LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — When J.B. Bernstein was eight years old, he received a fortune cookie with this message tucked inside: “The greatest pleasure in life is doing something people say can’t be done.”
Bernstein is the sports agent whose experiences were the basis for the 2014 Disney movie, Million Dollar Arm. That cookie fortune still hangs in his office as a reminder that working hard to achieve a dream can change life for the better. That certainly has been the case with Bernstein, who delivered the PestWorld 2014 keynote address on Oct. 21.
Sports agent J.B. Bernstein, inspiration for Disney’s Million Dollar Arm, spoke about perseverance in his keynote presentation.
The idea behind the movie is to follow and realize one’s dreams, but the story behind the story includes hard-learned lessons from which business owners can benefit.
As a successful sports agent, Bernstein knows a thing or two about business. He explained the three basics of good business — creativity, passion and overcoming adversity.
“Everyone in this room has failed because anyone who has ever accomplished anything has failed,” Bernstein said. “To be successful, you have to keep trying and overcome the obstacles that get in your way.”
In 2008, it occurred to Bernstein he could create another Yao Ming, the pro basketball player from China who generated more than $1 billion, of which his agent received more than $100 million.
“The eureka moment came courtesy of an ESPN international cricket broadcast,” Bernstein said. “Cricket is similar to baseball.”
No one was scouting cricket players in India, where the sport is widely played, so Bernstein borrowed the American Idol method of finding prospective baseball players there with a competitive Indian television reality show also called Million Dollar Arm.
“It wasn’t one of those why-didn’t-I-think-of-that ideas,” he said.
Bernstein met with 15 different professional baseball team owners who shot down his plan for finding new talent. He was undeterred, however, and fortunately the owner of the San Francisco Giants gave him the support he needed.
Determined to make it possible for the first Indian-born men to sign professional baseball contracts, competition was soon underway. Bernstein scouted 38,000 kids the first year, including 30 who had never played baseball but could throw the ball faster than 87 miles an hour.
Poverty was an obstacle not easily overcome, he said. “The two guys who ultimately won the contest were not going to come because they were going to win $100 in a javelin contest instead,” Bernstein said. Plus, three winners were named, but only two could come because one of them couldn’t leave the country because he couldn’t afford it.
Bernstein brought Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel to America to teach them about baseball, which they knew nothing about, and the American way, which they promptly embraced. Seven months after coming to America, Singh and Patel signed contracts with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Bernstein admits outside-the-box thinking led to Million Dollar Arm — a dream that would’ve died had he not been passionate about it. To make it happen, he overcame adversity.
“I don’t hear no,” he said. “There’s a yes in everyone.”
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