You Gotta Have Balls Read online

  “My name is Peter Zawackey,” he said. “I run the dietary department at the GBMC. The Greater Baltimore Medical Center. You sent us your resume recently?”

  “Yes…” I said, fairly cringing at the memory of flair marker.

  “I just had to speak to the guy who's crazy enough to send a letter like this,” he said. “You got to be kidding me. This is no way to write a cover letter.”

  I waited.

  “…and I want to meet you.”

  So I drove down to meet Zawackey at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, and we had a great interview. He hired me as an accountant, responsible for costing out medical supplies and overseeing patient admissions in the dietary department. He also asked me to oversee the inventory of the employee cafeteria where the doctors and nurses ate.

  A month later, in August of 1981, I packed up my yellow Fiat 128, and moved my life to Baltimore. I had two $60 suits and $400 to my name. I didn't know a thing about Baltimore—including where I was going to be living and working.

  My mother's friend Sara had a son named Joel who lived in Columbia, Maryland; my mom told me to call him. I could probably stay with him and his wife Susan for a while, until I could get on my feet. But the hospital had offered to put me up for two months, and being the proud guy I was, I didn't want to lean on my mother's friend. So I went with the hospital's accommodations.

  When I got down to Baltimore I discovered that the hospital's accommodations were “unorthodox.” They were going to put me up in a mobile home in a trailer park in Crofton, Maryland, 25 miles outside Baltimore.

  I struggled from the very first night, out there in the wilderness and the darkness, with the quiet and strange sounds. I mean, I'm a Brooklynite from Ocean Parkway—I've been living in Scarsdale for years, and I'm still adjusting.

  What made matters worse was that I was living in the trailer with another employee named Dale. Dale was not my ideal match for a roommate. He openly shared his hatred for Jews, blacks, all sorts of people. He was one of the most bigoted guys I've ever met. And everyone who worked at the hospital despised him.

  Since I spent so much time monitoring the employee cafeteria, I got to know everyone from the surgery to the dish room. I really liked the hustle and bustle of food service. Also, I started organizing basketball games and various social events, becoming one of the most popular guys at the hospital. So Dale and I didn't exactly hit it off. Still, I was determined to make our situation work.

  But even after three weeks of living there, I had difficulty finding the trailer park when I drove home at night. The road home was one of those back roads where you missed the entrance if you blinked. Here I was, a Brooklyn Jew, living with David Duke in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere—and I needed a map to find the place every night. I felt twisted up inside. I needed to get out of there.

  I called my mother one night from the trailer park payphone.

  “I can't take this,” I said. “I gotta come home.”

  Again, my mom suggested that I call her friend's son Joel. But I was so stubborn; I still couldn't do it. I never wanted to rely on anyone else for anything. I felt that I had to do everything for myself.

  Luckily, around that time, my boss at the hospital, Peter Zawackey, was getting divorced. (Lucky for me, of course—not him.) Peter knew about my situation, and he made me an offer.

  “Look, now I have an extra bedroom in my house,” he said. “Why don't you move in with me?”

  Peter lived in Towson, which was like Preppyville, USA to me. I didn't think I'd feel comfortable living in that area, but it sure beat the trailer park. I took him up on the offer.

  As luck would have it, a week after I moved in with him, Peter accepted a job in Saudi Arabia. There was a slew of new hotels and hospitals opening over there at the time, and that was a big move for someone in his position.

  “I don't want to throw you out on the street,” he said. “But you have three weeks to move.”

  In the meantime, he took everything. He left me with a couch, a lamp, a fork, a knife, a plate—that's it. I didn't even have the means to eat soup if I wanted it. I began to feel nostalgic for the days with Old Dale in the trailer park. And I had three weeks to find a new place.

  So what did I do? I slipped into a bit of a funk, and I waited 20 days to do anything. Then my mother called me and asked me what my plan was.

  “I don't know,” I said. “I'll figure it out tomorrow.”

  “Why don't you call Joel,” she said. “He wants to invite you for dinner at his house. I think he and Susan need a favor from you.”

  That shows how well my mother knew me, and how sharp she was. She knew that my pride would keep me from going over there for my own sake. But it was different if Joel and Susan ostensibly needed something from me. So I went over to have dinner with them. Joel had an offer of his own:

  “We're going away for a couple of weeks, and we're afraid of leaving our son alone,” Joel said. “Would you mind house-sitting for a couple of weeks, until we get back? In the meantime, you can look for your own place.” Their son's name was Alan; he was 18.

  I lived at Joel and Susan's for two weeks, took care of the house and the son, and had a great time.

  When Joel and Susan came back, he told me I could stay longer.

  “Alan is leaving to go to college soon,” he said. “We'll have some extra room. Why don't you move into the bedroom in the basement?—you can have your own setup.”

  I felt like I might have been slow-rolled by Joel and my mother. Maybe the plan all along had been for me to stay there permanently. My ego was a little bruised. But I accepted the offer.

  No one ever choked while swallowing their pride.

  One day Joel and I were talking. “You work in this hospital,” he said. “But what's the real story? What do you really want to do with your life?”

  I told him that I had applied to all these hotel jobs and that I really wanted to work for Hyatt, but I hadn't gotten in anywhere.

  “You're not going to believe this,” he said. “But there's a Hyatt opening downtown soon, near the harbor. They're hiring.”

  I still didn't know my way around Baltimore too well, and I was nervous to go to the inner harbor by myself, so I put off looking into it. But Joel stayed on my case. He reminded me about the Hyatt three different times before I finally admitted that I didn't want to go down there alone. (I was getting better at this “accepting help” thing.) The next morning, Joel drove me there himself. It turned out to be the last day they were hiring.

  I had three different interviews that day. I told them how much I enjoyed monitoring the hospital cafeteria, and how good I thought I was at it. In the end, I was offered the last food service management job available.

  I had ended up working in a hospital in Baltimore partly because I hadn't been able to land a job with Hyatt. All of a sudden, I had one. In Baltimore.

  From day one of that job, I worked my ass off.

  My first post was a perfect transition from the hospital: managing the hotel's employee cafeteria and its staff of six. The hotel was run by almost 500 full-time workers, so the cafeteria got a lot of traffic. Hyatt was in the middle of an employees union battle at the time, and because management wanted to keep the staff as happy as possible, on occasion they let us create themed meals and special staff parties, I got to do a little bit of everything.

  After four months of running a happy and bustling employee cafeteria, I was promoted to assistant manager of the hotel coffee shop, Cascades, during breakfast hours. I was told it was a promotion, but the first morning on the job, I had my doubts—which probably had to do with having to wake up at 5 a.m. every morning to open the shop. On my way over, in the dark, I used to pray that the staff would arrive on time; if someone was missing, I would be the one who had to do the dishes or bus the tables.

  The job at Cascades proved to be one of the most difficult, most intense posts I've ever had in my life. I'd wake up at the crack of dawn to go dow
n to the hotel, and there would already be 300 guests lined up, waiting to get in for breakfast when I got there. Every morning was an overflow crowd; it was crazy busy.

  And I was responsible for making sure that everything went smoothly.

  While my work at Cascades was invigorating, I dreaded having to wake up so early every morning. I could never get used to that.

  But I couldn't quit. That was not part of my DNA. Rather, I had to find a way out.

  “How can I get promoted?” I wondered. “How can I get to a higher position?”

  What Else can I do for Hyatt?

  “In my position, I can't bring more clientele into the hotel,” I thought. “But is there another way I can make more money for the hotel?”

  Then it hit me—increase the average check price.

  Restaurants are always looking to grow the average amount of money their diners spend. Usually, they do this by pushing wine and other alcoholic beverages, and dessert. But those weren't options for a place that served so much breakfast; I was going to have to be more creative.

  The impressive fresh-squeezed orange juice maker we had at Cascades gave me an idea.

  I had just learned about the “Yes or Yes” theory at a sales seminar: Never ask a person a Yes or No question when it could be Yes or Yes instead.

  I put a big display of oranges outside the entrance to the restaurant, and while guests were lined up to get in, I had a waitress ask each customer if they would like coffee or juice. Little room for a no in that question. As it happened, most people said “Both.” Who doesn't want coffee and juice in the morning?

  Pretty soon, the coffee or juice proposition became standard operating practice at all Hyatt coffee shops—along with the welcoming display of fresh oranges.

  Simply thinking, “How can I run this place more efficiently?” might have sent me in a thousand different directions. But using the average check price as a guide—a measurement against which I could hold myself—showed me directly which areas I should focus on.

  You can't manage what you can't measure.

  At around the same time, Hyatt began computerizing its restaurant operations. Prior to this point, restaurants weren't computerized at all. When you ordered a dish off the menu, the waitress wrote it down on a check, and she had to run all the way into the kitchen and give it to the cook to read. Hyatt was the first restaurant chain to install a computer system whereby the waitress went to an electronic console and typed in an order, after which it was automatically printed out in the kitchen. This had never happened before. No one else had it. This machine was called the NCR-2160. The company, NCR, made cash registers, ATMs, bar code scanners, those sorts of machines.

  I had absolutely no prior experience with computers myself. But the machine excited me. I took one look at that thing and knew it could accomplish a billion more What Else's? than I'd ever be able to imagine.

  So I threw myself into learning how to use it. I made it my business to master it. Pretty soon there wasn't anything the NCR-2160 could do that I couldn't program.

  Before I knew it, every manager in the hotel was coming up to me with questions about the NCR-2160.

  “How do we use this thing?”

  “I want to boost sales. How do I do it?”

  I felt like I had the keys to the castle. Just taking the extra time to learn the machine—even though it wasn't one of my direct responsibilities—had made me into a huge asset for my colleagues.

  It's crucial to stay current with technology. From the guy starting out in the mailroom, to the CEO in the corner office on the 50th floor, everyone has to be up to speed with the latest software and accessories. If you're not, someone else right behind you will be. And that person will provide the What Else—to your boss or your client or your customer—that you didn't.

  On account of my record increase in breakfast revenues and my knowledge of the NCR-2160, I received yet another promotion. The management looked at the coffee shop as a training ground of sorts, and after just three months downstairs, I had proved that I was ready for the next level. Sales were lagging at Skylights, the restaurant on the top floor; they wanted me to take over as manager there.

  Now I was working every night, running the hotel's most high-end restaurant, with its clientele of beautiful people, half-naked waitresses, extensive wine list, cocktail lounge, and view of all of Baltimore—lighting up the night sky below me.

  The hotel was one of Hyatt's most successful locations up to that point. While Baltimore's inner harbor is one of the city's most thriving sections today, it was a desolate wasteland back then, and Hyatt was the first to plant a flag there. The chain really helped kick-start the resurgence of the harbor—and the city. It was a thrilling place to be, and I was right in the middle of the action.

  I was lucky to come across people in Baltimore who wanted to help me out—Joel and Susan; the management team at the Hyatt, which was eager to teach me—but it was my dedication that turned those opportunities into good fortune.

  In a few short months, I had come a long way from Dale and the trailer park.

  As I said earlier, luck is the residue of hard work.

  If you work hard and stay the course—and commit yourself one job at a time—you'll put yourself in a position to take advantage of opportunities that naturally arise. You'll also notice more opportunities than you did when you weren't committed—so while you might feel “lucky,” you made these things happen. Opportunities are springing up around us all the time; the question is whether you're able to capitalize on them or not.

  If it Isn't Easy, it Isn't Possible

  We had to have everyone out of Skylights by 2 a.m. to be able to clean up for the next day. But the mesmerizing view and décor and the intoxicating drinks and waitresses made it so that people never wanted to leave—and the status of the restaurant made kicking them out impossible. It was a problem.

  I came up with a solution. Starting at about 1:30 a.m. most nights, I'd start playing offbeat disco music over the speakers in the cocktail lounge, and I'd ask some of the more attractive members of the staff to start dancing. The beat was just strong enough to get some diners to pay their checks immediately, so that they could join the dance party, and just grating enough to get the rest of them to pay their checks immediately so that they could leave. When the clock struck two, we'd cut the music, and with no other options, the dancers would file out.

  One night, after we had started the disco music and I was making the rounds and cleaning up, a customer pulled me aside. He looked to be in his late thirties; I recognized him as a regular, though I had never spoken to him before. He introduced himself as JJ, explaining that he was in town as a hospitality consultant, advising a couple of the hotels that were getting set to open in the harbor.

  “I'm in this restaurant practically every night,” he told me. “I've seen how you manage the place, busting your ass. You're an interesting guy.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I only work six months a year, myself,” he said. “Would that interest you?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Let me take you out to dinner,” he said. “I can explain how. I have a set of truths to live by. I think you'll like them.”

  I happened to have the next night off. JJ picked me up and we drove to an Italian place. On the way over, this guy was just riffing on life. I barely understood half of what he was saying, but it sounded profound. I was very intrigued.

  We got to the restaurant, sat down, and ordered.

  “My truths are not exact,” he said, “but if you follow them, they'll take you to a whole new level.”

  “Hold on,” I said. I ran to get a pen and paper from the hostess, so I could write everything down.

  “First truth,” he began. “If it isn't easy, it isn't possible.”

  I wrote that down. He explained it a bit.

  “Second truth,” he continued. “You have the power to will things to be.” I wrote that down. And on he wen
t.

  So began my collection of Steinerisms—a compilation of sayings that I try to live and work by, and which I try to expand to this day. JJ's theories seeded the collection.

  The next night, he was back at Skylights. I went over to his table to say hello.

  “I'm leaving Baltimore tomorrow,” he said. “But I'll be back in a couple of months.”

  JJ's Truths

  If it isn't easy, it isn't possible.

  If driving to work seems to take too long and causes you stress every day, then you have to leave earlier, or find another way to get to work. To be successful, you need to be as efficient as possible in every area. When something in your life proves regularly complicated and taxing, you have to let it go.

  You have the power to will things to be.

  Capacity is a state of mind. If you really want something, you can get it, as long as you go all in. If you're not all in, you don't want it enough. You must be all in physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally to reach your true capacity.

  Be confident of your own value and worth by gaining consummate knowledge.

  When people get upset about something, like not getting a raise, it has more to do with their own feelings of inadequacy than the thing that “happened” to them. But when you have total knowledge of yourself and your trade, when you know you know your stuff, there is a little that can fluster you.

  It's not what you expect; it's what you inspect.

  Accountability is crucial to success. That is to say: Game planning a project is important, but the plan is worthless if you don't constantly monitor its progress, and closely evaluate it once the work is done, double-checking the details. Just as you're more likely to lose weight from a diet if you keep an eating log, so are you more likely to complete a task successfully if you carefully track its progress.

  Steer people toward decisions. Don't push them.

  Direct orders are forgotten as soon as they're completed. But if you steer someone toward reaching the desired decision for himself, the lesson will stay with him. It's the difference between telling someone to eat healthy, and showing them the benefits of healthy eating. Try and avoid telling people what to do. Inclusion breeds commitment and helps someone make a decision.