It’s been nearly a decade since Charlie Schaefer created Greyson Clothiers and he still gets choked up whenever he talks about his mentor and biggest cheerleader, Ralph Lauren.

“What I learned at Ralph Lauren is monumental,” Schaefer said of his 13 years working for the designer.

That experience afforded him the skills to create a lifestyle brand with annual sales of more than $100 million, 10 stores and a robust wholesale business. And Schaefer owes it all to Lauren.

The Greyson story starts in Detroit where Schaefer grew up playing sports, excelling at lacrosse, hockey and especially golf. In fact, he attended Duke University on a golf scholarship. But although he was an elite athlete, he wasn’t quite good enough to turn pro and needed a plan B.

He moved to New York and started interviewing with the big investment banks “where I thought I should probably work,” he said, but his mother suggested he try and find a job at a Polo store. He mustered up the courage and walked into the Ralph Lauren store at the Rhinelander Mansion store on 72nd and Madison where he was immediately intimidated by the lavish surroundings.

He bought a pair of cufflinks as a way to “pretend I was cooler than I was,” he said, and got up the nerve to ask a longtime worker how to get a job there. She immediately contacted the human resources department and Schaefer was escorted upstairs where he was interviewed for 30 minutes and offered a job the next day.

“It was hugely humbling,” he said. “I was just thrown into the ocean with all the sharks because this wasn’t a revolving door of people working in retail two or three years. These are people whose life dreams were to work there — and they’re really good at it.”

Turns out he was pretty good at it, too, and four months later, he was promoted out of the “tie pit to the cashmere bar,” he said, the area right inside the front door. It was there that he met Lauren who was visiting the store and was interested in finding out more about this fresh face.

When he heard Schaefer had graduated from Duke, where two of his children, David and Dylan Lauren, had attended college, he asked why the young man wanted to work at his store. “Honestly, it was something my mom told me to do,” he said.

Lauren was apparently impressed with his honesty and spent the next three hours walking the store with Schaefer. “Those three hours felt like three minutes,” he said. “It was a surreal moment for me. I can’t believe I’m saying this about Ralph Lauren, but something clicked between he and I. He was so kind to me, he asked my opinion on the buildout of the store, the merchandising, the clothes.”

The next day, Lauren called the store and asked Schaefer to come to his office. “They asked me what I wanted to do and I said I didn’t know but I’d loved sports my whole life,” he recalled. “I love the idea of competing. I like to win but not at the demise of someone else.”

Next thing you know, he was offered the opportunity to join the soon-to-launch executive training program — one of only 12 people who were handpicked for the role. In the program, he rotated through several disciplines including planning, merchandising, store development and more.

Enter Ralph Lauren again.

When Schaefer was checking out one of the upcoming men’s sports-related collections, the designer walked in and asked his opinion. Although Schaefer was surrounded by the design staff, he took a deep breath and said he saw opportunities in various places within the collection. He was immediately assigned to the design team.

Soon after, he became an assistant designer in Polo sportswear, then moved into concept design where he was elevated to the head of the department when the creative director resigned.

“The ceiling then went away for me at Ralph Lauren,” he said, adding that in the next 12 years, he served as senior vice president of men’s design, helped create the RLX Golf division, took over Polo Golf and then worked on the luxury brands.

Here, his eyes fill with tears when he recalls that when his mother got sick, he moved back to Michigan for four months and Lauren called him every week to check in, and continued to pay him the whole time.

After his mother passed and Schaefer moved back to New York, Lauren helped him find a sprawling home in the suburb of Bedford, where he also has a home — even driving around with his employee to check out the available houses.

Although Schaefer’s life seemed ideal, however, he was getting restless. He remembers telling his 1-year-old daughter Greyson every night to “dream big, don’t be afraid.” “I soon realized I was talking to myself and maybe I had gotten to this inflection point where, sadly, I wasn’t as motivated or passionate as I used to be, and I wasn’t I bringing as much value to Ralph specifically and/or the company.”

That led to a four-hour meeting in Lauren’s living room in Bedford where Schaefer bared his soul and told the designer about his idea to launch a golf lifestyle brand named after his daughter. “I don’t know if I’m actually good at anything, because you have been this amazing safeguard for me,” he recalls telling the designer. Lauren’s response: “If I told you that I didn’t think it was a good idea, then I would be going against everything that I did,” Schaefer said. And they spent the next two hours brainstorming about what Greyson could look like.

Fast forward to today and the brand with the wolf logo has found a niche not only among green grass shops but also specialty and department stores.

Schaefer came up with the logo as a tribute to his mother because the family had a wolf-dog when he was growing up and his mother used a golf head cover of a wolf. He started with golf because he had connections in the sport and the top pro shops. In addition, unlike traditional retail, golf shops don’t ask for markdown money or return merchandise.

Over the years, Greyson expanded into an array of other products, all of which merge fashion and sport. It has expanded beyond golf to tennis and a full lifestyle assortment for men and women as well as kids. His “wolf pack” of ambassadors includes golfers Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Shane Lowry and Jessica Korda as well as celebrities such as Justin Timberlake.

Around 65 percent of the business is wholesale with the remainder direct-to-consumer. Its most popular products in green grass shops are polos and shorts while at its own channels, the dress sport collection — sweaters, trousers, blazers and button-down shirts — is among its bestsellers. “They’re luxury and there’s performance associated with it,” he said. The fabrics are sourced in Italy and pricing is upper moderate, with a sport peak lapel blazer retailing for $398, a merino crewneck sweater for $200 and a cotton twill trouser for $190. Golf polos average around $120.

Looking ahead, Schaefer believes womenswear, which was introduced about a year and a half ago and represents around 15 percent of sales, represents a growth opportunity. The company will also add three to four stores a year and be moving some of its manufacturing to Detroit, his hometown where the company is now based, within the next few months.

But big picture, Schaefer envisions Greyson creating a “full-stop lifestyle company that tries to do some really innovative and good things.” That could include hospitality or other ventures outside of apparel — much like the playbook that his mentor Ralph Lauren has followed.

Schaefer summed it up this way: “You go through journeys in life, and sometimes we feel very much alone, but I’ve been around amazing people who have helped me get to where I am today, and I will never lose sight of that.”