And good evening, you've got More Than Money.

You've got Gene Dickison, your host, your personal financial advisor for the next half an hour.

I am at your service and I think you're going to find our show tonight to be especially interesting.

It doesn't really matter where your interests lie.

I think between myself and our guests, we're going to cover a lot of ground that will be of interest to everyone in our audience.

Absolutely everyone.

I think you're going to really enjoy the opportunity to spend some time with us tonight.

If you are coming into this new year with high expectations, I think that's fantastic, especially if you have high expectations for your family, perhaps your kids, your grandkids.

Maybe for Christmas they got, I don't know, a basketball, maybe they got a football, maybe they got new baseball equipment.

Maybe they're already working out, snow on the ground, they don't care.

They're out there enjoying themselves.

And maybe, just maybe they're developing skills that are going to carry them through the rest of their lives.

That could absolutely be the case, and I pray it is the case for you both in the year 2022 and well beyond, for both you and for your family.

It certainly was the case ♪for our guest, as this young lady has spent a wonderful career on many different levels, but it all started as a child.

I want you to join me in welcoming Michelle Marciniak.

Michelle, welcome to More Than Money.

- Thanks, Gene.

I'm very, very, very happy to be here.

- Michelle, your name is well known throughout the country on many, many different levels, but I want to start with an area that some folks may not know you for.

And that's entrepreneur.

That's business owner.

You have a company, Sheex, that's pretty darn impressive.

Why don't you give our audience just a flavor of your company and how it got started?

- Sure.

I started a company called Sheex, and it's a performance fabric bedding company.

So it's sheets made out of athletic performance fabrics, really for the same reason that athletes made the switch from cotton to performance fabrics.

That's how we birthed the notion of Sheex.

I was coaching at the University of South Carolina with my co-founder, Susan Walvius.

And this was back, probably 14 years ago.

I was wearing a pair of shorts that I loved to train in, really for the technical aspects of what the fabric does for you.

The moisture working and whatnot.

It felt really good, but I bought some for Susan, my co-founder, to try.

And she made a different connection, she said, I love the drape and the feel of this fabric against my skin, I'd love to have bed sheets made out of this stuff.

And I looked at her and that was the entrepreneurial moment where you just say, Well, let's do it.

Let's figure out if this has ever been done before.

And we, ironically, it had not, making athletic performance fabrics into bedding or sheets, if you will, because that was, you know, the beachhead into the market for us was performance sheets.

And so we've built a brand, not just a product.

And, you know, it's been a long, a tedious road, but it certainly is a lot of fun being an entrepreneur.

- Fun, indeed, challenging, without a doubt.

Your partner, your co-founder Susan Walvius, did the two of you break this up into certain areas of responsibility, or were you both kind of shoulder by shoulder throughout whatever needed to be done?

- Well, it's funny, Gene, because if Susan was on the show right now, we would be bantering back and forth.

You know, just because she, you know, we fought a lot at first because, you know, we were basically...

I was, you know, she was the head coach at South Carolina.

I was her assistant.

So of course, the same sort of thing followed as entrepreneurs, you know, in business where she was the CEO and I'm the president.

And that didn't last very long because what we realized is that we were 50-50 partners.

And so, you know, we became co-founders, obviously, from the beginning, but co-CEOs.

And now Susan, really, she handles more of the product development, the branding side of the business.

I'm more sort of out there as the face of the brand, communications, investor relations, communications across the board, and key relationships on the sales side.

So we we've morphed into very different roles as the years have gone by.

But at first it was funny ♪because we fought like sisters over the smallest little things.

But you know, like we say, it's been like raising a baby, you know, I mean, as an entrepreneur, you know, you start in a garage, which is what we did.

And you, you know, you take all these steps to get to where we are today.

And we're not even... We haven't even scratched the surface yet of what we want to do, but we certainly have made great strides.

- Michelle, you and Susan, half a dozen years ago, came into an idea that said, Hey, we can do this.

Entrepreneurship is a challenge on any level for anyone starting a business.

As the father of three strong young women, we're really proud of what our daughters have done.

How would you describe the challenges of entrepreneurship in terms of being a woman?

Is it different?

Is it basically the same?

How would you describe it?

- I think, I mean, I think there are some barriers that women, you know, that we have had to go through.

You know, like, it's really hard to raise capital, you know, to go out there and, you know, we've raised over $20 million of capital, you know, from our inception.

And it's been... That is not easy.

And so now we're sort of getting into this, you know, going out to raise private equity and, you know, you have to bring money in in order to continue to grow your business and expand.

And so that's where we are right now.

But as a female and as a woman, you know, I think the neutralizer, and what we're going to be talking about here is sports,.

I mean, you know, Susan and I were athletes.

She was an all-American at Virginia Tech.

I was all-American at Tennessee, you know, won a national championship.

And, you know, there's not one boardroom or one investor I sit in front of, or one key relationship where my background, whether it be coming from the Lehigh Valley to becoming the best player in the nation, to going on and playing at the top level in college and winning and then playing pro ball.

All that is really interesting in a very male-dominated business world, to sort of neutralize, you know, us as females.

I think we actually have an advantage rather than a disadvantage, because of our sports backgrounds.

- Michelle, sports are the great equalizer.

There are, in all of us who appreciate sports, who have over our lives, over our careers, been either student athletes or professional athletes or entrepreneur athletes, the respect for someone who's accomplished as much as you have, and I can hear all around the valley, all around the country right now, people going, "Of course.

That's Michelle Marciniak.

"Of course, that's Allentown, Central Catholic, Tennessee, National Championship, MVP.

One of the awards that I read about that I really wanted to just take a moment and talk about, we're not here to tonight to talk about awards, we're talking about the rewards of business.

But this year you were honored with a Silver Anniversary Award from the NCAA, a rather amazing award that doesn't just reference your success on the court, it references your success as an adult, as a professional, as an entrepreneur.

And I want you to comment on that.

But before you do, I do want to make note for our audience that along with Michelle in that class is a very good friend of More Than Money.

His name is Lieutenant Colonel Dan Rooney, and Dan, Lieutenant Dan is a good friend and the founder of Folds of Honor.

And as many of you know, every year at 9/11, More Than Money raises funds for Folds of Honor.

So this is an elite organization.

This is an elite group.

Michelle, what did it mean to you to be part of that silver anniversary class?

- You know, you don't get to be a part of the silver anniversary class unless you played, you know, sports and excelled, you know, outside of sports.

But I have to tell you, it is the, probably, award, as you said, that is the most rewarding to me because it... You know, you can have success in life.

You know, I mean, you can have little successes, big successes.

But I think the key is, you know, are you going to be significant, you know?

And how are you going to use your success to kind of springboard into being significant, and significant in others' lives, you know?

And so, you know, from a lot of charity, you know, I've been able to morph what... You know, I'm an athlete.

I will always be an athlete until the day I'm not here anymore.

I love it.

I love challenging myself.

And so I've sort of formed a charity and I went on for Alzheimer's.

And because my coach died of Alzheimer's, Pat Summitt, of early onset.

And, you know, I did a lot of things that sort of, you know, they touch on the different parts of my life that were extremely influential, and so using myself as an athlete, even in the charity space and, you know, the charitable space of, you know, trying to give back.

And that's, to me, that's, you know, it's, you know, money is fine, but it's really what you do with it and the people who you are able to not only influence but impact on levels that, you know, they don't typically see every day.

And, you know, I always talk about this.

You know, I have a responsibility to give back.

You know, I mean, I didn't arrive on Tennessee's campus, and all of a sudden we started a program at Tennessee.

Tennessee had already won multiple national championships.

I just so happened to be, you know, a player at the right time, in the right space, with the right coach, with the right surrounding support.

And I think what the Silver Anniversary Award really is, it's about perspective, you know, and I will say this as a...

I love to use this as an example, but I call it reset moments in your life, you know, so if you think about when you're a freshman in high school and then you're a sophomore, senior, you know, junior, then senior, then all of a sudden, like, you started here and now you're here.

So you're like big man on campus or in school, and then you go to the next level and then you become little man on campus or little girl on campus, and then you sort of work your way up and now you're a senior in college.

Right?

So you've done that.

But guess what?

You're going to be a freshman again in the corporate world, or you're going to be bagging groceries for two years because you have to get started and make money and get yourself through graduate school, you know, so it's like you go here and then you reset.

You go here, you reset, you know?

And so what's cool is I've been able to sort of look at my life with these reset moments and just know that as soon as you get here, you know, with business, you know, with the different steps ♪of business, you're going to get reset, at some point you're going to get reset.

Either it's a new venture or something like that.

But, you know, and I think looking at life that way is just it allows you not to get too low when things aren't going well or to get too high when things are going well, thinking that you've arrived and there's nothing else to do in the world.

So that's kind of my mantra of how I try to look at my life.

- It's a tremendous framework that people can build on.

It's the opportunity to see how the ebbs and flows really do come together.

You use the word significant.

I thought it was so important.

I wrote it down while you were talking.

I think significant is such an impactful word because it doesn't focus on us.

It focuses on the impact we have on others, which is, as we say in the media, a smooth segue to my next group of questions.

And it's all about certain people, and I would hope, I'm going to ask you to give us one or two sentences about the person I give to you and maybe a lesson that they taught you along the way.

Let's start with your mom.

Kindness, patience, you know, just spirited.

My mother was and is still, you know, huge, biggest supporter in my life.

And, you know, just really taught me that I could, you know, I could do anything I put my mind to.

And she's a gem and she's the spirit of positivity.

- Fantastic.

Well, shift gears just a little bit in the family.

In your early years of competition, your primary competition was your brother.

- Yeah, my brother Steve I adore.

He's been really there for me my entire life.

And he just, you know, we grew up beating each other up on the basketball court and we would play every single day before school, after school.

And, you know, you just think about that.

And I was so fortunate to have, you know, a brother and a sister, but, you know, a brother who was willing to just make me better, you know.

Again, I didn't just arrive at, you know, with this, like, you know, tenacity.

I mean, he made me scrap.

You know, he made me be probably a lot more competitive because that drive kind of showed through every single day of my life.

- Yeah, the words "fiercely competitive" is... That's a phrase we see all over the Michelle Marciniak story.

So we thank Steve, at least for a little bit of that.

I'll shift gears to a woman that I was very proud a number of years ago to be the sponsor of her award, presented by Cedar Crest College, as Woman of the Year.

Mimi Griffin.

I see there's a connection you had with her early on, in your basketball life as well.

- Yes, I love Mimi.

I've known Mimi since we were in the...

I was in the fifth grade and she was pregnant with Kyle when her firstborn, when I was at St Thomas More and she'd come in and she just would help out.

But even, you know, through trying to pick a school and then, you know, I mean, the irony of having this person in the gym with you in fifth grade to calling President Clinton, she actually called our game.

our National Championship game.

And when I went up in the booth, in the arena, to call the president right after the game was over, Mimi was doing the game in studio, in the arena.

You know, that was just one of those "pinch me" moments that I'll never forget.

And then Mimi has not only been extremely successful in her own entrepreneurial venture, you know, with the opens and in her own business, she invested in my company.

She invested in me as a woman, as a businesswoman, and she's just always been kind of that person, that rock, you know, in my life, and I am so appreciative to have, you know, mentor, now she's a friend.

But what started out as a pure, you know, mentorship and, you know, she just was a guide and somebody that was local that could help me see the bigger picture of what women's basketball was all about, what I was doing within the sport, and what my responsibility was to give back to my community, my school, and just people who helped me get to where I am.

- Michelle, no name perhaps bigger in the history of women's basketball than Pat Summitt.

A woman that had an incredible impact in many ways, lots of folks strongly positive.

Lots of folks had slightly different opinions.

Even in your interactions with her, I think there was a little bit of a pull and push there.

How would you describe Pat Summitt's impact on you?

- Just incredible.

You know, Pat was that person that pushed, she pushed me to limits I didn't know I had, and then beyond those limits, and then create new limits from that.

She just, you know...

I have so much respect for Pat.

And let me tell you what, I couldn't stand her on any given day.

There were times where it was not a...

It was definitely a love-hate relationship.

But the love was there, and the nurturing was there, always, you know?

And so she knew just...

I mean, she tipped me over a lot, but she knew just that point to kind of pull back and say, "I'm about to lose her.

"I can't, you know, mentally, emotionally, I can't "£push as much."

But she would definitely push and she, you know, she was extremely hard on me, extremely hard on me as a point guard, and needed me to be the mouthpiece of her out on the floor.

But in the end, you know, she always said this, and I remember when I accepted her award for her, for the Sportsperson of the Year for Sports Illustrated back in, I think, 2010 or '11.,'12, something like that.

And she just had this fearlessness of tackling really anything like, "Why can't you?"

You know, like, so, you know, you're here to win a National Championship.

Your job is not to lose games.

Very, very simple.

You don't lose games.

And so if you did, or if you won a game that you barely won or if you, God forbid, you lost the game, but if you, you know, won a game that you're supposed to win by 30 and you won by ten, you know, like, so there was a level of perfection that Pat had that she just kept.

She just kept like, you know, poking you and just nudging you to become better.

And I just had a very special relationship with Pat Summitt.

I actually gave the eulogy.

Her family asked me to give the eulogy at her funeral, which was probably the second hardest thing I did, other than giving my father's eulogy.

And so, you know, I've got a big heart for her, and how she died and how she lived.

I just I can't say enough.

And it's not always fun or not always easy, but meaningful.

yes.

Significant, 100%.

- Not always fun, not always easy.

You've often said, as I've read a number of different spots of the quote, it's how you react to losing that determines whether or not you'll be successful in your life.

- Absolutely.

There's no question.

I mean, if you don't know how to lose... You know, I mean, sorry, you're not perfect.

You're a human being.

You've got to understand the highs and lows, and you have to be able to navigate through the rough waters.

And it's, you know... And again, I say that the reset moments in your life, they could happen weekly.

They could happen, you know, yearly, but they could happen daily.

You know, it's just like, you just have to keep, you know, not be so black and white with everything, but really understand what there is...

If you can go out of every situation that you feel like you lost or was negative or whatever and say, you know, "What can I take from this?

"How can I get better?

What can I do tomorrow to sort of snuff "out what happened and "learn from what happened the day before?"

And life isn't as difficult on the business, on the, you know, the sports, that side, if you sort of have a perspective of balance.

So I've tried to work on that.

- Well, all of us who have participated in team sports over the years, who have had coaches who pushed us, and at the moment we didn't like them, not even a little bit, and once you mature a little bit, you've gone through a couple of those resets, you can look back and appreciate the impact they really did have on you.

And they had your best interest at heart.

They wanted you to be every bit as good as they knew you could be, even before you knew you could be that good.

Are there a lesson or two about being an entrepreneur, particularly a woman entrepreneur, that if a young woman listening tonight were listening in and saying, "How do I get started or what should I avoid?

"What should I look for?"

How about a lesson or two to young women entrepreneurs out there?

- I would say, you know, you can do anything you put your mind to.

It depends on how bad you want it.

You know, and I wanted this business because I had this, this itch, if you will, and I had to see what it was like to do something other than play sports and play basketball and coach and sort of follow that path.

And I just always wanted to challenge myself mentally, and outside of the sports world.

And so, you know, I think, you know, again, not easy to start a business.

Can you do it?

Yes, but it's all about sacrifice.

You know, I also, I mean, for the women out there that are starting businesses, who have 3.5 kids at home and, you know, are just starting out, it's very difficult.

I didn't have to deal with that.

You know, I didn't have kids.

My kids are my dogs, and that's fine.

You know, you have to understand that there's a huge sacrifice to start your own business, and you have to have a bunch of humility because it's not...

It is one reset moment after another and it is not easy.

But if you surround yourself with the right people, and if you can maintain the fact that you just need to be a sponge and learn, learn, learn and be willing to be flexible, meaning there's a meeting on the West Coast that you have to take, then you just get on the plane and you go, the spontaneity has to be there for an entrepreneur as well, the flexibility, and you have to have a tremendous amount of tolerance for risk, because risk...

Being an entrepreneur is all about sort of risking... You're risking the years in your life you're trying to build your business and it could fail.

98% or 99% of entrepreneurial ventures fail.

So it's not an easy task, but I would...

I mean, those are all sort of the "watch out".

But the flip side, Gene, is... - We just have 30 seconds.

So give us the flip side.

- The flip side is it's so rewarding.

I mean, just to really be out there and trying to build something.

And so I just love what I'm doing.

I hope to do it for a really long time.

I just enjoy being an athlete that's turned into an entrepreneur.

- Well, we thank you so very much for sharing so much of yourself tonight.

For all of you listening out there, make sure your Google Sheex.

Make sure that you buy Sheex.

Get involved.

Absolutely, follow in the footsteps of somebody who started by just shooting hoops on a piece of pavement in the backyard and has crafted a wonderful life, one worthy of admiration and emulation.

So make sure that you pay attention closely.

For everyone listening out there in our More Than Money audience, if you have questions or concerns, you want to send those to me, or if you have suggestions for someone we should be interviewing in a future show, send those to me directly - gene@askmtm.com Whatever question you send us, we promise we answer every single question, not all on air, we simply don't have all that time, but every single one.

Thanks for spending part of your evening with us.

We hope you'll be back here next week when we return with More Than Money.