Media Coverage
The Nice Guy – An Exclusive Interview with Ron Shapiro
By: Philippe Matthews
When you think of Lawyers and Sports Agents, the word “nice” is not a word that you would normally use in association with the individuals who are in this line of work…except one guy. A guy who is so nice that he wrote a book about it – The Power of Nice.
Named one of the year’s “100 most powerful people in sports,” by The Sporting News and known as “One of baseball’s most respected Agent/Attorneys,” by USA Today, Ron Shapiro is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on negotiation and conflict resolution, as well as one of its premiere motivational speakers. Shapiro has represented five of the Society for American Baseball Research's "100 greatest major-league baseball players of the 20th century," including Cal Ripken Jr., Hall of Famers Jim Palmer, Brooks Robinson and 2001 Inductee Kirby Puckett. As well as Eddie Murray, Hall of Fame Broadcaster Chuck Thompson, and ESPN Broadcaster Jon Miller - all of whom have benefited from the more than a billion dollars in contracts negotiated by Shapiro.
Ron says it took an entire career to create this book. “The philosophy is something that evolved over a long period of time. The book was written in about 18 months to two years, and it had been written in that amount of time because a lot of it had been tried out in our courses at the Shapiro Negotiations Institute. “ Ron launched the Institute in late 1995, as he further explains, “It was because I wanted to draw on my experience as a corporate lawyer and a sports agent, while pulling together a system that would benefit other people in realizing that doing deals in life wasn’t one transaction; but it was doing things for the long-term. So, the institute evolved from my other professional community pursuits.”
From sales to customer service, executive leadership to line employees and personnel to purchasing – negotiating plays a vital role in today's competitive business environment. Shapiro is dedicated to helping individuals and organizations enhance both their business and personal lives by improving their negotiation, communication, and conflict-resolution skills. His nationally acclaimed dispute-resolution talents have settled a major symphony orchestra strike, facilitated solutions to human relations problems, and resolved challenging issues in governmental and corporate disputes. Shapiro combines this real life business experience with an effective, entertaining, and energetic style. His seminars and speeches are customized, insightful, and entertaining----motivating audiences and helping them make deals and build relationships that lead to future opportunities.
Ron was a Law Clerk in 1967 before launching his own business where he trained lawyers for the bar exam. “I started my own Law Firm, Shapiro, Sher & Guinot in 1972, and my Sports Firm, Shapiro, Robinson & Associates, which manages professional athletes and broadcasters in 1976 and then a publishing company along the way and then the institute in 1995.” Born and raised in Philadelphia, Ron went to college, then went on to Harvard Law School, and landed in Baltimore as a Law Clerk. Ron recalls his childhood and when the legal bug bit him. “A couple of things happened in childhood; one, the idea of relationships really became magnified for me through actions of my father. My father was an immigrant who had a third or fourth grade education, but he had such a knack for building relationships with people. I think that was probably the first kernel of what led to The Power of Nice® later on. He died when I was a freshman in college and I was thinking about going into business with him; but when he died, I decided I ought to find another line of endeavor and law school would be a good way to do it. So, I went off to law school and started to practice law as a Civil Rights Lawyer and then as a Securities lawyer, which is an interesting contrast in law. I enjoyed them both and stayed with law, while I did other things the first 25 years of my career.”
The Power of Nice®
Shapiro outlines his negotiation philosophy in the award-winning book, The Power of Nice: How to Negotiate So Everyone Wins—Especially You! (1998, John Wiley & Sons, Inc) which has become one of the top selling books on negotiations/sales. The Power of Nice was excerpted in Fortune Magazine and was named one of the "Top Ten 'On the Job' Business Books of the Year" by the Library Journal.
His Father was a Plumber and his Mom raised Ron and two other siblings, which created an environment of unconscious achievement for Ron as he made his way through life. Ron says of his father, “I’m a real believer in inner connectedness of everything and there’s no question that my father was very influential by example. Not in terms of what he told me to do, but by uniting relationships with other people and how he rallied people who had much more education, and much more opportunity than he had. He also told me that he wanted to impact people and he is a key piece of who and what I am.”
Another philosophy that Ron lives by is that of desire and preparation. He says, “I have tremendous desire and a pension for being prepared.“ In his book, Ron talks about how being prepared is vastly important and overlooked in negotiations and in life. In The Power of Nice, Ron follows the rules of the 3 Ps: Prepare, Probe and Propose. “The first of the 3 Ps in the book is Preparation. Cal Ripken Jr. came to one of our seminars recently and I never knew how he evaluated me, but there was a reporter there from a magazine and he asked, ‘Why is Ron good at what he does?’ and Cal said, ‘Because he’s always the best prepared person in the room,’ just as Cal was always the best prepared person on the baseball field. When opportunity comes, I study the opportunity and have a tremendous amount of desire and couple those two things together and take advantage of the opportunity.”
THE PRE-OPRAH EFFECT
The Power of Nice® is not about the power of trying to be perfect, Ron admits that he has made some mistakes in his career, but he doesn’t allow mistakes to stop him from moving forward. He learns from them, which is a great part of his book. “Writing the book in my fifties rather than in my thirties made so much sense; because I made my mistakes along the way through trial and error. I frequently tell people, this is not a book about Ron’s success stories and how you can follow them. It is as much a book about the mistakes Ron made along the way and how you can learn from them. The greatest teacher for all of us is our mistakes.”
A charismatic and creative individual, Shapiro has appeared as a negotiations expert on ABC's "Good Morning America", CNBC's "Power Lunch", Mutual Radio's "The Larry King Show", National Public Radio's "Morning Edition", ABC's Nightline", and ESPN's "Up Close". In addition, Shapiro has hosted "Special Edition," a series of prime time specials on NBC's Baltimore Affiliate.
But Ron’s charisma was challenged years ago when the professional relationship with Oprah Winfrey ended abruptly. Ron explains, “The Oprah relationship was a wonderful relationship. She was here in Baltimore; I guided her through her during her career for six or seven years. She was a real talent in my minds eye, and everybody locally fully appreciated her and she was given an opportunity to come to Chicago and really grow to the next level and she was a little nervous about it. I remember one day saying, ‘Oprah, if you go to Chicago and you move on the national scene, before long you will earning a million dollars a year. We thought that was a lot back then…I was only 130 million off!”
“Once she went to Chicago, she decided she needed someone full-time with her, and I wasn’t about to leave Baltimore; so she went with another agent. An Associate of mine came to me with an unpaid bill, and said he couldn’t collect it; and my first mistake was not picking up the phone and calling. Instead, he said, ‘I think we ought to file a suit for this.’ Well, the buck stops here. I’m responsible. Never do I shift the responsibility to someone else. I was so multi-tasked at the time in doing so many things that I let the decision slip away from me and I forgot the relationship. Now, Oprah and I have seen each other since and still have a nice relationship. She’s a wonderful person, but it would have been a lot simpler to think about the relationship and make the call and not play the hard-nosed Litigator; rather I should’ve been the win/win negotiator in working that one out.”
THE CODE
Committed to public and civic matters, Shapiro has chaired over 25 boards of charitable and community organizations including the University of Maryland Medical System Greenebaum Cancer Center, the John Hopkins Children's Center and the Baltimore Educational Scholarship Trust. He has received numerous special honors and recognitions, including Chimes Hall of Fame for contributions and community service, American Sportscasters’ Association Hall of Fame Mel Allen Service Award for distinguished public service and was named the 1998 Maryland Marketing Statesman of the Year.
Committed to a moral code of ethics, in closing Ron says, “I don’t discriminate. I’m not a person who builds relationships only with the so-called, ‘high and mighty.’ I’ve always said to my children, ‘The gentleman who parks your car in the garage in the basement of the building should be treated with the same respect as the man who is the Chairman of the Board on the 50th floor.’ I live those principles and I think my clients see that and they know that it’s for real – I don’t make it up. They know that I am a caring person. The other part of that is that I’m not an advisor who forces my personal agenda on them. I’m an advisor who figures out what their agenda is and then shapes the best strategy to achieve that agenda; and the only time I change it is if and when I think they are making a bad mistake from either a moral or ethical point of view.”
The two principles that Ron lives by he explains are, “It’s a variation of the golden rule, in order to get what I want in life, I’m going to help other people get what they want. The other piece that is not in the book is very important to me and I carry it around with me on a 3x5 card everyday, and it’s an old Winston Churchill quote: ‘You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give.’ Put those two phrases together and you’ve got the principles that I try to live by.”
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