Heath spent the first four days of the week traveling between Dallas, Atlanta, and St. Louis, but even as he met with clients and player personnel directors, he found himself thinking ahead to his Friday afternoon powwow at Stars headquarters. When it came to the Stars, he tried to do as much business as possible with Ron McDermitt, the team’s top-notch general manager, but once again Phoebe Calebow had insisted on seeing him instead. Not a good sign.

Heath prided himself on having a good relationship with all the team owners. Phoebe was the glaring exception. It was his fault they’d gotten off to a bad start. One of his first clients had been a Green Bay veteran unhappy with the contract his former agent had negotiated. Heath wanted to prove how tough he was, so when the Stars expressed interest in the guy, Heath had unfairly strung Phoebe along, letting her believe she had a good chance at signing him even though he knew otherwise. He’d then taken her interest in the player to the Packers’ bargaining table and used it to gain the leverage he needed to get his client a better deal. Phoebe was furious and, in a blistering phone call, warned him never to use her like that again.

Instead of taking her words to heart, he’d gotten into another battle with her a few months later over a second client, this one a Stars player. Heath had decided he needed to sweeten the third year of an existing three-year contract, again negotiated by a former agent, but Phoebe refused to budge. After a few weeks, Heath threatened to hold the player out of training camp. The guy was her best tight end, and since Heath had her over a barrel, she came through with a respectable counteroffer. Still, it wasn’t the splashy new deal Heath thought he needed to establish his reputation as an agent on the move. He dug in and sent the player deep-sea fishing the day training camp started.

Phoebe was enraged, and the media had a field day playing up the feud between the Stars’ tight-fisted owner and the city’s brash new agent. Heath capitalized on the player’s popularity with the fans by giving interviews at the drop of a hat and dramatically berating Phoebe for treating one of her best men so shabbily. As the first week of training camp came to end, Heath kept on showboating, staying cozy with the sports columnists and working the sound bites on the ten o’clock news. A back swell built against Phoebe. Still, she wouldn’t budge.

Just as he’d begun to have second thoughts about the wisdom of his strategy, a stroke of luck occurred. The Stars’ backup tight end broke his ankle in practice, and Phoebe was forced to cave. Heath got the extravagant deal he wanted, but in the process, he’d made her look bad, and she’d never forgiven him. The experiences taught him two hard lessons: In a good negotiation, everybody comes out feeling like a winner. And a successful agent doesn’t build his reputation by humiliating the people he has to work with.