You Gotta Have Balls Read online

  I applied to a few top-tier schools, like Duke and the University of Pennsylvania.

  I figured, what did I have to lose? It's important to take chances in life—even ones that come with long odds.

  I didn't get into a single one.

  Syracuse was the most expensive college in New York State. On the surface, it didn't seem like the most likely place for a poor kid like me to go to school. On the other hand, the way my mother operated, it was the logical place. I needed a ton of student aid, and she felt the richest school would be able to give me more support than any other college.

  Indeed, Syracuse offered me a generous amount of student aid.

  I enrolled and moved up there in the fall of 1977.

  Skills Before Bills

  David Badar's family ran an Odd Job Store in lower Manhattan that sold various knickknacks. I worked there over Christmas breaks during high school, selling fake Christmas trees. After our senior year, David's father offered me $125 per week to work in the store over the summer, which would have amounted to a total salary of well over $1,000. I spent the prior summer working at Camp Sussex as a waiter in the cafeteria. I had long planned to work there again—making $150 for the entire summer—but the Badars' lucrative offer made for a difficult decision.

  Although I was already committed to Sussex, I knew I could get out of it if I wanted. But I liked working at camp; I spent nine great summers in a row there, first as a camper, then as an employee. And not only did I like it, but that summer I was scheduled to work in the kitchen. It was a chance to work under Alzie Jackson, the head cook and a camp legend. Alzie was highly regarded as a mentor. I had done a lot of cooking in my life, but I knew that working in the kitchen at camp the whole summer under Alzie would bring that skill to a whole new level.

  So instead of choosing the position where I would make more money, I chose the job that promised to make me feel productive and give me practical skills.

  It wasn't easy working in that kitchen. Every day, as Alzie's helper, I was the first to arrive at work in the morning (6 a.m.); and as a dishwasher, I was the last to leave at night (7:30 p.m.). I worked 12- to 14-hour days, with only three days off the entire summer. The average temperature in the kitchen was 90 degrees. It definitely wasn't sitting in a hammock and drinking lemonade.

  But sure enough, by the end of that summer, I had mastered dishwashing, bussing, and working the grill and griddle. And as I would learn soon enough, sometimes it pays to choose skills over the bigger paycheck.

  A few weeks after I began Syracuse, it became obvious that I'd need to take a work-study job if I was to afford any sort of normal student life there. Since most of my friends didn't have to work, I was a little bummed out about it. However, the school gave me a few options, and I chose to work in the dorm cafeteria. I figured that I could at least utilize my kitchen experience, and maybe earn a higher salary by virtue of my relevant skills. Not to mention meeting every girl in the dorm. (Talk about turning a negative into a positive.)

  At the beginning of my junior year at Syracuse, I was elected treasurer of my fraternity, Fiji. That experience was a great lesson on how to allocate money, piggybacking on what I had learned as treasurer at Dewey. And it didn't take long for me to learn another lesson in politicking, either.

  When I became treasurer, the soda machine in the frat house basement dispensed cans for 25 cents. But one day I was going over our books, and I discovered that the sodas were costing us 26 cents apiece to buy. We were losing a penny every time some guy stumbled downstairs and bought a soda. This small discrepancy was adding up. Raising the price of each soda to a mere 30 cents would make a significant difference to the fraternity's finances. So I proposed this increase at the next house meeting.

  I could not have imagined the outcry this suggestion would inspire. I had to sit there and listen to two hours of anger, and fear, and disbelief—over a 30-cent soda. By the end of the meeting, I felt as if I was about to be the victim of a coup d'état.

  “When my grandfather was at Syracuse,” one brother said, “he chose this frat above all others for the 25-cent soda.”

  “I have a stack of quarters in my room,” another guy said. “I started it because I knew that when I felt thirsty, I could take a quarter and go downstairs and get a soda.”

  There was a silence.

  “Now I have to make a stack of nickels,” he continued, “in addition to the quarters.”

  “What if you have a girl over and you want two sodas?” someone said. “You might even need dimes!”

  “You're planning on us making money off of ourselves?”

  “How capitalistic can you get?!”

  “We should absorb that money.”

  It was intense. It was Occupy the Soda Machine.

  I came home one day and some of my belongings had been chucked on the lawn outside the house. To send a message.

  While the whole thing seemed irrational, it was a teachable moment. When you make a change that affects your team—no matter how insignificant it seems—you first have to get people on board, whether it's your employees, your friends, or your family. But especially if it's your frat brothers. This supports my earlier claim that putting people at ease and compelling them to trust you are an essential first step in business and in life.

  Change is always difficult for some people, no matter how small. A good leader will make his team comfortable with a change before he puts it in place. It doesn't matter if the change is obviously the right way to go. There is no sense in being right if you can't get it right.

  In the end, I couldn't get the soda increase approved. For all I know, they're down to 10 cents by now.

  My mother encouraged me to major in accounting at Syracuse. She felt it was the most practical skill for me to learn, which made sense to me.

  I did well enough the first couple of years, but I began to struggle when I had to take intermediate accounting during my junior year. Some of the more complex formulas and concepts just weren't sinking in.

  One Friday night, I was sitting at my desk in my room at Fiji, trying to study. My accounting notes were scattered around me like fallen leaves. The giant textbook sat open in front of me, inscrutable as the Dead Sea Scrolls. I felt lost.

  Below me, I heard music, and chatter, the sounds of cabinets opening and closing, and furniture being rearranged. The house was going to throw a massive party in a couple of hours. I looked forward to drinking with my frat brothers—and hopefully some cute girls—and leaving intermediate accounting behind. I'd deal with it Sunday night.

  I began to straighten up my workspace. As I did this, something dawned on me. If I felt anxious about accounting early on a Friday night, how would I be feeling Sunday night? I might well be in a full-blown panic. Yet here I was, ready to throw a whole night away numbing my mind. And that would likely roll into a full weekend of taking it easy.

  I didn't need to be at the top of my accounting class to know that this was not a winning formula. I needed to buckle down with my studies, and I needed help if I wanted to get a decent return on my efforts. Friday night was the perfect time to look for it.

  I gathered my accounting materials, threw them in my bag, and left the house—walking right past my brothers, already doing shots and grinning like hyenas in anticipation of the night to come. I made a beeline for the library.

  I figured that anyone spending a Friday night in the library studying would be hardcore enough not only to thrive in class themselves, but to be able to teach me a thing or two. They'd probably even enjoy teaching me.

  Often disciplined people are also caring people. And caring people are usually helpful people.

  I walked through the library, and lo and behold, I spotted four kids from my class. The two Petes—Wiesenberger and Pasterell—and two girls—Joan Berkowitz and Edie Grossman.

  “Hey!” I said, approaching the group. “What are you guys doing in the library on a Friday night?”

  “We're hanging out here,” th
ey said. “We're having fun.”

  My frat brothers were hanging out and having fun. These kids were hanging out and having fun. But while one group was at an epic kegger, the other was at the library. It seemed pretty obvious which group was headed for bigger and better things in life.

  “I really need to be a part of this group,” I thought.

  So I sat down with my classmates. They were each working on different things, but when I explained that I was having difficulty in accounting, they immediately showed a willingness to help me. They told me to take out my papers, and they began tutoring me.

  I wasn't the quickest study, but I was teachable. Whether or not it was out of kindness, or amusement, or because it helped reinforce the concepts for them as well, this group took me under its wing. I began to hang out with them, and they tutored me whenever I needed it.

  Part of becoming the best is surrounding yourself with the best.

  Later on that year, all of my fraternity brothers, friends, and basically everyone I knew were heading down to Fort Lauderdale for spring break. I didn't have the money to join them, but I never really doubted that I would come up with it. I just had to figure out how.

  There was a club in Fort Lauderdale called The Button, which was the one of biggest spring break meccas in Florida in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Button was famous for its wild college contests, which pitted students from different schools against each other in competitions including—on the modest end of the spectrum—basketball, beer pong, and wet T-shirt contests.

  In case I couldn't make it down to The Button, I figured I'd bring The Button up to Syracuse. I convinced the most popular club and radio stations in town to cohost a giant, Buttonesque party one Saturday night at a local bar called Uncle Sam's. A family friend, Mo Berger, had some sway with local liquor distributors; he helped me persuade them to sponsor the bash with several premium labels and game prizes.

  My right-hand man putting on the party was a Fiji brother a year younger than me, named Gary Gerome. Gary came up with the excellent idea of enlisting our fraternity pledges—with whom we had natural leverage—as worker bees.

  We rounded up the pledges and told them that if they wanted to get into Fiji, it was in their best interest to help us throw this party. Then we drove them to other local colleges, like Le Moyne and St. Joseph's College of Nursing, and told them to fan out and invite everybody with a pulse. They were like little battalions, storming all the towns in the countryside.

  We charged $2.94 to get in the door; then people could purchase three beers for $1.94 or two drinks for $2.94. We promoted it on the radio, in the streets, on campuses—wherever we went.

  The night of the big party, almost 2,500 people showed up at Uncle Sam's. The line of cars stretched down the road as far as the eye could see. The club had a capacity of 1,500; we had to turn away a thousand people at the door!

  The party ended up bringing in twice as much money as I'd hoped for. It was the first time I had put together an event on that level.

  And the night really resonated at Syracuse; Gary threw the party after I graduated, and made some good coin. I'm proud to say he and I are still good friends, some 30 years later.

  Still Orange After All These Years

  I graduated from Syracuse in 1981, but I've kept my life entwined with the school.

  In 2003, on the backs of precocious freshmen Carmelo Anthony and Gerry McNamara, Syracuse at long last won the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship. I knew we had to come up with a Steiner Sports product line that would commemorate the title for diehard fans and alumni like me. So we started Syracuse Steiner Sports Collectibles, and with the invaluable blessing of Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim, and the help of Athletic Director Daryl Gross, we were able to deconstruct the wood court in the Carrier Dome, where the team played its home games. (When I met Daryl, it was love at first sight; he has an energy and vision that only come along once in a while at a school.)

  In addition to selling court pieces engraved with the team's record, and cutouts of the court mounted on plaques, we took some larger slabs and turned them into coffee tables and end tables. We even took tiny swaths and made them into cuff links. I have a pair of these myself; I wear them to add a little luck on days when I have big meetings.

  The Syracuse basketball court line ended up being very successful, and we've expanded it with a similar product line from the University of North Carolina, and even one from the Knicks. Once, we even installed a large expanse of the 2007 Syracuse court as a brand new floor in a fan's office!

  But the best part of Syracuse Steiner is that it's run largely by students at the university. Under Daryl's leadership, with assistance from my fellow alum and super sports agent David Falk and department director Michael Veley, among others, a few years ago we established an innovative partnership between our company and the school's department of Sport Management. (Once again, Coach Boeheim was a tremendous advocate for us.) Students work very closely with us in managing the division; they gain firsthand experience obtaining, marketing, and selling all of our Syracuse athletic memorabilia. It's the type of practical, real world education my mother would have appreciated. Not to mention John Dewey.

  Every time I go up to Syracuse to give a lecture, or meet with fellow members of the school's Athletic Advisory Board, I'm thrilled to meet students who are getting their start in the industry through Steiner Sports. There's nothing like the feeling of pride you get from passing the torch to the next generation. I can't wait to see all the innovative products that they come up with.

  Chapter 4

  Yes or Yes

  From the time I was 10 years old, I had been busting my ass doing a hundred different things at once. When I wasn't at some job, I was at school. There hadn't been any downtime. I never woke up in the morning wondering what I was going to do during the day, and I never went to sleep at night without being completely exhausted. But as the end of my senior year at Syracuse approached, I began to worry about what I was going to do next. All of a sudden I was staring at a blank calendar. It made me a little crazy.

  Between my experience at the bagel factory, the hospital, and my various cafeteria jobs at camp, college, and the hospital, I had become passionate about the service industry. I loved everything about it—meeting and managing all sorts of folks, solving problems on the fly, working on my feet. Every day was a new adventure, and serving people was always very gratifying.

  Perhaps my inclination at that time to work in the hospitality industry was inspired by the stories Cary told me about our grandfather, who had once owned some hotels. Or maybe hotels held a unique appeal for me, as places offering weary people a safe, clean, reliable place to stay—something I never had growing up. In any case, my dream job was to work for Hyatt Hotels.

  Hyatt was the premier hospitality chain in the early 1980s. It was a growing company with a great reputation, an upscale clientele, and a high-profile management training program. I had always viewed myself as a manager, but I couldn't seem to get my foot in the door there.

  So I applied to something like 200 jobs that were all over the map, literally and figuratively. I called everyone I could think of, sent my resume everywhere, went on interviews—and every prospect ended with a rejection of some kind. I didn't have a single job offer waiting for me when I finished college.

  With no prospects in sight, my mother told me to go to Europe. She said she'd help me with the expenses.

  “You've worked really hard your whole life,” she said. “You deserve it.”

  She thought that was the classic thing to do, and plenty of my friends were going backpacking around Europe after graduation—but I couldn't do it. I couldn't take money from my mom; I knew she'd have to sacrifice too much for it. And I didn't want it enough to go into debt for it myself. Europe was out.

  Graduation was getting closer and closer, and I still had nothing lined up. I felt like I was about to be hurled off a cliff.

  I became so anxious that I deve
loped shingles. Most people look back at their senior year of college as the last hurrah of youth, innocence, and freedom. For me, it was a time of stress and illness.

  Then one day, I got a call from a career placement officer at the university. He knew I wanted to work for a hotel, and he told me about a new hospital in Baltimore that was opening up—it was going to be state-of-the-art, and was somewhat similar to a hotel. He thought I should reach out to them.

  What the heck, I thought. My experience working at the hospital in high school had been exciting.

  But before I contacted this hospital, I thought about the 200 rejections I had received. If I was rejected from so many jobs, there must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of others like me. I didn't see how, with those numbers, anyone could possibly stand out.

  So I returned to my mother's famous question: What Else? What else could I do to separate myself from the hordes?

  I found the name and address of the appropriate person at the hospital. I bought some nice stationery that I used to write a letter explaining that I had accounting experience, and cooking experience. I had worked in so many restaurants, I had done this and that, and I know I can be a help to you. Sincerely, Brandon Steiner.

  Except the catch was, I wrote this all in red flair marker. And I printed my resume on green paper.

  I don't know if I was trying to evoke the Christmas spirit in May or something, but I knew, at the very least, I wasn't going to get rejected for not standing out.

  I put the papers in a manila envelope and dropped it in the mail.

  One afternoon I was sitting around with an old camp friend, Frank Davis. Frank and I were on the verge of giving in and seeing if we couldn't somehow make it to Europe after all, when I got a phone call.

  “Is this Brandon Steiner?” the man on the other end asked.

  “Yes, it is,” I told him.