Fueling Professional Success with Personal Fulfillment with Mark Pancratz

Welcome to the Athletics of Business, a podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molitor.

Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics in Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molitor Group, Ed Molitor. Now, I've been around the game of basketball a long time. There's absolutely no denying my age when it comes to that. And over the years I've seen players, I said, you know, they've got a fairly solid chance of being successful in life because of the way they do things, how hard they work, you know, what kind of people they are, who they surround themselves with, things like that. But then there's been those players that you absolutely know to be true, that they will be wildly successful regardless of the field of endeavor that they choose. Today's special guest is one of those people.

I was a huge fan of his in high school, follow him closely in college, and to reconnect with someone I have so much respect for him and his family. As a former University of Tennessee assistant coach, now a founding partner of Axiom Wealth Management, Mark Pankratz knows the value of developing and connecting leaders. Such a great conversation. We are aligned in so many different ways. Now, during his seven years with coach Bruce Pearl at ut, Mark works specifically in player development and scouting. Here's what's cool. His ability to coach talent and enhance skills while thinking strategically. Now does that sound familiar? Ability to coach talent, enhanced skills while thinking strategically set him up to shift his focus to growing a multi million dollar financial planning service.

Really cool piece of the conversation here because Mark and I both struggled with similar issues when we left the game of coaching on different circumstances for different reasons. We are both at different places in our life. But you struggle with that identity thing, right? Like who I am is what I do. And Mark really gets vulnerable and open on something to us about how he handled that, systematically, intentionally handled that challenge. Now, Mark also serves as one of the top youth basketball coaches in Knoxville. He talks inside this conversation about building the next generation of leaders while equipping them not to lose themselves in a game. And that obviously sets him apart from the majority of youth athletic coaches.

Now there's some, many, there's many amazing coaches out there, but as we all know, there's an issue right now with the way we do youth sports and we need more. Mark Pancratzes in the world and through coaching, leading his business, Marcus had the privilege to work with other high impact leaders, coaches and teams to grow their faith, health and wealth. Now, here's what's really cool about market. Here's where it's just another area we're so aligned is most importantly, Mark is the lucky husband to Brooke and a father to three beautiful daughters, Charlie who is 13, Landry who is 10, and Jovi who is 7, providing him with plenty of opportunities to continue coaching the sport he loves. Now, I'm going to get right into this conversation. I know you'll enjoy it.

Mark, we jump right into the power values, priorities, you know, operating with a sense of purpose and the willingness to go all in on something that you believe in, the importance of accountability in the thing that you'll take away from this. And it speaks right into what we talk about here with the Athletics Business podcast and our work with Excel Institute and the Coaching Effects Survey. The, the genuine care for others and what that does to relationships and the power of trust in the role of vulnerability and transparency to building that trust with your team. So much great stuff here and I will get out of your way and I hope you enjoy this conversation half as much as I did recording it. Mark, thank you so much for joining us today on the Athletics of Business podcast.

It is funny how life brings us back together.

It's been a while, but I'm super excited to catch up, spend some time with you.

Hey, all I know is it seems like yesterday I was sitting in Peoria Civic center watching you and your teammates at Schomburg High School hoisted. It was 2001 state championship trophy. Some will call it the biggest upset right in IHSA history. I didn't think it was an upset at all. I think you guys did what you did the entire year and you just played and you're just yourselves and. But man, I guess it wasn't yesterday though. It's been a few years.

It's. It's been a few years. It's been a few kids ago. There's been a lot of. A couple decades. But yeah, some good memories in that gym.

Hey, you know, it's been a treat for me following you since you were a little guy following you through your high school career and then your college career at UWM with Coach Pearl and then coaching with Coach Pearl. You know, there's a lot of similarities that we have and we're aligned on so many things and I think one of Those things that we're aligned on is what the game of basketball meant to us. Not just as an athlete, not just as coaches, but as a human right, as a person. And I don't know how it was for you, but for me, when we got fired at Texas A and M in 1998 when our head coach got reassigned, I was at a crossroads in life, and what am I going to do? I was only 28 years old.

I've been in a gym my entire life. I absolutely loved it. But I knew there was something else. I knew there was something more where I could go, still have an impact on people. One of the struggles I had, Mark, was I quickly realized how. I don't want to use the word lost I was, but how I had to figure out who I was because I had spent a lifetime identifying with who I was, with what I did. In other words, playing the game of basketball, right? Being a coach's son, coaching the game of basketball at a pretty decent level. Like, to me, that. I just thought that was life. I just thought that was all that existed in the world. Was it a challenge for you when you walked away from your coaching career even before that?

Why don't you walk the listener through what your career was. Was like after you graduated from University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee?

Yeah, well, I mean, it started even before that, right. My dad was a really successful basketball player in the suburbs of illinois. Went to DePaul when DePaul was actually really good and really good, and, you know, they were going to the NCAA tournament, sweet 16s. And my dad's family, the last name Pankratz, I mean, all of his brothers, I mean, one played at Illinois. I mean, they were just a successful sports family growing up in that northwest suburbs of Chicago. And then my mom played volleyball. My mom a Hall of Fame volleyball coach in the state of Illinois. And so I grew up in the gym with my parents. Sports, in a lot of ways, was our life. It was our identity. It was awesome.

There were so many blessings from it, you know, blessing of having a mom work at the high school that I went to meant that I could get in the gym before school and get shots up and I could stay there and I could get play against the high school kids when I was in middle school and get beat up a bunch and then go into the gym later and work on your game saying, man, I'm trying to beat those guys. And so growing up in that family, in that sports environment was a huge blessing. It allowed me to get some opportunities to play in College for Coach Pearl at Wisconsin, Milwaukee. You know, I was Coach Pearl's first recruit after Beau Ryan left UWM and took the Wisconsin job, which opened up a scholarship.

Us beating Eddie Curry and Thornwood in the championship opened up a lot more scholarship opportunity and went to Milwaukee and, you know, I had a chance to go to some different programs. The reason I chose UWM with Coach Pearl is because he had a track record of success. You know, he won a Division 2 National Championship prior to coming to UWM. And I was close enough to home in Milwaukee, but far enough away. And it turned out to be a really good move because we won a lot of championships at Milwaukee and just had a great college experience before that next transition.

I was very fortunate. I got to know Coach Pearl when he was at Southern Indiana, I was at Lewis. I mean, we had some battles and not just on the court, but in the recruiting world. Right. As you can only imagine. And just his teams, they played so hard and he didn't overcomplicate things and he didn't try to act like he reinvented the wheel. What were some of the takeaways as a player that you had, you know, and then obviously coaching for him.

Yeah, it's interesting. Coach Pearl ended up being almost a complete opposite of my high school coach and my dad, my high school coach again. I was blessed to be around a lot of successful people. Bob Williams got inducted hall of Fame in the state of Illinois. And Coach Williams, man, he was always hardest on his best players. My dad was always hardest on his best players. My dad never really said, I love you, but I always remember him saying to man, if you ain't working, somebody else is. And when it comes push a shove and you go up against that individual that's been working hard, they're going to beat you if you're not working hard. So you got to outwork people. I get to Milwaukee and Coach Burrow is known for X's and O's being a players coach, being a great marketer.

And it was interesting that he allowed his best players to make more mistakes and coach them way differently than my high school coach, my dad, where the best players like you weren't allowed to make mistakes. I'm going to be hard on the best players because that's going to be a trickle down effect to the rest of the program. Coach Pearl, it was the inverse. It was like, hey, I'm going to let these great players because they're great. I got to be willing to let a little bit more go by. But I'm not going to let that happen with my sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth band. And man, that was a. That was tough. That was tough getting to be a part of.

But I grew to appreciate how much coach really did, Coach Pro really did know the game, appreciate everybody that was on the team. And he taught me a lot about the X's and O's. And then even as I transitioned eventually out of the coaching world on how to be a business person. And coach Burrow is a great salesman and you see that a lot in the way that he coaches these days.

Hey, I gotta ask them before we even go back into some other stuff. I have no idea how this just popped in my head. Well, I do because I can't unsee it. But I remember when you guys were at Tennessee and Pat summon huge game, women's team. And I'm watching on espn, all of a sudden the camera goes to Coach Pearl on the baseline in the student section or whatever, Wherever the student section was, right? Shirt off, full blown body paint. Please tell me you did not help apply the body paint. That was one of the most epic visuals I've ever seen, man.

Looked at that picture close enough. Look who the O is. I'm the.

Oh no. Are you serious? Yeah, I need to find that picture and put it in the show notes. Matter of fact, that needs to be part of our creative piece there.

So here's the story, right? So coach bro comes to me. By the time we got fired with, I was his right hand man because I knew, I mean, X's and O's, I mean, I was in on everything, thankfully, outside of the recruiting pieces that got us fired, but I was on everything. So he decides that it's number one versus number two coming and he's going to go support the lady balls and he's going to paint his chest and he's like, hey, I need five guys to do it. And none of the players would do it. And I mean, the brothers really couldn't do it because the orange paint wouldn't really show much. So it had to be the white guys. And he could only get three others, so himself and three others. So he says, pankratz, you're doing it. Me?

So I was like, well, coach, I'll do it, but I'm only going to do it if I'm right next to you. Because I knew like it was going to be all over the place. And it was in the centerfold of ESPN magazine sports Illustrated like it was everywhere.

Well played on your part, by the way. Well played.

People don't know. What people don't know that I still joked with him about today is when after he gets the pain, he's in the back in the training room doing push ups and curls. So that way when he comes out, like he's got a little flex going on. And man, it was a blast. Like the program was on all time high. People were loving it. I mean, he was the king of this city. I mean, it was a fun time.

But that's, but that's what he does. I can't wait to see him again. He's actually doing the push ups, right? Sit ups weren't going to do him any good. Push ups.

Yeah, the curls and the push ups. He was all in on it.

That's awesome. But yeah, I mean, he could sell anything. Like, he was just a master.

When were at UWM and were on a. When he got there, we're at the Klotchy center, which is right on campus. I mean, probably fits 3,000, 3,500 people by the second or third year because he was in cafeterias handing out free pizzas. He's going around the community. I mean, we're playing at the US Sailor, which was where the Bucks used to play. And it was a sellout. And that was a 11,000 person arena that in a short period of time, because of the way that we played, obviously we had a win. But because of his personality, just encapsulated the whole entire city.

So what was that like when you walked away from coaching after everything went down in Tennessee? What was that like for you?

Well, so I got done playing at UWM and I really wasn't 100% certain I was going to get into college coaching. I thought about some different avenues. My family's in the medical space, medical sales and whatnot, and thought about coaching high school. Then he called and offered me a job. So I went down there. We get fired. And I've been down in Knoxville and I didn't really know anybody. And my whole coaching tree, so to speak, was Coach Pearls. And that was just somebody that just got fired for the on campus recruiting violations of the barbecue. So then by the grace of God, which I think is a whole nother story, Council Martin takes over for Pearl, and Council Martin ends up retaining me.

And because one of the things I did for Coach Pearl and Coach Summit is I ran a lot of their basketball camps and for Pearl I did a lot of the scouting of the opponents, two of which things, Coach Martin, Konzo Martin didn't really enjoy the most. And so they contracted me to run the camps. Well, I saw that as my opportunity to try to get back in with Konzo Martin, even though everybody told me, man, it's going to be a long shot because he just got fired with the previous staff. But I basically lived at that arena for two months, trying to show Coach Martin I would do anything and everything to get an opportunity to stay with the program. And by the grace of God, Konzo ended up retaining me. And so then I worked two years with Konzo.

I kind of started over. I went back to, like, basically director of scouting, and I was with Konzo for two years. And then we fast forward to deciding to get out of coaching. It was really hard. Like, we go back to my upbringing, right? My parents being around sports. My family was known as basketball. My whole identity, in a lot of ways, was around the success that surrounded our family and myself with basketball. And it was not odd. In Knoxville, which is a college town, when I was coaching, I mean, I could call about any donor. I could call people around town and be like, hey, Ed, man, I just had some time free up on my calendar. You want to go grab lunch? And about anybody in town would be like, yeah, like, I love to talk basketball.

Get some inside scoop on Tennessee athletics. And then you leave coaching. Oh, and you go get into the financial services world.

That's it right there, though. Yeah.

And now, like, nobody's gonna pick up the call. No one wants to spend time. Like, it's like, it was, man, it was the hardest thing to walk through and a fight through, walking away from basketball and that identity piece, that was just all of a sudden instantly gone.

Well, and it didn't help that people ghost you. Right. Or they. They avoid you a little bit. Not like you're a plague, but almost like, you know, you're to play. How did you handle that mentally? Like, how did you start working through that, like, realizing, okay, this life isn't going to work this way if that's how I identify with myself and if that's. If that's how other people identify with me, that's their. That's their deal. That's not my deal. Like, I gotta figure this narrative out.

Yeah. Two things for me. One, I couldn't just rip the band aid off. So starting the financial service at the time, I was 100% commissioned. So I still am married to the same woman, but I was married and I had a two and a half year old. And so my family needed to eat. And so back to what my dad taught me about if you ain't working, somebody else is. I've always been a grinder. So I would get up and I would, I concocted a plan to, I would work out high school programs in the morning before school at 6am and I would charge them like 10 bucks a kid and so that the coaches couldn't work the kids out. So they would, or the kids would pay me to come work out 15, 20 kids for an hour before school.

And then I would do that two or three times at night with two or three different schools so I could make some money. And then in the meantime I would start my financial practice. So one, I didn't completely negate the basketball side because I needed to create some money. But then two, I just trusted some mentors and some people that said, hey, if you just do A, B and C, eventually you're going to be successful. And so I aggressively attacked those things. But I was patient for the results to happen because it was going to take time to build that financial services, build the brand, build the trust, build the relationships. So I needed to be patient with it, but I needed to attack it every day.

And so if I didn't trust that process and I didn't have some of that basketball, I wouldn't have been able to survive.

So, you know, it's very interesting you say that because I think that's how we all have to work through. Like how does our passion still fit into our life? Right. But you said something that's very significant, that you trusted a process and the process was you had to attack A, B and C, right? But you were patient knowing that the results are going to be a byproduct of you putting the work in every day. In basketball, you did get instant feedback during your workouts. Are the shots going in? How are the handles? Right. How's my foot speed feel? How am I feeling Cardio wise? Sometimes when you're grinding in the business world and you're working on those lead measures versus leg measures, you're not getting that immediate feedback. How big of a challenge was that for you and what is it that you did?

Like, what was the story you had in your head telling yourself, even though you're a grinder, this was a different type of grinding, right? It's a whole different process. How did you finally get to that point where it's like, I'm just showing up every single day. I'm showing up every single day. Yeah.

So what I looked at was if the average income in a first year financial advisor was call it 70 grand and it was 100% commission. If the first year, if the average was 70, okay. The things that I could control were getting introductions of referrals and then points of contact. And so I would just mentally have to say, okay, if the goal was to do a thousand referrals in a year, then every time I got a referral, I was telling my mind, I'm earning $70. And same thing with my points of contact. If I had to do 40 points of contact a day. And I went and did the math on that. Okay, I may not actually be earning that dollar on that phone call in that moment, but it was planting the seeds and stacking those future opportunities.

And so I had a way to just screw my mind up to be able to think as though I was earning money in that moment for my family when I really wasn't, to help me get through it. And then, look, you got to have some wins, right? I mean, there's got to be some things that are happening to give you some light at the end of the tunnel. And I think the other thing from a business standpoint is my wife is my partner and understood the challenge that it was going to take. I think so many times leader people that I see that go take on challenges, they don't include their significant other and there's a disconnect of support there and understanding what it's actually going to take to be successful.

My wife is queen and she was a big difference for me on that. And then financially, we lived within our means. Even after we started to have success, we still lived well within our means so that we could invest back into the business and do other things as opposed to. Again, sometimes I see people that they have a little bit of success and they start spending it all and it adds to the stress.

You know, it's funny, you talk about your wife and I joke with mine. She is my number one fan, my number one supporter. Without her, none of this is possible. Right. Ironically, your mom was my wife's high school volleyball coach and to this day my wife's favorite coach in any sport. Okay. On that side note, but anyways, you talk about that and including them in the process. Right. And I joke with Nancy all the time that she tolerates me sometimes rather than supports me, even though it's full blown, full blown support. What was that like for you to go you know, you talk about screwing with your mind. I would tell, like, can you condition your mind? This is what I need to do. Right? And you truly were earning the money, then you're not going to reap the reward until later.

But what was it, the conversation like when you sat down with your wife and said, listen, here's my game plan, here's what I'm thinking about doing, what do you think? Like, what are your questions? What are your feedback? Did you guys have that conversation? Because I, I deal with clients every now and then and are thinking about making career move and they get really tunnel vision. Like, I know this is what I need to do and I know this is what it's going to mean for me and my family that I have to move or I have to do this or I have to take this type of pay cut or whatever it is. And my question is, have you talked to your spouse? Have you talked to your partner? Have you talked to the other people that are going to be affected?

What was that like for you?

I think it goes back like, I'm a dad of three girls and if my oldest daughter were to come to me and say, hey, dad, can I stay at so and so's house? If there was a track record of disobedience, not being responsible, that person was not a good influence on their life, I wouldn't have faith. No matter what she said, like, dad, it's going to be good this time. Like, no matter what, her response with the track record would have said, no, you're not going to get to stay at her house. So I say that from the standpoint of my wife had seen me work, my wife had seen me get fired, and the way that I responded to that adversity and earned that opportunity back with Konzo and move up a little bit with Konzo.

So my wife had seen and experienced a track record of me doing what I said I'm going to do and living up to that. And so then when I came to her like, hey, like, I think it's time to get out one, she was all in support because she'd actually see me once in a while from when I was coaching, she never saw me. But like to go to 100% commission with a two and a half year old and another one on the way, like, and she couldn't work because, you know, she'd been taking. So I think that the answer to that was because she had seen me and actually experienced me follow through there Was a level of trust deeper than just, hey, I'm married to you, so I trust you. It's, I'm married to you, I trust you.

And you've proven to me in the past. So I have no other reason than to believe that you're going to do it again.

So 100% commission. When we got it fired at AM in 98, literally every job I've had except coaching has been 100% commission. So I get the stress level. But I was single, right? It was real easy back then. My concern was have enough money for Cubs games on Friday and golf on Saturday. But for you, that's an added pressure to perform. That's an added pressure to put the hours in and put the time in and get results. How did you manage that in your head?

In the people that I coach and talk to these days, One of the things that I oftentimes say is, you've got a choice every day to be really comfortable at work and not do the hard things, not do your points of contact, not have the hard conversations, show up later, go home early, do all the easiest and be comfortable at work, which is going to lead to a lot of discomfort at home. Or you can choose to get into the mud and be really uncomfortable at work and, like, do the hard stuff, like, do the things that you don't want to do and then do even more of it. And what's going to happen is it's going to lead to a lot of comfort at home.

And so for me, again, back to trust in the process, Like, I was just willing to get really uncomfortable at work, and I knew that my heart was in the right place. Like, I was truly just trying to help people. I wasn't trying to sell them something that they didn't need. I could utilize senior advisors and other people to help me, as I was still getting started, to become the financial advisor that I am now. So that allowed me to do the activity and the effort and to have the conversations with people because I was genuine in it and that allowed me to generate enough income and then to build from there.

Early on, how did you decide on the financial advising? You know, because it's you and I still, we still see it as a transformational opportunity for you to really impact others. But I'll remember and I'll be the first to be real about it. In 1998, when I was 20 years old, there was nothing that could have been more transactional in the world that I went into in the mortgage business. Right? The start of the refi Boom. And I was, I mean, I spent my entire life around, you know, a transformational head coach, my father and guys in his circle. So for to me that was shell shock. The financial advisor, you really are a transformational leader. But what made you decide that line of work? What made you decide that business?

When I left out of I truly didn't know what I was going to go do. What happened was I had been away for a few days helping on the recruiting side when I was coaching for with coach Martin and we had a recruiting dinner that night that I got back. So here in Knoxville, there's the Tennessee river, which is right outside my window, and the arena where the basketball team plays at and the coach's offices are right on that river. There's a road that goes right down there. And I went to go pick up my two and a half year old daughter and she was coming with me to the recruiting dinner and you know, two and a half, three, like they don't know what they're saying, they know what they're doing, whatever.

But as we're driving towards the restaurant that was on the river, were going by the arena where my office was and my daughter looks up and says, daddy's home. And points to the arena. That was a Friday. And that was the. That was it. I went and let Gonzo Martin know on that Monday that I was leaving and getting out of coaching. So I didn't know what I was going to go do. So I interviewed medical sales because my dad and his family was in the medical sales business industry, real estate thought about. I had some of my dad's buddies and some local people that were going to invest in opening up a sports facility for me and then obviously the financial services. So what got me into it was I wanted to help people and.