Website – http://thebdsagency.com/

Email – brian@thebdsagency.com

Twitter – @BDStan

Brian Stanchak is the Founder of the BDS Agency which is dedicated to providing individualized and innovative management to each of their coaching clients while forming long-term relationships with them and their families. Understanding the life and demands of a Division I basketball coach himself, Brian focuses on providing a service to coaches that he would have wanted as a coach.

Since 2014, The BDS Agency has had45 clients obtain a first-time or new Division I Head Coach position, secured 85+ extensions or renegotiations to Division I Head Coach client contracts, and negotiated over $120 million in employment contracts.

Stanchak, previously was the athletic director at Penn State Wilkes-Barre after spending three seasons in the Big East Conference as Assistant Coach with the Seton Hall University Women’s Basketball team.

Prior to Seton Hall, Stanchak served two years as the Top Assistant Coach/Recruiting Coordinator with the Fairleigh Dickinson University Women’s Basketball team.

Stanchak spent the 2004-05 season as the Coordinator of Basketball Operations for the men’s and women’s teams at the University of Pennsylvania working under current Temple coach, Fran Dunphy, and women’s coach, Patrick Knapp.

While an undergraduate at Seton Hall, Stanchak was a Student-Assistant/Video Coordinator for the men’s basketball program (beginning under current Harvard coach Tommy Amaker).

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Take some notes on the business of coaching as you listen to this episode with Brian Stanchak from the BDS Agency.

What We Discuss with Brian Stanchak

• Starting his coaching career in high school by working with coaching staff at his school
• The high school coach giving him opportunities to learn and coach, especially with the freshman team
• His early goal was to coach at the division 1 level
• Working summer basketball camps to learn and build his network
• Meeting Tommy Amaker and Chris Collins while working camp and how that led to an opportunity at Seton Hall
• Not realizing that parents could be such a challenge for coaches before he started his coaching career
• Quickly understanding how hard coaches had to work in order to be successful
• Learning from Tommy Amaker every day as a student assistant coach
• Becoming more of the video coordinator for Louis Orr after Amaker left for Michigan
• Breaking down video in the past compared to today
• Getting hired by Fran Dunphy at Penn and working for both the men’s and women’s teams
• His path to the women’s side of college basketball
• Working for Patrick Knapp with the women’s program at Boston College
• Why coaches need to be proactive in looking for jobs
• Being hired by Sandy Gordon at Farleigh Dickinson and how that gave him an opportunity to coach on the floor and have more responsibility
• Returning to Seton Hall under Phyllis Mangina for three years
• The day to day interaction with student-athletes, watching them grow and develop
• The challenge of competing in the old Big East
• His decision to step away from college coaching and his brief time in pharmaceutical sales
• The opportunity to become an AD at Penn State Wilkes-Barre
• “You can only be as successful as the support above you as an athletic administrator.”
• The lessons he learned as an AD that help him when he works with his coaching clients today
• How helping his friends in the coaching profession led to him becoming an agent and starting BDS
• Focusing on the underserved women’s college basketball coaches
• His three most important services – 1. Contract Negotiations 2. Counseling/Advisement 3. Helping with the Interview Process
• “As far as the contract negotiations go, a lot of it’s about data and what you can do to support your case.”
• Adding an additional year or protection from termination can add value to coaches beyond salary
• Why he believes you should have ties to a school or region when applying for a coaching job
• “Put your effort into attacking and pursuing jobs that you’re qualified for, that you have a connection to or that fit you based on your background and level of experience.”
• Interviewing for a job has to be very personalized to the specifics of that job
• You have to help the school visualize you as their next coach
• Different ways he has helped his coaching clients deal with COVID and handle social justice issues

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THANKS, BRIAN D. STANCHAK

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TRANSCRIPT FOR BRIAN D. STANCHAK – FOUNDER OF THE BDS AGENCY, REPRESENTING COLLEGE BASKETBALL COACHES – EPISODE 420

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle this morning, but I am here with Brian D Stanchak from the BDS Agency. Brian, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:00:11] Thanks for having me, man. Excited to be here.

Mike Klinzing: [00:00:14] We are excited to have you on and dig into your varied background in the game of basketball, starting out in the coaching profession and shifting over to the coaching agent business.

Let’s start with when you were a kid, tell us a little bit about your first experiences with the game of basketball.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:00:29] For sure. You know, I fell in love in basketball pretty early about middle-school and played in middle school and some of high school. And then I realized relatively early that I was not gonna get that opportunity to play at the division one level. And so I figured wanting to be involved in some way at that level, why not just start my coaching career while I was in high school. And so had [00:01:00] spoken with the head coach of the high school team and I give him all the credit in the world for letting 15-16 year old kid become a part of the coaching staff and learn and get involved.

And, and so that’s how I got my started coaching. And then it was my goal to really just advance my career and coach at the division one level. One piece of advice that I got really early on was to work college basketball camps and build a network. And so while all my friends were having fun during the summers, I was staying in dorms without air conditioning and coaching basketball for eight to 10 weeks and building a network. And it was through that network that I got to know Tommy Amaker at Seton Hall and Chris Collins at Seton Hall. Chris had left to go back to Duke right before I got there. But I had gotten to know them and I was fortunate enough where coach Amaker said, Hey, you wanna come to [00:02:00] Seton Hall?

We’d love to have you work with our program. And so Seton Hall was the only school I applied for. And I don’t know what I would’ve done if I didn’t get in there. But it was my goal to work with TA and Chris before they had left. And so that’s how I got my start.

Mike Klinzing: [00:02:18] So, what does that look like?

So two questions, let’s go back to high school for a second. First, when you go in and you’re a high school student and you’re helping with the coaching staff, what does that look like? What were some of the things that you were doing? What were some of the things that you were able to sit on? Sit in on our, learn at that early stage in your career?

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:02:35]

Well, so I was fortunate where the head coach had asked me, Hey, what do you want to do? And I said, listen, I want to learn, I want to sit in on all the coaching meetings. I want to be able to go and travel and produce scouting reports. I want to get on the floor and coach. And so what I had started doing was I [00:03:00] started coaching with the freshmen.

because the freshmen were younger than me at the time when I started coaching. And so it just gave me an opportunity to really gain hands-on experience on the court coaching. And I’d sit on a bench for varsity games and do some coaching there my first year. But you know, a lot of it was with the freshmen team and really just honing my craft on the court.

But at the same time I was I was traveling. Even though I couldn’t drive up, go with the freshmen coaches when you go out to different games and, and pretty scattered reports. And we’d watch game film with the coaches after the game and just be hands-on with every aspect of, of it.

Mike Klinzing: [00:03:44] Was there anything that you remember from that time that was.

Surprising to you as a coach, maybe there was something that before you got into it, you thought, Hm. I didn’t realize that coaches did so much of this, or was there one particular aspect that you find particularly [00:04:00] interesting or surprising that you didn’t realize was part of coaching?

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:04:03] Probably I was naive to the fact of how bad parents are.

You know, I’ll never forget the two or three times that parents were flipping out for unnecessary reasons. And these were parents that I knew because I was friends with their kids and I’m like, man, this was a side I didn’t know was there.

So it was a little bit of a, of an eye-opener for me at that point. But I think the biggest thing in terms of the skills that go into coaching and the responsibilities are just how much work goes into preparing for practice, preparing for a game that players or those on the outside don’t see. Whether it’s the hour you spend in a car to go to a game and watch it, and then spend two hours [00:05:00] watching it and then spend two hours putting together a scouting report and then discussing it as a staff. These five to six hours before a high school game that went into it to produce a 15 minute report to show the student athletes and talk about it at practice. So I think that was probably the greatest eye-opener, but in a very positive way.

Mike Klinzing: [00:05:25] Yeah. I can totally see that where okay. I think a lot of people, especially as players, you don’t necessarily realize how much time your coaches are putting in.

You see them on the practice floor, you see your coach at the game. And then you’re like, well, what are they doing from 7:00 AM until three o’clock when practice starts I guess in high school, Probably teaching and most likely the most likely case, but in college, I think you have a perception of, I’m not sure what they’re doing but they show up for practice the same way I do it.

2:30 to three o’clock and then it’s just things just kind of miraculously happen. And I think inevitably

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:05:57] you talk to coaches. [00:06:00] And people would say, what do you do? And I’d say, I coach  basketball. And they’d be like, okay, what’s your full-time job. I’m like,  that’s my full-time job. And so it’s more, more, a lot more than full-time.

And we’ll get into that in terms of why I stepped away from the profession.

Mike Klinzing: [00:06:19] When you’re at Seton hall and you’re working with coach Amaker and you’re part of the staff there, and you’re doing things for him. What are some of the things that you’re doing? And then in the course of doing that, did it cement your love for coaching and get you to the point where you’re saying boy, now this convinces me that this is the direction that I want to go.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:06:42] Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, Coach Amaker was and still to this day. I mean, a tremendous mentor. And I mean, he was my idol. Everything that he did for that Seton Hall program was done in such a first class way. And so [00:07:00] to learn from him every day was, I mean, it was a coaching clinic every single day, whether we’re in practice, individual workouts or being in the office, but you know, a lot of the stuff that I did for him were just typical managerial duties that managers would do, whether it’s setting up for practice, breaking down practice, but also one of the assistant coaches kind of took me under his wing.

Billy Schmidt was the assistant who replaced Chris Collins at the time. And Billy kind of took me under his wing and gave me a lot of insight and allowed me to kind of help put together some of the scouting reports that he would do, gather the information and stats. And so it gave me a real good insight into what the scouting process of producing a college basketball scouting report.

And so for coach Amaker, I did that after coach left for Michigan Louis Orr came in [00:08:00] and this was back in 2001,  2004. And at the time. Programs didn’t have specific video coordinators. It’s not like it was as common as it is today. There were some programs that did it, but a lot of times there was a TA who might’ve done it, or there was an admin assisting that specifically for basketball that would do it.

But not as many video coordinators. And so what come short allowed me to do was he allowed me to be the video coordinator. And so I spent three years as a video coordinator two years as as the overseeing all the student managers. And so being the video coordinator helped me expand my network and just really add to my resume things that someone who might’ve just been a typical student manager wouldn’t have had when they graduated.

So I was really, really lucky to be able to do that.

Mike Klinzing: [00:08:58] That’s a little bit different job than it is [00:09:00] today with dealing with video

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:09:01] Oh man. The amount of times I fell asleep in the office at two o’clock in the morning, cause you got six tape decks rolling. And and you still got 13 tapes to send out.

Cause this would be the non-conference games in the beginning when everyone’s requested them. I mean, it. It’s crazy. Even at Penn after I had graduated from Seton hall and went on to Penn, I was doing the video work and we only had two, maybe three tape decks that we could copy on too.

And I mean, it would take, these guys today have no idea how good they got it. I mean, the amount of time you spent in the office just making sure that you’re copying tape. The tape was, ah, man, I couldn’t, I couldn’t even count the hours now.

Mike Klinzing: [00:09:51] Yeah, it’s crazy. When you think about how much easier it is today, I think anybody under the age of 25 or 30 really has no [00:10:00] idea.

And I think about it from a coaching perspective. I think about it from a player perspective. I remember sitting in trying to watch video with. Our coaches when I was playing at Kent and we’d sit in the locker room and your coaches want to replay a particular play. So you’d hit the rewind button.

It would go like 45 seconds past the play that they wanted, this one of the sea, and then you’d fast forward it. And you’d end up seeing all this stuff. I mean, you wasted so much time. It’s just amazing how much more efficient we are today with digital. It’s just, it’s just crazy. I can’t imagine. What that looks like in terms of just the change in the amount of time and productivity, somebody who is in that video coordinator position today, versus what somebody who is doing it in the age when you were doing it.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:10:43] Oh a hundred percent. Well, I remember, I mean, even just the live stats they’re doing now in terms of the different software where you’re able to code it during the course of the game. So that way everything’s picked up and [00:11:00] able to be broken down as soon as the game’s over.

I mean, I remember there was a time my first year that. The first year Eddie Griffin who was drafted in the NBA. And I think he was drafted by the Nets, but Eddie was on team and I mean, he was just getting triple doubles with blocks, not even assists, but there was a game,

I can’t even remember how many rebounds but Billy came to me and he was like these stats are wrong. Like this, when you rebalance, he’s like watch the entire game and kind of when he read that and said he had, and I mean, I watched it, I can’t remember if the stats were right or, or wrong, but again, it’s something that you look back on and you’re like, man, I spent two hours or more just watching that video where now everything is just categorized instantly and they have the resources, the [00:12:00] software, the people to be able to do that to really make time much more productive.

Mike Klinzing: [00:12:06] Yeah, it’s incredible, driving videotapes around doing exchanges and going to FedEx all the time.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:12:12] I mean, like, the place that was in Secaucus, New Jersey? There was a tape place where they got every game. I mean, everything that was on TV and  we were lucky because we were close. So I’d be up there all the time having to figure out when school is closed for winter break, because then when we came from coming in over winter break, then you wouldn’t be able to get them because it was closed.

Mike Klinzing: [00:12:44] yeah, that’s insane. That is absolutely insane. How did you balance all your responsibilities with the basketball program, with your responsibilities as a student?

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:12:55] Well, probably not very well because I spent so much time in the office. [00:13:00] But it I mean, I loved it I loved it. It was, I mean, it was great.

I was part of something that I wanted to do for the three years prior to getting to Seton Hall. So I didn’t mind the grind, and I gave up a lot during my college experience. My friends were out  at parties and doing different things because I was working my butt off. And so it was a tough balance, but I made it work and that’s one of those things that, again, when you’re putting in so much work and it was the same thing for me I might not have been doing the, obviously the practice work and the individual workouts and whatnot, but you know, I’m spending hours on hours in the office.

You know, put in putting all that time in, but I knew that there was going to be an end goal to it. It [00:14:00] wasn’t necessarily, I wasn’t thinking about necessarily what I was doing for myself at that point in the program. At that point, it was anything that I’m doing now is an educational experience.

That’s going to help me later on down the line.

Mike Klinzing: [00:14:15] Absolutely. All right. So take us through the various stops in your coaching career. Maybe just give us some highlights from each one of them, what you learned and then we can start to move towards ultimately where you end up with BDS.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:14:30] Yeah, So when I had graduated, I mean, one thing that I was always really good at was networking.

And just trying to develop and cultivate and maintain relationships. And so I had developed a ton of relationships working camps, and then obviously during my time at Seton Hall, but I was also very proactive with things. And so what I had done was just started reaching [00:15:00] out to a lot of the local schools saying, Hey this is my background, here’s my resume.

This is who I’ve worked for. If anything opens on your staff would love to talk with you. I got a call one day from Penn and they were interviewing for a coordinator of basketball operations position. And Coach Dunphy had gotten my email that I had sent a month prior and asked if I was interested. I didn’t know, Coach Dunphy at all.

But it was a great opportunity. And I keep saying this, but I was fortunate because I had probably like two or three other offers at the division one level whether it was a GA spot or op spot and so for me, it was okay, where can I go and learn from one of the best.

And so I interviewed and got the job at Penn and it was fantastic. We won the championship. I [00:16:00] think in January. Cause at the time there was no Ivy league tournament. And I mean, I think we lost one game that year in the Ivy league, but we were beating up on everyone so bad and it was like, I mean, we saw it like five or six Ivy League games to go and we’d clinched the championship.

So that was certainly a highlight and then moving on to the NCAA tournament, but yeah. Where it, this kind of established a different path, was at the time I had started working, I had worked with the men’s and women’s team when I was at Penn. So I was coordinator of basketball operations for both teams and Kelly Greenberg hired me.

She left Boston College about a month after I got there. And Patrick Knapp, who was the head coach at Georgetown had taken over for Kelly and Coach really took me under his wing and really exposed me to the women’s side of college basketball. And so for me, it was a side that I never really contemplated, but I also saw that the 15th kid [00:17:00] on the roster also didn’t think that they were making it to the NBA.

It was much more pure. It was much more fundamental. And I really, really enjoyed being able to experience that. And coach Knapp gave me a lot of enhanced responsibilities as well, in terms of just being able to scout and breakout film and do some of the stuff that I needed to learn, but wasn’t necessarily doing as much cause I was too busy copying videotapes.

And so he gave me that opportunity and really took me under his wing. And so I kind of made the decision at that point where I was gonna head towards the women’s side. And I had gotten a job at Farleigh Dickinson. And you know, I’ll kind of tell this quick story, because I think it’s important about being proactive.

I mean, for me, I was coordinator of basketball, operations, administrative stuff, and doing scouting behind the scenes and whatnot, but I [00:18:00] wasn’t on the floor and I knew I wanted to be on the floor. And so what I had done was I went at the time, most third assistants, we’re still talking 2005.

Most of assistants were grad assistants. And so I went to the website of every school in the Maac and America East, and any of the kind of local Northeast conferences. And I saw who had GAs in their second year. Because I knew at that point they would be looking for assistants and I was proactive and had emailed a bunch of head coaches.

And one of the, I had gotten some responses, but one of the ones who had written name was Sandy Gordon who was at Fairleigh Dickinson and interviewed for the job and was fortunate enough to become a recruiting coordinator, an assistant coach at Fairleigh Dickinson at a really young age. And so I was there for two years and then call to go back to [00:19:00] my alma mater Seton hall for three years on the women’s side with Phyllis Mangina, who was tremendously impactful for my career and I had gotten to know while I was working at Seton Hall as a student and giving an opportunity to come back home.

Mike Klinzing: [00:19:16] What was your favorite part of your time as a college basketball coach? Which piece of it stood out to you when you look back on it that was the part that I enjoyed the most.

Does anything stand out for you?

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:19:29] Yeah, I think just the interaction day-to-day interaction with the student athletes and watching them grow and develop over the course of a year or four years. I mean that you’re impacting lives in a positive way. So I think that is certainly meaningful as far as what I miss.

I mean I certainly miss the excitement that comes with being on the bench during a close game at the end. [00:20:00] And I think that’s something that I’ll always miss. But you know, it’s funny. My wife’s favorite game, we played a game in the Prudential Center on the women’s side and it’s Uconn.

I think we lost by 70. She always like, that’s my favorite game.

Yeah, 10 minutes of the game. That’s awesome. So that’s not a positive memory, but it’s certainly a memory

Mike Klinzing: [00:20:28] that’s funny. So when you think about that time, what is it that you don’t miss? So what was it that made you kind of rethink and reprioritize where you want it to go with your career?

What was it about coaching that made you say? Hmm, maybe there’s a time for me to find a better balance. Was it getting married? Was it kids? Was it just you seeing the amount of time you’re spending in the office, the amount of time that’s required in order to have success? Where were you in terms of your thought process when you left [00:21:00] Seton Hall and then you go and become a Director of athletics.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:21:04] Yeah. Well, I think it’s a combination of a couple of things. I mean, for me, my dream was always to coach at my alma mater and I had done that for three years before my boss, Phyllis had decided to step away. And so I had essentially reached a dream. I was 25 at the time when I had gotten to Seton Hall 28 when Phyllis had resigned.

So I had accomplished something that I had to set forth about what eight years earlier. So there was that, the other thing was, you have to remember, this was the old Big East. I mean, this was. When I say it like it was so long ago,

Mike Klinzing: [00:21:52] It feels a lot longer than it is, right?

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:21:54]  Yeah. I mean, this was 2007, 2010, and this was [00:22:00] when Notre Dame, Uconn we’re in the conference. And so we were breaking school records for non conference wins. planner, challenging, not having a schedule and yeah. All of a sudden you open up and you’re 0 and three, because you lost to three of the best teams in the country and whatnot.

So it beats you down a little bit, there was not much parity in terms of the conference. And so that took a lot out of you because you put a lot in, and you weren’t seeing all that hard work. It was disappointing. And more disappointing.

In terms of me taking accountability saying, man, what else could I have done to make us more successful during that period of time? And then the third thing is, yeah, as a college coach, you’re not getting that personal professional balance. And having reached my dream and having desired [00:23:00] to have a little bit more personal professional balance that I had sacrificed through college.

You know, through my years, as a college coach, I desired a little bit more. And so that’s when I decided to step away and look at the administrative route.

Mike Klinzing: [00:23:19] So you do that and you end up at Penn State Wilkes-Barre what does that look like for you in terms of reaching that goal of having more work-life balance?

What did you like about that job? And what maybe did you, I don’t know if not like, but what did you miss about what you had been doing before?

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:23:38] Well, so let’s take one quick step back. When I had gotten out of coaching. Everyone kept saying to me, Hey, you gotta do sales. You’re going to make so much money or do the nine to five.

And so I want to get into pharmaceutical sales and did it for nine months. Hey, number one, sales rep in the company, made more money than I ever did in my coaching [00:24:00] career. And I hated it. I absolutely hated it. And like the day we got our big commission check was the day I called my boss and I’m like, you know, I’m taking a athletic director job.

And I know he was disappointed cause I made him a lot of money, but it just, what I missed at that point that I didn’t necessarily realize prior was the comradery that comes with being on a college campus. And so during this period of time, I was offered a couple of assistant AD jobs and didn’t necessarily want to move very far.

And so had turned them down and kept looking at different opportunities. And the girl I was dating at the time, who is my now wife. We had started dating about two years after my first year at Seton Hall. She’s from the Wilkes-Barre area. And so we were always doing the back and forth thing.

I was still living in North Jersey when I was doing pharmaceutical sales and [00:25:00] and just saw that Penn State needed an athletic director. And so played the process. Right. And I was fortunate to get the job over there. And it was a great learning experience in terms of helping me.

And fortunately the path that it kind of led me to where I am now. I really enjoyed being back on college campus. I really enjoyed the leadership aspect. I really enjoy being able to create as much of a positive student athlete and coach experience as possible. But I also learned, and this goes back to the part that’s not fun is that as a coach, you may be asking things of your AD and they might be saying no, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s things they don’t want to do. They report to someone too, and they [00:26:00] answer to someone too. And I learned that you can only be as successful as the support above you as an athletic administrator, because we had done a tremendous amount.

I mean, where you’re setting school records for number of recruit student athletes to the school. And our coaches were having success and buying in and I kept emphasizing the importance of not just recruiting, but the retention part of it. And you have to invest to be able to get that long-term investment.

And so it was frustrating when we weren’t obviously being able to get that investment that was needed to be able to not just recruit, but retain, the best positive experience as possible for our student athletes. And I think we did as much. And one thing I say that I did for my [00:27:00] coaches is the one thing that costs the school.

Nothing that I did all the time to show them appreciation.

Mike Klinzing: [00:27:09] So, which we know as coaches, a lot of times it can be very, very isolating. And when you’re not hearing from somebody above you or people, because you hear a lot of bad stuff as a coach, just like you talked about with parents earlier off the top of the podcast, coaches are hearing a lot of people complaining about what they do.

So I’m sure that any coach would appreciate hearing from somebody that’s giving them a little bit of praise and a little bit of love for the hard work and time that they’re putting in. Oh

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:27:34] Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, I texted my coaches after every game and I’d be at every home game, occasionally some of the away games, but just, being able to be visible and let them know that I’m there and supportive of them was big, but it also only goes so far, at the end of the day. And so that was probably the most frustrating part of the [00:28:00] job, but it was also a great eye-opener in terms of situations that I deal with now and being able to really help clients work through them with our administrators and just understand that just because your administrator says, no, it doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in you or that they’re not supportive.

They ultimately have to balance things and answer to someone else as well.

Mike Klinzing: [00:28:25] Yeah. I would imagine that learning how to lead and manage that group of coaches. As a college athletic director translates pretty well to what you do as you try to manage and help the clients that you have today manage their careers.

So tell us a little bit about how the idea for the agency came about and just give us the Genesis story of BDS.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:28:49] Sure. So I never set out to be an agent. It was not anything I’ve thought of doing. When I was a student at Seton Hall, it was the height of the Jerry Maguire [00:29:00] era. And so everyone, I feel like in my sport management major, wanted to be sports agents, I wanted to be a college basketball coach.

And I joke that right now I look back and I’m probably the only one that is a sports agent, no one else. And so it’s funny how, these twists and turns, but it was during my time as an administrator that I had maintained communication with a lot of my friends on the coaching side in women’s basketball and was able to really help them through various things, whether it was their contract, interview preparation, handle the situations with administrators and a couple of them over the course of time would say you should get into the agent thing and I’d say, no, no, I’m  not interested in doing that, Andy.

The more I thought about it at the time, there were maybe one or two people that were focused on women’s basketball. I saw that [00:30:00] that women’s basketball coaches were not a priority for most agents. And also it wasn’t the focus there. Wasn’t a focus for helping coaches. It advanced their careers as much on the women’s side in terms of representation.

And so I felt like my experience, having been a coach and athletic administrator, and then seeing, obviously my self, help several coaches through various things and advance their careers and contracts and sit through situations as an AD. I saw that it could provide real value there. I wasn’t someone who just, Hey, I can make money off coaches.

I’m going to become an agent like I see today. It was what I can provide real value. Having been on both sides of the table. And I got a passion for an underrepresented sport. And so [00:31:00] founded the agency back in 2013 and haven’t looked back since I wound up. I stayed in my AD job until 2015, I did both was able to have a little bit of success.

My wife found out we were having our first child and. When she found out, I said this is great, but I think I’m going to quit my job.

Mike Klinzing: [00:31:25] Perfect timing,

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:31:28] I took a  pay cut. But I believed enough in myself and the clients I had that it was worth the shot. So I said, listen, I’ll stay  through February of 2015, my son was born in November of 2014, but I was asked I’ll stay at Penn state.

You know, that way we’ll make sure if  anything happens with the baby and I’ll just make sure he’s healthy. And he’s the beautiful love of my life. And once I left in [00:32:00] February, 2015, been doing this full-time ever since

Mike Klinzing: [00:32:05] How many clients did you have when you made the leap?

And then what was the plan for obviously adding clients since you’re going from it being a part-time job to being a full-time job? What was the expansion plan when you first got into it?

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:32:19] Well, I think I probably had 15 to 20 clients when I left, but what did kind of help allow them to build a foundation and understand that there is going to be a level of success?

My first off season as an agent five of my clients became first time division one head coaches. And so I saw there was some success. I was able to start generating some revenue. Now it was nowhere close to what I was making as an AD, but it was foundational enough to kind of [00:33:00] help give me a start.

And so without that, if I had went that first off season and didn’t have success, I don’t know. I don’t know what would’ve happened, but you know, with that, I was just fortunate enough to work with amazing coaches who believed in me as much as I believed in them.

Mike Klinzing: [00:33:21] What are the three main services that you provide to your coaches. If you had to narrow it down, what are the three most important things? If we were to ask, take a survey of your clients, what would they say would be the three most important things that you do for them to help them advance and succeed in their careers?

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:33:40] Well, I think obviously the contract negotiation.

And advisement is a huge part of it. I think the counseling piece of it, whether it’s career or program or dealing with staff or administrators at whatever it might be, my wife thinks 80% of my job is being a [00:34:00] counselor, especially through these last couple last eight, nine months. So I think that’s a the second piece of it.

And then I think all aspects of the interview process as well is big, whether it’s portfolio development or interview prep, or being able to be strategic about pursuing opportunities that are potential there for other clients.

Mike Klinzing: [00:34:25] All right. Let’s break down each one of those one at a time. Let’s start out with contract negotiations.

So how do you, how do you learn what you need to do in contract negotiations? I’m assuming that you don’t have a law degree. So how do you go about helping your clients in that contract negotiation piece? How did you learn the process for what needed to be done to help your clients.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:34:45] Well, I think with the contract piece, I was negotiating contracts as an AD.

And so I had had some experience on that other side of the table, but I think the biggest part of it [00:35:00] that gave me a huge advantage was fact that I wasn’t an attorney because there were a lot of Ads, they don’t want to deal with it. And deal with the terms.

And I think once they talked to me, they saw, I was a down to earth guy who was extremely knowledgeable and fair and fought for my clients. But in a way that was also not demeaning or looking to piss them off either. And so I think my approach was always really solid, but as far as the contract negotiations go, I mean, a lot of it’s about data and what you can do to support your case.

You know, you can’t just say what this is not money, or this is not years. A lot of it goes into, Hey, this is what we want, and this is why we want it. Or this is why this person deserves an extension. I try to put as much information as possible in front of them to help them make their decision for them.

That’s my piece of the negotiation, but we also, [00:36:00] I have an attorney who represents baseball coaches who will read every contract for me too.  So it was just kind of an extra set of eyes. I mean occasionally he might pick up something that I missed, but I’ve been doing it for so long that  there’s never too many issues with it, but just from a legal standpoint, he looks at all our contracts as well.

Mike Klinzing: [00:36:20] Yeah, That has to be tremendously valuable to coaches who one just don’t have the time to be able to put in that research to. Give back their case for why they should be paid, what they should be paid or what they’re looking for in terms of a new position or an extension of their current contract.

So I’m sure that’s an extremely, extremely valuable piece. That again, coaches just don’t have the time. And it’s kind of like when you go in and you’re buying a car from a from a car salesman, that car salesman has done hundreds or thousands of transactions, and you’re sitting there maybe having done three, four in your entire life.

And I think that contract is probably the same way where a coach. Sure. They’ve they’ve. Dealt with maybe one or two situations, but here’s you, somebody who has, you [00:37:00] know, again, hundreds of clients that you’ve negotiated hundreds, if not thousands of contracts, at some point that you can go in and look at it and you know what you’re looking for the case that you have to put forth in front of an athletic director in order to make the.

In order to make the deal happen and to get the best deal for your client. It just seems like something that every coach I’m sure when that process is done, I would guess that the thank you’s that you get from your, from your clients you know, are pretty heartfelt at that point.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:37:25] Yeah, no question. I mean, I’ll get texts or calls from the spouses

and that’s when it’s so meaningful, because for me again, I know that I was able to impact their life in a positive way that maybe they didn’t necessarily feel like maybe they should’ve been capable enough to achieve the same goal, but didn’t know how to go about it, or didn’t know how to [00:38:00] justify it, or didn’t know that it was possible.

But you know, the negotiation piece of it too is with clients. It’s not just about the salaries, because I think that’s the big thing that everyone always looks at. And there are a lot of coaches who don’t want to work with an agent because they figure they can save money and they might save money by going in and having an attorney review it.

But the attorney doesn’t know about coaching contracts, so it doesn’t have the data to be able to justify any assets that are in there. And so I think that one thing coaches need to take into consideration, I think it’s becoming much more prevalent are other aspects of the contract. There might be times where, yeah, we might not be able to get any more money, but maybe we’ll get an extra year.

That’s a lot more money in your coach’s pocket, whatever they’re paying me or the additional bonuses that they might get, or even just protecting them from a termination. [00:39:00] with or without cause or a buyout if they were going to another school allowing them that flexibility.

So there’s a lot of things that are in the contract that go outside what your salary is and I felt I’ve done right by my clients in these areas that might far exceed what they’re paying me because of these additions or subtractions to a contract.

Mike Klinzing: [00:39:24]  I think when you know the lay of the land, you’re much more able to be in position to negotiate on behalf of your client when you’d kind of know where those forks in the road are and what you should be looking for, as opposed to, again, somebody who, yeah. Maybe they’re an expert in law. But if they’re not an expert, as you said, in coaching contracts, they may miss some of those things that could end up being vitally important to a coach, depending upon how things play out at that particular school, we have two more areas to cover.

So I’m going to go back. I want to leave counseling for the last piece. So let me just ask you about helping coaches to prepare for interviews. And we could probably spend a whole podcast [00:40:00] on this, but just give me the number one. What’s the number one thing. If you were going to give advice to a coach out there, when they’re preparing for a head coaching interview, what’s the number one thing in your mind that they should do to prepare for that interview?

Is it to work up answers and try to think about what questions are going to be asked? Is it to research the school and what kind of. Things that they would want the program to have in place when they get there. What’s your, what’s your number one piece of advice for a coach going into a head coaching interview?

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:40:29] Sure. Well, the first piece of advice is don’t be a job chaser at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you want, what I want, it matters what the athletic director wants. And so if you don’t have a tie to that school or that region don’t be sending out your resume or email every division one school trying to get a head coaching job because, cause Ads talk too. And they’ll say, well, that person applied for my job and. Yeah, they haven’t even been out on the West coast. [00:41:00] And so the first thing is putting your effort and time into jobs that are realistic to you, whether it’s you have a connection or it’s within your region, or it’s something that you sincerely feel that you’re capable of doing not because, and trust me. I interviewed as an AD. I mean, I would get emails and resumes from, and I wasn’t division one school, but CYO coaches, so you have to understand that ADs are getting inundated with resumes and people were completely unqualified.

So put your effort into attacking and pursuing jobs that you’re qualified for, that you have a connection or that fits you based on your background and level of experience. In terms of pursuing jobs, it has to be very personalized. It cannot be, you cannot be interviewing for job A and B and expect that you’re going to give the same answers for [00:42:00] both jobs and  you cannot send the same cover letter.

You can’t pursue and gather information and expect that everything’s going to be the same when you learn and you research and you can have a list of questions. I mean, I send clients a list of over a hundred interview questions that they could be asked maybe they’re our story or whatever, but understanding if you’re going to answer the question of what’s your authentic philosophy that you can answer that, but you also have to tailor it and include why your offensive philosophy fits with that current existing roster. So they understand that you’ve done your research, but also can visualize you as their next head coach doing what you’re saying that you’re doing.

Mike Klinzing: [00:42:50] Yeah, that makes sense.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:42:51] And I think too from an assistant standpoint, it’s, you’re not a [00:43:00] head coach. He wants to hire you to be their head coach or is interviewing you either they need to feel comfortable enough that you’ve handled the responsibilities. So whether it’s budget compliance, staff management whatever it might be that you’re not even thinking about thinking about, because there’s a lot of great recruiters, but the things that are in a separate. Those you get the job and don’t is that level of comfortability that he’s going to have and say, you know what, these two people are great recruiters, but that person right there, they’ve handled some of those responsibilities that a head coach has to do.

And so I feel more comfortable hiring that person. And so just thinking about those things off the court and, and making me feel comfortable, whether it’s through your resume and through the process.

Mike Klinzing: [00:43:57] All right. Let’s jump to the counselor role. [00:44:00] What, in the last nine months, as we’ve been dealing with COVID, what have you done to help your clients work their way through that?

What have you learned from the experience and what have your coaches learned through this experience of kind of trying to manage this crisis and figure out day-to-day whether I’m going to be able to practice, whether I’m going to be able to have a season, how have you helped your clients through that?

We’ll answer that question then I have one more for you before we wrap up.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:44:27] Sure. Well, obviously the last couple of months have been incredibly challenging for coaches and it has really changed the way that everyone has led and managed. I mean, nothing is normal or nothing is as it used to be.

And so we have to adapt and we have to change. And some of these changes are good and are going to continue with us even when we get through this. But for [00:45:00] me, it was just letting my clients know that if you need to talk, I know constantly being a resource to your student athletes who  you’re so focused on their mental health, know that I’m there for you as you’re trying to be there for your student athletes. So I think making them aware and checking in with them and whatnot, I think that’s the first piece. The second piece is every school is handling this and has been since March completely different. And so. With my clients, they’ll call me and say, Hey, we’re dealing with this and this and want to talk through it.

But I think the other piece of it is letting them know, Hey, you’re not alone. Like there’s other clients at other schools that are doing this too. And so it brings a level of comfort to them knowing when they feel like they’re on an Island and that they’re dealing with stuff that other schools aren’t.

[00:46:00] That they really aren’t all other schools and dealing with it or handling it the same way. The third piece is, I mean, we did this a lot, was putting together whether it was zoom sessions or email threads of various situations, excuse me where clients can be able to bounce ideas off each other, whether it was how you’re helping your student athletes adjust back to school or how you’re doing workouts. Now, when they’re supposed to be wearing masks and gloves and various different things and, and create these large email threads where clients are basically just at each other and saying, Hey, this is what we’re doing here.

And so that way they can help each other too. And so the other, the last piece I’ll say is we went through and obviously we’re still going through it, but the issues revolving around social justice, being able to put together a zoom session for all our [00:47:00] clients that they could get on and discuss how they’re helping their student athletes through this and working through it, especially for some of the white head coaches, because when everything is so sensitive and heightened, everyone would obviously say, I don’t know how you feel, but they want to help their African-American student athletes through this. And so just being able to discuss how they’re doing that, but also hear from our African-American head coaches and black head coaches on, you know, Hey, these are some ways that you can help  your black student athletes through this. So just being able to be a constant resource and connect there to, to help the clients through these things.

Mike Klinzing: [00:47:46] Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I always say that I feel like coaching is such an isolating profession.

It’s so easy to get caught up in your team, your situation, your school, what’s going on with yourself in the moment that it’s super, super [00:48:00] valuable to be able to connect with this greater community and to be able to have you as a resource, say to them, look. You may be going through this. It may be extremely difficult, but you’re not the only one facing this situation.

There are other people facing this exact same issue and here we’re going to connect you with them. And we’re going to learn from the experiences of our entire collective group. And that’s going to help each one of my clients. Who’s one of our clients to be able to better manage their own situation, where, and again, in a lot of cases, you just feel like.

I’m on this Island and I have nowhere to turn. And so to be able to have your client base and yourself as a resource, I’m sure is tremendously valuable. All right, Brian, before we wrap up, I want to give you an opportunity to share where people can connect with you on social media, with your website, let people know how they can reach out to you.

Find out more about what you’re doing, and then I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

Brian D. Stanchak: [00:48:52] Yeah. So I’m on all the social media platforms, whether it’s Instagram or Twitter, every handle [00:49:00] is BDStan or the BDS agency. And you can even check this out with theBDSagency.com as well as an annual conference that we run.

We’re entering our fifth year, it’s called head coach training center, which teaches coaches strategies too. It’s all focused on off the court development of coaches.  Strategies to obtain a head coach position, whether it’s a new position as a head coach or for the first time and then be successful in that role.

And so we incorporate search firm executives, athletic directors, administrators, and coaches sharing that intimate level, these strategies. So feel free to check out our head coach trainings at www.headcoachtc.com/

Mike Klinzing: [00:49:44] Coaches that are out there listening, please go and check out what Brian has going on. A lot of the things that he’s talked about today and that he just talked about and shared are things will be really worth your time to go and check out.

And Brian, I cannot thank you enough for taking some time out of your schedule today [00:50:00] to join us here on the Hoop Heads Pod, and to everyone out there, thanks for listening. And we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.