We recently connected with Ryan Schachtner and have shared our conversation below.

Ryan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Throughout the process of writing my book, Foundation for Financial Excellence, I began to befriend a number of the professional athletes that collaborated with me. We began brainstorm ideas on how to make the world better and help people break some of the generational curses they found themselves in. We identified money empowerment and helping people see their true value and abilities outside of athletics in an effort to have them chase their dreams were the two topics in which we could make a huge impact. We wanted to target athletes from high school, college and the pros and we saw the opportunity to leverage the new Name, Image and Likeness rules in collegiate and now high school athletics as a way to engage them. And we are doing just that at a massive level!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

Growing up in Wisconsin I was 100% focused on playing baseball, in fact, I was so focused on it that I neglected academics and many other things. At 13, I accidentally found myself in an Atlanta Braves tryout camp meant for college players. Because of my performance I found myself on their “list” which only fueled my baseball focus. After graduating high school I went to college and the last game of my freshman year I suffered a career ending shoulder injury. Finding myself without a plan “B”, I took an internship in the financial services space. Due to relationships I made during my baseball career, I was given an opportunity that my resume didn’t qualify me for. I used many of the skills I developed as an athlete to excel and ended up in the top 10 in the country. I spent the next three years learning the financial services business and after graduation moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. I proceeded to spend the next 20 years building one of the fastest growing financial planning firms in the Southeast. Right before COVID shut the world down, a basketball player from UNC- Charlotte reached out for an internship. During the interview I discovered that the level of personal finance education provided was at best, sub par. I had arranged a presentation to the team but that was sidetracked by the world shutting down. During quarantine, I began to put the presentation together and through a series of fortunate events it turned into a book. During the editing process I was introduced to a ton of current and former professional athletes. As we went from acquaintances to friends we discussed a lot of issues. The two that we felt were most important to solve were, financial illiteracy and economic and generational advancement particularly among the community of high school, collegiate and professional athlete community. The book finally launched about five days after the Name, Image and Likeness rules went live in college athletics which led it to become an international best seller. From there we looked at the financial education that was being provided in collegiate athletics and noticed that it was focused on educating only on topics the presenter made money on, the end goal of the education was to turn the athlete into a client, there was really only a 10% participation rate due to the fact the athletes didn’t have money and therefore didn’t feel they needed to learn how to invest something they didn’t have and lastly the presenter made difficult topics even more difficult. Once we had a clear vision of what we were up against we said, in order to truly change people’s lives we need to utilize the new NIL rules to show athletes, regardless of gender, sport, school and ethnicity how to earn money through the new rules. Now that they have money coming in they became significantly more interested in learning how to manage it properly. By making it clear that I don’t take on any clients from this, translating financial topics into the language of sports and educating on all financial investments we eliminate the remaining barriers to participation. The next challenge was to create a program that broke down the self limiting beliefs athletes had about who they could become outside of sports. We built a custom personality profile that is 92% accurate and it identifies careers they are naturally aligned with, core strengths, communication styles and more. Once we have this information we should them how to build their personal brand to capitalize on NIL opportunities and to make connections and build relationships within industries they match to for life after sports. Building a brand that is truly authentic, learning how to communicate their strengths, and building key relationships helps them transition to careers and opportunities they never thought possible thus breaking generational cycles people find themselves in. My company A Must Win and book Foundation for Financial Excellence are the cornerstone to what we’re doing to positively change lives.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I think building an audience in anything starts with really understanding who you are, what your beliefs are, what your passions are and being ok if people don’t agree with them. Once you’re comfortable in your own skin you can approach social media with genuine authenticity. My whole purpose is to help people, even if I never meet them. Everything I put out is meant to add value and build community. Once I had that understanding I just focused on putting out tons of content, usually 4 – 8 pieces per day. From there it just snowballed!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

As an entrepreneur every day test your resilience! Anytime you start a new business there are tough times, now add in the new business being in the brand new industry of Name, Image and Likeness. Now combine a new business, a new industry and then coming off COVID when athletic department budgets were frozen. Most people would have shut it down but I knew that we were solving real problems in a way that has never been done before. I simply focused on having 2 – 3 new conversations with schools, athletes and teams per day and a pattern began to appear. The individuals within the athletic departments that played sports at a high level collegiately or professionally loved what we were doing, essentially because they knew the system was broken because they lived it. Those individuals began bringing us in and asking us to create unique experiences to truly impact their programs and the athletes within them. Those opportunities ended up being with schools in the ACC, PAC12, Sun Belt Conference, BIG10, professional teams and more. At the same time we were building out game changing financial, brand building and NIL engagement programs for big name schools I was getting turned away by others that said because I didn’t have an MBA or higher degree my programs wouldn’t be considered, essentially the real world results and impact we were getting didn’t matter unless I had an advanced degree. Because my end goal is to help these kids it was extremely frustrating but, at the end of the day, when you sign up for entrepreneurship you sign up for the good and bad, highs and lows. To me my 23+ years of actual experience and the results we get meant something but to others it doesn’t and because at the end of the day I know the value I bring to these kids I didn’t let it bother me; at least not for too long. I just focus on the word NEXT and move on to the most important thing I can be doing now to grow A Must Win.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.amustwin.com
• Instagram: @amust.win
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanschachtner/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1CnfzidT8L_MxrQNwAe-JQ
• Other: TikTok: @a_must_win CirQula: Ryan Locals: https://athletefinancialeducation.locals.com