You Gotta Have Balls Page 12

Most people can't do it. They're too concerned with what they're getting back from the other person. But being generous with what you have without keeping score is the only way to live. It strengthens your spirit, it keeps you focused on the people who make your business what it is, and it helps breed success. And earning some good karma never hurt anyone, either. Having the right attitude will help you reach the right altitude.

  I've always operated under this principle with the media, which is one reason I've gotten solid coverage over the years. Back in the 1990s, when I was starting Steiner, the sports marketing industry itself was in its infancy. Even the journalists who were covering it didn't really know too much about it. Whenever a reporter called me for a quote, or for guidance on a story, or to connect with the right person, I went out of my way to help them.

  There was no e-mail, or Google, or websites. Phone numbers were hard to come by. I built a reputation as the guy who could get players on the phone with journalists—which made their lives a heck of a lot easier. I'd do whatever I could to help. And you can be sure that I wasn't getting much in return. But I was definitely accumulating credibility.

  Inevitably, since I became such a trusted source, my name, and in turn, my company and brand, ended up in the media quite often. In the first 16 years of Steiner Sports, I didn't spend more than $150,000 on advertising, promotion, and PR combined.

  That's unheard-of for the level of advertising, promotion, and PR we actually got.

  Ultimately, it's important to remember that you might not always get paid in money for your actions or time; but what you do end up getting might in reality be something more valuable.

  That's the irony; when you play the game, and not the score, you usually end up “scoring” more as a result.

  Chapter 9

  Turning Memories Into Money

  Expanding Our Business

  ADAPTED FROM THE BUSINESS PLAYBOOK, PAGE 33:

  Our collectibles business initially began as a tangent to the “celebrity appearances” side of the company. In advance of the appearances we arranged, we usually asked the athletes to sign some memorabilia; we would have David Cone sign a dozen baseballs, or ask Gordie Howe to put his John Hancock on a handful of pucks. We'd then send these pieces to corporate clients to get them to return our calls, or thank them for their business. Or I'd use them to help certain charities raise money. There were plenty of reasons to keep a stock of these items on hand.

  Today such autographed pieces could cost us thousands of dollars, but they weren't as big a deal back then. And by 1993, we had built up a tremendous inventory of sports collectibles.

  Meanwhile, as our appearance business grew, so too did requests for the “souvenirs” themselves. People called us and asked if we had, for instance, any extra Yogi Berra baseballs lying around. But it could have been anything. “You got this?” “You got that?” The calls kept coming and coming.

  This was a big What Else in the making. It was as if—harking back to my paper route days—the milk had become more of a draw than the newspapers. Accordingly, we decided to start a memorabilia company, simply expanding on something that was already successful. It's not like we reinvented the wheel; we just put more spokes on it.

  This meant expanding our business on multiple levels. We began producing and framing our own original photographs and ordering our own bats and balls for signings. Previously, we had outsourced these items, which cut into the profit margin of each collectible. Fittingly, the Sid Loberfeld monies came into play once again; I used the $10,000 in savings from the car insurance settlement (from my summer before college) to ramp up our capabilities so we could process all of our collectibles in-house.

  Looking back at some of the twists and turns in my life, like the Pepsi bottle exploding and how that led to meeting Sid—with his sports collectibles, and the money that eventually helped me start my own collectibles company, it's hard not to see an invisible hand at work.

  It's like the philosopher Joseph Campbell said: “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”

  But again, it all falls into place only after you've committed yourself to the path that's right for you—as opposed to the ones that fit others' false expectations, or even misplaced expectations you have for yourself. And “your bliss” doesn't necessary mean what's easiest for you, or what gives you instant gratification. It's whatever feeds your spirit and fills your soul. In fact, later in his life, Campbell speculated that a better way to put it might have been to say, “Follow your blisters.” For me, it's always been about finding creative ways to bring services to people.

  Once our collectibles department was up and running, we had to find other big name athletes to seed it with.

  After I met Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton, aka Sweetness, through the Pfizer promotion, I booked him for other marketing deals. One weekend in the early 1990s, I was with Walter in Las Vegas, for Konica Cameras. The entire weekend I kept begging him to sign a bunch of footballs for our collectibles line, but he adamantly refused. He was the nicest guy in the world, but he wasn't a big autograph guy. And what can you do about that? Still, after the whole event was over, and we were on the way to the airport to fly back home, Walter agreed to do one signing.

  A few weeks later, a few employees and I flew out to Chicago, where he still lived. Having not fully specified with Walter the exact definition of one signing, we wanted to make sure we could get as much as possible out of it. We packed a hotel room with 1,500 items: footballs, photos, cleats, Chicago Bears mugs, anything you could think of. He signed it all in less than an hour. All of it!

  But that was nothing compared to 1999. That year, when Walter was dying much too soon from a rare liver disease, he agreed to sign 20,000 items for Steiner, to be sold only after he passed away. It was by far and away our most significant line of collectibles up to that point; it really put Steiner memorabilia on the map. I'll always be infinitely grateful to Walter for that.

  Our second big “get” was Phil Rizzuto, affectionately known to Yankees fans as the Scooter. Born—where else—in Brooklyn in 1917, Phil grew up to be the starting shortstop on seven World Series–winning Yankees teams in the 1940s and early 1950s, earning the AL MVP in 1950. After he retired from baseball, he broadcasted Yankees games on radio and television for 40 years. Scooter was known for his distinctive, Brooklyn-infused voice, and his signature catchphrase, “Holy cow!” In 1993, he was announcing games for the local TV channel WPIX.

  Although Phil was one of the first athletes I booked, he and I did not exactly get off on the right foot. I had hired him for a store appearance, but when he went to cash the $1,500 check I gave him as his fee, it bounced. I called the manager at my Citibank branch, a very nice guy named Mr. Gonzalez, to find out why. He and I previously had worked out a deal where he'd make sure my checks cleared, so long as I made up any difference to him quickly enough.

  “How could you let my check bounce?” I asked him.

  “I didn't!” Gonzalez said. “I made sure it went through.”

  “But Rizzuto said the check bounced,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, that one bounced. You had one check made out to him, and one to Mickey Mantle. I could only cover one of them,” Gonzalez said. “I had to go with the Mick.”

  Fortunately, that bounced check didn't negate the level of comfort and trust I had curried with Phil personally. He continued to work with me.

  In 1994, after too many years of near misses, Phil was finally inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, thanks to Major League Baseball's (MLB's) Veterans Committee.

  One night shortly after the announcement, I went to dinner at the house Phil and his wife Cora shared. Phil had never hired an agent before, but I wanted to be his first. I explained that his Hall of Fame (HOF) induction was sure to bring about a new surge in his popularity. “Everything is going to change now,” I sai
d. “You need a memorabilia and appearance agent to help you capitalize on it all. To bring you to the next level.”

  Wouldn't you know it—he agreed to sign with me, out of the dozens of agents who were courting him at that time. That was one of the biggest deals I ever made; Scooter's influence spanned the entire Yankees universe—something that would come in handy down the line.

  At the same time, Phil never let me hear the end of that bounced check.

  Another memorable signing we did in those nascent days, in the early 1990s, was with Lawrence Taylor. Similar to Walter Payton, LT was reticent to autograph merchandise and agreed to only one signing—at his house. We brought so many pieces for him to autograph that I had to rent a truck just to transport it all. I convinced Kevin Heller to join me in driving out to meet him. After we got to the house and brought in all the items, LT began signing everything. But, after a little while, we heard another car pull into the driveway.

  “Shoot,” LT said to Kevin and me. “That's my marketing agent.”

  Apparently he had another guy who was supposed to handle these types of things, and if he saw us, there would be trouble. LT had Kevin and me hide in the closet until he left.

  Hiding in that dark closet with Kevin for the sake of some autographed footballs and helmets felt a little unsettling, but it also reinforced my feeling that this—sports memorabilia—could be a huge industry.

  At some point LT let us know the coast was clear, and we finished the signing. The whole experience was exhilarating.

  My Favorite Collectible

  By this time, Mara and I had been married for eight years, and we had started a family. Our son Crosby was born in 1991, and in 1994, we welcomed his sister, Nicole.

  One night when Crosby was little, as I was tucking him into bed and getting ready to read him a story, he asked me what my favorite piece of memorabilia was. I had never specifically articulated the answer to myself—let alone anyone else—and Crosby's question got me to think it through.

  Hanging in my office at home, I have a framed photo of Mark Messier holding the Stanley Cup in his arms, wearing the most ecstatic smile you've ever seen. The picture was taken just after the Rangers' Game 7 Finals victory over the Vancouver Canucks in 1994.

  Mark, a good friend of mine, inscribed on the photo: “We did it!” This is my own favorite collectible.

  “I think it's because that photo highlights an important period in my life,” I told Crosby. I went on to explain that the Rangers' win came at a very emotional time for me. My mom had just died, which was incredibly painful. But at the same time, I had two amazing little kids that I was getting to watch grow up with my loving wife. My business was doing well, and I expected it to really take off, thanks to the success of Mark and the other Rangers whom I had as clients. I had worked months to sign Mark; in fact, he was the first athlete I ever signed to a collectibles deal, specifically. I knew my labors were about to pay off big time.

  Around the time that photo was taken, as I sat in the Garden watching the Rangers celebrate—seeing how happy they were, and how happy their fans were, myself included—a flood of emotions ran through me. At that moment, watching Mark hoist the Cup, I felt life itself very deeply. It was like a religious experience; I was truly inspired.

  The next morning, on the train into Manhattan, literally everyone in my car was reading a New York paper; each one had that shining photo of Mark and the Cup on the cover. I had rarely, if ever, experienced an event that brought together New Yorkers in that way. I knew I was going to have Mark autograph a photo for me, and I wanted only three words on it: We did it. I knew that every Rangers fan, having suffered through a 54-year Stanley Cup drought, would have understood that sentiment completely.

  After explaining all of this, I looked down, expecting to see my son's glowing face. Of course, he was asleep. I realized I had been talking for quite a while; I had lost myself in reliving that moment at the Garden.

  Crosby's question changed how I viewed memorabilia. Instead of merely being a collectible, each piece held the potential to be a totem—a magical gateway into the past. The difference between my own Messier photo and another copy of the same photo was the inscription—Mark's words are what unlocked that magical potential. They were the unifying force that brought together the visual image and the emotions I felt at that moment.

  I thought that every fan had to have their favorite sports moment, and that moment must be one of the top ten moments in their whole life. I knew that the right photo, the right collectible, could conjure up those feelings again.

  The next day at the office, we began brainstorming other collectibles that begged for inscriptions. Joe Namath writing “I guarantee it.” on a magazine cover featuring an image from Super Bowl III, or Franco Harris writing “The Catch” on a photo of the Immaculate Reception. We could have Louisville Slugger replicate the bat Bucky Dent used to smash the infamous home run over the Green Monster against the Red Sox in their one-game playoff in 1978, and Bucky could inscribe it with “The pennant-clinching homerun.” We could reproduce the hockey stick Wayne Gretzky used in his rookie season, and have him personally write the year and his stats from that season on it. We could even have Bill Buckner inscribe a photo of his infamous moment in the ‘86 World Series with “Oops.”

  We were going to create product lines that revolved around not just players, but players and moments. A Reggie Jackson–autographed baseball was nice, but a Reggie-inscribed ball, referencing his three-homer World Series Game in 1977, contained an entirely new dimension.

  We were the first to market with this kind of product, and Mark Messier and the ‘94 Rangers had been the perfect cornerstone upon which to build this new business. It was a fantastic What Else moment, and the first of two big tipping points for Steiner Sports.

  During that time, I would come home from work talking a mile a minute about all the opportunities that popped up that day, all the people I had met, and all the new projects that were just getting started. Mara would roll her eyes.

  “If only one-third of these things end up working out,” she'd say, “wouldn't that be something.”

  Then Extel, a financial data-communications company where Mara worked was sold, and she got a year's salary as severance. So we decided she should join me at my office. “I'll come in for a month or two,” she said.

  That very first morning she came to work, Mara made the business radically more productive and professional. Right off the bat, she looked at the motley arrangement of computers we had and explained how we could network them and share resources more efficiently. Unimpressed by our phone-answering procedure, which consisted of an impromptu game of hot potato every time the phone rang, Mara also insisted we hire a receptionist. Mara is almost single-handedly responsible for bringing Steiner into the information age.

  She even convinced me to get a postage meter. I had always been paranoid that if I bought one for the office, everyone on staff would use it for their personal letters and our mailing costs would go through the roof. I needed Mara to knock some sense into me on things like that.

  Perhaps most significantly, Mara executed a real financial plan for Steiner Sports, and she showed me how to get a line of credit from the bank. Previously, I had had a visceral aversion to borrowing money (a model that carried with it benefits like bouncing a check to my boyhood hero Phil Rizzuto).

  From the time of our first major ascent in the industry through our purchase by Omnicom Media, Mara served as CFO. She kept everything in order, in a way I never could. A stickler for documentation, Mara watched every dime. We couldn't come back from a business trip with an expense report that was even two dollars off. She'd be all over you until you could explain the discrepancy.

  “I bought a pretzel in the airport,” I'd plead. “I just forgot to write it down!”

  For Steiner Sports, Mara was just what the doctor ordered.

  A year after she started working with me, she came into my office smiling.

 
; “I think you have something here,” she said. “This could really be big.”

  Signing some big-name athletes had been encouraging, but when Mara said that, I knew we were really on our way. Going on 15 years now, Mara has been the voice of reason at Steiner, the one to get me to see the light when I've gone into one of my trances. Her office is three doors down from mine.

  So in addition to being the love of my life, the mother of my children, and my emotional and spiritual rock, Mara's long been the glue that holds Steiner Sports together. The company wouldn't be half of what it is today without her.

  As Meat loaf Sings, Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

  Sometime in the late 1990s, as Steiner was beginning to really get off the ground, I was in Orlando with Jim Kelly, Hall of Fame Buffalo Bills quarterback. I had accompanied Jim down there for two appearances he was doing at a big sports memorabilia trade show. One night he took me out to a local bar, and at around 2 a.m., while Jim and I were chatting with some people, I felt a tap on the shoulder. Turning around, I recognized one of the top collectors from the show.

  “Brandon,” he said. “I know you are starting to really grow, and I like what you're doing. But remember. There are three pillars of business—price, quality, and service.” He paused. “And you can only excel at two.”

  To this day, I try to run my company with service and quality as the main goals.

  Chapter 10

  The Big Break: Yankees-Steiner

  In 1999, Steiner Sports really started to roll. That year, we signed a multiyear deal with Derek Jeter. We also had an exclusive deal with Mariano Rivera by the time he won the 1999 World Series MVP, after the Yankees swept the Braves in four games. And in 1999, we signed Mia Hamm to the first ever collectibles deal for a female athlete.

  By opening day of the 2000 Major League Baseball Season, Steiner Sports represented most of the players on the Yankees and the Mets. So when the two New York teams finally met each other in the World Series that October—a dream come true for every New York baseball fan—we were in position to offer a collectible to all fans of the game, no matter which team they were rooting for. It was like we were in the middle of a perfect storm, and we were the only ones selling umbrellas. The Subway Series was another tipping point for Steiner. It garnered us a priceless amount of attention, and we did our best to capitalize on it; with the help of my old friend from Brooklyn, Steve Stein, we set up an online auction of Mets-Yankees memorabilia—the first such web-based auction Major League Baseball had ever seen. At the same time, we were bursting with new collectibles lines, and booking talent all over the country. 2000 was a dream year.