Steiner Sports CEO On Healthy Living And Having Purpose

Brandon Steiner’s story as a business entrepreneur begins in the late 1980s when he established Steiner Sports doing marketing and promotion for the athletes he had met while he managed the Hard Rock Café.

But the dramatic scene in Steiner’s story was in 2000 when he sold Steiner Sports, which by then had blossomed to a profitable sports marketing and collectibles enterprise, to Omnicom. It should have been one of the happiest days in Steiner’s life, but as he tells it in his latest book, “Living On Purpose,” he was “emotionally bankrupt” after selling the company.

“Most people will spend 90% of their time on the money grab or just learning how to do what they do for a living better. They won’t spend much time on just learning how to be a more well-rounded person. They are more concerned about their promotion and what they’re going to do for a living than the kind of person they want to be.”

Steiner, who stayed on with the company after the sale and continues to run it as CEO, said this was his mentality in the years leading to the sale of his company, as he spent every waking hour building up Steiner Sports. After the sale, he vowed to start living with more of a purpose beyond becoming financially successful. “Living on Purpose” emphasizes the need for business leaders to do more good—for themselves and the community at large—and by doing good, they will be more successful in business.

Chief Executive had a chance to chat with Steiner about the book, the ebb and flow of the sports memorabilia industry and much more. Below are excerpts from this conversation.

The book focuses on three areas where you need to improve your overall wellbeing – faith, fitness and fortune. Of those three, which area do CEOs have the hardest time paying attention to?

If there’s one part of the book that I’d ask every CEO or somebody who’s leading a group or running a company to read it would be the fitness part. Your health and your fitness is so critical to everything else. When you are feeling better, eating better, and you’re sleeping better, you will be more effective and efficient in the office. It just makes sense. The more energy you have and the more you feel better about yourself, you’re going to end up feeling better about everything else you do. So why not put yourself in a position to do that?

But it’s amazing how many leaders and people that are managing other people that are so consumed by the job…that they don’t have to take care of themselves and they’re bankrupt in that area. You’re running this multimillion-dollar business, but if your body was a business, you’d be bankrupt.

Your body is a business and you need to manage it. You know how much money’s in your bank account, but you don’t really know the percentage of body fat you’re carrying. Most leaders and managers say they have no idea [about critical health components]. They squeeze in an annual checkup when they can, but they are not really paying attention to it.