Scott Boras – Baseball Power Agent

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.”