Episode #003: The Comeback (Leigh Steinberg)

In Episode #003 of the Negotiation Warriors Podcast, Cliff Stein sits down with legendary sports agent Leigh Steinberg - the inspiration behind Jerry Maguire and one of the most influential figures in the history of athlete representation. 

Over a career span of more than five decades, Steinberg negotiated over $4 billion in contracts, represented eight No. 1 overall draft picks, and worked with Hall of Fame players including Troy Aikman, Steve Young, and Warren Moon. But his story is about far more than contracts. 

In this powerful conversation, Steinberg shares his philosophy of “winning with integrity,” the mindset required to become a true Negotiation Warrior, and the lessons he learned through adversity - including his remarkable personal and professional comeback. 

Cliff and Leigh discuss: 

• The universal importance of negotiation in everyday life
 • Why listening and empathy are the foundations of great negotiating
 • The importance of preparation and understanding leverage
 • Why relationships and trust are the currency of successful negotiations
 • Common mistakes young negotiators make
 • The power of resilience and the mindset behind a comeback 

Steinberg also discusses his upcoming book “The Comeback”, his Agent Academy, and how the next generation of negotiators can learn to succeed with both excellence and integrity. 

This episode is a masterclass in negotiation, leadership, and resilience from one of the pioneers of modern sports representation. 

🎧 Listen to the Negotiation Warriors Podcast as we explore negotiation not as a transaction - but as a mindset shaped by preparation, empathy, trust, and the pursuit of meaningful outcomes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A great negotiator can read the room and is constantly aware of subtle shifts in in body language, in tonality, who can be sensitive to to what the right time. And lastly, a great negotiator is creative. So if this way won't work and the traditional way doesn't, what can we think outside the square creatively that may bring us closer together?

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Welcome to Negotiation Warriors. I am Cliff Stein, and I am on a never-ending quest to learn what it takes to be a great negotiator. In every episode, I will sit down with some of the greatest negotiators in professional sport who will share insight, knowledge, and draw upon their real life negotiations. Negotiation Warriors is sponsored by Front Office 360, premium cap management software. To find out how we are helping college athletic programs, go to frontoffice360.com to schedule a demo. Alright, welcome back to Negotiation Warriors Podcast. On this podcast, we explore negotiation not as a transactional skill, but as a warrior's mindset, a craft shaped by preparation, empathy, trust, emotional intelligence, and the ability to find common ground even in the highest pressure environments. Today's guest embodies all of those traits. He's one of the most influential figures in the history of athlete representation, a man whose name is synonymous with excellence, integrity, and the art of negotiation. Lee Steinberg is more than just a sports agent. He's a blueprint for the modern athlete representation relationship. Over five decades, he has negotiated over$4 billion in contracts, represented over eight number one overall draft picks, and worked with more than a dozen Hall of Fame players. He even inspired the film Jerry McGuire, and he's also about to publish his third book. It's an honor to welcome someone I've always looked up to and to be on Negotiation Warriors podcast, the legendary super agent, master negotiator, industry trailblazer, Lee Steinberg. Welcome, Lee.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Well, I'm honored to be here and congratulations on your new podcast. I'm sure that people will learn many things from it.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Well, you are um you are a huge inspiration for me. What what do you think about that when people say the word uh master negotiator? Is that a um industry term? Do you do you accept that um praise?

SPEAKER_00 3:03

You know, the need to negotiate in life is universal. And when we pigeonhole that praise into just a business context, we forget that parents negotiate with kids for what time their curfew is. Husbands and wives negotiate for who does the household chores and where they're going out to dinner and where they're going on vacation. We buy cars, we buy homes. People that don't have agents have to negotiate their own contracts in their employment. So it's a skill that's necessary in life, and it starts with the concept of listening. So if you want to be a good negotiator, you need to draw the other person out and understand their needs, goals, and priorities. You want to understand someone's deepest anxieties and fears and their greatest hopes and dreams. Because, Cliff, if you can put yourself in another person's heart and mind and see the world the way they see it, then you can negotiate your way through life gracefully.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Yeah, I love that. And part of um what I've learned and just kind of reflecting, you know, we do this stuff in the industry and we're we're in the trenches and we don't really um necessarily realize how we're doing it all the time or how we're doing it well or not. But you're one of the few people that I learned early in my career, even before I started working for the Bears. So prior to 2002, um, you were already kind of out there teaching it. And that that's one thing that uh impressed me about you that you were you were really at the peak of your career in in the 90s. You'd already done a lot since then, but represented Troy Aikman and Warren Moon and Drew Bledsoe and Steve Young. And in the height of all that, you took the time to write a book called Winning with Integrity. And I and you're the only agent I really know that took time out of their career to teach people. And it's a book that I've utilized in my classes, and I've give a sign reading from the book at Northwestern Law School and Miami Law Schools. What made you write the book at that time?

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Well, the you have to be introspective as to what your real goals are in life. My dad gave me two core values. One was to treasure relationships, especially family, but the other was to make a meaningful difference in the world and help people who couldn't help themselves. Unsuccessful negotiations lead to marital problems, divorce, they lead to war in international relations. And I thought if I can train younger people to have a philosophy that's about making a difference in the world and then giving them tools to execute that, um, a way to think about win-win negotiating, a way to think about fulfilling each person's need that hopefully I could influence other people to also try to make a difference, but specifically train that way. And so winning with integrity, how to get what you want without losing your soul, also speaks to the concept of situational ethics, which is you are how you negotiate. And if you lie, if you intimidate, if you do all those things, you can't go home and be a nice person to cats and dogs and to your neighbors. That's called situational ethics, where you use heinous techniques in the world to achieve goals, because after all, it's just business, the end justifies and means. So I was trying to show people that you can be ethical, you can be honest, you can be someone who considers the bigger needs of the other person and still be conventionally successful in life.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Yeah, that's amazing. I you know, Lee, I've learned so much, even just again, starting with that book, and I'm gonna ask you about some of the other things you're doing to teach others because I think it's so important. But when I go back, and whenever I go somewhere and I speak about negotiation or I consult on the topic, um people want to bring up a book, Splitting the Difference, which is recent and and it's Chris Voss, and it it's it's an excellent book, but but I'm dealing and you're dealing with people in professional sports, I always ask them, I just want to know, have you read um, you know, starting with winning with integrity, have you read that book? Because it's written by an agent who's talking about essentially almost all the same things. I don't know if you noticed that. Um, but you know, you when it comes to preparation and and empathy and listening and asking questions and the different tactics, you know, you actually helped me prepare for my first interview with the Chicago Bears. And the way you did that was you wrote a piece on Ted Phillips, and you and I believe Jeff Moore at one point had a negotiation with him over Jim Harbaugh. I don't know, I'm going way back in time, I know that for you. But you talked about how he had he was known for his binders and index system, and that whatever the argument you had, he was always prepared with the counter-argument with clauses and bonuses and just things that um allowed him to respond. And I was just so um, you know, impressed by that um that you know you you took note of that and was helping somebody like me. What was it like for you um, you know, as you write about preparation and you teach about it, dealing with someone on the other side that was so meticulous?

SPEAKER_00 9:18

It was actually a positive because you could accept that the same things in the world were relevant. In other words, back then you didn't have the salary cap. So the point is they could have paid Jim Harbaugh from zero to a trillion dollars, and there was no one else to say that was right or wrong. So if you don't have a judge, if you don't have an arbitrator, if you don't have someone that's gonna make this decision, then whose reality is gonna prevail? Is it mine that Jim Harbaugh will be a franchise quarterback and that you can build your team around him and win because of him? And that without that position filled, you've got a treacherous slope to ever try to be a great team, as today's bears are learning, right? And all of a sudden uh have had a miraculous one year turnaround. Or is it his concept that this is an untried, untested rookie that they're taking a chance on? Ted was a great negotiator because he had great resilience. He had and you need resilience in negotiating. In other words, no matter how dark it it life looks and how impossible it looks to make a deal, you've got to be able to bounce back and try again and try again and keep at it and not become so frustrated that you give up or or because in the business of sports, my clients have very short playing lives. My clients have a narrow window that they can perform in. We don't have time to waste the consequence of that quarterback being in training camp and getting enough knowledge to make that big adjustment to the whole different timing and tenure and competitiveness of pro football. We don't have time to waste in holdouts and uh and the rest of it. So you also need to understand what the position of general manager is. So Ted Phillips at that point is a doing his first big negotiation. And so there's pressures on him. I have to think about the relationship between how Mike McCaskey perceived the owner of the team, perceives how Ted Phillips is delivered in this situation. I can't leave him with a deal that's going to embarrass him with the um with his owner. And the other thing is, if you look at a young general manager, you're gonna do a mean negotiations repetitively with them over and over and over again. So the only thing to remember in negotiations is if someone's neck is exposed to you and you step on it and take full advantage, and you then go out and brag about it. The only thing I can tell you for sure is the situations will be reversed at some point in the future. And that that's not a way to have longevity.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Yeah, that's a great point. It also brings into how I'm sure you've been in situations that you've had leverage, and I'm sure you've been in situations where you didn't. What would your advice be to people in in managing leverage, whether you whether you have it or you don't?

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Well, the first thing to think about is how whatever deal you're doing reaches its endpoint, and what situations would be like that. So the time to think about leverage is when you're doing the current deal, and you think about will there be a career arc where the player can do his ascension in terms of value at the same point that he has contractual freedom. Because freedom is everything. You notice in the NFL, free agency doesn't work the way it does in other sports. You don't get massive high-quality players changing teams. Because they extend contracts to avoid free agency. If you're in a situation with no leverage, let's look back three years ago. Did you think about the fact that this contract would end in restricted free agency and you'd have fundamentally no rights for the players? Or could you extend it a year longer when you'd be an unrestricted free agent? Would that put pressure on the team to extend or negotiate the contract ahead of time? So you need to be thinking about leverage far before you're doing this deal. You need to think about it. Years ago, I did a deal for Warren Moon, and it had an end date that left him about 27 years old playing for Canada. He put in six seasons. But guess what? We timed it so that the United States Football League would be bidding on him, the NFL would be bidding on him, and the CFL would be bidding on him. And that produced 12 different teams to talk to. So, but I was thinking about that two years before the contract ever ended.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Yes, you're way ahead um and thinking and knowing that, as you said earlier, if you step on their neck too much, you're gonna hurt the relationship. And so as you're looking ahead, you're thinking about how do I get the how do I get the maximize the financial interest of my client and maintain strong interest along the way.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

And it means you can either do great deals or you can brag about great deals. They used to have a time in the USA today where they had all the free agent deals two or three agents had. Who did the most deals? I made sure my name was left off of that. Because the last thing you want to do is rub into people's faces the fact that you're have 90 clients and you're dominating and you have the half the starting forever. Let the other side take the credit for wisdom and intelligence and forward-looking thinking and why they did this deal. And my name doesn't even have to be in it.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

That brings me to a a similar point. This is why are people so why do you think people are so fascinated with how much money professional athletes make?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

This has been something which has been in our culture since Babe Ruth, you know, made more money than the president of the United States. And so there's a I think that psychologically, all of us grow up at some level playing some form of sport. And so we think of it as a game. And now, I don't believe I could be, you know, Kevin Costner, George Clooney, or or Russell Crowe. But I did play baseball and football and the rest growing up. And so, first of all, we think of it as a game, so it's still a stunning shocker, and people compare it to their own salaries. Well, the truth of it is that the quality of of uh athletes is so high today you can't find someone off the street that can play that position. Um, and honestly, Cliff, if I was having a draft in pro sports, I would draft owners, general managers, and coaches. Because the critical factor, as you just saw in football, where Sean Payton takes a team that, you know, had been a doormat, changes his culture, same players, Jim Harbaugh takes a team, doormat, same players, same culture. You'd have Mike Vrabel go to the New England Patriots, which have been a doormat for a couple years, and they're all successful. So the truth is, as much player value as there is, does the owner have a long-term plan? Does the uh executive know how to draft and trade and and manage a cap? You know, does the coach have a unique concept and a culture that they institute? So at any rate, I don't get surprised when I see college coaches' salaries because I think they have the toughest job of anyone in in professional sports, in uh any type of sports.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Do you think there's anything wrong with the fact I mean, look, there's a lot of important professions, right? There's brain surgery, that's an important profession. Airline pilot is an important. You know, if they think that but we don't know their salaries. Do you think there's anything wrong with everyone knowing what athletes make?

SPEAKER_00 18:07

I think it's been a real help to athletes because before those days, in my early years, if I had someone who was a second-round draft pick, I had no idea what other second-round draft picks were being paid. I didn't know what first-round draft picks were being paid. I didn't know what clauses were in their contract. And so you're just shooting at the dark. Um, so now at least, most negotiations, rookies are cat now, so that is not much of a of a negotiation in basketball and in football. But for veterans, it all comes down to comparables. And if you had no idea and you were blindfolded as to what the nature of the market was, it'd be very difficult.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Do you have an opinion on or have knowledge and an opinion on what's going on at the college level so that where college athletes right now can get, you know, revenue share from their from their schools, but they don't have that transparency and data. Do you feel like that would help them as well?

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Well you certainly know what the number is. You know that it's 22% of the uh average competitor in your conference, and that's what part gets but look, Cliff, the entire NIL has been mishandled. It's uh uh it it's a mess, it goes against so many values that we care about in professional sports. It was intended to give athletes that were um it was a college campus because they came from disadvantaged homes, enough money to cover a decent standard of living comparable to other players. What it turned into was Star Wars and it it it's the concept of unintended consequences. No one thought through the integration of gambling into sports, and it resulted in scandals, and there'll be more scandals. No one thought through the destructive effect of breaking up uh college conferences. No one thought about what high school to college recruiting and transfer portal would turn into if you allowed alums to be involved with funding the collectives that have people. So you you don't have to look much farther than the University of Michigan that has a quarterback who was gonna make four million allegedly in NILs, and along comes the big Michigan alum and and offers him$14 million, and he's currently the starting quarterback. He leaves, never plays for LSU, and away he goes. So there's so much fundamentally wrong. And the problem is you don't have a czar in sport that can sit and reshape these changes that are occurring are ultimately destructive. If you if if you have enough gambling scandals that fans start to look at the integrity of the sport and think, you know, this is not a real match, this is fixed. Then it becomes wrestling. So you can't have players shaving performance or revealing inside information or or interacting with gamblers to cheat the system, and it will occur inevitably.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

So speaking of um, you mentioned about all these things that no one thought about, which I agree with. And then so I'll add to that is you have uh athletic directors, maybe general managers, maybe even head coaches that were thrust in now at a position to have to negotiate. Not trained to do it, but now they're in a position to do it. And also, you have agents, but not agents like yourself, because you train and are certified, but then you have no barrier to entry. So you have anyone can be an agent on the other side. What would you say to some of those people that are doing those negotiations when, you know, you know, I know from you and your book, Patience is important, but people that just want to get it over with and really don't like it, but they have to do it, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 22:34

First of all, they should do an internal inventory as to what is most critical and important to them in life and in what order. So we're talking about short-term economic gain, money that comes quickly, long-term economic security, family considerations, spiritual considerations, geographical uh considerations, the weather, the lifestyle, proximity, where you grew up. How important is profile? How important is making a difference in the world? How important and then for uh a coach, you look at what is the support system there? How much can he pay assistant coaches? Well, how much can he pay trainers? What's my support staff like? Um and you you uniquely get into what someone's true priorities are. So going in negotiations, something has to be more important than something else. Is it up for honey? Is it long-term security? Is it is it the tools that will give you the ability to win? And for an athlete, I ask them, how important is starting? Being on a winning team, the quality of coaching, the system that they use, the facilities. And each person will have a different constellation of value, so that you need to have that construct done and prepare in a way that you can. Now we do have access to other coaches, uh salaries, general managers, probably not so much, but but you can find out what any coach in the country is making, except for private universities, and even that information comes out. I mean, if if you notice, Lane Kiffin just signs, and everybody in the galactic system already knows every detail of his contract.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Um, I'm gonna switch gears because uh the name of the show is negotiation warriors, which I've was always excited about using that word with negotiation. And in general, it's a powerful word to me. And as much as I want to take credit for being the first person to match warrior with negotiation, I found that you said it two years ago, or maybe three years ago. And I heard you say it and I was excited, but what does that mean to you when you apply warrior to negotiation?

SPEAKER_00 25:04

It means bleeding out your personal angst, anxieties, fears, um, and emotions from the context of negotiating this next contract. If you're negotiating for someone else, it's not about you. And you need to be steely and tactical in every word that comes out of your mouth. Every single word in a negotiation means something. Every single factor means something. The only reason you talk in a negotiation is to try and convince the other party that you're right. And you can't get insulted. You can't make it personal. You cannot allow your you're not insulting me. No matter how antagonistic is the war, I am a warrior. I will not respond to provocation, I won't respond to insult, I won't respond to any of that. Because it's not about me. It's about fulfilling the client's expectations. And so if a warrior does his best to max out the situation, a warrior is not sitting and concerned with how does this look for me? What am I, you know, is he dissing me? So the point is that you have to bleed all emotion. Now, look, in my non-negotiating life, I'm a totally soft, soft touch. I want to please people. I want to make them happy. My whole life has been about getting into people's soul and thinking if I can add any value to that. That'sn't but that can't be me negotiating. Um, in other words, would I split the difference? Yes. But look, I always say if someone makes you a ridiculous offer and you counter at a reasonable level, and then they say split the difference, you can't split the difference because if the real market value is something's a hundred and someone comes in and offers you twenty, if you split the difference, you'll be at sixty. You'll be at a very sub-market deal, and you have to say to that person, Well, you're obviously not ready to negotiate right now because you know that's not a valid offer. Let's pick this up at some point in the future.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Whenever I'm in my class or we do um mock negotiations and I'm you know writing notes to critique, I cringe when I hear uh meet in the middle or split the difference. That being said, when when you you and I might have been doing a deal or or or you and another team or me and another agent, you know, if it if we're trying to get to a million and I'm at you know 900 and you're at one 1.1 or something, there's probably some something to be said where there we can get closer, but I agree with you, that can't be a strategy, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:05

No, and there's other things. Um Warrior understands that if you're making a set of arguments and the other side's resisting and it's a critical point to you, don't press a losing argument to the end. Don't keep hammering and hammering away on something so you make the other side lock in and put energy behind their position. Back away, take a break, do something else, talk about some other part of the contract, but don't force the other side to become locked in. We don't have the luxury of delay in the athletic context. We've got a fixed time, we've got athletes need to be, we can't you don't have the ultimate power to say, well, we'll just walk away. So if Jerry Jones is offering Troy Aikman nine million dollars and I want 10, a rational human being has to say at some point to themselves, look, Troy Aikman's option at that point as he sits at UCLA is to go back and do what if he doesn't play for the Dallas Cowboys? Is he gonna play cello in the Westwood Philharmonic? Is he gonna develop the new theory of super collider research? His economic problem is whether or not he can buy his date the extra toppings on her frozen yogurt. So let's at least be reality-based that it may not be everything we wanted, but in the real world, it's a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

Yeah, and keep going. I'm gonna keep going a little bit on Warrior, but I want to bring up the fact that um it's related. So you have a book coming out called The Comeback. That is your um third book, correct? Yes. And then I pre-ordered that book on Amazon. So if anybody wants to pre-order it, you can get it by March if you go on now, because I've already done it. In your first book, I learned a lot about negotiation. In your second book, um, you were very candid in all the adversity that you faced in your personal life. You battled alcohol alcoholism, you filed for personal bankruptcy. I believe maybe even the breaking moments were you being manipulated when dealing with a client and your daughter even telling you that she wasn't even gonna deal with you anymore unless you stopped drinking. You went backwards, you were at the top, you went backwards, and then you climbed back up, and now you're representing Patrick Mahomes, and you're right out there as a thought leader on negotiations. When it comes to the use of the word warrior, is do you think that dealing with adversity and others can learn from that too help make you stronger as a negotiator, leader, person, agent?

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Yes. So the first part is breaking denial uh that you have a problem. And uh any any type of addiction will convince you that the rest of the world is wrong, you don't have a problem. And your brain becomes changed in a way where it's not volitional anymore. In other words, it's all about cravings. And the cravings are so strong they override rational uh limits and thinking. So the point is in life, Cliff, inevitably we all have reverses. They can be marital or relationships, they can be economic, they can be health, they can be addiction to some substance. And then you get into the situation where you've crashed, and now the question is, what do you do to get out of the darkness? So the warrior, first of all, gets a sense of proportionality. Look, what do you uh your father raised you trying to make a difference to the world and being a good father? How are you doing that? And wait a second, let's just take a step back. You're not a starving peasant in in uh Somalia. You're not a uh person with the last name Steinberg in Nazi Germany in the 30s. You don't have cancer, you don't have a what excuse? So you need to have an epiphany. And strength means taking an objective look at yourself and realizing where you're failing, and then striving to do something different. So the comeback for me is maintaining sobriety for the last almost 16 years and uh being a good father, and that I could succeed in my career was not the goal. Uh it it it but but look if you're gonna relaunch, you have to be prepared for every difficult question someone's gonna throw at you. How can you guarantee that you're gonna stay sober? You didn't manage your own money well, how can you manage ours? You um uh you're old. You're you've been out of the field because I don't have a divine right to represent athletes. I have to bring value to their life and they have to trust and believe in me. So I understood all those would be the impediments, and I waited three or four years into sobriety before relaunching in the athletic field.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Did you spend time or do you even do it now, aside from dealing with your clients who might have problems, do you find yourself coaching and advising people through problems just because you had gone through stuff? And is that some of the things that are in your book as well?

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Yes. So it's a whole series of twinning with integrity is the 12 principles of negotiation. There are about 10 or 12 principles in this book for how to come back out of difficult situations. And we all have them to minor or hopefully you don't have to go through colossal public collapse like I did. But ye no one did this to me. I did this to myself. And so here we are 15 years later, and I'm hoping that this will help people in the world who have faced ultimate frustration to not give up and to come up with an organized way to return.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

Lee, tell us about the Agent Academy. What is it? How often do you hold it? Who can be involved? Is it still going on?

SPEAKER_00 34:43

We did our last one uh a couple weeks ago. We've done about 40 of them, and it's you go to business school, law school, management, and they teach you principles, but there's a set a skill set that's necessary to be successful. And so we call it the Agent Academy, but it's equally applicable to someone who wants to work for a team, a league, a a players' association in sports marketing, sports, uh PR sports business, the same basic skills. So we've held it in New York and Washington and Chicago and Ann Arbor and Columbus and Houston and Dallas, held it all over the country. And we just had the last one in Newport Beach. We teach a skill set, which first of all is what we talked about in terms of listening skills, drawing out someone else, how to recruit another person, which is equally applicable to how you sell. Then we do so we do uh stage a problem where we bring in, at one point, Patrick Mahomes, at one point Warren Moon, and they have to recruit that player. We break them into agent groups. So we do a recruit and then we critique um the recruit. Then we teach negotiation. And so we have a problem which is half of the players are general managers and half of them are player agents, and they get a long laundry list of things to negotiate. And I've also taught that same thing to teachers and lawyers and business groups. Then we do a branding and marketing problem where you have to take a specific athlete and build out his website and build out his presence on TikTok and Instagram and and LinkedIn and Facebook. Then we do a charitable foundation that the player has to set up. And lastly, we do a player in crisis. So we take someone who's just caught in a gambling thing, or someone who had drunk driving, or someone who had that, and then the audience is reporters, and they have to make a pitch for this person and defend them. So we do all of those things, and at the end of it, we talk about how you can make a difference in sport. How, like I was concerned about the environment. So we built a sport and green alliance with some teams that did modalities which would be exhibited at a stadium, arena, uh practice field, is water recycling, resurfacing, uh, solar, um, and how to integrate that into the grid and how you use a sports facility to trigger imitative behavior so someone sees the water's urinal or solar panel and thinks about how to do it, combat bullying, because if you could convince the high school athletes to be the pushers of tolerance instead of the bullies themselves, you could change the culture of a high school really quickly. And so we're trying to show the power of sport, or and as you know, the basic concept of my practice was the athlete as role model. So it was high school scholarship on college scholarship pro charitable foundation.

SPEAKER_02 38:11

Can anyone or do you have to take a limit? Can anyone take this course?

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Anyone can take the course. We do limit it. I know there are people who teach agenting who have three or four hundred people. There are groups are usually more like 30, 35. So we cap it at a certain level for each one. But we've had people from 13 years old to 70. We have people that are uh lawyers or in another field that are thinking about, you know, their different options. Uh but the base of it is usually law school, business school, undergrads, sports management grads, people like that. Do you have another one planned? The next one will be next spring, and we don't have a location yet, but stay tuned. And we're right. We've also done sports career conferences where we have like one session is media, so we'll have you know the top anchor in that area, and someone from ESPN and someone who's an executive from Fox Sports, you know what? Jacob Woolman, the vice president of uh of uh Fox. We have people like that. So we're doing constant education process.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

That's tremendous. So valuable to so many college students, law students, uh, and they have access to you. A couple more the one is, you know, I mean, I I dealt with you as a very young negotiator. I was probably in my first year with the Bears. You taught me several things. One was I really enjoyed um, you know, one was how to have the right demeanor, but another was um, you know, you you never would cross-fertilized. Like you were very clear that like if you were negotiating for a player, um you weren't going to share what other teams were offering you. And I always appreciate I didn't appreciate it at the time or understand it, but then I appreciated later that, well, if he's doing that for them, then if we make him an offer, he's doing that for us too, and that's tremendous trust. Is that something you've always done?

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Yes, I uh I'll give you an example. Teams share draft information with me openly, but the deal is that I won't cross-fertilize it. So that if um they tell me what their true interests are, it's always giving me an advantage on actually knowing where a player's gonna go in the draft, because a team will actually come out and say, if you get to the seventh pick, we're taking you. Well, if I go out in the world and share that, I've just violated trust with that person. Trust is everything. Trust is whether or not you're gonna approach me all armored or you're gonna understand that I value our relationship and I'm gonna protect it and protect you. So look, when we're negotiating your contract, I'm totally aware what your situation is. In other words, if that thing, I gotta think about how is Cliff gonna explain this to Ted Phillips and how can I make it something that he can defend to his president? And so I'm thinking about that, and thinking about the fact that that what are the pressures on the other person? What are how are they gonna be judged? So, for example, in our negotiation um crisis uh negotiation exercise, the players come out with scores, and at the end of them, I say, you realize that what really matters is not comparing you against the other side, it's comparing you against the other agents. So you're actually competing against the deals that those other agents did. And conversely, as a general manager, you're competing against how little you cost your own.

SPEAKER_02 42:20

That's amazing. I think it's so important that you're doing that, you're telling people you really got to understand the pressures of the person across from the table. What are some of the for you for young, whether it's front office or agents, young negotiators, what are some of the most common mistakes that you have seen?

SPEAKER_00 42:41

First of all, not to prepare a rational, a rationale for what you're asking for. So simply to say a number. We prepare a negotiation packet, usually, that shows comparability, who other players are with the same experience who play the same position, who are what their statistics are, what their honors are, a rational way to look at what the market is. I've I'm a concept negotiator. Um, I used to have a partner, Jeff Morad, and we had contrasting styles. Because I was all about if I can convince you of what the rightful position of this player is in the market, once we solve that, then the numbers will just flow from that. His was grinding away on the ground. So, and I'm like, if I can sell Jerry Jones on why Troy Aikman's worth this, or we could sell any team on why the player's worth what he's worth. But I've got to give you a way, again, to go back and show your owner this is why we're paying him. Okay, we're paying him because his quarterback rating, his uh percentage of total completions, his touchdown. Passes and then and then here's what he does in critical situations. Here are the comebacks that he's engineered, blah, blah, blah. And here's the effect he has on other players. So they don't prepare well enough. And they've got to have a comp understanding what your economics are. Yeah, we have a rev split, so it's pretty clear now. So it makes it much easier. But that's the mistake. They personalize it. They get angry. They let words come out of their mouth that are hard to take back. If you slight another person, they'll remember that slight forever. And they may not instantly respond, but don't think that it's just flown by the other person. So you have to be really careful to keep the the deal on a rational basis. Third of all, don't threaten things. You know, people threaten, wow, if you don't do that, I'm gonna are you really prepared to do what you just said? Um and you know, don't threaten. Third of all, try to get things light sometimes. You know, if Cliff has a love for the Chicago Cubs or or White Sox or whatever, but here's a Chicago guy, um talk about the app a lot. You know, talk about our players, the catcher for the clubs, talk about why love try to humanize the situation, okay? And realize you're gonna be dealing with Cliff Stein ten more times. So whatever you just did sets the groundwork for ten feature negotiations.

SPEAKER_02 45:42

I'm glad you brought up the keeping things light, because you also talk about in winning with integrity the use of humor, and you talk you showed an example where you went into a negotiation with with Ted Phillips again, and you brought you decided to bring super soakers. And was I don't know if that was that something you were doing like as a tactic, something you knew about him, or in general, were you just trying to show the lighter side of yourself?

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Chicago, it's Al Capone, the rackets and everything, and it's we've been up all night. There was a night where I negotiated about 11 at night, and I was tired and went home, and Jeff Morat in their office kept going. I came back the next morning, they're still on the phone. So what that showed you though was resilience. I tell negotiators if you're physically going to the other person's thing, bring food, bring your meds, bring they may or may not have the caffeine, you know, bring whatever you need. Don't ever pass up a bathroom. Bring everything that you need that you know can help you survive through long sessions. And uh used to be pretty effective when it got to be late night. So conversely, if you know you're fading, you know, get out of the house. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

And the last question I always ask people in my class, and I think you've probably answered some of it, but I'm gonna give you a chance to sum up what are the key traits of a great negotiator?

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Um a great negotiator is a warrior who's bled all emotion out of a situation and looks at things rationally. And a great negotiator is someone who's done thorough preparation on the business they're in, the economics, the profitability, the background and character, the person they're negotiating with. Um great negotiator has the capacity to be flexible and switch courses in when something's not moving in the right direction, has a sense of timing as to when the right time is to offer this or reduce that. A great negotiator can read the room and is constantly aware of subtle shifts in in body language, in tonality, who can be sensitive to to what the right time. And lastly, a great negotiator is creative. So if this way won't work and the traditional way doesn't, what can we think outside the square creatively that may bring us closer together? Is there a different construction of a clause? Is there a different way to look at it? Is there different whatever else negotiating per Ben Rothesburger with the Pittsburgh Steelers? And we wanted to be paid like a quarterback, this is pre-salary cap and not paid like the defensive back pick right in front of him. We wanted shorter contract, we wanted accelerator clauses. So he says, Well, we've never done an accelerator clause, we'll never do an escalator, we'll never do an escalator, and that's that. And he said, We're just paying what any guy would get in the slot, and and plus we want a long contract. So he said, We're not gonna make a deal, go home. I said, Look, I'm staying here until we finish this deal because Rotzenberger needs to be in camp to have any chance of being anything. I'm not going anywhere. No, you should go home because well, I'm not. So anyway, I stayed there and and they did pay us a premium because he was quarterback. We called escalator clause as something else to maintain their policy. And at the end of it, Dan Rooney looks at me and says, I know you don't want this long a contract, whatever it was, five years or six years, precap. Um, but we need this security. And I promise you I will do what's right if we get a couple years in the contract and south mode. And we gave on that contract because there was an owner promising me something, and I trusted him. And they did adjust this contract. So that's my point is creatively figure out what you can do.

SPEAKER_02 50:22

Yeah, that's so great. There's so much valuable information here, Lee. That's why I can't wait to read the next book. Really an honor to have you and just really study your career. Um, been a colleague with you. I'm a huge fan. You're the ultimate negotiation warrior. Thank you for continuing to be out there and be a thought leader. I know there's a lot of people like myself that really, really um appreciate you, um, all you've gone through and all you're doing to help people make us better. And in exchange, I feel like I'm able to better help make people become better because of some of the things that I see you doing. So thank you for that. It's great to have you. It's great to see you. Great to see you and uh good luck on your podcast. Thank you. Talk soon. Take care, Lee. Bye. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

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