Jan. 28, 2001, 11:59AM
TIPS FOR FEAR-FREE LIVING (SCROLL DOWN)
Former sportscaster turns defeat into a career
By DAVID KAPLAN
Copyright 2001 Houston Chronicle
Barry Warner has worked 25 Super Bowls, but today he
is nowhere near Tampa, Fla.
This Super Bowl Sunday he will be at Reliant Arena to
celebrate the Tet Festival, bringing in the Vietnamese
New Year while enjoying traditional music and dragon
dancing.
The man who earned the nickname "Sports
Mouth" on the AM dial will be with thousands of
Vietnamese-Americans. He'll pass out crisp $1 bills
tucked inside red envelopes, which like black-eyed peas
are said to bring good luck.
"It should be wonderful," Warner said a few
days ago. "It's our celebration. It's our new
year."
Our?
The outgoing Buffalo, N.Y., native doesn't have a
drop of Vietnamese blood in him, but he is all wrapped
up in his current enterprise, and he sometimes gets
carried away.
Warner is in his second year as president of Asian
Southwest Media, a company that connects Asian media to
the general market. He works frequently with Little
Saigon Radio, KREH 900 AM.
For decades, the Houston public knew Warner as a
brash sports talk-show host. He worked at seemingly
every radio station in town and a few TV stations. His
in-your-face style got him fired a few times, and for a
while he couldn't find steady work.
Some people might have been discouraged by all the
job changes and the loss of the celebrity spotlight, but
Warner is approaching his current livelihood with great
energy and passion. He is a man who keeps bouncing back.
"You never give up," Warner said. "The
most repulsive word in the dictionary next to `hate' is
`quit.' "
Warner's resilience is remarkable, said his friend
Barry Silverman, president of a marketing-management
firm. Silverman has seen Warner go "from job to job
to job to job."
"He's just constantly charging forward,"
Silverman said.
Warner has survived the downturns in his career by
drawing on reservoirs of persistence, resilience and
adaptability.
When things haven't gone well in his professional
life, he's used sports metaphors to explain his
predicament. He once told Silverman years ago:
"It's 21 to nothing in the fourth quarter, and my
quarterback just got hurt."
A few years ago, his quarterback was knocked out
cold.
Between 1992 and 1994, after KPRC Radio fired him,
Warner couldn't find a full-time job. He started to
wonder if to all the world he was just an unemployed
45-year-old loudmouth.
He recalled sending out 103 résumés and getting
four responses.
"You talk about ego deflation," he said.
"I got a tidal wave."
When he would run into executives he knew, he'd tell
them he needed a job. They'd invite him into their
office but would only want to talk about sports for 15
minutes before dismissing him with something like:
"You're a bright guy; you'll land on your
feet."
"It was a rough time, standing in line at the
Texas Employment Commission with people who have
listened to you for years," he said.
Soon after those dark days, he began selling on-air
advertising for KGOL, an AM radio station specializing
in international programming. That experience would give
him the idea of forming Asian Southwest Media.
Dr. Scott Sindelar, a business psychologist
based in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the author of Fear
Free Selling: How to Become Absolutely Fearless Selling
Anything; Products, Services, Even Yourself,
noted that resilient people are able to handle failure.
They don't take it personally and they learn from it, he
said.
"In sales, the two traits most predictive of
success are resilience and optimism, and both traits are
teachable," said Sindelar, who observed that
"actually, we're all in sales," no
matter what our line of work.
Sindelar said that, in sales, a person faces constant
rejection.
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Warner currently is selling Asian radio and print
advertising to general-market advertisers. He said his
previous life as a talk-show host gave him good
training.
While working years ago on the 10th floor of a
building overlooking the Katy Freeway, he recalled
"seeing thousands of cars going by, and not one of
them was calling me to talk about sports."
Warner is a fountain of energy. Ask him a simple
question, and you will probably get a long answer.
When asked his age, he replied: "Fifty-seven,
still playing hockey twice a week after 14 surgeries:
four backs, two necks, a nose, two shoulders, an elbow.
... "
Then he recalled the time he suffered a skydiving
injury.
From his Galleria-area office inside his condo,
Warner recently was making sales calls in a smooth,
booming radio voice that projects authority.
In any profession, it is important to market oneself,
said Sindelar, who noted that most people are afraid to
do that.
"The most successful people are able to sell
their selves, their character and ideas," he said.
Warner isn't shy about selling himself.
"You are sitting in the presence of one of the
nation's foremost Caucasian experts on the buying and
selling of goods and services to reach the Asian
community," he said.
Warner hasn't totally abandoned the bravado style
that used to get him in trouble. Reflecting on the
broadcasting career he left behind, he said: "I'd
rather do roofing work in 100-degree heat than talk to
some of the morons that call sports talk radio
shows."
Houston City Council member Gordon Quan said that
behind Warner's gruff exterior is a "heart is as
big as all outdoors. But his worst enemy is himself. He
can't keep his mouth shut sometimes."
Warner recalled the time he was banned for two weeks
from broadcasting Southwest Conference games because,
during a game between Arkansas and the University of
Houston aired on HSE, he disparaged the people of
Arkansas. The wife of a high-ranking Arkansas school
official overheard his comments.
"Who is that idiot?" she complained to HSE
executives.
Doug Harris, a marketing consultant who works with
Warner, said, "Unquestionably there are some
elements to his personality that will keep him from
being named `man of the year.' He can be abrasive and a
bit long-winded and very opinionated. His manner does
put some people off. "
Warner also is self-effacing. He joked about the
number of times he's been fired from radio. In Buffalo
in the mid-'60s, he worked at WYSL for broadcaster/owner
Gordon McLendon, who eventually let him go.
Warner returned to the station -- and someone else fired
him.
"After I shaved my beard, (McLendon) came up to
me and said: `You're a lot better than that hippie we
used to have who was always ripping Notre Dame.' "
He was referring, of course, to Warner, who would later
get a third pink slip from WYSL when it changed formats.
In the early 1990s, Harris worked with Warner at KLOL.
Warner was a fish out of water at the rock station and
"ruffled a lot of people's feathers," Harris
said. "But he'd bring in fresh bagels every morning
and always have a hearty smile on his face.
"Even if he got on your nerves, you had to
admire his perseverance."
Along with his work in radio, Warner has been a
stockbroker, wholesale floor-covering distributor, the
manager of the Lamar Tower condominiums, a research and
site selector for a local real estate developer, and a
part-time scout for the American and National Football
leagues.
Such adaptability is an asset, Sindelar said.
"The willingness to take risks is what stops a lot
of people dead in their tracks," he said.
"They're afraid to acquire new skills."
Sindelar said today's young professionals may change
their careers several times in their lifetimes.
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Even during his radio sports talk career, Warner
proved himself adaptable. From 1992 until 1996, he
worked part-time at the black radio station KCOH. He
called his show "Honky in the Hood."
Patrick Fant, former general manager of KLOL, offered
a theory on Warner's adaptability. "He's more
afraid of failure than of overcoming his
limitations," Fant said. "That's the sign of a
strong personality."
It was Fant who, after firing Warner from KLOL,
suggested he try sales.
Quan recalled what Warner said to him a few years
ago.
" `My calling in life is to see the Asian-
American community have a seat at the table.' It wasn't
a passing fancy," Quan said. "He's taken it
really seriously and continues to preach that."
Quan said Warner adds a spark to the local Asian
community. Asian people are typically modest, he
explained.
"We're so respectful," he said. "But
Barry comes in guns ablazing."
Warner's representation of the Asian community, Quan
said, "expands the way people look at us."
Warner said he admires the Vietnamese. His
professional survival is nothing compared to what
they've endured, he said.
Warner has served as a link between corporations and
the local Asian community to promote voter registration,
cultural heritage events, mentoring programs and
scholarships.
Vu Thanh Thuy, chief executive officer of Little
Saigon Radio, recalled working with Warner recently on a
promotion with the Houston Comets. It was before a game
at the Compaq Center, and several members of the station
were there.
Warner began talking to Thuy in his typically loud
voice.
The other staff members looked on in disbelief.
"Barry, don't talk to me in that tone of
voice," she told him.
"But this is how I always talk to you," he
said.
"But we've never been in public together,"
said Thuy, who explained to Warner that in Vietnam when
a person talks in a commanding voice, it means that he
or she is either a figure of authority or head of the
family.
Thuy said Warner thanked her for the lesson. The next
time they did a promotion in public together, Warner
barely spoke.
Warner has started a sports talk show on Little
Saigon Radio, but he is not the host. He trained two
young men to be the Sunday afternoon hosts: Alex Wu and
Luong Khanh, both natives of Vietnam.
Wu is a computer engineer and Khanh a pharmacist at
Methodist Hospital. Khanh often wears his lab coat while
working in the studio.
The main focus of the show is soccer, but they also
discuss local professional teams.
Along with Asian Southwest Media, Warner is busy with
other work. He does public relations for the Westside
Tennis Club, marketing and consulting work for Le, Ju
and Tran, a venture-capital group, and gives
motivational speeches and sales seminars to retailers.
Warner has met countless celebrities and has counted
among his friends the late Howard Cosell, Muhammad Ali,
Earl Campbell and Nolan Ryan. Many of the famous call
Warner by the nickname "Super."
Among other celebrities, the April 7 opening of Enron
Field lured then-Texas governor George W. Bush. The
stadium was teeming with national and local media,
Warner recalled. Out of nowhere, Bush yelled out to
Warner: "Hey, Super. They still let you in
here?"
In the late 1960s, Warner and Bush met over pickup
basketball at local YMCAs and became friendly. Later,
Warner would hang out with Bush poolside at the Houston
apartment complex the Chateau Dijon. Warner and the
future leader of the Free World played water volleyball
and enjoyed the single life in Houston.
Warner, who is divorced, noted that the late Alan
Shepard was the best man at his wedding.
He pulls a chain from his neck. The gold pendant says
"Apollo XIV," along with the Hebrew symbol for
life.
"Three guesses where that's been," he said.
To the moon.
Warner idolizes American astronauts. He also reveres
his mother and late father.
From his mother, Hilda, who lives in Houston, Warner
said he learned his people skills, vocabulary and
"whatever is good about me."
His father, Ed, was a Fuller Brush salesman in
Buffalo -- one of the best in the country, Warner said.
He learned from him that "every `no' is one step
closer to a `yes.' You never quit. You always make the
extra call."
As a boy, Barry Warner worked for the Fuller Brush
Co., delivering catalogs and merchandise to homes.
"Who's going to slam the door on an adorable
9-year-old all bundled up like Frosty the Snowman?"
he asked.
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Fear
Free Selling - How To Become Absolutely Fearless Selling
Anything: Products, Services, Even Yourself