Scott Boras – Baseball Power Agent The Art of Excellence

Scott Boras is a sports agent specializing in baseball. He is the Founder and President of Boras Corporation, a sports agency that represents roughly 75 professional baseball clients.  He has negotiated more than $9B in major league baseball contracts, with 11 of them worth more than $100 million—more than any other agent. Scott has been named the “Most Powerful Sports Agent in the World” by Forbes magazine. 
 

Some interesting insights from this episode:
He felt it was important to have a backup plan. He earned his Doctor of Pharmacy and law degrees while he was playing baseball so if things didn’t work out, he would have another path to pursue. The hardest part of being an agent isn’t negotiating contracts. It’s figuring out how to optimize a player, both physically and psychologically.  To effectively represent a player, you’ve got to not just understand their skill level but to understand them at a personal level as well. You don’t go into a negotiation to win. You go into a negotiation to understand and build a bridge.  And you build that bridge with reasons which benefit the needs and wants of both sides. His firm employs NASA and MIT-trained research scientists and engineers to uncover proprietary player performance data that nobody else uses. His firm also has sports psychologists on staff whose ultimate goal is to increase the durability and hence value of the players. The key to success isn’t comparing yourself to others but just trying to be the best that you can be in what you’re doing. “My measure of excellence is how long can you stay in the game.”