Applying the lessons of Chris Pronger to STL

Hockey Hall of Famer and Stanley Cup Champion Chris Pronger joins the Arch City Report to discuss his new book, Earned: The True Cost of Greatness from One of Hockey's Fiercest Competitors. Chris shares the life lessons he's learned from his career in the NHL — from facing adversity and building resilience, to the challenge of finding purpose after retirement. He opens up about his transition from professional athlete to entrepreneur, author, and keynote speaker, and why he chose to make St. Louis his permanent home. The conversation also explores how the principles in his book — self-assessment, ownership, and betting on yourself — can apply not just to individuals, but to the St. Louis region as a whole. Plus, details on the book's April 14th release and a special pre-game book event at the Blues vs. Penguins game.

Show Links:

• https://chrispronger.com/book
• https://chrispronger.com/events 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

This is the Art City Report. Your weekly dive into the biggest stories from the St. Louis Business Journal about business and everything else in the home of the Gateway Art. Sponsored by Meryville University. I'm Eric Seamers. If you're a fan of the St. Louis Blues or just follow the National Hockey League, then you know we're just a few short weeks away from the start of the NHL playoffs, one of the longest and most arduous postseasons in American professional sports. To succeed in this season after the season, NHL teams need more than talent. They need strength, a little luck, and a lot of determination to earn the right to hoist the Stanley Cup. Today we're joined by someone who has lived that experience firsthand. Hockey Hall of Famer, two-time gold medal winner, Stanley Cup champion, heart trophy winner in his nine years with the St. Louis Blues, and now author. Chris Pronger. Welcome to the Art City Report. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I want to jump right into talking about your book titled Earned the True Cost of Greatness from one of Hockey's fiercest competitors. Because within it are some lessons that can apply not only to hockey, but also the world of entrepreneurship and even to your adopted hometown of St. Louis. Yes. So why did you want to write this? Tell me about what the book's message is.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Yeah, I'd kick tires on writing a book, and for various reasons, it just either wasn't the right time, wasn't the right type of book I wanted, what have you. And as I began building up my speaking platform, I started really doing a lot of research into life lessons that I've learned over the course of my youth hockey, professional career and then post-playing career, as well as just taking stock in the life experiences that I've had and the lessons uh that that has given me and really try to lean into what was going to allow me to have the most impact with people and really kind of engage the reader uh and not just have it be a sports book where you're just telling a bunch of stories, but where the stories actually have a tangible value and make it a true impact with those that read the book and those that are engaged and want to follow along and want to try to level up and become difference makers in their own right.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Not all athletes, when they retire, decide that they want to go on public speaking circuits. They become coaches. There's a lot of stereotypes you could play, but this approach you've taken is very different. What a part of your life did you think that I really do have a message to sell that this is I am made for this sort of public persona?

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Yeah, since I retired, and and even before that, I'd been asked to speak at any number of events and you know would kind of go not that I was unprepared, but no real messaging, no real intent behind what I was saying, other than telling some stories and having a few laughs and things of that nature. And as I began to really kind of dig into what 3.0, 2.0, 3.0, what that next chapter looked like, once I started to kind of go down this path of challenging myself, and ultimately it was to challenge myself to do something different, to do something maybe a little off the radar, so to speak, with respect to me and and kind of how I was living my my life and what I was doing. And uh, you know, wanted to challenge myself. I'm a little bit more of an introvert, a little bit more of a homebonny and keynote speeches and public speaking. You've got to be out front, you've got to be forward-facing, you've got to get out in front of people. And I think for me, it was just to to challenge myself and do something a little bit different, and also just to have an impact with people. I think as I began to look at my post-playing career and life after hockey, while I was playing, I didn't want to just be Chris the hockey player. I wanted to be more than that and be thought of in a different light. And I wanted my legacy to be more in total in my life's uh work, if you will, as opposed to just being about hockey. So as I began to kind of build out my speeches and build out my speaking platform, it was very intentional in what I was talking about. The experiences and the lessons I learned were kind of intertwined with who I am and who I've become over those many years, and a lot of the adversity that I faced and the grit that's formed and the resilience that's formed from all that and the how your character is shaped and molded from those experiences really kind of speaks to who you are and what your uh life has looked like.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

If someone were to want to buy this book, what would you think is the biggest takeaway, the core lesson that you think people can get from your experiences and the messages you're imparting in this book?

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Uh I think at the end of the day, they're going to be challenged to take ownership of their life, take ownership of what their goals are, and then to really look inward and challenge themselves to be better, challenge themselves to look at it and self-assess properly and look at, okay, I've set this goal. Okay, great. How dedicated am I? What am I willing to sacrifice? How hard am I willing to work? All these different metrics that are easily tracked and very much in front of you. A lot of times we're not great self-assessors of where we're at and in evaluating our workload and our effort and all these different things. And so as athletes, we're used to failing. We fail more often than we win, unfortunately. So it's not like you get used to it, but you understand what it is and why it's there and how you can grow from it. And I think as an athlete, you you get used to leaning into being comfortable, getting uncomfortable. And I look at adversity as a gift. Those are the only true moments where we're able to really grow as people, whether it be in sport, business, life, you know, adversity is where the true growth happens. And so getting people to really understand that and then to self-assess properly, be very intentional in how you're looking at things and then how you're going to take action and execute on that.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

What you're asking people to do is also be mindful of your own legacy. You know, think about what you're leaving behind and what you'll have marked as an accomplishment. Because I don't think a lot of people often think that we're going day by day, humdrum, we're job, our paycheck, we're paying our bills, this is what life is. But what you're suggesting is think about what's next. Set a goal, aim higher, always push.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

Be very intentional and challenge yourself. But also throughout the course of the book, you'll notice a common theme is that I bet on myself at every turn. I did I had my own unique journey. I took my own path. I didn't follow the the normal path of everybody else. You know, it was very much about my journey. And I had to live with and deal with the decisions that I made, and then had to go out and take action and execute on those and live through the good, bad, and the ugly from those. So in that regard, I want people to challenge themselves and like you, it's your decision. How good do you want to be, how great do you want to be? And then it's also incumbent upon you to take action, execute. You set the goal, execute and take action. And and how you can do that is through the 30-day standards challenge that I have in the book. And I've got the code standards, adversity, and then ownership is the difference maker's code. And in if you do those three things, good things will happen.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

We're gonna be right back with more on this after this break.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

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SPEAKER_01 8:05

Welcome back. Something you said really struck me there, Chris, in that you really decided that your post-playing career you wanted it to mean something. You wanted to stand for something. Yeah. I always think about with professional athletes, you know, where your life is so defined from your youth into your adulthood by the athletic performance, by the sport you're attached to. And that is forever going to be who people remember you for. But I find it really interesting that you have thought about, you know, the what you want to be remembered for beyond just that. And I wonder, do you talk to many of your peers? Athletes compared to most other professions, retire relatively young because of the, you know, but for all the reasons. Hockey's a tough game. And actually, hockey players, you guys play longer than some other sports, which I always find fascinating. But do you ever talk to your peers about that point? About I would think it would be a real struggle once you're out of the limelight on a plain surface to then go into retirement and just have to completely reset the way you go about your day-to-day life. It can be a struggle.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

And I struggled mightily myself, and I talk about it in the book. You think you have a path, you think you've prepared properly, you start to go down this path that you think is what you've wanted to do since you've been playing, you're like, oh, this is what I'm gonna do when I'm done. And then you go down that path, like it's not what I thought it was gonna be. And you then go, Okay, well, what am I gonna do now? And because you think you've got it planned out, and and I think then you get stuck in the train tracks or stuck in the tracks of thinking, well, what now? That's what I was supposed to do. And you have you really struggle to pivot, you really struggle to find an identity and a purpose. And so talk to players all the time about preparing for what life is gonna look like after your career. But even in doing so, it's not always gonna play out the way you think it is. You know, we hear people talking about you gotta find hobbies and you gotta prepare for life after, and you gotta do this, you gotta do that. And that's all well and good, but you can start to prepare from a monetary perspective, but from a life perspective, it's hard to really understand what it's gonna be like until you actually get there. And everybody can come at you in different directions and try to give you advice, but until you're actually in it and you get a feel for everything that's kind of revolving around that uh moment in time, you don't really know what it's gonna feel like. And so for me, it's just getting out in front of you, get your two feet on the ground, start getting involved in things and really start trying different things. Like you've been doing one thing, especially as athletes, we've been doing one thing for so long. You're just immersed in it, you're immersed in your craft, you're trying to be the best you possibly can be, you're trying to be, you know, win championships. And it's hard to relive that. It's hard to find that same gratification elsewhere. And so it's really just a matter of trying to figure out what life is going to look like, what your purpose is gonna be like. And I think that's where guys struggle the most, is as athletes, you're told where to go, what to do, how to do it for so long. After things are done, it you're just kind of looking around, like, well, what am I supposed to do? Nobody's telling me where to go. Nobody's telling me what to do. And so that that part of it, I talk to guys about really just trying to create some semblance of purpose. And it can be incredibly simple, but just time blocking and doing things of like this is what I do at this time, because that's how our life is set up as athletes. It's I go to the gym, I go to the rink, I go to the soccer field, I go to the baseball diamond, I go to all these different things at certain times, and then I have my nap and I have my meal and I have my game day routine and I have all these things, and everything is planned out to the minute, and then we retire and it's like, here's your time back.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

How about it? So you you retired from hockey in 2015, you'd won the Stanley Cup, the Anaheim ducks, you had a lengthy career, very many accolades. And one of the titles you've added since retirement is entrepreneur. So I'm curious, you know, what when you're an athlete in that circumstance, one thing you might have that maybe a professional in some other career might have is that you still have time because you're usually generally young, and the opportunities can come flooding to you if you're there to listen. Tell me about your work as an entrepreneur. What companies have you started? What are you investing in? Who is Chris Pronger, the investor and businessman?

SPEAKER_02 12:28

I actually started a company when I was playing called Chaos Holdings and used that to invest in just various real estate entities and startups and different things throughout the time that I was playing. And then post-playing, began to look at businesses and things of that nature. Started a couple businesses with my wife. One is her travel company, Wellsfire Travels, that you know, we've been growing since 2018 and it's doing very well. Another, she's got another company she's starting called Super Well, the community. And then I've got been building out the Pronger group, which is my speaking platform. So, you know, just always trying to look at things from a perspective, and then what you know, to to what you mentioned earlier, what is like from a legacy perspective and an impact perspective? How can I utilize the platform that I have to grow and evolve and not only help myself and in figuring out a new passion and something I can really sink my teeth into, but but trying to help other people kind of level up and learn from the different experiences that I was fortunate enough to have?

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Do you think going forward your life as an entrepreneur is going to focus more on building out uh the Chris Pronger platform with your book, with your speaking appearances? Do you see yourself looking for more businesses to invest in in other areas or starting new businesses?

SPEAKER_02 13:45

I think you know that's an opportunity. You know, I think for the Pronger group, for Chris Pronger, that entity, if you will. We've got the book, I've got broadcasting, I've got speaking engagements. What I add to that media platform, I'm not sure yet. You know, there's obviously podcasts and some other different things that you can newsletters and different things that you can add to them. You know, I'm kind of slowly looking at different opportunities, and I'm trying to walk before I run and don't want to jump in too fast into things. Be very deliberate and diligent on making sure that it's a good fit, making sure that it is a good piece in the flywheel and the puzzle, and and then from there jump in and grow and try to build it out.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Set those standards, but don't run past them too fast. Correct. Very much so. Keep your eye on the prize. That's right. We'll be right back after this final message. St. Louis has big regionwide challenges, and that means we need big ideas and bold leaders. I'm Eric Seamers, and I'm inviting you to join me at our next Advanced STL event on Thursday, April 30th from 8 to 10 a.m. at the St. Louis County Library Clark Family Branch for an engaging morning of real talk and real solutions. We'll hear from Dara Eskridge of Invest STL, Chris Craymeyer of Beyond Housing, and Eric Scrogans of the Opportunity Trust. Three leaders already driving change in housing, education, and equitable growth across our region. Head to Bizjournals.com slash St. Louis slash event to reserve your seat today. Welcome back. This year at the Business Journal, we've been asking our readers to think big, to conceive of big ideas that they think can help the St. Louis region return to a growth or at least inspire the region to move itself forward. Now, Chris, you not only played here in St. Louis for many years, but you've, correct me if I'm wrong, continued to make this your post-hockey home. We've written a little bit about this in the past. You know, the athletes during the early years of the blues in the 60s and 70s, and the Cardinals and the football cardinals, many of them stayed here post-career because they kind of had a built a name recognition. Yep. But now athletes, as the salaries have increased, can make choices to move elsewhere, often move to places the tax situation is more friendly to people who are wealthier. They don't have to come back into these cities. And of course, this is the region with a big chip on its shoulder about, you know, they're so thankful when people come here. There's a why us type mentality often. So why did you stay in St. Louis? What is it about this place that made you want to build your life after hockey? Well, first and foremost, my wife is from here.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Well, there's a big draw right there. Secondly, and equally as important, is you know, the people, the quality of life, a school system, the lack of crazy traffic, I guess would be the easy way to say it. Uh, the ease of getting around town. Uh, I'm obviously a small town kid from the middle of nowhere, Canada, and I'm not a big fan of traffic. I'm not a big fan of taking hours on end to sit in my car and get places. So the ease of travel around St. Louis, the people, the community, you know, how they take care of their athletes here in town. And I think that's a huge draw for guys that have played here and have gone elsewhere, and then they come back because they know what the community is all about. They certainly know what our St. Louis Blues alumni is all about and how we give back to the community, what we do year in, year out for the local St. Louis area. And so they're able to kind of come back and integrate easily into the community. And again, they touch on everything that I just said from schools to quality of life to the people, and more importantly, the people. You know, how how great the people are in the in the local St. Louis area, how they treat the players and the retired players. It's it's second to none.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

You do see a lot in this city. And I'm not from here. I'm born and raised in Minnesota, lived all over the country. Most of my listeners know that I'm not a native, but I do see here from someone outsider's perspective, a place where people here who are here are intensely devoted to it, who believe it's a hidden gem, believe it's on the cusp of a great turnaround. But we do still deal with some population decline and slowdown and a real fear of why can't we get people to move here? How do we do that? I'm wondering with some of the lessons that you have in your book about asking individuals to set standards and to follow those and have a goal and have a target. That might apply to St. Louis as a whole as you try to address some of these particular challenges.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

I think the easiest answer is we all need to be leaders. We all need to act accordingly with respect to how we handle things in the community and how we treat one another. Um, you know, how we look at growing and evolving the local communities and coming together. You know, I think that part of it is something that I know a lot of people have talked about. Uh, and we've just been a little shy of getting to work on that. And I think it's gonna, it's gonna take everybody coming together to want to change things, to want to grow and evolve. The city is not what it once was, and it's up to us, it's incumbent upon us to fix that and change that, and also change the narrative to what's out in the exterior areas of the local St. Louis area and how they perceive St. Louis and what they think about this community. Because it's funny when you get a lot of hockey players that come here, you know, it's kind of a secret that it's such a great community, a great place to live, a great place to raise a family, a great place to kind of set your roots. And we need to tell that story more often. We need to get that out into the stratosphere and get that out into the public eye because it is a great story and it is a great selling point to hopefully bring more people into the marketplace and bring more business and more companies that are willing to kind of set up shop here in the local St. Louis area.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

And I think there's another piece of your message that applies to this too. It is how do you define what you're going to be next? Yeah. Which is a big part of what you described and how you set your own career path. Because you're right, St. Louis isn't what it was, but what is the vision for what it could become? And I I don't see enough of that right now. And I think that is something you someone can take away from your book.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

Yeah, I think you think about how do you remake yourself? I mean, you know, if we're gonna equate it to my career when I was down at the very bottom of the barrel and struggling mightily, how do you get yourself out of that? Nobody's gonna help you but you at the end of the day, and the book is about challenging you, pushing you, you know, holding you accountable to level up because nobody's gonna do it but you. And so it's incumbent upon us to challenge one another, but also to challenge ourselves to be better people, be better in the community, be better at spreading the word of what's available here in the local St. Louis area. And the more people that are able to do that, the more it's gonna spread, and the more it's gonna hopefully engage those to come into this area and start to start seeing it flourish again. Chris, when can folks uh find your book? It's releases on April 14th. Uh, it is on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble. You can go to my website, Chrispronger.com slash book. There's obviously a number of ways you could buy it. There's a number of great book packages with some giveaways and things of that nature. Uh, and then there's also some book signings. If you go onto my website again, Chrispronger.com, there's an event section where I've got various book signings and things set up here in the local St. Louis area.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

And I understand the blues on April 14th. That same night are going to be hosting fans with tickets for that game.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Launch date is April 14th, and I'm doing a book event pregame at the Blues game. They play the Penguins, which is looking more and more like a playoff implication game for both teams. We'll see how that plays out over the next week or two.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Chris, thank you for joining us this week. That's it for this week's episode. Again, thank you to Chris Pronger for joining us. To learn more about his upcoming book, see the link in our show notes. Thank you to our supporting sponsor, Maryville University, and a special shout out to our newest supporting sponsor, Cass Commercial Bank. We'll be here back with you again. Next week. Learn more about these stories and what we discussed in this episode at the St. Louis Business Journal Online, which is bizjournals.com/slash St. Louis. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Arch City Report Podcast series. New episodes release every week. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. If you like this episode, leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.