Latest / Carlsbad: People, Purpose and Impact / The Real Cost of Chasing Gold: Shane Fisher and the Mission of American Paragons
Transcript
- Bret Schanzenbach: Carlsbad: People, Purpose and Impact is an essential podcast for those who live, work, visit, and play in Carlsbad. Good morning and welcome, everyone. My name is Bret Schanzenbach. I’m the president and CEO here at the Carlsbad Chamber, and I’m your host today. I’m pleased to have with me Shane Fisher. Shane is the founder of American Paragons Foundation. Good morning, Shane. Shane Fisher: Good morning, and thank you for having me. Bret Schanzenbach: This is fun. I’m excited to have this conversation. Now, you and I are sitting here just after the conclusion of the Winter Olympics, and of course the Olympics are going to be a big part of your story. That was quite a conclusion, especially that hockey match. Shane Fisher: Oh man, it was so cool. The women’s hockey match was incredible. The men’s match was incredible too. I read about it, then thought, I’ve got to go watch this thing. I watched all three hours. It was some of the best hockey you could possibly watch. What a great way to finish it. Bret Schanzenbach: Yeah, super fun. To your point, I first got dialed into the women’s team. I wasn’t even following the men’s team at first, but I saw how dominant they were and started following them too. I was at a job fair at my daughter’s high school in Escondido when the gold medal game was going on, so I was keeping track on my phone while talking with students. They were behind, then behind again, and I kept thinking, come on. Then with two minutes to go, they tie it up in the final period. My daughter was done for the day, so we grabbed lunch together and they had the game on. We got to see the overtime live. It was amazing. Shane Fisher: I bet that was electric. The pass that set up the final goal was unbelievable. I love watching modern hockey because when I was a kid, I’d go watch the girls play live and it was incredible, but on TV you couldn’t follow the puck on those old televisions. Nowadays it’s so much easier to track the puck and see what’s happening. Even with all the modern cameras and technology, that pass was so fast. You almost didn’t realize they had scored until the crowd went insane. You wonder how people in the arena can even track it in real time. That thing is so small and moving so fast. Unbelievable athletes. Bret Schanzenbach: So cool, for sure. I’m actually the opposite. I’m really not a big hockey fan. I couldn’t tell you the name of a single NHL player, and I don’t know who won the NCAA hockey tournament in the last five years. But when the Olympics come around, it’s just different. Something’s in the water. It’s gripping. Then to have both of our teams win gold in dramatic fashion made it even more fun. Shane Fisher: Everything about the Olympics is so amazing. It’s funny because I’m almost the opposite of most Olympics fans. I don’t really watch hockey or a lot of traditional sports. I don’t watch much American football, soccer, or basketball. But when the Olympics are on, I’ll watch hockey. Most people use the Olympics to watch the niche sports, but I’m the opposite. I think, well, since they’re at the Olympics, I guess I’ll give hockey a holiday and watch it. Bret Schanzenbach: That’s funny. You’re a Fallbrook guy, right? Shane Fisher: Yeah. Bonsall, actually. Up by Highway 76 and 15. Bret Schanzenbach: Very nice. Local. Did you graduate high school up there too? Shane Fisher: I went to Fallbrook High School for one semester, and then I went to an online school because I was doing so much tennis training at that time in my life. Bret Schanzenbach: Makes sense. That was my next point. You’re an athlete. You’ve had multiple different pursuits, but you started with tennis, then track and field, and then became part of the USA bobsled team. Tell us about your journey in athletics. Shane Fisher: It’s a weird one. I was obsessed with the Olympics for basically my entire life. I remember so distinctly watching the Olympics on TV with my grandma. It was right when TiVo first came out, which now feels like ancient history, but back then it was a huge deal because you could record things. We would record every single round of every sport, and we’d spend about six weeks watching the Olympics, stretching it out and watching everything. I remember during the 2000 Sydney Games watching the opening ceremonies, which was always my favorite part. I saw those athletes walk out and thought, these are actual superheroes. These are the coolest people I’ve ever seen in my life. I told myself at four years old that was going to be me. I was going to be in an Olympic opening ceremony. At first, like any little kid, I thought I’d do it in football or baseball, not realizing those weren’t even Olympic sports. But no one corrects you when you’re eight years old. I played a lot of traditional sports—football, baseball, basketball, swimming. Then when I was about 12, I got obsessed with being the running back for my football team. In Bonsall there are hills everywhere, and there was one giant hill that I’d jog to every day and run down and up over and over. I ended up giving myself stress fractures in both legs because I did it seven days a week. I was just wired that way. The doctor told me no more football until high school and no more baseball. So my grandma took me out and we started playing tennis. I did it partly to spite the doctor because he never explicitly said I couldn’t play tennis. I started playing at San Luis Rey Downs, which doesn’t really exist anymore, and Larry Justice was my tennis coach. He had gone to the Olympics twice when tennis was still an exhibition sport in the 1970s. The moment I saw photos in his office of him at opening ceremonies and all of that, I knew I had found it. I became unbelievably obsessed with tennis. Like I said earlier, I did one semester at Fallbrook High, then had a meeting with my parents and my coach and said I was going to do this full-time, six or seven hours a day. I played national tournaments and all those kinds of things. When I graduated high school, I had some personal things going on that kept me from leaving town, so I went to San Diego Mesa College for two years. There I got introduced to some Brazilian Olympic track athletes, and I started training with them because I wanted to be the fastest tennis player alive. I trained with them six days a week in the mornings. I’d get up at 4:45 a.m. to drive from Bonsall to Genesee. Then during the summer of 2016, I was doing a tournament circuit in France and getting smoked. I was supposed to go to the University of Chicago and play there. Meanwhile, my Brazilian friends were in Rio competing in their hometown Olympics. I was watching them on TV and realizing I probably wasn’t going to be top three in the nation in tennis. It felt like the walls were closing in. So I took my track coach out to lunch and asked him, if I quit my job, stopped coaching tennis, stopped playing tennis, didn’t go to college, and made running track my whole life, just like you guys do, do you think I could go to the Olympics in track? He said, “That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Please do not do that. It’s horrible. But I think you probably could.” So I decided that’s what I was going to do. That started the decathlon journey. I didn’t really choose the decathlon—it was chosen for me because I didn’t have the physical traits to become the fastest guy in the nation in one event overnight. But my coach said, “You’re out of your mind, and that’s the number one trait you need for the decathlon.” You don’t have to be the greatest at any one thing. You just have to be willing to train seven hours a day. So I did that and grinded it out for six years with no support. My NCAA clock was up because I had been playing tennis, so I never ran collegiate dual meets. I couldn’t join track teams because I had no experience. But I didn’t let it stop me. Then six years later, I ended up trying out for the bobsled team almost on a lark. It was during my off-season, and I always thought bobsled was cool as a kid. Two weeks later I was on a plane to Lake Placid. I was sitting around the Olympic Training Center trying to do the math and thinking, okay, up to 11 bobsledders can go to the Olympics, but only three decathletes. I had already made a U.S. team in decathlon before, but sitting there in Lake Placid I realized my chances were probably better in bobsled. So I thought, I guess I’m a bobsledder now. That was it. It was definitely a weird zigzag, but I set my eyes on the Olympics and said I didn’t care how I got there. I was just going to get there. Bret Schanzenbach: That’s wild. What a journey. You mentioned that when you pivoted away from tennis, you were still able to coach tennis. I know that ties into what you eventually founded, because athletes can struggle financially while trying to train and prepare for the Olympics. Shane Fisher: Yeah, I was incredibly lucky that my first sport was tennis, because tennis and golf are probably the two highest-paying sports when it comes to giving private lessons. Because I had such a deep tennis background, I was able to pivot and work for myself. I started doing private tennis lessons, advertising online, building a client base, and I was able to make pretty good money per hour. During the six years I was training in track, I probably only worked 20 to 25 hours a week as a tennis pro. In the beginning, I used a pretty aggressive strategy. I looked up all the independently advertised tennis pros in San Diego and undercut them by $40, so I was by far the cheapest guy in town. That helped me fill up my schedule. Then I raised my prices to something more normal. Pretty quickly I was making around $80 an hour, which at that age was really good. Especially because this was before the crazy inflation of recent years, I could sustain myself on about 25 hours a week of work and focus the rest of my time on training. Most people on Team USA do not have that luxury because they don’t come from a sport like golf or tennis. Especially if they’re on the bobsled team. I think I’m probably the only original tennis player to ever do bobsled. Bret Schanzenbach: Those two don’t necessarily go together. Shane Fisher: No, not really. The track background is what got me into bobsled. But I think all the time about how grateful I am for tennis because it let me make my own schedule, be my own boss, and support myself in a way a lot of Team USA athletes simply can’t. They need an employer, a traditional job, and all that comes with it. They don’t control their schedule and they can’t just take time off whenever they need to. When I first joined the bobsled team, I called my clients and said, “Guys, I’m on Team USA for bobsled. In November I’m going to be gone for five weeks. I’ll see you in five weeks.” No one could really tell me no. But if you have a traditional job and say, “By the way, I’m gone for five weeks,” that probably doesn’t end well. So I was really lucky, but most athletes don’t have that. Bret Schanzenbach: On your website, it says point blank that 25% of U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes earn under $15,000 a year, while average annual training expenses are over $30,000. That’s hard to square. Shane Fisher: Yeah, that equation does not work. So many athletes end up relying on grants, scholarships, and sponsorships, which are very difficult to get. They do part-time work or only work seasonally during their off-season. It becomes very difficult to build a resume or move forward in a career while doing that. Then their training expenses are what they are. It’s very common to take on credit card debt or personal loans because they’re so close. They’re knocking on the door of an Olympic medal or an Olympic team, and that has been the motivating force in their life for years. Most athletes will say, I will do whatever it takes. For someone willing to get up at 4 a.m., suffer, and grind every day, taking on credit card debt can feel like an easy choice. They would rather win a gold medal than almost anything else. But that sets them up for a very bad situation, because there’s no guarantee you even make the Games. You could get injured. You could have one bad day at Olympic Trials. Then suddenly you’re not going, and the debt doesn’t go away just because you didn’t make it. Bret Schanzenbach: During these last Winter Olympics, I found myself paying attention to which athletes were featured in commercials, because obviously that’s income for them. But you’re talking about the elite of the elite—people like Mikaela Shiffrin. Shane Fisher: Right. And just to pull the curtain back a little, Team USA and Olympic advertisers are trying to make money. NBC and all these companies will not run ads or feature athletes unless they have already pre-qualified for the Games. There are some athletes who perform so well the previous year that they effectively punch their ticket early. Those are the athletes you’ll see featured. Mikaela Shiffrin is a great example. On the skeleton side, Mystique Ro had already qualified through prior performances. They don’t want to invest in an ad campaign with an athlete who then fails to qualify. That makes them very conservative, and it self-selects for a small group of people at the absolute top. That makes it even harder for others to get the resources and visibility needed to break through. It becomes a difficult cycle. Bret Schanzenbach: And if you do earn a gold medal for Team USA, that payout is around $37,000, which frankly feels like a joke. Shane Fisher: It’s absolutely nothing. It barely covers a year of training. If I had wanted to make a real, full push to qualify for these Games as a bobsled athlete, it would have cost me about $150,000 in one year. That’s an Olympic year, which is more expensive than a normal year because of equipment and travel, but still, even in less equipment-heavy sports like track, it’s expensive to compete around the world. Meanwhile, other countries offer much larger medal bonuses. I remember Italy offering around $200,000 for a gold medal. In the U.S., people say the lower amount is because we win so many medals, but this is the richest country in the world. The financial support could be much stronger. Bret Schanzenbach: Another part of the financial side I learned about recently involved Alysa Liu. There were reports that China had tried to recruit her at one point and had offered major incentives. Shane Fisher: Right, and they were successful with Eileen Gu. But with Alysa Liu, there’s also her family history and her own values. From everything we’ve seen, she came back on her own terms. She wasn’t going to let anyone dictate her body, her music, or her identity. She seemed genuinely free. That freedom was so evident in how she skated and how she carried herself. She skyrocketed into my top tier of Olympic heroes. Her story hit me at an interesting point in my own life too, because there’s so much pressure athletes put on themselves. It’s easy to tie your identity and your self-worth to your performance. That’s dangerous. The way she talked about connecting to it all but attaching to none of it was incredibly powerful. Watching someone go through those same internal struggles and come out the other side, then perform with such joy and freedom, was deeply inspiring. It’s a reminder that you’re supposed to be having fun. Bret Schanzenbach: Exactly. That’s why we start sports. I coached youth basketball for seven years, and at the beginning of every season we’d tell parents that they probably got their kids to sign up because they promised it would be fun. Eventually kids convince parents to stop signing them up because it isn’t fun anymore. So our goal was always to have fun while learning skills and teamwork. Sports are supposed to be a microcosm for life. You learn life’s important lessons through adversity, highs, and lows. But you’re supposed to be having fun in life too. All of these financial challenges are what led you to found American Paragons Foundation. I want to read the mission statement from your website: to help USA athletes build fulfilling careers, financial stability, and meaningful connections in the communities they inspire. Talk a little bit about that transition—from experiencing these challenges yourself to starting the foundation. Shane Fisher: When I was a track athlete, I had this North Star that kept me going, even though it was a little naive. I believed that all I had to do was make a USA team and all my problems would go away. At the time, I was struggling in a pretty significant way. I was self-funding everything. I had no savings, no insurance, nothing. I brushed my teeth and hoped for the best because I couldn’t afford a dentist. I knew I was sacrificing all of that for a bigger goal, and I kept telling myself it wouldn’t always be like this. I thought once I made a U.S. team, I’d be flying Emirates, staying at the Four Seasons, and living some glamorous athlete life. Then I made the U.S. team for bobsled, and nothing changed. Absolutely nothing. I went through a lot of phases—frustration, anger, acceptance, self-doubt. I kept asking myself if maybe I just wasn’t good enough, interesting enough, or marketable enough. But over the four years I’ve been on the team, I met so many other athletes who were incredible people with incredible stories, performing at unbelievably high levels, and they were struggling in the exact same ways. At some point you have to ask: is it me, or is it the system? It’s easy to blame yourself. But when you look at athletes you deeply respect and see them going through the same thing, you realize it’s a systemic issue. I started looking around for resources, and there really wasn’t anything out there with no strings attached. There’s always a catch. So I said, I’m just going to make it myself. I got really lucky and was introduced to the former head of partnerships for the Golden State Warriors, who then introduced me to the former chief technology officer for the Utah Jazz. We started talking every week on Zoom. They came from multibillion-dollar sports organizations, and when I told them how things worked for Team USA athletes, they were stunned. They couldn’t believe athletes had to pay for so much on their own. We started brainstorming the biggest, most universal pain points of being on Team USA and how we might address them. Thankfully, they joined my board of directors, and we began taking real steps to build something. A lot of the time, when we design programs, I think about a version of myself from ten years ago. I imagine having a conversation with that version of me and asking, what do you need? What would genuinely change your life? That helps me remember not just who I am now, but who I was when I was a broke track athlete with no resources. That’s how we built our programs. We wanted to create something completely free for athletes, with no strings attached, and laser-focused on solving problems that would truly move the needle. Every Team USA athlete gets random DMs from supplement brands offering free creatine or protein powder in exchange for promotion. But that doesn’t solve the real problem. Athletes have bills to pay. So I wanted to think bigger and solve what actually matters. Bret Schanzenbach: On your site, and from our previous conversations, I know that has led to a whole host of offerings—from helping athletes find career opportunities to mentorship from entrepreneurs, public speaking training, and media opportunities. Tell us a little about what you offer and what you’re trying to create. Shane Fisher: We have a lot of cool programs. The flagship one that started it all is career support. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that 95 to 99% of people on Team USA have day jobs. To live off sponsorships alone, you have to be someone like Mikaela Shiffrin. The vast majority of athletes have jobs, and finding one that works with your training schedule, gives you a supportive employment contract, and understands the context of your life is incredibly difficult. But there are patriotic people with small and medium-sized businesses who genuinely want to support Team USA athletes. They watch the Olympics and think, why are these athletes being treated like this? There are employers willing to step up and say, send me one of them. I’ll pay full-time wages for part-time work, or I’ll offer unlimited PTO, or let them work unusual hours because I want to support an American athlete. These athletes also become incredible employees after they retire from sport. Their work ethic, discipline, and resilience are second to none. So our flagship program is essentially a matchmaking service. We connect athletes who have real skills, degrees, and potential with employers in their industries who are willing to support them. Then other programs grew from that. We realized many athletes might want to start their own business, so we built a mentorship track. We match athletes with entrepreneurs who can guide them from having a business idea to building an actual business. Athletes often already have the grit, focus, and problem-solving ability needed to be great entrepreneurs. What they may lack are the teachable skills like writing a SWOT analysis or a funding proposal. We also run Team USA Airbnb, which is a short-term housing support program. If someone has a vacation rental, a summer house, or a place sitting empty, they can donate the value of that stay to our 501(c)(3). Then a Team USA athlete can stay there while traveling for training or competition. The athlete just pays for cleaning, and the host gets a tax benefit while helping cover one of the biggest expenses athletes face. We create earned media opportunities too. I look for podcasts and content platforms that focus on high performance, sports, and related topics, and I connect them with Team USA athletes. Athletes need a stronger digital footprint so they can go after sponsors. If I can help an athlete appear on 15 podcasts, suddenly there’s much more online when someone Googles them. That can make a big difference in how they’re perceived by sponsors. We don’t take a cut of any of it. We’re not in it to make money. Nobody in the Olympic movement is doing it because they’re money-motivated. We also run social media accounts that amplify athletes’ stories, and we’re starting to produce original long-form content. We’re filming our first piece with Team USA para track athlete Delaney Noll. Another big piece is public speaking training. We partner with an organization called Speak to Freedom, which normally charges a substantial fee to teach people how to become professional speakers, build their materials, and present themselves effectively. They’re offering that to Team USA athletes for free through us. Those are the main pillars of support we offer. We’re also working toward hosting events. I’m a big believer that Team USA athletes can advocate for themselves. I can’t be everyone’s agent, and even if I tried, I wouldn’t be very good at it. But these athletes are adults with compelling stories, and nobody knows their story better than they do. So what I want to do is give them the tools to go advocate for themselves. I use this analogy: if I locked a random Team USA athlete in a room with the head of partnerships for Chobani Yogurt, that athlete would probably walk out with a Chobani sponsorship. The problem is not what happens once they’re in the room. The problem is how they get into the building. That’s where we can help. If I can bring together hundreds of Team USA athletes with a combined social following in the tens of millions, then it becomes very easy to get brands into the room. I can’t be everyone’s agent, but I can create opportunities and environments where athletes can make those connections for themselves. That event side of things will come a little later once we have more budget and grant support, but the other programs are already live and working, and we’ve already started making matches and helping athletes. Bret Schanzenbach: That’s great. So at the end of the day, you’re looking for more companies to participate—companies willing to offer flexibility and understand an athlete’s training schedule while still keeping them on payroll. You’re also looking for people with vacation homes or rentals that could potentially be used to support Team USA training and travel. So how do people get in touch with you? Shane Fisher: First and foremost, people can email me at shane@americanparagons.org. I’m constantly online. You can also find me on LinkedIn pretty easily. If you’re ready to jump right in, you can go to americanparagons.org and sign up as a supporter. There are so many different ways to get involved, and many of them don’t really cost money. I tried very intentionally to build something that allows people to make a real difference without having to open up their wallet if they don’t have the disposable income. If you know people who might be a good fit, or if you have access to housing in a city where athletes might travel, that can help too. It could be San Diego, Los Angeles, Park City, or really anywhere. There are athletic events happening all the time. And if you’ve got a creative idea about how you could support Team USA athletes in a way that doesn’t cost athletes money, please reach out. Find me on LinkedIn or send me an email. I’d love to hop on a call. I’m a big ideas guy, and I’m all in on anything that can genuinely help these athletes. Bret Schanzenbach: That’s Shane Fisher on LinkedIn, F-I-S-H-E-R. You’ve been a podcast guest in other places too, and these podcast episodes take on a life of their own. They go all over the place. In your case, that’s especially meaningful because companies anywhere in the country can help, and vacation rentals almost anywhere in the world can help. So if you’re listening, get involved. Shane Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. Bret Schanzenbach: Well, this has been a blast. Thank you so much for taking the time to come down here, and thank you for what you’re doing. I love having the awareness because I didn’t even know these issues existed until we had coffee a couple months ago and you came alongside and joined our chamber. I’m excited to see where this can go and to help get our athletes better supported. Shane Fisher: I can’t thank you enough for giving me the soapbox and letting me evangelize a little bit about what we’re doing. I think 2026 is going to be a huge year for us, and if we all come together, we can make a huge difference in the lives of our chosen representatives on the world stage. Bret Schanzenbach: Let’s do it. Perfect. Thank you. Shane Fisher: My pleasure. Bret Schanzenbach: Thanks for joining us today on Carlsbad: People, Purpose and Impact. If you got value out of our episode today, please hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app, and please tell a friend. Can’t wait to see you next time on Carlsbad: People, Purpose and Impact.