Iconic Dealmakers Part 2: Charlie “Cash & Carry” Pyle

In his book Cash and Carry: The Spectacular Rise and Hard Fall of C.C. Pyle, America’s First Sports Agent, biographer Jim Reisler described Pyle as a combination of “the talents of P.T. Barnum, Don King, Col. Tom Parker and Oral Roberts.”  In this episode of Music Row Dealmakers, from composing to closing, Shrum & Disney discuss Pyle's first successful deal with NFL Hall of Famer Red Grange.  Their successful collaboration generated more than $500,000 in endorsement and sponsorship deals, the present day equivalent of over $10M, and kicked off what is now known as the National Football League.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Music Row Deal Makers, where we explore our world of making deals from National's famed Music Row. In the heart of Music City, we are the deal makers, from composing to closing. Now, here's your host, Barry Neil Strum and Dennis Disney.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Hello, I'm your host, Barry Neil Strum. My co-host Dennis and Doug will join us in just a few minutes to discuss some of the deals that we will parse out in our introduction. So, welcome to the third episode of Music Road Dealmakers, from composing to closing. In our last episode, we looked at our first iconic deal maker, Frank DeLeo, who was the personal manager for Michael Jackson during his thriller years and a close friend of mine before his death. But today we're turning our attention to our second installment of Iconic Dealmakers. So for this purpose, we're going to be dialing the dial back on our time machine to the 1920s in order to explore the world of deal making in in that era. That was the era of the roaring twenties, of course, the jazz age. It was a time shortly following Henry Ford's invention of the assembly line, and manufacturing companies all across the country began manufacturing products and using his idea to make it a better world. And consumers were snatching up new technologies left and right. This was the dawning of the radio, the the record player, the piano, the player piano, all of this going on in this roaring 20s era. So that's the stage that is set. So let's take the specific date of January 4th, 1920, when the Champaign News Gazette published a story about a local theater owner who had big plans for a new building project in downtown Champaign, Illinois, featuring a 12-story, 330-room hotel incorporating a 2,200-seat theater, a barbershop, a coffee shop, and a bowling alley. That local theater impresario was none other than a man named Charles C. Pyle. He had the nickname of Cash and Carrie Pyle for his first two initials. Pyle was a schemer. He was a dreamer and a deal maker. He parlayed that into a lot of successful ventures. And that's why it's worth exploring him in our iconic dealmaker series. Ultimately, the hotel theater bowling alley combination never materialized, but what Pyle did ultimately build was the Virginia and Park Theater in Champaign, Illinois, which, by the way, is still standing and still showing movies and other things. Pyle was, as I said, an interesting fellow. His dream deal making uh abilities and his uh ability to see the talent in individuals, see the potential in entertainment, see the value. This would ultimately lead Pyle down divergent paths that took him far away from the theater business and led him to several moderately successful precursors uh to what we now refer to as a sports agency, for example, or a professional football league, or uh a tennis tour. In fact, some say these are the precursors to uh people like WME and and the NFL and the ATP. One biographer described Pyle as a combination of the talents of P. T. Barnum, Don King, Colonel Tom Parker, and Orl Roberts, all colorful people in their own rights and perhaps future iconic deal makers. But the combination of those people must have been pretty striking, and that's the accounts we have of Pyle. He was visually attractive, he was a taller man, he was always a sharp-dressed man, as as uh Zizi Tot might say. He wore a top hat, wore a three-piece suit, uh gold chain hanging out attached to his watch, et cetera, et cetera. When Pyle entered the room, he commanded attention, something that helps in deal making and negotiating. Now, in in Champaign, of course, as well as the uh University of Illinois, and that's where the story begins to get a little bit interesting for our purposes. And in 1923, the star running back for for that team was none other than sophomore Red Grange. And if you don't know that name, I I don't blame you, but Red Grange is one of the first people inducted into the National Football League's Hall of Fame. He was a legend as a sophomore in seven games. He ran 723 yards, and as any football fan will tell you, that's a lot for a college player. He scored 12 touchdowns and he led the Illinois to an undefeated season, and they ultimately were champions in the Helms Athletic Foundation National Championship. But in addition to football, Grange himself was um somewhat of an attractive man, a smart man. He modeled for local department stores, something that in those days college football players had to do to support themselves through college because they weren't allowed to take compensation. This is where Pyle and Grange began, their their paths begin to meet. One day during the the fall of 1924, when Grange was a junior, Pyle, who was an avid football fan, and of course recognized Grange, saw him sitting in the seats in the in the theater. And so he told one of his ushers to to bring him around for a chat after the movie to his office. And and he did that. And Pyle said, Okay, you know, I like what you're doing. You're uh, you know, I I know about you, so I'm gonna give you free tickets for the rest of the season while you're uh while you're in college, and and you just come down anytime you want and you've got free admission. Now in a deal making world, we call that greasing the wheel. By giving Grange uh tickets, Pyle ensured that uh he would have constant contact with Grange during the course of his collegiate career because he had big plans for Grange. Pyle had an innate ability, it seemed, to recognize talent.

unknown 6:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

And if you work in the entertainment industry, you uh understand that that means something. If you can spot that it factor, whether it be sports, acting, singing, you you can exploit that, you can harness that for commercial gains, and it's all done through through this art of deal making. So Pyle understood this concept in this consumer world of the 1920s. He understanded that that the consumer wanted to be associated with great people. And this goes back well into our history. We all like to be associated with the strong, the beautiful, the great. And sometimes we express that need to associate by purchasing the products that they endorse. So there's a lesson to be learned, even in these beginning stages of this story. In other words, Pyle recognized a deal, and in this case, a deal with Grange, and he immediately began to plot as to how that could be accomplished. So about a year later, following that initial encounter, Pyle stood in the the line at graduation and and saw Grange as now a national sports figure. In 1925, in fact, a Chicago Journal poll named Grange as one of the world's best athletes, uh, somewhere behind Jack Dempsey and Jim Thorpe, but well ahead of notables like Babe Ruth and and Ty Cobb to pile that talent, that ability, Grange's appearance, it was all money in the bank. He saw dollar signs. Now, since we're talking about football, it's important historically to understand what is going on in that world of professional football in this context. The sport of professional football had in fact been evolving since the late 1800s. And in the early 1900s, at this time, local companies like the Indian Packing Company began to form local teams. Now you'll recognize this team as the Green Bay Packers, which was funded with a 500 donation from Curly Lambeau's employer, the Indian Packing Company. Similar things were were happening in other parts of the country. Other local companies were forming their own football teams, uh, the the Pittsburgh Steelers, for example. And several of these local professional teams began to get together and and form a conference called the American Professional Football Conference. And that was uh in the early twenties, and and then a couple of years later they changed that name to the National Football League. By this time they had eighteen teams that were uh fielding in that season, one of which was the Chicago Bears close by to Champaign. All of this development is happening in a culture, a collegiate culture, an educational culture, in which it was still frowned upon for an amateur to play professional sports, to accept cash for playing a sport. How gauche they thought. This was the context in which Pyle goes to Grange and says, Hey, if you will let me manage your post-college career, I will give you a percentage of the net revenue that I get. Will you? I'll get you endorsement deals, I will get you places to play, I will set up a tour of cities, I will sell tickets, we will make a fortune, and I will make you quite literally the gridiron star, a celebrity. And so Grange agreed. And uh Grange happily went and told his recruiter, his coach at that time, the his mentor, Bob Zupke, a famed uh Illina L football coach. And when he when he told him, uh Zupke blew up. He he blew his top. He said, Keep away from professionalism. Oh my gosh. So football's not a game to be played for money. What are you thinking? And to that, the the keen Grange pointed out the irony. He says, Wait a minute. Yeah, Mr. Legendary Coach, aren't you coaching football for money? What's the difference? And so Grange did sign with Pyle and he the the next day after his blow up with Zubke, signed with the Chicago Bears the very next day. It took NF the NFL about three years before it began to uh achieve some national notoriety. And of course, ultimately in the 60s with with the deal with uh CBS and the AFL and the NFL joining forces, it became what it is today. But in the beginning, it did so primarily on the back of Red Grange, and primarily based on the the deal that was negotiated and closed by none other than CC Pyle and all of the other deals that he got for Red Grange, and we'll talk about those in the next segment. And now let me welcome into the studio Dennis Disney, my co-host, and uh Doug Smith, our associate. And we're going to talk about these deals a little bit. Hi there, Dennis, and welcome into the discussion stage of our um of our show. Mr. Barry, how are you? I'm doing just great. With with uh cash and carry pile, I you know, I don't know how you feel about it. You've done a little bit of research, I've done a little bit as well, and I just this guy just fascinates me. There are so many interesting facets to his character that can inform us on deal making.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Well, I think the first thing about him in particular, summed up in one word, and that's Hutzpah. I like that word. You know, it's it's and I think in to some degree every negotiator has to have a little bit of that. You have to have a look a little bit, maybe a lot of, depending on the deal, but the the ability to say, hey, I'm going to take this a step too far. Because one of the principles that I have I learned way early in my career, and it sounds pretty simple, but people do this all the time. The first, let's say, deal negotiating points they throw out are too low. And if you start too low, you can't take them up. You can, you know, you can only take a deal point and come down. And so a lot of times people get get tagged with the, if you will, the moniker, they've got a lot of hood spa because they're asking for a big number or some sort of a big get, if you will. But if you're having to throw out those first numbers, even though you don't want to be so out of the ballpark that the other side says, well, there's no place for us to go. That's just that unreasonable. You don't want to go there. But if you don't start bigger, you can and then work your way down. You can you just can't go the other way. So you always end up leaving a bunch of money usually on the table, unnecessarily so.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah, you don't want to be caught in the situation, the old adage of negotiating against yourself. Exactly. Starting to either too high or too low. You know, if you start too low, the other side says, Oh, yeah, we'll take that off, or you realize uh well, maybe I should have started a little bit higher. The thing about Charles Pyle that is so fascinating. I think I was telling you this before the show, is his tenacity in addition to his Hutzpah. He he's like a bulldog, right? And he's he was always looking for his next deal. And you know, we're talking about the deal with Red Grange and the Chicago Bears today. In our next episode, we're gonna be looking at his dealings with Suzanne Langlin, a historic tennis figure, and and how he he he negotiated that and took her on a similar tour that he did with with Red Grange. And then later we're gonna talk about the Bunyan Derby. So at the end of all of these deals that we're talking about, he's already looking for his next big gig. So the the three things I think that that come out of this story with Red Grange and the football tour is first of all, Pyle's agent-client relationship with with Red Grange. That um is so common today, but in in the 1920s, when when this was going on, it wasn't as common. And then secondly, the idea of a national football league, which we all kind of take for granted, was in its nascent stages in those days. And so Grange's player contract with the Bears was something that was unique at the time. And then finally, through all of that, Pyle sort of jumped ship with the National Football League and started forming his own league because they wouldn't give him what he wanted. So there are so many lessons I think we can learn from this guy. So let's start with the agency agreement with Red Grange. I think, you know, that's one of the first important lessons that can be gleaned from his deals. The thing about that is that it was built on relationships. And I know you know, one of the most important things in negotiating and deal making is your relationship with other parties.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Well, you know, one of the best definitions of business that I've ever been taught is getting things done through people. And that's really what you're talking about here. How many of us have received a complete cold call from some salesperson trying to sell us whatever? We don't know them, we can't trust them, we have no idea what we can believe and can't believe in that regard. So the relationship becomes really, really important. And when you're dealing in all of businesses that way, but especially in things like entertainment that we do so much of, there's so many people trying to get into this business, and so many people trying to take advantage of people coming into this business that if you don't have relationships that you can call on and go back to, and then they introduce you to new relationships because of the trust factor they have with you, that's really how these things start start coming together and building. And it's amazing when you look back, and I look back at my career, how many different business deals I've done with people that I already know. And I think that's so critical to what we're doing here. So a great agent, whether you're in entertainment or sports or the arts in any other capacity, these agents are selling, quote unquote, their clients to people they already work with and they already know. Or it's a brand looking for an endorser will come to the agent or agency, but the agent is already going to have an idea of who this brand is, typically. They can do the research on that. So I think the point you're making is relationships fundamental to doing any business deal. Has to be that way. And then because you've got a relationship, hopefully, that means that both sides put together a fair deal for each side.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Right. And I think, you know, the the the word you used in in all of that was trust that you've got to develop with with these relationships. And when you have that, like you say, it makes things easier, makes life easier. For Pyle, he was aware of Red Grange, and and Red Grange had already kind of built up a certain reputation because of his skills, kind of like celebrities and sports figures do today. You know, we we recognize those people who are the best among us, the the brightest, the smartest, and all that. So for Pyle, he at the time was a theater operator. And he saw Red Grange come into his theater to watch a movie or whatever's gonna was going on that day. And he established that connection early on. He he called him into his office, back to his office, and and made the deal with him that, you know, just keep in touch and and I'll give you free tickets to the to the shows. Just come anytime you want. So his first little, I guess, wedge into the relationship was hey, you like movies, you like shows, you know, I enjoy watching you play football. I'd like to get to know you better. Come on down, I'll give you all these tickets. And and you and I know in in this business of entertainment these days, that's commonplace. But for Pyle, it was a way to establish that relationship with Grange, who he wanted to contract with.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

I think the one of the key elements to all that is because we see it so often. Pyle here wasn't being a moocher. He knew he wanted a relationship with Grange. He may not have fully understood where that may go yet, or he may have. He may have had a completely clear vision. He just needed to get Grange on board. But you can't just go to someone you don't know and start saying, give me, give me, give me, give me your time, give me your name, give me your talent, and I'll make you a star. You have to say, look, I'm willing to put something into this. And here, Pyle was putting some stuff into this. He's putting some time, he's putting something of value that Grange was interested in, the movie tickets and stuff like that, while they developed this relationship. And I know for me, way too often over the years, I would get calls from people who wanted something, they didn't really want to give me anything. They just wanted something. Right. And you got to find that balance between the two. I do think that you give to get, yes, I give space in my theater, here are my tickets, et cetera, et cetera, because I want to get a relationship with you. And then if that develops over time into something bigger than great. I, when I was in artist management, that was a big part of how I would sign clients, is I got to know them. I would give them advice, I would give them access to other people or something like that as I was developing the relationship. And then over time it became a, hey, I need this from you now. Now, but not in a manipulative way. That's the other piece. You got to be careful of for long lasting deal making relationships, it can't be manipulative. It's got to be fair and equal, but you also have to have, I think, proper respect for each other. At least that's the way I want to operate.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Well, and that there's a there's a fine balance between giving of yourself to someone you want. To do business with and being taken advantage of or by a manipulator. You know, that's why I think you mean you mentioned the stranger on the phone, you know, trying to sell you something. I think that's why initially people are put off by that because they don't know is this guy just a scam artist? Is he manipulating me or can I trust him? And so I think you're right. And I think that's what happened here with Pyle, right? The way he welcomed him into his theater, and Grange took him up on it, and he began to to do that throughout his two or three years more years at college. And and they saw each other and they built a relationship and they built trust. And none during none of that time did did Pyle go to him and say, Hey, I want to sign you right now so nobody else gets you. Right. He waited until he was ready to graduate. So he he took a very systematic approach to this. And I think that's part of his genius. And so ultimately that unique relationship that he built with Grange became a form of what we know of as a sports agent, right? Even though Pyle probably would not have described himself that way. But but that's effectively what it took. He took a percentage of whatever it was he was going to get for him. And he got a lot. I don't know if you went through some of these things he got, man, but he he got over a half a million dollars in those days, that day's dollars, not our dollars, $500,000 in 1920 dollars. I don't even know what that would be. But he got a $300,000 movie contract for Pyle. He got a $13,000 advance for a sweater manufacturer. Apparently, Grange was fond of wearing sweaters. They made a doll that looked like Red Grange for $10,000 advance. They got a candy bar company for the same amount, shoes, ginger ale, caps, and just all kinds of things. And so he even uh Grange even got a $10,000 advance from a cigarette company, even though he said I don't I don't smoke, but my best friends do. So why can't I capitalize on this a little bit? So I think you had a quote you wanted to share.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

If Mr. Google is right, that $500,000, I said roughly from 1930. Yeah. It's it's a pushing $10 million. Oh wow. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Yeah. That beats uh Frank DeLeo's six million dollar deal we talked about in the last episode.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

No, the the quote that that you were uh addressing came from a book by John Jim Reisler on cash and carry. The book was called The Spectacular Rise and Hard Fall of Cece Pyle, America's First Sports Agent. And the quote is quote, bursting from obscurity, he meaning Pyle, had invented a profession all by himself, becoming America's first full-scale sports agent, a man who represented an athlete in micromanaging each and every deal, from contracts to what to wear, what to say to the newspaper men, and where and when to play. That's common practice today, but in Pyle's day, it was a revolutionary concept, end quote. And that is true. We back in the day, the sports agent had not been invented, back in Grange's time, obviously. There were people who brokered different things, et cetera, I'm sure, but not to the degree that it looked like Cash and Carrie Pyle was trying to do. But now, bring that forward to the early 60s. There was a lawyer actually out of Cleveland, Ohio, named Mark McCormick, who was a golf nut, had played golf in college, but he started out through references, somehow connected to Arnold Palmer and then to Jack Nicholas and then to Gary Player. Those are his first three clients. You know, it's the three of the four or five people you'd put on golf Mount Rushmore. And he, but his point to all that was we're gonna do everything for you. So they managed every deal, managed appearances, managed obviously endorsements, handled their taxes, a whole variety of things, but they took 25%, you know, for doing all that. Right. Which is when you deal with agents and or managers, uh I have to tell clients this all the time. The more you're asking them to do for you, the more you're gonna have to pay them, which is fine as long as they're earning their money. But don't think you're gonna get all of that for 5%. You know, it's not gonna happen. Exactly. But so the sports agent today, as we jump into 2025, the sports agent today, it's where they are based upon the work that Pyle started, if you will, and bring all that through. And then you get the McCormick's, and then you get all these others that have followed. Since then, you and I have had some pretty good conversations about various sports agents out there. And forgive me, I forget his first name, but a Mr. Dell, who had started started out as a tennis agent for the, but then parleyed that into bigger things. Martin McCormick's company, International Management Group, which eventually was purchased by CAA and is now being spun off, I understand. But McCormick, they got into not just sports with golf, and then they got into some other players, they got into tennis, they were running a modeling agency at one time and a bunch of other things. They also did television productions. They they became a pretty much a fully integrated agency if you were in sports or entertainment.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Well, they became uh ultimately, you know, that merged with uh uh WMG and and they became the monolithic sports representation that we know today, along with celebrities.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Correct. I said uh I said CAA, you're right. It was WME that bought them, and it looks like they may be spinning them out now as another separate entity that Ari Emanuel may be taking in, who is one of WME's you know biggest power players and co-owners of. Right. But uh but today's sports agent is really built upon what Cash and Carrie were doing. And even today, those same principles come into play. Hutzpah. Oh my gosh. And you look at some of the stuff that Ari Emanuel has done running a WME, a lot of Hutzpah there, man. So the Hutzpah, big vision, relationships, and that's I think the most fundamental part of it all is that it is.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

And and Pyle, uh, just uh the the vision you talked about, the the the vision to to to look beyond the the current culture, because at in the 1920s, of course, amateur sports was sacrosanct. You didn't you didn't take money when you were an amateur, that was an obstacle he had to overcome, him and Grange. And so that kind of brings us and transitions us to this uh contract with the Bears, right? So when Grange was finishing his his senior year, Pyle was already envisioning what he was going to do with Grange. I think he had developed the relationship to the point where he knew he would get him to sign. And it's rumored that they split everything 50-50 after expenses.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Maybe that's where Colonel Tom learned that for exactly.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

Exactly. Maybe that's where he took 50%. Took after Pyle, yeah. And so he had, you know, through his theatrical experiences and uh he had researched what was going on in in the developing National Football League. Because at the time, those little local football teams were popping up and they were being sponsored, like the Pittsburgh Steelers by the Steel Plants, but like the Green Bay Packers with the packing plants, and and all of these sort of company-affiliated teams were playing against each other. Pyle was witnessing this, he was researching this, he was reading newspapers, filling his mind with these things. And that's an important component even today in understanding your industry. You talked about Donald Dell and Mark McCormick. Mark started, as you said, with with golf. Donald, on the other hand, was the tennis guy. He had Arthur Ash. He had all the players of those days. Well, it's only a natural segue when you start seeing, okay, well, there's Donald over there doing tennis and I'm doing golf. You know, that's those two things are pretty related. Why don't we merge our efforts? And they did. That was the first step in the evolution of what ultimately became the monolithic WME and whatever it is called these days. So because of this relationship with with Grange, he was aware of the celebrity that he had, and he could envision what he could do with that. And that's what led to that the equivalent of $10 million worth of deals that that we talked about earlier.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

So you know, so you know, when you look at that back at that time period, we had radio, and and I'm sure there was some broadcasting happening, not necessarily national broadcasting, more local and regional, but newspapers. I mean, wire services were still able to get news out from the various areas. And here was Red Grange, who was so dominant in college, built up his great reputation. The rest of the sports world across the U.S. had heard of him, but they'd never seen him.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

And the only way you could see him was to come to a game, right? That we didn't have television, to that they could go to go watch live one. You could not. And and and so that level of or or I should say Pyle's ability to see that there's an interest married with scarcity, married with this idea of fear of missing out. Oh my gosh, he's coming to New York or coming to Chicago. I have a chance to see him, but if I don't, then what? And will he ever come back around? All that combines to create this real sweet spot to make things really happen. Now, today we we we deal with streaming, we deal with national broadcast, international broadcasts. And so it's a different animal in the sense of it's not so much about scarcity, except, you know, if you want to go see Taylor Swift on one of her big stadium tours, but you don't want to spend the hundreds of dollars for a cheap seat ticket, okay, then yeah, there's some scarcity there. Kind of hard to argue scarcity when she's doing three, four, five nights at a 60,000 plus seat stadium. Right. But but it but worldwide, yeah, there's still some scarcity there. And there's that fear of missing out. I have the ability to go to my local theater like they did with her tour, and I could go, you know, spend relatively small dollars. I don't know what the price was, but it's like a movie ticket, maybe 20, maybe 30, plus all the concessions. And that's sold out everywhere. So it's still the same idea exists, but we've adapted to the current technologies that allow us to do that. And I think that's one of the brilliance of what guys like Pyle and other agents andor managers really do bring to the table. Some people say it's handling the business. Yeah, but there's this element of vision, this element of where can we go? What is possible to do? Now I've got to convince people to come around that. That's like with any deal negotiation. Here's where I want to go. This is the type of deal I want to get from my client. Now I've got to get the other side to sort of rally around that somehow. But being able to see that vision is really where the riches are found.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

Yeah, and and putting the pieces together. I mean, you you talk of you talk about something that I would describe as passion. You know, uh Pyle, Pyle had a passion for football. He enjoyed football. And and that's what made him interested in Grange. He had been to see him play and to see that on the fans and then parlay that, as you said, into, well, you know, what if somebody in Washington, D.C., or somebody far away from Illinois wants to see Red Grange play? Can I make some money on that? Can I make that a deal? Can I make an opportunity out of that? And that's exactly what he began to say. And then he saw these teams forming. And he was keenly aware, because of his celebrity, that Grange was being made these offers from all these people. And he also knew Grange was young and needed guidance. So that's when he struck the deal with them and then started looking to the Bears owners. At the time, the Bears were owned by uh George Hallis and Ed Dutch Stirnerman, and they were desperate to sign Grange. And they had already written to him several times. And Hallis at one point in one interview said, as an owner, manager, coach, and player, I was determined to have Red Grange on the Bears. He was a true rarity, perfectly coordinated athlete. Pyle was aware of that keen interest, that passion that Hallis had for Grange, but he also could envision something more than him just playing for a local football team. He could envision, as you said, taking him on a national nationwide tour. And so Pyle agreed to meet the Bears owners three weeks after Grange graduated at the Morrison Hotel in Chicago after Grange's last college game of the season. That was on November 21st against Ohio State. And Pyle had indicated to the owners that they intended to sign a deal at that point. On the day of the meeting, Pyle strolled into the hotel firmly shaking hands with each of these guys and looking them directly in the eye. And Pyle, as I've already described, is a striking man, very spelt, very well dressed, well kept. And he was taller than both of these guys. And he was in his tailored gray flannel suit and his spats with fashionable pearl buttons. And he cut an imposing figure. Pyle stated in no uncertain terms that if they wanted Grange, they had to deal with him. So that's kind of what got the deal kicked off.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

You know, it's interesting how how you describe Pyle in his look, the way he carried himself. I just finished listening to a podcast last week that it was a marketing podcast, primarily for law firms, but it brought that out. It's it talked about presence and that ability that when you walk into the room, you don't have to be the loudest, you don't have to be the biggest, you don't have to be any of those things. But what you have to do is is walk with a certain air of confidence. And a certain, as a friend of mine once said, you have to let the the room feel the weight of who you are. So I'm sure Pyle it helped the way he how his height and all that. But it's really more about that. And this is what I I see sometimes when I'm across the table from other negotiators. You know, hopefully they don't look at me this way, but there's been way too many times I've walked into a room and I went, oh, okay, well, you know, just the way they carried themselves. They they were too, they were they were too not meek and mild mannered is not the right thing to say, but they they played really small. And that's what you can't do when you're negotiating. You only negotiate from strength. That's exactly right. And so you have to present that I've got strength. I, in this case, Pilot's saying, I've got red Greenge. You want to talk to Greenge, you got to talk to me. Right. Enough said.

SPEAKER_02 38:13

I'm the guy. I'm the guy. You know, we we talk about appearance and and in many ways. There's there's a book by Damon John, and we'll talk about Damon a little bit later on in our series, but uh, it's called The Brand Within. And his basic premise is that celebrity is a brand, much like IBM or or any other corporate logo is a brand. A celebrity has that brand. I'm thinking in terms right now of the more common folk like us, the lawyers, right? Even though we're lawyers, we still need to have that appearance to understand that we are conveying a message by our presence. I'm sure you've been in the presence of attorneys who, you know, they didn't feel the need to wear a nice business attire, right? Maybe a sweatshirt and sweatpants. But you're coming into a professional office, that's conveying a message. I remember one attorney I was actually litigating against. And don't get me wrong, he was a great litigator, but he came into the courtroom with glasses that had been taped with duct tape, held together with duct tape. And I'm looking at him and I'm like, okay, you're you're you're either trying to present as a geek or you're just not aware of the brand you're you're letting off.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

And I'm sure there's some people out there that are trying to do that. They're downplaying, you know, the who they are to try to get an advantage or work a deal. There's a great episode of Cosby way back in the late 80s where he went to buy a new car. Now he was a successful doctor, his wife was a successful lawyer, they were wealthy, took their son Theo with him, but he dressed up like a shabby guy. I have no money. And, you know, of course, his son keeps interjecting things that dispel the fact that, yeah, you may you dress like that today, Pops, but you're not that. You've got money, you've got these things. So I I I know that people will, for lack of a better word, would say costume themselves up to try to gain an advantage. And that is true. On the flip side of that, there are people that might walk in with a $1,500 suit and talking all this big game and don't really have it. What's the old cowboy thing, all hat, no cattle type of thing? Yep. Totally recognize that. But what we're talking about is authentic presence, authentic confidence and authority to talk to the person in front of you. I have been involved with, to your point, attorneys, like you said, who walked in and they're wearing old Chuck Taylors and jeans and a sweatshirt. And I'm going, okay, they're great attorneys, don't get me wrong. But in my mind, I'm more of what going back to Mark McCormick, he said in one of his books. He wrote the book, What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School and What They Still Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, and two or three others. But in the first book, he he told his staff at the time, we will wear jackets and ties, and men, women, you will wear dresses or other professional attire because when a 21-year-old tennis player or golfer comes into our office, they're working with you because you're managing their money. You're not there to be their friend. You're not their frat brother. You're working for them, and you need to present that image that we've got it buttoned up, and you need to trust us with your business. And I think that's the way attorneys need to be and negotiators need to be. I'm representing a client. And I know you're the same way. I can probably count on one hand the number of times we've gone into a meeting without a jacket on. Now, we may not always wear a tie because today's business environment doesn't necessarily require that in those types of settings, especially in the entertainment and sports world. I get that. But not wearing slacks or early stylish jeans, nice shoes, and a jacket, that's just taboo to me. And again, that goes to what Pyle was doing. I'm presenting an image. My brand is I'm a serious negotiator with you. We can have fun and joke around and we're all collegial and cordial, but you need to respect that I'm coming to the table on a serious matter that we're trying to negotiate, working with people's real money. I'm trying to get money from you at a high amount. My client isn't wanting to make some money from you. You're looking for my client's time and talents and all this other stuff. And I think that is something we have to take seriously. We don't take ourselves seriously, if you, if you will, but we have to take our mission and our task seriously on those things. I'm just a real big believer in that. And I recognize that there's a generation of people out there that don't see it that way. I think that ends up hurting them in the long term.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

It does. It does. I mean, uh image is a is extremely important. And I think one of the things that about Pyle is that's just who he was. He was a businessman. He he was in the theater business. He understood the importance of image. You didn't see him without that that tailored gray flannel suit and a top hat and just whatever he wore.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

I mean, that's a great point. It was just image. He was in the theater business. He saw what was happening up on the screen or on the stage and how the audience responded. And that's what you have to do. You're looking for your counterpart across the table to respond to you in a way you want them to respond. And so you've got to bring that to bear in your overall presence. You know, now, one thing, and and I didn't want to get too far away from. From the this whole thing about how he, you know, Cash and Carrie Pyle performed. But if Red Grange hadn't performed on that barnstorming tour, had he not played well, he had he not awed, really, according to the book, had he not awed the audiences that were watching, it would have been short-lived. Oh, it would have been. And so that comes back to when you're putting a deal together, you have to execute, you have to perform it. It's not just, hey, you're going to give me money and I'm going to go do a little thing for you. No, you need to perform. You need to prepare for it. You need to, as the client, you need to do what needs to be done. Because again, that performance is your brand, and you want this customer that you're just signed with to keep working with you and paying you and hopefully paying you more and more over time. But the other side as well, that company needs to perform what they're looking for. They, if they're doing ads, put the right ads together. Work with us on how best to do those. So it's a very collegial relationship when you do these deals, and every deal informs the next deal. I think you brought that up earlier. And this deal leads to the next one, which leads to the next one. So if you're looking for a long-term performance business, whether it be sports business, the arts, whatever, you have to perform. That's the bottom line.

SPEAKER_02 45:23

Oh, yeah. And uh and that's true, that was true certainly for Grange, and and all the parties involved in that understood his skills and his talents. And it it ended up with Pyle and his image in a special little deal, and there was some back and forth. And so the he walks into the room basically, and the bear's owner, Hallis, says, Okay, I'm thinking a third, two-thirds. What do you think about that? Pyle says, Yeah, I'll take that. And Hallis was a little surprised. You'll take that, great. So the bears get two-thirds and you get a third. And Pyle says, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, no, it's the other way around. So he threw him a little curve there. Well, ultimately, after describing the tour that he had envisioned, after describing what he'd planned with this what he called a barnstorming tour around the United States, the bears owner ultimately agreed to a 50-50 split. So you were talking earlier about throwing out either big numbers or small number. You know, both both sides are going to, the one that doesn't want to pay a lot is going to throw in a smaller number, the other one's going to exaggerate and throw in the bigger number. That's exactly what happened here. And it ended up, of course, that they they struck a deal. And to your point earlier, it was very successful. And the Chicago Bears just had a great time with him and made a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

You know, um that reminds me way back in the 90s, Deion Sanders was playing baseball and football, if you remember professionally. And he had, I want to say it was a Domino's commercial that he had signed on, but it was all about getting two pizzas. I think it was Domino's. And so it was all this idea of a certain situation and him saying, Well, why not both? And one of the things were so so Dion, the a fake news conference, Dion is a football or baseball. Well, why not both? Then it cut to Dion and Jerry Jones, who had signed him, and he's and Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. And Jones says, So come on, Dion, what do you think? 15 to 20 million? Why not both? They signed him because they had signed him for 35 million dollars. There you go. And uh so that what you were talking about just sort of reminded me of that that commercial had they come out and said, Hey, we're thinking 60, 40. I'm not even sure that would have been enough for Pyle if if he would have said, Oh yeah, me too. You know, I think he was probably thinking, no, 66% is a huge number. Nobody gets that for these types of things, et cetera. But he wasn't going to sell it for less than 50.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

And and I think that's probably what he had in mind the whole time. I do too. So the first game, the opening game of the season, drew 40,000 people to see Grange. That was $1.75 a ticket or $70,000. So half of that was $35,000 they made in 1925, somewhere around probably $650,000, $700,000, something like that in today's dollars. That's a pretty good little deal for one game. That's that's probably about what the NFL players make today.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

Yeah, I'm trying to recall the lowest, because now everything's under a collective bargaining agreement. And so there's a minimum salary standard, and there's even minimums for positions, if I understand it correctly. We don't we haven't been involved in player contracts uh as yet. But I think the minimum income now for an NFL player is somewhere north of 600,000. I want to say it's somewhere around 900 plus, and it might even be over a million. That's the value of television and and all the broadcast money that's come in, obviously. But for him to look back and get, what'd you say the number was? Coasting.

SPEAKER_02 49:15

650.

SPEAKER_01 49:16

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's that that's almost unfathomable for the average worker back then. It's unfathomable now when you think about it. You look up and you go, wait a minute, I'm a bench warmer, I get a rundown on kickoffs and nobody runs back anymore. And I'm making, you know, six, seven, eight hundred, nine hundred thousand dollars here. Okay, you know, I I get beat up in practice, but okay.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

It's okay. Yeah. So the next part or evolution of this story comes, of course, in the next year, right? And in this business, the entertainment business that you and I are in, we know everybody's always looking for the next great thing, right? The next big deal. If you're signed with a label, let's say, as an exclusive artist, and then the next year they find somebody better, right? All of a sudden, your profits start going down, right? And there's always controversy, and everybody's always trying to find the next big thing. And then that's when your client might get dropped. Well, of course, similar thing happened here in the NFL. The first year was a total success. This tour with Grange made a lot of money for both the Bears and for them. So next next go around, the next season, the owners of the NFL football teams held a meeting in Detroit. Pyle wasn't invited, right? Here it is, their star player, Grange, and his representative is not invited to Detroit. So Pyle had to have a plan B, and he did, right? And his plan B was, hey, I'll just form a new team. So he crashed the party in Detroit and made this big announcement in front of uh of all the team owners and said, Hey, we're gonna play at the uh Yankee Stadium. We're gonna call ourselves the New York Yankees football team, less than a half mile from where the New York Giants played in the on the polo grounds. And so this developed a hate, love, hate relationship between Mara and Pyle. And Mara, of course, was very influential. And he perceived Pyle as trying to uh horn in on his territory and and horn in on his profits, all because he has this one little you know football player who he didn't think necessarily controlled the market. So ultimately the other owners sort of had to sign with Mara and play with the NFL. And Pyle ultimately got kicked out, but he formed his own football league, the American Football League. And as you and I know from history, ultimately those two merged back together in, I think it was the 60s and became what we know of as the NFL today.

SPEAKER_01 52:07

But but and there's still, from a conference perspective, the National Football Conference, which is the original NFL, that's correct, and the American Football Conference, which was the original American football leads.

SPEAKER_02 52:20

Right, right. And so that that just illustrates the importance of having a plan B in your pocket. That gives you a certain amount of botna. You're familiar with that term. Best alternative to a negotiated deal. If you've got two or three players bidding on your skills or your celebrity, you can drive that number way up there because of this principle.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

You can. And you and I have been involved in a lot of a lot of negotiations where a recording artist in particular, even an author, has one entity interested in them. That's really where this botna comes into play. Yeah, if you get two or three, maybe you can get an auction bidding war type happening. But those are kind of rare these days, in my opinion. Oh, and these days, unless you are already somewhat established and you're leaving a label or leaving a book publisher or whatever, a publishing company, music publishing company. And so you've got that track record of people start singing clamoring for you. But it's rare to get a bidding war happening these days in in music and especially music. But having said that, then it makes it even more important about the whole botna idea. But what if? What if I can't get that deal with that label? What do I do? Do I just stop? Do I go back around to the list of people that's already turned me down and has shown no interest and keep trying that? A, maybe, but B, you still have to make money. You're an artist. Fortunately, today we've got many opportunities for independence to do work.

SPEAKER_02 54:01

I was gonna say, I think the the fragmentation of the market actually helps form a botana for independent artists. Whereas back in the 90s, right, the record label was the gatekeeper of distribution and the gatekeeper of marketing radio. These days, you can get your music out there on your own. You can tour on your own. You can build a fan base on your on your own. You don't need the labels anymore. So the labels have had to develop a strategy for a botany as well.

SPEAKER_01 54:38

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 54:39

And so that does help sometimes in the negotiation.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

It does. The where the label is really strong still is, and they recognize this because I've been in those meetings. They recognize that they're a bank. Right. They're the bank to fund a lot of things that the independent artists just can't. And even if the independent artists could fund it, they can't fund it at the level to accelerate that career growth. Got it. There is still some gatekeeping, obviously, that's involved, even with the streamers, to get the editorial uh teams at these digital digital service providers, DSPs, to pay attention to you to playlist you. They'll take a call from a Warner or Universal or a Sony quicker than you know Joe Schmoe from you know Poughkeepsie. Yes, that is true. So you're still incumbent upon you as the artist to develop your own fan base, as you just mentioned, and you have the tools to do that, and you can get to the DSPs through all the various uh distributors that are out there. I don't want to start naming them all, but we all know who they are from DistroKid to Symphonic to whatever. Yes, you can do that. The trick is you have to drive audience to you, but now with social media, there's ways to even do that. So there's not the the the plan B idea, the bottom idea has to be if I can't get the label to sign on and I I want them to for various strategic reasons. And by the way, I tell artists all the time a record deal is just a means to an end. You have to identify where do you want to end up over here, the type of music you want to do, the type of audiences you want to do, the type of shows you want to do, the number of shows you want to do a year, all those things. Identify that. In many cases, major label deals the way to go. But also in many it's cases, just do what you're doing independently because that's where you're going to find fulfillment and satisfaction and happiness anyway. But setting all that up, then knowing what the what are the objectives. This is what CC Pile understood. What is my objective? What are what's Red Range's objective? Let's identify that. And then we put the right deal together to accomplish that goal, regardless of what it is. It's just that now we have, thanks to digital media, we have so many more tools at, or artists have so many more tools at their disposal to reach an audience and to develop a fan base more so than they ever had. The label still has power, yes, and they are the bank, yes. But there's ways you can get around some of that if you need to. But as we've said before, I think we said at the last show, no deal is better than a bad deal. Just don't go into a bad deal. Just don't get a bad deal. You and I have seen that how many times where now they're locked into a deal that's multi-years long. And if you don't want read the fine print well enough, I've seen contracts, well, it's only three albums, but look at the timing of what you can do. It's 10 years. Yeah, but it's three guaranteed albums. 10 years. That's a lifetime, especially in the arts. And and so you don't want a bad deal, no matter what you do. Stay independent if you have to. But having said all that, the one thing I wanted to quickly mention to what you were saying a moment ago, is as you're looking at these deals and thinking about the next deal that may come along, you have to look at the length of term. And I I mentioned that just briefly now. But it's not only the length of term, but are there options involved that the other party can exercise that extends your overall deal with them? Those become critical here. And in in the CC Piles case, a lot of his things were event-related, not multi-event related, but individual event related. That's one thing. But over time, I'm sure he had to develop that sense of, okay, what am I getting myself into? Are there escalations in the amount of money if it's a multi-year deal that I can get, you know, kind of like cost of living raises, that type of thing. But all those things come into play here. And I have looked at I don't know how many contracts over my career, and I and I had a conversation with someone just last week about it. Hey, this looks fine, except they want five options, one year and five options. I I don't like that idea because you want to be there for more than two years, you think, because you think you need that time. They may or may not have to stick with you. At the same time, even if you did that, the option, the increases went up almost minimally. Really? So you're telling me that today, you would be okay that in five years from now, well, it's more than that because roughly 18 months of period. So 10 years from now, you're okay if you you're being paid in advance from them that's $5,000 more than what you're getting today. Really? That's what you're telling me you'd be okay with. And they they didn't think about it that way. They just said, Oh, yeah, option five. I'm gonna go up another five. No, not a problem. Let's go do it. And I've had to calm them down and say, wait a minute, no, let's go for shorter term, bigger money. How about that? Right. And um, that's hard to get, especially if they've given intimations to the other side that they would take the cheap deal. That's the tough part.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:10

Yeah, yeah, you don't want to lock yourself into a lifetime deal for sure. So all right. Well, let's um listeners, we'll be right back with some walkaway points. So, walkaway points. I think a lot of what you've been saying, Dennis, applies here. And uh we can derive a lot of good walkaway points. One one I would say first, right off the bat, if you're looking at staring down the barrel of one of these 10-year deals that you're talking about, look outside the box, right? When you think about deal making, don't think in traditional terms. Pyle wasn't thinking in traditional terms. If he were, he wouldn't have even approached an amateur sports figure to lock him into professional sports, right? That was just not heard of in the 1920s. So he was thinking outside the box. If it's never been done before, do it anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:16

No, exactly. I I think part of that is what we said earlier in this recording, and that is vision, being able to see where something could go. So thinking outside the box isn't just a short-term lateral move to get you the to the number you're looking for, but it is looking at, well, where could this go? Because conventional thinking says, well, this is good for one or two years. No, no, no, no. I'm seeing this as a five-year plan. So think that way and then show that value to the other side.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:49

Right. And I, you know, we we talked also uh early on about relationships. And I think we've covered that pretty pretty well. But the walk away here is start thinking of the people next to you as relation people. I tell this to my classes at Belmont, the the Curb School of Music all the time, right? You're probably sitting next to one of the next presidents of a major label or one of the best personal managers in the industry, and you don't even know it, right? So that's a time to build relationships. Think about it in terms of that quid pro quo we talked about, right? Pyle was offering Grange something that was of value to him. And through that, he they learned to trust each other. And you can only do that through a quid pro quo, and not as you say, through manipulation, but through actually building a relationship.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:49

No, exactly. And and you know, selfishly and candidly, I'll bring this up. You know, we're we're speaking into Shure microphones at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:58

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:59

And the way we acquired these was because I have a relationship, longtime relationship with an artist relations rep at Shure. And I called him up asking for some better pricing. And he said, Well, wait a minute, what are you doing? Let's talk about that. And so we were able to get an equipment sponsorship with Shure. Well, that only happens because I've known this guy for literally 20 plus years. I my youngest and his oldest played in a high school band together. And so we were in the quote, pit crew, the parent pit crew for a couple of years together, sweated together. But that's what it is. That that's it goes to the relationships that you've you develop, and you develop those very early on. That's why I'm such a big fan of internships. If you're in college and undergrad and can take advantage of some internships, what an amazing opportunity to network and get to know people so that when you graduate, at least against all the people who didn't take an internship, you are miles ahead of the game just in building your network and building relationships that to your point now come back around as the heads of companies.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:13

That's right. That's right. Some some of the best people you're you're going to know, you know them already, right? Yes. And so um just build on that. Uh another thing we can learn from from Pyle and the way he approached things is to know your industry. So many people don't understand the ins and outs of their business, particularly in the music business and the entertainment business. You got to understand who the players are.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:40

You do. I years ago, I was not it's not original to me, but I adopted the phrase you have to understand the game. You have to know the industry, you have to know who the players are, you have to know what roles they perform and what those roles are supposed to really be, so that when they move on or get replaced, you the people that come in, you already know what they're supposed to be doing. And so now you can deal with that. You have to be a student of the game. That was the phrase I was thinking of. You have to be a student of the game. And you're not gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:12

Well, the best metaphor is a chess set, right? Or chess pieces. You gotta know how each piece interacts with the other and moves on the board and what they do, what what what goal, what function do they perform.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:25

Deal making really is like a game of chess. It is, it's not checkers. And and I love checkers, and my dad used to beat the dickens out of me at checkers. He just did. He always thought two, three, four moves ahead. I don't know that he ever played a game of chess in his life, but it is chess. That that's really what it's about. And so you have to to become that student, to understand those games, those rules, et cetera, you have to read trades, you have to sit with people and and just talk shop, and you have to study how some deals get put together. But yeah, it it really comes. Down to know the business, know who the players are, be a student of the game.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:04

Yep, I agree. And then we talked about botna. Obviously, that's one of your walkaway points. Have a plan B. If you don't have an alternative to the deal you're trying to negotiate, go find one, figure one out, because that gives you the confidence to go into a deal and know that, hey, if I don't get this record deal, I can go out and distribute my stuff through a distributor and have a successful career without a label. And then ultimately the label will come back to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:39

Yes. Keep in mind that the greatest leverage you have is to walk away. That's right. If they want you bad enough, then hopefully they will come to the table with more of what you need. But again, a bad deal is worse than no deal. So that's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:54

And then finally, always be prepared in negotiation for a curveball because it's going to happen when you're negotiating. And you know, for Pyle, that was, you know, walking into a room, he's saying, you know, a third and two-thirds, and then he throws it back at him and says, Oh, you meant two-thirds for us and one third for you. Well, that's a curveball. You got to be prepared to roll with the punches sometimes. I used to watch the show, I don't know if you've ever seen it, American Pickers. Oh, yeah. And Mike Wolf is just my idol in that regard. I love watching him negotiate these little pieces of junk because it really illustrates negotiation very well. What you have here is to most people trash, right? And here you have Mike Wolf saying, you know, I'll give you a thousand dollars for that. And then you have people say, Well, no. And then he throws back at him, well, what's your, I don't want to sell this price, you know, because these people are looking at this piece of junk like it's, you know, their mother gave it to them or their grandmother or something, and and like it's worth a million bucks, and it's not. And you know, for Mike, he's got to calculate his return on investment and try to figure out if he can sell this in his store. And so he's got all these other considerations. So, you know, always be prepared for that curveball.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:16

That reminds me of doing yard sales and garage sales with my wife. You know, we take all this junk and put it out there. And she said, Well, I want to sell this for, I'll just pick a number, whatever it's 50 bucks. Okay, fine. If somebody pays it, great. I think they're they're dumb to do it. And then I'll be standing there and somebody will come up and say, Well, I'll give you 15 bucks for that thing that she wanted 50 for. I'm like, I'll take it because I know, I know that there's it's not worth anything.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:44

But my experience with yard sales, when I when I put 50 bucks on it, people offer me 10 cents because it's all the always the people looking for the deals that go to yard sales.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:55

I will say, my father one time, when I was a senior in high school, we were trying to buy a car, and I kid you not, Barry, it went this negotiation with the car dealership went on for over two hours, and it got down to $25 difference. And my father said no. Now, this is 1979, so $25 wasn't a lot more than it is today, but it's not that big of a deal. Right. Right. And he said, no. He said, I've told you my price, I'll go to here. Well, come on, you know, Mr. Disney, you know. And finally the guy said, Look, we were running a promotion today for the salespeople that whoever sold the first car today would get an extra $25. Nobody sold a car today. I'll split that with you. My dad said, okay. Well, I think that's a pretty $12.50, man. $12.50.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:48

I think that's a perfect place to end our uh discussion of Pyle on the NFL. We'll be talking about his foray into the tennis world on the next episode. I hope you join us. I look forward to that.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:06

Music Row Dealmakers is a production of Shrobb Disney and Associates.