You Gotta Have Balls Page 11

  By this time, I had a young man named Andrew Levy working for me. Only two years out of college, Andrew was like a Mini-Me; he had stayed in touch with every person he had ever met, would work the phone all day, and could get “inside” information on anyone, long before the internet. Andrew was an excellent point man for countless athlete appearances, a true pillar of the Steiner Sports foundation.

  My Jerry Maguire Moment

  In those early, hungry days, during the football season, I regularly drove to Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Then I'd just hang around the parking lot, waiting for the team to finish practice.

  As the players exited the building and walked to their cars, I approached them, pitching them my business. Ideally, I wanted to sign them as clients, but I was happy just to get a phone number; I was always looking to expand my roster of relationships.

  I did my Giants Stadium parking lot routine for several years.

  This approach really paid off for me in 1991, when the Giants won their second Super Bowl. By that time, I counted a large chunk of the team among my clients, including Ottis Anderson, the starting running back and a highly respected league veteran. I had competed with many other marketing agents to sign Ottis, and I held 100 percent of his marketing rights exclusively.

  The Giants upset the Bills in the Super Bowl, and in running 102 yards on 21 carries, Ottis won the most valuable player (MVP) award. He was a seasoned pro, who just won the Super Bowl MVP, for a New York City team—you couldn't ask for a better guy to market, at a better time, in a better place.

  I ran with it. I set Ottis up with countless appearances and signings, and I got him some good promotional gigs, including Nathan's and Amex. I showed him the money.

  I might have incorporated the company in 1987, but this was the true beginning of Steiner Sports—the catalyst that said we were for real.

  People tend to get confused when they think about achievements. You have to be as excited about the tiny steps that add up to success as you are about the broader idea of reaching an ultimate goal. I had to be excited about my parking lot routine. If you can't find inspiration in little steps like that, it's going to be difficult to take the big steps you have your eye on.

  Two years later, the Bills reached the Super Bowl for the third straight time, facing the Dallas Cowboys at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. (Sadly, the Bills were well on their way to a record four straight losses in the big game.)

  American Express was one of my clients at the time. They were hosting an MVC (Most Valuable Customer) Super Bowl Party for their upper echelon cardholders at the Playboy Mansion; they had us organize it. We arranged for a host of former Super Bowl MVPs to attend, including Marcus Allen, Roger Staubach, and Ottis Anderson. I desperately wanted there to be an even 10 MVPs there, but we could only wrangle up 9.

  Then, the day of the big party, while I was waiting outside a hotel for someone else, I bumped into none other than Steelers great—and Super Bowl IV MVP—Franco Harris. I asked Franco if he would help us out, and he immediately agreed to attend the Amex party, no questions asked. True, it was an invitation to the Playboy Mansion, but over the years I've learned that it wouldn't have mattered if it was to the local library; Franco Harris is simply one of the nicest guys I've ever met.

  When I picked him up that night to head to the mansion, Roger was already in the front seat next to me. Franco got in the car and started chatting amicably, but Roger wouldn't say a word to him the whole way there. It was stunning.

  After we arrived and got out of the car, Roger pulled me aside.

  “Don't put me in a car with a Steeler again,” he said. “Those guys took two rings from me, and I will never like any of them.”

  Who says pro athletes don't take their jobs to heart?

  Our First Major Deal

  Despite all the hard work in the first several years, Steiner Associates didn't make any significant money until late in 1993.

  I had five employees by that time, but I was still basically keeping the business afloat from project to project, trying to support myself one week or month at a time.

  Then 7Up hired us for a promotion.

  The soda maker wanted its vendors to buy more soda. Simple enough. We designed a contest for them. If a vendor met a certain threshold in its monthly order, it would win an autographed jersey or trading card of a star basketball player. We billed the campaign 7 FOOTERS FOR 7UP.

  If you ran a deli or restaurant that sold 7Up, and if you ordinarily bought 25 cases a month, now you had incentive to buy 50—because that would win you an autographed, officially licensed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar jersey to hang in your store (or home), or a Larry Bird- or Scottie Pippen-autographed basketball poster to hang in your store (or home).

  Until my team and I crunched the numbers, we weren't 100 percent certain of the cost of carrying out the contest: the estimated price per autograph, per photo, per jersey, and per frame—multiplied by the number of vendors and potential orders. When we finished costing it all out, we discovered that the total cost of goods was likely to surpass 1 million dollars. That was the first time we had dealt with a number that big. This was huge.

  I gave the blueprint to the guy who did all our buying—an associate on whom I relied to orchestrate these kinds of campaigns.

  “Brandon,” he said, “I think that if the vendors buy a million dollars of products, we will make around $250,000 profit.”

  That was a lot of money. But in a way, it wasn't.

  We were going to do a million-dollar project, and control every aspect of it, but we were only going to clear $250,000? It didn't add up to me!

  I figured that if we could clear $250,000 on a promotion, it automatically meant that the campaign was big enough to squeeze even more business out of it. I took over the lead in negotiating the goods and services.

  I went to a framing manufacturer—in lieu of the local framer we usually used for our work. I knew I'd get a better bulk price there. Then I asked some of my other customers if they'd be interested in memorabilia from these basketball players. Then I called each athlete personally and proposed that instead of signing, say, 100 items, that they autograph 200. Even though they'd have to take a little less money per item, they'd net a significantly larger sum on the back end—for not much more work. I also worked with the jersey manufacturers to get a better price there. We didn't know exactly what the final order would be, but I was confident that between the contest and the ancillary item sales, it would be large enough to scale the entire project up a few notches.

  The project turned out to be a monstrous hit for 7Up, and Steiner Sports made around a $400,000 profit.

  We had been so happy with the first $250,000, that we almost left the second $150,000 on the table. If you're working on a sizeable deal, you have to assume you have something even larger on your hands.

  Sometimes success is less about finding new business than it is about taking what you have and putting it to better use. A lot of people would have been ecstatic with that original profit estimate. But to me that was a giant red flag, making me ask, “What am I missing here?”

  You have to dig deeper. Look at every part of the project, and see if you can make more money on the margins.

  Since I adopt this approach as much as possible in my life, a lot of my friends and employees think that no matter how well things are going, I'm never happy.

  The truth is, I'm a tremendously happy guy. I'm living a great life.

  I'm just never satisfied.

  You Never Know

  In 1994, Bill Liederman convinced me to change the name of the company from Steiner Associates to Steiner Sports. I had chosen the original name to give the business the imprimatur of an all-purpose marketing company. But as Bill pointed out, sports was our specialty and besides—the new name had a much better ring to it.

  I didn't exactly start out with some grand plan to enter the sports marketing business. I started out in a completely different industry—food service. Even when I began work
ing with athletes, I was booking them as bartenders and glorified party guests. The key—the unifying thread—is that at every step of the way, I was committed to doing the best job possible, and to meeting as many people as possible. The people I met and did business with saw how hard I worked, and in turn, opened up doors for me. But it was a real day-to-day grind, filled with ups and downs.

  “You were a scraper,” Mara tells me. “You'd get some work over here, do a little work over there. You were confident enough in yourself to go off to do wacky things and make them work. That's where you set yourself apart. Most people don't have that confidence; they have to stay in one place.”

  (Did I marry the right woman or what?)

  It's a cliché, but in life you really have to keep your nose to the grindstone. It was around five years from the time I first incorporated Steiner Associates to the time I had my first real piece of business on my hands. If I had let myself become distracted, if I had given up at all during that time—if I had “looked up” from what I was doing—I might have missed any number of key opportunities.

  Chapter 8

  Play the Game, Not the Score

  When I coached my son Crosby's little league teams (which I'll get into more deeply later), I observed a vast array of motivational tactics on the part of the other coaches. For instance, sometimes when a team was winning but its players were losing focus, the coach would implore them to imagine they were getting pummeled.

  “Play like we're 10 runs down!” he'd shout.

  Now, I've watched a lot of baseball, and I can safely say that normally, when a team is actually down 10-0, its players don't look too motivated.

  And to most people, a game with that kind of score is a boring show to watch. But I believe that it's actually the best reality show you can find. When a team has virtually no chance of winning, the game becomes a great indicator of who its great players are. I like to see who is still playing hard. Who's still launching himself out of the batter's box, scrapping his way to first? Who's still diving for balls? Who's still getting dirty?

  Those are the committed players. The passionate players. The ones who realize that consistency over time equals credibility. The ones who know that ultimately to be successful, you have to give your all all the time, no matter whether you're winning or losing. That's the difference between being a real player and being a human thermometer. I've learned this from the most successful athletes I know. Hank Aaron. Mark Messier. Derek Jeter.

  “Play the game,” they say. “Not the score.”

  Derek Jeter is a perfect example of this mind-set. The Yankee captain plays hard during every inning, every pitch, day in and day out, over the course of the entire season. He doesn't let his fundamentals lapse; you can never tell what the score is from Derek's body language during a given game. Even in the last game of the season, watching Derek you wouldn't know if the Yankees were headed to the playoffs or if they were in last place in the American League East.

  Entrepreneurs, employees—everyone—should perform the same way.

  When you walk into your office, can you tell whether it's nine in the morning or six at night? Is it the beginning of a promising quarter—or is it the end of a bad month? Are employees' stock options riding a promising wave, or slogging through a trough? In reality, none of these factors should matter. A valuable employee will look like a valuable employee no matter the situation and circumstances. Consistency over time equals credibility.

  Every day is Gameday

  A few years ago, I was asked to give the keynote speech at the opening of the Xanadu Shopping and Retail Center at the Meadowlands, in New Jersey (now called American Dream Meadowlands). The ceremony was going to be held at a nearby college.

  Being asked to give a big talk is always an honor. But when I saw the roster of speakers the organizers had lined up, I was even more excited than usual. Both the governor of New Jersey at the time, Jon Corzine, and the area's congressional representative, Steve Rothman, were slated to speak at the event as well—before me, no less. As I sat down next to those dignitaries, I really felt like I was in the Major Leagues. I was even more pumped as the event began, and I looked around the auditorium. The place was packed; there looked to be 400 people in attendance.

  Midway through the event, however, my excitement turned to disappointment. After the governor, congressman, and the other speakers in front of me had taken their turns at the podium, the emcee announced a short break—during which a vast majority of the audience, including the VIPs, promptly left for good. Instead of speaking before the governor and other leaders in a packed house, I was going to be standing in front of a few dozen random people in a cavernous, empty hall. The wind went out of my sails.

  But then I admonished myself. Didn't the small group of people who had stuck around deserve the same speech and effort from me that I was going to give the governor? Why would I compromise my performance on account of my disappointment? Wouldn't that only serve to make me feel worse about myself?

  Who would gain from that tactic? No one.

  I got up there and threw myself into the speech, full throttle. It went very well. I talked about finding the entrepreneurial spirit in yourself—how it's all about seeing the changes going on around you and finding the What Elses in them. After I finished and the event ended, a man came up to me.

  “I loved what you had to say,” he said, extending his hand. “I'm Mark Lamping.”

  I knew the name immediately. Mark Lamping was CEO of the New Meadowlands Stadium Company—and the former president of the St. Louis Cardinals. (Currently, he's president of the Jacksonville Jaguars.)

  “I was looking forward to meeting you,” he said. “We might need your help selling the old Giants Stadium, when the time comes. I'll be in touch.”

  In the following months, more than a few firms competed for that project; in the end, it went to Steiner Sports.

  You never know when an opportunity is going to present itself—or who might be listening.

  Too many salespeople misunderstand the unique importance of consistency. They have a big sales day, and to celebrate, they buy themselves a big lunch. Then, they leave work early because they feel they've earned it.

  But where is the logic in this? Are you less worthy of good food when sales are down? Conversely, if you feel you have done well, why arrest that momentum by taking a break?

  The days when you have a big sale—when you're riding a big wave—are the ideal days to go for a second big sale, and possibly a third. In my experience, the best time to make more money is when you're already in the process of making money. There must be a reason that that day has turned out successful. Harness it.

  It's like a batter on a hitting streak, who's seeing the ball really well. He doesn't want to take a day off. He wants to ride that wave as long as he can.

  When I was starting Steiner Sports and I had a good sales day, I never wanted to leave the office.

  “Please don't let this day end,” I used to think to myself. “Don't let 9 p.m. come too quickly. I need this day to be longer.”

  I didn't want time for a rewarding meal. I wasn't building my waistline. I was building a company.

  In the hungry days at Steiner, our office was only two blocks from Madison Square Garden. My athlete connections afforded me a lot of Knicks and Rangers tickets, and during the basketball and hockey season, many nights after work I'd go to a game. And on most of those nights, I couldn't go home after the final buzzer. I had to pay dues to the work that got me those tickets in the first place. It may have been 11 p.m., or even midnight, but I'd go from the Garden right back to the office. Heck, back in those days, I would have swum the Atlantic Ocean to get to work. My company was exploding and I did whatever I could to ensure it continued on its upward trajectory.

  Would you wake up every morning at 5 a.m.? Would you regularly return to the office after an event, half exhausted and stuffed with junk food, at 11 p.m. on a weeknight? You might think you're giving 99 percent
of yourself to something, but being all in means giving 100 percent. Either you're all in, or you're not. The difference between 99 percent and 100 percent is 100 percent.

  Relationships, Not Transactions

  Playing the score and not the game is not only unwise business; it's not wise on an intrapersonal level, either.

  Look at how we treat phone calls. Too often, if we call someone and leave a message, we don't even consider trying them again until they've called us back. It's phone tag.

  Playing the game of life amounts partly to not worrying about everything being quid pro quo with everyone. If you need to speak to someone, give them a call. Even if you've already left a message.

  As long as you're polite about it, what's the harm? The other person might even appreciate you taking the initiative, if they were having difficulty making time for a call themselves.

  Similarly, once or twice a month, it's handy to go through the e-mails in your Sent box, to see if any important ones have gone unreturned. With the myriad ways of communicating that we have nowadays, it's easier than ever before for messages to slip through the cracks. So really, there's less reason than ever before to be offended by someone dropping the ball. E-mail them again!

  Do as much as you can, for as many people as you can, as often as you can, without expecting anything in return. Don't worry about what you're getting back from someone you're giving something to. Don't worry about how many dollars that person is going to equal for you. It's counterintuitive, but there's definitely more joy in giving than receiving. There's a reason that's an expression, although you may not believe it until you've had the balls to commit to this mind-set.