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On the first day of his new job, Steve Mack’s boss asked, “Why do you want to be a certified public accountant?” It’s a question no one had ever asked Mack before—not his professors at Arizona State University, nor the people who initially interviewed him for the position at the public accounting firm.

The question shocked Mack, and not just because he had never been quizzed about his professional intentions. He was stunned that he couldn’t come up with a single reason why he had chosen that career. And, in that moment, he decided he really didn’t want to be an accountant after all.

Mack left for lunch that day, and never returned to the office. He instead decided to make the family pawnshop business his career.

In 1875, Mack’s ancestor, Luis Makovsky, opened a pawn brokerage in Seattle. In 1925, a new generation of the family, Leon and Ester Mack, moved the family business to the San Francisco Bay Area. By the 1950s, another generation of Macks had taken over. In 1959, Ron and Judy Mack moved the family business from California to Reno, Nevada. They established Cameo Jewelry and Pawn, which became one of the most successful pawnshops in Nevada. Their son, Steve Mack, joined the family pawnshop in 1981 with big dreams of growing the business and improving the reputation of the pawn industry.

When Mack came onboard, his family owned one store and had six employees. Today, the Mack family’s SuperPawn empire has 40 company-owned stores and eight franchised ...