Steve Herz
Appearances
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
I think there's never going to be a shortage for companies to improve their culture. And I think it's a need. Ultimately, you know, like you said earlier, skills and abilities are great, but what need are you filling in another company or another person's life? And if you're not fulfilling a need, then there's no value to it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
I don't think at that point, Heather, I thought about it in any kind of... way that you're describing it so smartly. I just said, Gail, I'll take the calls. And I just figured nothing bad could come of it. And I would build some relationships.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Right. And now it's easy to figure a lot of things out that weren't as easy to figure out back then because of the internet.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Yeah, that was kind of a fluke, too. I guess my whole life is one good fluke after another. What happened was is I'll be 54 on July 7th of this year. But four years ago, when I was about to turn 50 in January of 2016, my wife was going to throw a party for me. And it was just kind of a time of reflection at that point. Wow, I'm turning 50. I can't believe it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And what am I going to do with the second half of my life? How is that going to be different? And I thought, I feel like professionally I'd done not everything, but I'd done a lot of what I wanted to accomplish as an agent. And what else could I do? What other skills did I have? What other things could I do to offer the world?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And I thought that the coaching that I had done for on-air broadcasters and helping them get those jobs at the ESPNs and the CBSs and some of the interview coaching I had done for them, I thought that was transferable. That kind of advice could be applicable to a CEO, but also a dentist or a doctor or a lawyer or whoever.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And I came up with this idea that a lot of people were talking about public speaking and media training, but that wasn't really where the important communication is happening in the world. or in your career. And where it's really important is what I call private speaking. You know, what we're doing right now, having a dialogue as opposed to what public speaking is, which is a monologue.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And so I thought, I really want to teach this. This is what I want to do. I want to teach it. And I ended up writing, I had all these notes, obviously from my career and all the things I had done. And I thought, all right, I'm going to transfer this to this other medium. And I wrote this presentation out and I daughter at the time was in the school choir. And I went to hear a performance.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And while there, I ran into a mom from our school. And I just said to her, I really have this idea. I think it's great. What do you think of it? Her name is Tali Potter, this woman. She's the general counsel of Bank Leumi. And she's like, I love this idea. I think it's a great idea. I think you should come to our bank and work with us. And I want to introduce you to the HR director of our bank.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And I said, well, I don't really have a business yet. I don't know what to charge. She said, don't worry, it's fine. So she had this woman, Kate Edinger, came to my office four years ago. And Kate said, I love it. It's a great idea. Why don't you come work with us at the bank? I have a perfect guy for you. Very, very senior executive that you could coach. What do you charge?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And I said, Kate, I don't know what I charge because I don't have any clients, which is probably not the thing you want to say to somebody. But I just said, I was honest with her and I told her a price. And she said, that seems fair. And I got hired and it really kind of morphed into a nice little business where I was working for that bank. And then I got hired by a pretty big law firm.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And then I got hired by a medical company. And then one day, about a year later, this woman got up at an event I had been doing for Bank of Leumi and said, I love your ideas. I really want to buy two copies of your book for my children. They should read it. They're 18 and 20. Where can I buy those copies? I said, you can't. And I think she thought I was joking.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
because I guess anybody who speaks now pretty much has a book. And I said, I don't have a book. And she said, well, that's really too bad because you should write a book. And that night, it was March 8th, 2017, I went home, told my wife, and she said, well, go write a book. And that's how it all happened. It's kind of crazy.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
I think the best skill that I have is I do think I'm a pretty good communicator and I'm able to connect with people. And so that gives me a lot of opportunity to speak to people and influence them. And maybe they feel like, well, one thing I have also noticed now that I've been
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
in this kind of having almost dual things I've been doing for the past few years is this, I think there's never going to be a shortage for companies to improve their culture. And ultimately, one of the hopeful side products of my book and my message will be to improve culture in organizations. And so that's a real desire here. And I think it's a need.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Ultimately, like you said earlier, skills and abilities are great. but what need are you filling in another company or another person's life? And if you're not fulfilling a need, then there's no value to it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
The book is basically two broad thoughts in the book. First is kind of what I call the foundation for change, right? And the foundation for change is this idea of don't take yes for an answer. And my thesis is that there's been, I would say, a pretty significant change in American society in the past 30 years. And I don't,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
say this politically at all, and I don't intend it that, and I don't think it's a millennial thing. I think it's just what's happened. Some of it is just people meant well, whatever, but there's always another unintended consequence of things. So those three things are, one, you've had great inflation. Two, you've had this what I would call participation trophy culture morphing into MVP culture.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And then the third is HR departments in many, if not most American companies, really acting as a adjunct to the legal department and not wanting to get sued and not in talent development as it might be thought of. And so they don't fire people. They don't really want to tell you what you're doing wrong. They just want to get you out. And go quietly.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And so what I say in the book in terms of setting up the foundation is that if you get the artificial A that should be a B that was 30 years ago, you get the participation trophy culture and you seem like you think you're an MVP. And you've had the job and you never even got fired.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
You were lucky you got fired because now you would have gotten downsized or reordered and they would have told you, it's not you, it's me. You were great, blah, blah, blah. So what ends up happening is that you, the individual-
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
who's on the wrong end of this equation, and you mean well, you work hard, but no one's ever told you what you could do better, you get caught up in the vortex of mediocrity. And how do you get out of that? You can't get out of it if you're not reading the signals of somebody saying to you, Heather, you can do better. Heather, you're fired. Heather, do something else. Or Steve, get out of the law.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
You stink at it. Okay, fine. You can do something with that. It's actionable. But that doesn't exist for a lot of people anymore. So there's not a mindset to think about change.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
So assuming you can get past the first third of the book that sets up the idea, then you'll be able to understand what the signals are that you need to read for change and not get caught up in this echo chamber of yes and then the vortex of mediocrity. And this isn't just for people on the lower end of the scale in terms of their career.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
It can be someone on the higher end who could be a superstar and is only a star because they're being told how great they are all the time. So I think it applies to everybody. So that's the first part.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And then the second half of the book, which I think is probably the more important actionable message for the audience here, is that it's really fascinating research shows that there's a very unexpectedly small correlation and causal relationship between how good you are at your job, the technical parts of it, and your success.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And that there's only a 15% contributing factor, what we would call the hard skills, the technical skills. And there's 85% of what we would call the non-technical skills. So I'll just call them the soft skills for the purposes of this conversation. And my thought here is that
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
We get drilled our entire lives from first grade on to graduate school and continuing ed, whatever, on the technical skills, how to become a better lawyer, better doctor, better surgeon, better technical, better writer, et cetera, et cetera. But no resources are dedicated towards these, quote unquote, soft skills.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And yet, so many people that we end up competing with in our lives, including us a lot of the times, we get good enough at the technical skills. We're all kind of commoditized, so to speak, in the technical parts of the job because we're all good enough at it. But that's not the defining factor and the distinguishing factor from those who just get a seat at the table.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
and end up ascending to the place where they do have the influence and have the authority and have the leadership role and all the clients and customers. And that comes from this 85%. The important thing about the 85% is what do you do with it? What can you do if I told you, Heather, you know what? You've got a weakness in your soft skill. What the hell does that mean?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
There's nothing you can do with it unless I tell you something actionable. So this is what I try to do is make it actionable. So let's just take that 85% and create an acronym around it that we can work on. It will have a report card and metrics. That's called AWE. The subtitle of my book is called Using Authority, Warmth, and Energy, AWE, to Get Exceptional Results.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
I think that if you look at the people in your life that you believe, first of all, have those precursor technical skills and are thriving, most of them fit into this category of being able to communicate stylistically and have a sense of authority about themselves. We perceive them as, you know, very competent. We perceive them as trustworthy because they have the warmth and connectability.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
We want to go along with their ideas because it's a certain energetic quality to them that energizes us. And those are the only things that really matter in our communication. And if we can do that, if we can make people understand that we're good at what we do, you can trust me. I'm going to get the job done for you. And I make you feel good around me.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
You're going to have all the influence in the world you need. That's it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Well, you're correct. I just want to repeat, though, for the audience and for you, that that is only because... you are going to be competing and working alongside other people like yourself that have mastered the technical part of it. I use this dental example. If you needed a filling tomorrow for a tooth, you had a cavity, you could call up 10 dentists, probably 100 dentists,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And they all know how to do a filling, right? And that's not going to be the distinguishing factor of why you go to one dentist versus another. You probably wouldn't even know who's going to do a better filling anyway. And that's true of a lot of the services that we end up using in our lives. And so it's not that the technical part isn't important.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
It's just a necessary prerequisite to get you a seat at the table. And I think very little else.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Do you mind if I say this? Read the book. No, no. Yeah. I mean, obviously, please read the book. But what we do talk about is, first of all, I think it's understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are. And when you... We have an opportunity. It's fascinating.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
In the last few months, one of the hopefully good byproducts of this pandemic has been this Zoom culture where we get to record ourselves if we want to, and we can go back and listen and look at ourselves and take note of our communication. And I think most of us would find that we have these blind spots, these weaknesses, the way that we're communicating.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And unless you're walking around with someone who's telling you 24-7, hey, Steve, hey, Heather, stop doing that, stop doing that, and you find a way to actually change it, you're going to continue to embed those bad habits in your behavior. And we don't have people that tell us these things. That's why I say don't take yes for an answer. And so
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
The immediate things like kind of the low hanging fruit, I would say, of actual things you could do to have more authority is stand up straight, sit up straight. Have some physicality to your body language. Finish your sentences, Heather. Finish your words. So many people just trail off at the end of their words or they have a sing-song delivery or a high-pitched voice that's artificially high.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
So go on the internet and you can have many different free resources to figure out if you have a properly placed pitch with your voice. Enunciate. And if you have a good voice... If you don't have a sing-song delivery, if you finish your words, then you will seem and you will be more authoritative. And another really simple thing is do not use filler words. End them from your vocabulary.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Um's, you know's, like's. They're easy to fix. I could teach it to you in probably an hour. And if you can get rid of just those filler words and use a pregnant pause and have more inflection in your voice because you're not using those filler words, man, you're going to be so much more captivating.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
filler getting rid of filler words or how you're standing or how you're if you're enunciating or not right because this is this is a question of the substance versus the style substance is important it gets you seated at the table if you don't study dentistry you're not getting a dental job if you don't study engineering you can get an engineering job but once you've done that
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
and you have the resume, look, you're getting the interview. Whatever job you're applying for, who else is coming in for the interview? People with very similar resumes to you. So the substance is going to seem very similar, almost, if not completely indistinguishable to the person reading them. Now, you've been on both sides of this equation, so have I. I mean, you tell me.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
I can't read 10 resumes if I'm recruiting somebody and tell you the difference between those 10 resumes. And I've been doing this, I'm in this field for 30 years and I can't do it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
It's a great question. And it's been, I would say, the number one pushback I've gotten about this whole messaging in the book is, well, you can't teach warmth. Some people are warm, some people aren't. So I fight back by saying, I'm not going to teach you or convince you you're going to be the warmest person in the room.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
But what I will teach you to do is to be a little bit better every day than you were the day before. And I'll also focus on these tiny little granular things you're doing, many of which you're just self-sabotaging. And that's going to hurt your warmth. So I'll give you an example. I'll pick myself here.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
When I started writing this book, I had two really bad communication habits that killed my warmth. And luckily, I'm married to a woman who never gives me yes for an answer. And I love her for that. And so she pointed out to me, hey, you know what? Big shot, you're teaching communication.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Do you know that when you go to cocktail parties and you're around people, you stand there with your arms folded often when you talk to people? Well, what a terrible habit that is. And I said, wow, that's great advice. And then I just found that I was having a hard time changing it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
So what I did is I started going to these cocktail parties and really paying very careful attention for who else was in the room and who was folding their arms and standing there like that. with this off-putting language. Once in a while is fine, but staying there for five minutes every single interaction. And once I started noticing that, it would be a signal to me to stop doing it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And I eventually cured myself of that. And that just gave me a little bit more warmth in my personality. And I didn't change. I wasn't even aware I was doing it. And the other thing I do is, as part and parcel of that, is when I talk to somebody, I position my hips directly parallel to theirs. If you're standing there like this, I don't turn away with my shoulders and hips.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Thanks, Heather. Happy to be here.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
I try to focus in on you and with the feeling that, hey, you're important to me. You're the one I'm talking to right now. And it was just another just slightly bad habit I had and easy to fix. And then the last one I'll give you is I talk about dentistry a lot because I had my front teeth knocked out as a kid and then knocked out again.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And I've had my front teeth are all caps and fakes and everything else. So since I was two growing up, I've always had a lot of sensitivity to my smile. I was never very proud of it or just sensitive to it. And yeah, Only in the last, I would say, 10 years, when I finally found an amazing dentist who fixed my gums, have I been really much more confident about smiling.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
But I had 43 plus years of this bad habit of not smiling. And when I learned to smile more, I became warmer. And so these are the little tricks you can learn in this book to really change the way people perceive you in a very profound manner, I believe.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
I agree. I mean, look, I feel that why I think this message hopefully will get some traction in the marketplace is is that it's really not that hard. It's not that hard to figure out five or six things that you're doing that you could change really easily. This is kind of like what I would call a communication diet, not a personality diet, just a communication diet.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And I'm not asking you to never eat potato chips again. I'm asking you to not fold your arms at a cocktail party or to make eye contact when you're talking So you'll have more authority or to smile a little bit more or to face somebody when you're talking to them or to work on your voice a little bit. This is not a very hard book to digest and to make some actionable change to.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
It's just things that I think people unfortunately ignore at their own peril.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
people to feel that i'm paying more attention to them right right so so you've increased your warmth because you know under my rubric of awe that warmth leads to greater connectivity greater trust because look you're you're putting you put your finger on a really important thing in that when you talk about earlier you know in this post pandemic or current pandemic how much trust is important to people and i do believe that trust is
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
foundation of every relationship, even your Uber driver, if you don't trust that person, that's the basis of all business. Once that trust is eroded, and look, not to get political, but I think we're seeing a lot of this anger and this tremendous groundswell that we've had around
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
the death of George Floyd, because I think if we really, besides the anger about the murder, it's just this idea that our trust has been eroded. This is, you know, not to impugn all police at all, but it seems like This one incident has really done a lot to affect people's trust. And that's a big thing.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Yeah, thank you. I found out two days ago that I was nominated for the next Big Ideas Club, which is a group that is cultivated by Adam Grant, Susan Cain, Malcolm Gladwell, and Daniel Pink. So to be in the nominees of that list, I think it was 15 books that were nominated in this summer, it's really quite humbling. I thought I had a good idea. Luckily, HarperCollins agreed, and they
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
agreed to publish the book. And so it's really been humbling to think about, you know, some of the other people in that list are really established authors and huge names in the world. And so the fact that my idea is resonating with people like Adam Grant, it means a lot to me.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
So you can find it in any of your local bookstores and any Barnes & Noble, obviously. You can buy it at Amazon or anywhere any book is really sold. And if you want information about the book, you can buy an audible copy or just go to my website, which is www.stevenhers.com. And then you can follow me on all kinds of social media platforms, follow the blog.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And there's a one-click button to buy off there as well of any of these sites.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Sure. So when I was in my second year of law school at Vanderbilt in 1990, I worked for a law firm called Curtis Malay Prevost, a Park Avenue law firm in New York. And the way the law works is that you get to find out if you get a job coming back at the end of law school after your second summer. And so it's a big deal. Most of the good jobs are taken in that wave of job offers.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And at the very end of the summer at Curtis Prevost, there were, I think there were 29 or 30 summer associates. And I was the last one to be called into the managing partner of the program's office. His name was Turner Smith. And all of the 29 previous kids that had gone in before me were all given offers.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And it was kind of a very euphoric feeling in the office in the last week of the program, that August of 1990. And I walked in, and he looked at me, and he said, we take it very seriously when we don't give someone an offer. We really know that it's putting kind of a black mark on your record. It's going to make it very hard for you to get a job in the law.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And in your case, we didn't really stress about it. We're not giving you an offer. And we don't think you should practice law. And he said, I don't even think you should. Maybe you shouldn't even consider finishing law school. And I think you would be much better suited coming back here as a client, as a business owner or a businessman, rather than continuing the law.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And so that was the gut punch. And I kind of reeled out of his office with a whole new focus of what the rest of my life would look like. Because up until then, those first 25 years were directly in that one singular manner of I'm going to become a lawyer.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
No, no plan B. As I said, I mentioned this in the book, my dad is now retired, but he was a successful attorney. I have two older brothers that were and are successful lawyers, cousins, aunts, uncles. I mean, it's just like, it's the family business basically. And I grew up our family, you know, kind of pastime is arguing and dating. So this was it. This was my whole life.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And then it was gone in an instant, in a sense.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
It's interesting. I mean, we're going back 30 years now. So I'm committing this to memory that I think I was just lost for a while. Look, the good news is that I agreed with Turner Smith.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
I think the worst part about getting fired from a job, I would think, this luckily has never happened to me, is that you get fired from a job and they tell you you're no good at the entire field and you actually don't believe them. You do believe you're good at it. I knew I wasn't cut out for it. So that was kind of, in a weird way, it was comforting and discomforting at the same time.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
It was kind of a double whammy in the sense that I now had to go figure out what else could I do with my life after not having thought about it. So I was kind of lost for a while. I had this last year of law school to finish and it didn't make sense not to finish. And also, you know, take the bar. So my dad and mom were like, hey, just take the bar.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
If you don't want to go practice law, at least you'll say you could have done it. So that was I knew there was another year of all that. And I did all that. Luckily, passed the bar, etc., But I just didn't really know what I wanted to do. And nothing really came to me. And I did end up practicing law briefly from my dad's law firm on Long Island.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And that's when I kind of just had this weird thing happen. I was reading the newspaper one day, the New York Times sports section. And there was an article about this goalie for the New York Rangers named John Van Biesbroeck. And it was a story about how he was going to be traded, likely to be traded.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And there was a quote in the article from his agent, Lloyd Friedland, of Garden City, Long Island, where I was working at the time. And I couldn't believe it. Somebody was working in a field that I was interested in, in the same little place I was. And I went into the law firm, little law firm library, and took out the white pages and
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And looked up the name Lloyd Friedland, found his law firm and business, and cold called him. And he picked up the phone, who the hell are you? I tell him I'm this guy who went to University of Michigan, worked in the athletic department, knows a lot about sports, and I'm giving this entire crazy sales pitch, not knowing that everything I was saying was really irrelevant to his business.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And I didn't have what I thought I had, but I was too ignorant to know that I didn't have anything to offer this guy. And he was luckily either not smart enough about the business or just didn't care and like what he was hearing. And he said, all right, let's have lunch. And so we had lunch the next week and he hired me.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
He decided he wanted to start a small sports agency and he was going to try to grow this practice beyond this one or two clients he had. And it was Valentine's day of 1992. And that was when I guess kind of my life changed. I was in the field that I thought I might be good at.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Well, that job wasn't what I hoped it would turn out to be, but it led me to something, I guess, the right place. Lloyd was a very good guy and he had all the right intentions, but he was primarily, and is primarily still to this day, a successful matrimonial lawyer. And he was trying to build off these few clients.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
He didn't really have the time or the energy or frankly, the industry context to build out a business like this. And I certainly didn't know anything. And it was kind of the blind leading the blind in a way. And after about six months, I think he realized he was throwing money down a rat hole with me. I was completely useless to him. at least in this incarnation of his business at that point.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And I realized I wasn't going to help build a business for him. And around the same time, this girl I dated in law school who lived in New York, it was a long distance thing. She had a friend, we've broken up at this point, but she had a friend who worked for this agency called Athletes and Artists.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And I stayed in touch with this woman and she called me one day and said, hey, you know, our company needs a director of marketing. This guy, Maury Gosfran is leaving and he's going to law school at the University of Miami. And we need to replace him. And I said, I would love that. And she said, why don't you come meet the owner of my company, Art Kaminsky. And I met him.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And this woman's name is Jackie Harris, still friends with her. And she got me in and they hired me. And that was in July of 92. And so that was great because now I was actually working for an established agency. And I had a job. I was in New York City. It felt like I made it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
By the way, this job paid at Athletes and Artists, the base salary was, I think, $35,000, which even in 1992 was not a heck of a lot of money considering my law school classmates starting were making $80,000. But I was thrilled. I had a job. And for the first month or so, I lived on my friend's couch. And I was happy as could be.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
I think I didn't even know what the work I was doing at the time when I got into it. It was more of the idea that I had this goal of getting a job at an agency. And I think it was just doing something new. I mean, I knew nothing about, first, I knew nothing about what I was doing for Lloyd Friedland.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And then I knew nothing about being a director of marketing for a sports TV management company, which was to get these guys voiceovers and commercials and speaking engagements and all kinds of ancillary income. And I knew literally nothing about it, had no relationships in it, but I figured what the hell I'll learn. I didn't care. I was too, too ignorant to know any better.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Exactly. I just felt like maybe it was something that was intrinsic in me. This is my first real job in the world. I just realized that if you built relationships with people and you cultivated them, that somehow good things would happen. I think one of the hardest things I ever did in my career there was I went to the front desk of this office, athletes notice. And I went to the receptionist.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
Her name was Gail Lockhart. And I said, Gail, Do me a favor. If anybody calls the office and you do not know who to give the phone call to, just give it to me. I will deal with it for you. And I don't care how bad it is. I don't care if it's the electrician calling or the tax collector. And the owner, Art Kaminsky, he had some very strange hours. He wasn't there all that much.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
But I would take all these calls. And early on, I got a phone call that no one else wanted from this guy named Bob Rice. And he was a lawyer for a big law firm downtown, one of the big, big law firms. And he said that he was trying to produce the world's first chess championship, speed chess championship. And was I interested in helping him produce it? And I knew nothing about any of this either.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
But I said, sure, I'd love to. And we'll get you the talent. We'll figure it out. And then I went back and told the people in the agency. And we ended up getting a client who, believe it or not, is still a client of our agency, Bruce Beck, who is a major local sportscaster in New York, WNBC. And he became the host of the show called the American Challenge.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Stop Waiting for Permission—Build a Career That Lights You Up with Steve Herz
And then through that, I met and represented Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion, all because I told Gail Lockhart, I'll take any phone call. And that was the very beginning of my career.