Sept. 20, 2016
By Jack Smith
Mark Mettelman had never been to Auburn when he visited campus as a top tennis prospect from Wisconsin in the winter of 1979.
But the Southern sun and the people on the Plains made Auburn feel warm and familiar the moment he stepped on campus.
"I think I left freezing temperatures in Wisconsin and got here and it was 72 degrees," Mettelman said. "I had visited Notre Dame and Purdue in the middle of blizzards. But when I visited here, people were jogging and the sun was out. I stepped out on campus and looked around, and I said, 'I'm home.'
"I knew this was where I wanted to be."
And just like that, Mettelman's mind was made up. Auburn ended up being the final stop on a college tour that also included Penn, Kansas and Kentucky for the two-time Wisconsin state tennis champion.
It didn't take Mettelman long to realize there was something special about Auburn.
"I think for me, coming from the north and the Midwest, the people here were so nice and so open. Even though I was a Yankee, they accepted me. It was obvious Auburn is definitely about the people and the lifelong passion they have for the school. I don't think I've ever met someone that went to school here that said a bad word about Auburn. That's pretty unusual."
Life has recently come full circle for the mild-mannered Midwesterner, who earned a B.S. in business administration from the Harbert College of Business in 1984. He and his wife, Dana, a 1982 graduate, recently moved back to the area after Mark retired from a highly successful career in the securities industry.
Since stepping down as CEO of Triad Advisors in Atlanta, the firm he co-founded in 1998, the couple have enjoyed sunsets on Lake Martin and quick jaunts to Auburn, where their daughter, Lindsey, who graduated in 2013, and son-in-law, Jon, now live. Their son, David graduated in 2015 and lives and works in Austin Texas with his new wife, Erin.
The Mettelmans also own a house in Auburn. They're living what most any Auburn graduate would call the good life.
"You don't appreciate Auburn as much until you have gone somewhere else and you come back," Mettelman said. "You have a sense of community that's hard to have in a big city. I think people long for a little bit simpler way of life."
While Mettelman said Auburn has changed in some obvious ways. The campus is even prettier and the community has far more amenities like restaurants and retail that few could've imagined when he was in school. In those days, the War Eagle Supper Club was the only landmark between I-85 and campus, the Sani-Freeze was a popular spot downtown and the edges of town now bustling with retail went dark as soon as the sun went down.
"A lot has changed here, but a lot hasn't. And that's what makes Auburn special. It's just home."
The Simple Life
Growing up, home for Mettelman was Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee.
It was there that his affinity for the simple life really began. All he needed to be happy as a boy was his bicycle and a wooden tennis racquet.
"My dad got me started at tennis at 6 or 7 years old," Mettelman recalled. "I spent a lot of time playing at the club or hitting into a backboard. Anything I could find."
If he wasn't in school, where he did what was expected but didn't excel at the level he did on the tennis courts, his parents knew where they could find him.
"We actually rode our bikes to the tennis courts," he said. "Your parents would never think twice about it. You just played until it was dinner time, then you would go home."
The quietly competitive Mettelman says he learned a lot from his father, his family and the game of tennis. It all prepared him for a successful tennis career and college experience in Auburn, far from home. He didn't know it, but the values he was developing playing tennis at an elite level were preparing him for a career in a complicated industry that would require hard work and reward discipline and patience.
He credits his father for igniting his interest in the game.
"My entire family played a lot of tennis growing up, but I think my dad was definitely the inspiration for us," Mettelman said. "He was the most competitive. He never let me beat him."
When he finally did beat his dad at age 15 or 16, he earned it. By that time, he'd spent endless summer days at the local tennis club doing drills in clinics, hitting balls against the backboard or even teaching lessons, an invaluable experience he says taught him a lot about people and life.
"I was one of those strange kids that actually liked hitting against the backboard. I would stay there and hit against it for hours. And I'm sure to my mother's chagrin, I would hit against the garage door as well."
His mother was a great tennis player in her own right. She never discouraged her son's relentless practice habits.
"She never said anything about it."
Mettelman credits his parents and the game they all loved for teaching him key life lessons that would serve him well, both as a young man far away from home in college, and later as a successful financial services executive and entrepreneur who took a big risk that ended up paying off in a big way.
"Dad was a good tennis player, and he was pretty savvy. He just taught me to always rely on myself. Tennis teaches you that as well. It's a lonely game."
When Mettelman signed his scholarship to play at Auburn in 1979, former SEC Champion Steve Beeland was men's tennis coach. He remembers Beeland as a positive influence and a good coach.
"He was very much a mentor," Mettelman said. "He was a good player himself."
Mettelman played under Beeland for two years and then closed out his collegiate career under Coach Hugh Thomson. In 1981, the Tigers had their best year ever, finishing out the year competing in the NCAA Championships in Athens, Ga. The roster included talented players from across the Southeast and all over the world, from South Florida to South Africa and Mobile to Brazil.
For a young man from the Midwest who'd never been around international players, working and bonding with people who were different was a beneficial experience.
"As an athlete, you have to interact with a lot of different cultures and a lot of different backgrounds. I think that definitely translates over to a more successful business person."
From Hardcourts to Boardrooms: The Value of College Athletics
Learning to work with others was just one part of being a collegiate tennis player that Mettelman says gave him an edge when he finally figured out what he wanted to do after graduation.
"When you're an athlete and you play at a high level, you obviously have to have discipline and you have to be competitive. It's the same way in business."
The relationships he formed off the court and between matches ended up being just as important as the lessons he learned on it.
Mettelman wasn't sure what he wanted to do until one of his father's best friends, a Milwaukee stockbroker who played football at Texas A&M by the name of Owen Hill, hired him as an intern during the summer of his junior year.
He enjoyed the work and ended up taking a job there after graduation. While it was almost like going home for Mettelman, it was a tough adjustment for Dana, who grew up in Florence, Alabama.
"Let's just say it was a pretty big shock. She had never been north of the Mason-Dixon line. I think she was unprepared for just how harsh the winters are."
After a few years in Wisconsin, Mark started networking in the South. Atlanta seemed like a logical place for a career in the financial services industry.
His tennis connections once again paid off. The father-in-law of former Auburn teammate Nick Stutsman introduced him to a municipal bond trader at one of Atlanta's big banks.
They shared a cup of coffee and Mettelman came away with contacts that led to a job at FSC Securities, where he was over Fixed Income Trading selling bonds and treasuries. He then went to work for Keogler Morgan for a decade, running the firm's trading and recruiting departments.
Then in 1998, he and a few colleagues made a bold move. They saw an opportunity in a changing industry. They believed financial advisors were growing weary of working with large brokerage firms that were becoming less personal and more corporate. They also envisioned how to make a new model that was not yet widely accepted work for investment advisors that would allow them to own their own business while also giving them the freedom to sell whatever products they wanted to sell.
So Mettelman and his partners started Triad Advisors from scratch.
"The company actually started in my guest bedroom on a folding table," Mettelman said. "It was a huge risk. There were a lot of sleepless nights."
Mettelman didn't get a paycheck for about six months, but their firm began to flourish after surviving the first year. They knew a lot of financial advisors were not happy with the large wirehouses they were affiliated with, so they offered a new model and a new way of doing business.
Triad pioneered, if not perfected, what's known in the financial industry as the "Hybrid RIA (Registered Investment Advisor) Model." In simplest terms, the new model essentially gave independent financial advisors the freedom to choose what products they sold clients and whether a fee or commission-based structure was best to meet their needs. It's a model that often makes more sense for advisors with high net worth clients.
Triad attracted just enough clients to survive the first year. Then after several years of steady growth, Triad took off. The firm grew to $30 million in revenue and around 200 financial advisors within five years.
Now, Triad has some 650 financial advisors.
In the span of only a decade, Triad went from meetings on Mettelman's dining room table to negotiations in a Wall Street board room. The company was acquired by one of the oldest New York Stock Exchange firms in the country in 2008.
Mettelman continued to work for Triad under the new ownership until January of 2016, when he stepped down as CEO. While he is still active as Chairman, he's spending more time doing things he enjoys with his family. The death of his mother just over a year ago no doubt had some impact on his decision to find ways to spend more time with his friends and loved ones.
"I really weighed the value of time versus money and where I was spending my energy," he said. "I wanted to spend more time with my family."
He's also enjoying more time on the water at Lake Martin or even fishing in Costa Rica, where he started a sport fishing business a few years ago.
Mark Mettelman and his daughter, Lindsey, haul in a nice Mahi during a fishing trip in Costa Rica, where Mark now owns a charter fishing service.A Special Place: Auburn 'Always in your DNA'
Now that he's close to "home" in Auburn, Mettelman also plans to enjoy more athletic events and get more involved.
"I enjoy it because when you are around Auburn, Auburn people and Auburn Athletics, you really realize you are just a tiny part of great things that have been going on since 1856. It makes you appreciate the people that have come before you all of the foundations that have been laid before you get here."
While he and his young wife may have left Auburn when Mettelman graduated in 1984 to start their careers and a family, Auburn never left them.
"It's the normal progression for a lot of us that are lucky enough to come to Auburn," Mettelman said. "You come to school here and you have a great experience, and then you go off. You start a family and career. It's hard to get back to games, to get back to campus. But it's always in your DNA. But then when you are able to bring your kids back to games, and you're getting them engrained in Auburn, you're able to come back more. But then once your kids are grown, you're able to spend more time here. It's just a great feeling."
It's the same feeling a younger Mettelman had when he first stepped onto campus that sunny winter's day more than three decades ago.
"To me, it's always the same," he said. "It's like coming home."