Steve Herz
speaker
95 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Steve Herz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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