Bald Truth : Secrets of Success from the Locker Room to the Boardroom

by David Falk

• ISBN13: 9781416584384
• ISBN10: 1416584382
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-02-03
• Publisher: Gallery Books

Summary

The man who called the shots throughout the careers of NBA legends Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing finally shares with readers the universal business tactics that have catapulted this powerful innovator to the top of the sports marketing game.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
I'd Rather Have a Good Enemy than a Neutral Friend, and other lessons from chairman John	p. 5
It's a Long Horse Race	p. 35
Blunt is Beautiful-stay True to you	p. 73
See the whole court	p. 98
A Men's Got to Know His Limitations	p. 139
Goodwill Hunting	p. 176
The Customer Isn't Always Right	p. 207
Know When to Hold 'Em, know When to Fold'Em	p. 247
The Godfather Theory: I'd Like to Make you an offer you can't Refuse	p. 284
Get Out Ahead of the cure	p. 326
Afterword	p. 361
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

ONEI'd Rather Have a Good Enemy than a Neutral Friend, and Other Lessons from Chairman JohnIn many ways, my career started when I met John Thompson, Jr.Having grown up in a very modest background, I could never have imagined that I would meet and deal with high-profile individuals as diverse as senators and congressmen, even a president or two, not to mention superstar athletes, entertainers, and chairmen of many of the most influential corporations in America. But without question, the most influential person in my life -- other than my mother, who passed away when I was twenty-seven -- has been John Thompson.The fact that John played such an influential role proves that hard work and commitment to excellence can be matched, if not trumped, by circumstance and good fortune. The twists and turns that brought us together were certainly not in the game plans either of us had crafted for our careers. That John became my first and, for many years, only coaching client is ironic, given the wisdom and guidance he has provided me over the years.I had aspired to be an attorney since the age of ten. In fifth grade, a friend named Greg Mallow wrote in my autograph book that I should become a lawyer because I was "a good arguer." Joseph Weber, my maternal grandfather, was an immigrant who frequently served on grand juries in New York. Pearl Weber, my mother, dreamed that I would one day become a Supreme Court justice. Despite these strong influences, my only role model for being a lawyer was Owen Marshall of the eponymous television series in the 1970s. I had absolutely no idea what being a lawyer was all about when I graduated from Syracuse University in 1972 and not much clearer of an idea when I graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1975.During my first two years of law school, I worked part-time for the Bureau of Land Management at the Department of the Interior and at the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley & Austin, a prestigious Chicago-based law firm. In Washington, the joke is that one out of every twenty-five males over the age of twenty-five is a lawyer. It seemed to me that most of them had an Ivy League background that I clearly lacked. At Sidley I was determined to overcome my lack of pedigree by sheer determination. Initially it seemed to be working as many of the younger partners entrusted me with legal research projects. But when the summer came, I was relegated to being a messenger when two "summer clerks" who were recruited from the University of Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania arrived. If I had a chip on my shoulder about my lack of Ivy League pedigree when I interviewed for clerkships in law school, after the snub at Sidley it grew into a block. When Donald Dell finally allowed me to work -- for free -- at Dell, Craighill, Fentress & Benton, which was the law firm part of the sports agency ProServ, in the summer of 1974, I was committed to overcoming my lack of nurture with my compulsive nature.At the end of that summer, Donald hired me as a part-time clerk. As a full-time law student, I was permitted to work twenty hours a week. My lack of personal pedigree and ProServ's surroundings better informed my approach. Donald Dell was a Yale man with a University of Virginia law degree; Lee Fentress went to Tulane and Virginia Law; Frank Craighill attended North Carolina and Virginia Law; and Michael Cardozo, the associate, was the grand-nephew of Supreme Court justice Benjamin Cardozo and a Dartmouth and Virginia Law School grad. I probably worked an average of sixty hours a week and went to school just enough to graduate. Later on, when I attained some success, I probably developed a reverse exclusionary discrimination against Ivy League types. Obviously it takes all types, but one of the questions you might ask about a player who grew up wealthy is whether that player is hungry enough to do what it takes. The n