Coming Out From Behind the Tree: Frank Ancharski on Faith, Leadership, Forgiveness, and and Bringing Your Whole Self to Work

Frank Ancharski has been in the fitness industry, as he puts it, "since dirt was invented." Since 1983, he has built clubs, turned around struggling organizations, coached executives, and consulted across the United States. He has seen the best and worst that business has to offer. And after four decades of leading from the front, he has arrived at a conviction he is no longer willing to keep quiet about: faith belongs in the boardroom, on the whiteboard, and in most every leadership conversation worth having.

That conviction is what drew him to Kingdom Factor — and it is the thread that, looking back, has run through his entire career, even when he did not have the language to name it.

A Career Built on Principles That Were Never Just Business

Ancharski founded Club Coach Services in 2003 and built a consulting practice that has taken him into fitness organizations of every size and shape across the country. His work spans market feasibility and discovery planning, new member acquisition and retention, management development, retreat facilitation, board governance, and fractional C-suite leadership. He has also served as an expert witness, bringing his decades of industry knowledge into legal and regulatory contexts.

For years, he also led an executive roundtable — a group of twelve to fifteen fitness industry leaders who met monthly to share best practices, sharpen strategy, and hold one another accountable. It was meaningful work. But something was always held back.

"You don't have to hide behind any sort of tree," Ancharski says about what drew him to Kingdom Factor's faith-based peer groups. "Your faith is something you can wear as a badge of honor." That freedom — to bring the whole of who he is into the room — is what energizes him now as he launches his first Kingdom Factor Faith-Based Executive Roundtable.

The Body, the Temple, and a Career That Made Theological Sense

Ask Ancharski how faith has shaped his professional life, and he does not reach for lofty abstractions. He starts with the body.

"In 1 Corinthians, it talks about your body as a temple," he says. "What you feed it, how you take care of it, how you sleep, how you hydrate, how you exercise — all of that matters. God gave us this vessel. It's not ours. So we might as well make the ride a little smoother by taking better care of it."

For a man who has spent his life helping people invest in their physical health, that verse is not a proof text — it is a professional north star. His faith and his vocation have always pointed in the same direction. He just did not always say so out loud.

The other biblical principle he returns to again and again is simpler still: treat others as you would like to be treated. He traces it to his parents, reinforced it through Lou Holtz's "Do Right Principles" — do what's right, do your best, treat others as you'd like to be treated — and has carried it into every leadership role he has held. He connects it to Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31 without apology.

These Do Right Principles are not negotiable for the teams I have led. It is not corporate policy. It is servant leadership rooted in scripture, even when it was never labeled as such.

The Letter That Changed Everything

If there is a defining moment in Ancharski's leadership story, it did not happen in a boardroom or during a turnaround engagement. It happened at a mailbox in Pittsburgh.

Years ago, he found himself entangled in a serious situation — not of his making, but devastating in its impact. A business partner made decisions that pulled all the firm's partners into financial dire straits, and everyone was left holding significant financial losses while families bore the weight alongside them.

"I decided I can't let this situation own me anymore," he recalls. When he later learned that his former boss — the one responsible for much of the fallout — had suffered a house fire, something shifted inside Ancharski. Despite the pain, he felt compelled to act.

He wrote a letter. He told his former boss that there was one less person chasing him in the universe. That he forgave him. And then he walked to the mailbox and dropped it in.

"When I closed that mailbox door, it was like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders."

A week or two later, the phone rang. It was his former boss. Ancharski was stunned. He had not written the letter expecting a response — he had written it because he knew forgiveness was not for the other person's benefit alone. It was for his own.

"I felt like he probably needed to hear that from somebody that he was close with," Ancharski says. "And it was the most telling moment in business that I thought — this is a God thing. I'm going to keep doing this."

Tithing When the Numbers Do Not Add Up

Ancharski's faith has shaped not just how he leads others but how he stewards his own resources — especially in the hard seasons.

He first encountered the concept of tithing at a church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and it stopped him cold. Give away ten percent? The idea felt radical. But he committed to it. And when life later brought him back to Chapel Hill — this time without a job — he did not quietly set the practice aside.

"I donated $500 to the church because I just felt compelled to," he says. "And I know the priest was moved by it." Around the same time, he felt called to enroll his son in a faith-based Catholic school, despite not having the financial margin for it on paper.

"If you looked at our household budget, we should never have done that," he admits. "I acted on faith when the spreadsheet told me not to."

It is the kind of decision that makes no sense on a spreadsheet and every kind of sense to a person who believes that what we hold is not ultimately ours to begin with.

Coming Out from Behind the Tree

For all of his conviction, Ancharski is refreshingly honest about the hesitation that comes with integrating faith openly into professional life. He recently told his wife he felt nervous about posting more openly about his faith on LinkedIn — concerned about how forty years of professional contacts might react.

But he has decided not to let that concern have the final word. Judy, his loving, emotional consigliere, magnificent mother, spiritual and supportive wife of 40 years, encourages him in his faith-based pursuits and to trust the journey God has them both on.

His advice to other leaders wrestling with the same tension is direct and practical. First, be unapologetic. Your faith is not a liability. Second, trust the path. The Stockdale Principle, drawn from Jim Collins' Good to Great, speaks to holding on to hope and honest reality at the same time — a posture that resonates deeply with how Ancharski has navigated his own journey. Third, be curious. Ask questions. Seek permission to have the conversation. And if someone is not interested, honor that.

"Respect what everyone's wishes are — whether they're atheist, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist. Respect what they believe. Maybe you can learn and even teach something."

He tells the story of ordering pepperoni pizza for a lunch meeting at a Jewish community center—a mistake quickly corrected with a good-natured pivot to mushrooms—as a reminder that integrating faith into professional life isn't about imposing it. It is about bringing your whole self to the table while remaining genuinely curious about the whole selves of the people across from you.

The Next Chapter

Frank Ancharski spent four decades helping fitness organizations grow, survive, and lead well. Now, in what might be the most significant chapter of his career, he is bringing that expertise into a space as part of his Club Coach Services practice, where the deepest questions of purpose, leadership, and identity can finally be asked out loud and shared, if and only if it is welcomed.

He serves as a lector — or as his current church in Simpsonville, South Carolina puts it, a "proclaimer of the word" — and brings that same posture to his coaching work: step aside, invite the Holy Spirit in, and trust that what needs to be heard will be heard.

For any leader who has spent years compartmentalizing faith and work, wondering whether a community exists where both can coexist without apology, Ancharski's story is an invitation. The door is open. Come out from behind the tree.