. That's probably the best I got right. Right now. No, Speaker 2 (9:00) but you know, it sounds so simplistic, but I don't think a lot of people can really do that, right? They fall into depression, they become unproductive, all sorts of things can happen, right? So as simplistic as it sounds, you have a pretty, you have a solid outlook on that, right? So I think that's important for people to take away. Speaker 1 (9:16) Well, and that comes with time, right? Perspective comes with time. If you look, if you ask me in the moment. It was the worst thing. I didn't know what I was going to do. I mean, it probably took me a year and a half to two years to, you know, figure out that the sun was going to come up the next day. And so the sooner you can get through that cycle, and I think there's probably more resources for that now. There's more people talking about it now. Yeah, like having the plan B or Speaker 2 (9:44) having other interests. Yeah. Speaker 1 (9:46) Exactly. I think Speaker 2 (9:47) so. I mean, I obviously talked to a lot of people on this podcast and... a lot of athletes are heavy promoters of the what's next concept, right? Like even while you're an athlete, just because even if you're super successful, that career could be over at 30, it could be over at 20, right? It could be over at 35 if you're lucky, but then you have this whole lifetime, right, of what's next. So I feel like that's a really big... theme out there right now for athletes, you know, whether it's managing their money or getting involved in the community or whatever it is for what's next, a whole nother second act career, you know, that's being talked about quite a bit now. But I think it's because there was this whole generation, you know, that you were part of that you put all your eggs in this basket for the dream, which makes total sense to me. But then when it, you know, something can turn on a dime and then what, right? So totally makes sense. Speaker 1 (10:35) they have permission now, right? Because of NIL and all that sort of