Greener pastures
Gradually the charm of making entrances through supper club kitchens lost its luster, and Sarnoff sought greener pastures. But what would be the perfect career for such a woman?
According to Sarnoff, it was buddy Bess Myerson who over lunch offered the advice that proved to be the clincher: ”Think of the sum total of your life experience that you can use to help other people, and then let a still, small voice direct you.”
The still, small voice made itself heard when the head of a Manhattan law firm saw Sarnoff address a City Opera fundraising function and asked her to whip his associates into better speaking shape. Sarnoff`s efforts were met with such enthusiasm that she decided to get into the consulting business.
But first, she decided, she needed a television camera. While a common practice now, no one used TV cameras to coach public speakers in those days, Sarnoff says, which makes her something of a pioneer.
As a child she had been mesmerized by the dramatic before-and-after films her plastic-surgeon father had collected over the years for medical students; she knew firsthand what an impact such visual evidence of change can have.
She enlisted a retired NBC cameraman and a camera, rented a salon at the St. Moritz Hotel and took a small ad in the New York Times. ”That`s the only ad I`ve taken in the history of this company,” Sarnoff says proudly.
From then on, word of mouth brought her all the clients she could handle, helped along by several magazine articles, her own television appearances and the success of her first book, ”Speech Can Change Your Life” (Doubleday, 1970), now in its 16th printing.
Since then she has written two other popular self-help books: ”Make the Most of Your Best” (Doubleday, 1981) and ”Never Be Nervous Again” (Crown, 1987).
After an article on Sarnoff appeared in Esquire in 1974, Ogilvy & Mather, a heavyweight ad agency, sent two of its people for a Sarnoff overhaul. Their presentations were so markedly improved, the chairman of the board said, ”Go back and see if you can buy her.”
Apparently they made an offer she couldn`t refuse; today Speech Dynamics Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ogilvy & Mather International.
Over the last two decades she persuaded has Menachem Begin to do away with his ”sinister-looking” black eyeglasses, suggested that Jimmy Carter tone down his insipid grin and talked Pat Schroeder into wearing earrings for the first time in her life.
She revamped Nastassja Kinski after she had bombed on David Letterman`s show, and was the first to inform William Casey, the late CIA director, that he had sweaty palms and dandruff.
Leslie Stahl`s mom
Even Leslie Stahl`s mother sent her to Sarnoff. Whereupon Sarnoff convinced the broadcast-journalist-on-her-way-up that CBS would take her seriously without the dowdy glasses. (Sarnoff doesn`t like glasses.)
”Sure enough,” the communications queen exclaims, ”she got the job.”
And just look at Stahl now.
These days Sarnoff has her own impressive before-and-after videos of star pupils.
”I use my camera the way my father used his scalpel,” she says. ”In a way, I`m like an artist at a canvas. I do something with a client, back away and take a look at it, do a little more. It`s enhancing what the person is, what they can do.”
Ogilvy & Mather may be in on the act now, but Sarnoff still runs the show, aided by Margot Cosslett, her composed assistant of many years. Since 1967 the Speech Dynamics operation has been housed in Manhattan`s venerable Steinway building on 57th Street, across from Carnegie Hall.
”The (office) walls are vanilla, and all the carpet is in the happiest color of red you can imagine,” Sarnoff says. ”It`s warm; it`s like an embrace.”
Even the lighting is happy.
”We`ve used absolutely no fluorescent lights,” she proclaims. ”They`re such an enemy to the spirit, especially for women. They did an experiment once keeping rats under fluorescent lights, and the rats lost their minds.”
All this warm, fuzzy nurturing and expert advice doesn`t come cheap, though. Enrollment in a two-day group seminar runs $850. Four hours of one-on- one coaching by Sarnoff costs $2,400, and six hours will set you back $3,600. A two-day corporate seminar carries a price tag of $12,500.
”We work quickly,” Sarnoff says. ”And while I`ve always offered a money-back guarantee if a client is not fully satisfied, no one`s ever taken me up on it.”
When clients go to Dorothy Sarnoff, they immediately are faced with the objective eye of her trusty TV camera and asked to give it their best shot. Often Sarnoff will fire off questions, acting as the interviewer probing for the guest`s Achilles heel. When the lights go back down, Sarnoff segues into a chat about public speakers the client admires, and leads the person through an analysis of what makes the great communicators so effective.
”OK, think about Martin Luther King,” she`ll say. ”Look at his eyes-can you focus on his eyes now? What do you get? What kind of vibes do they give out?”
Comes the playback
Having shifted the client`s attention onto other speakers-”It`s a matter of timing,” she says-Sarnoff does ”the playback.” The idea is to get the person to watch the tape performance as one might that of a total stranger.
”You`re the first to comment on yourself,” she says. ”And when we comment, we do it lovingly. Then you decide which behaviors you will change. And what changes you`ll make in your dress or your hair or your makeup. A lot of people have to change their hair.”
Jack Avrett, chairman, founder and CEO of the Manhattan ad agency Avrett, Free & Ginsberg, has been to Sarnoff three times to date.
”Dorothy gave me a terrific feeling of confidence,” he raves. ”She`s a wonderful audience, so you want to perform for her. She smiles and applauds and laughs, and then she shows you what you did wrong and tells you how to fix it. You feel like she`s on your side.”
Sarnoff excised Avrett`s stutter and encouraged him to smile more, among other things.
”The tape made me realize that I was frowning a lot because I was in such pain trying to deliver this speech,” he says. ”She changed my whole attitude about getting up and expressing myself in public.”
Sarnoff has been known to whip off her own scarf or ever-present tasteful earrings to demonstrate to some misguided soul what a difference the right accessories can make.
Alexandra Penney, editor-in-chief of Self magazine, first went to see Sarnoff in 1981 when she had to go on television to talk about her book, ”How To Make Love to a Man.”
She recalls her initial playback with amusement: ”I had worn a pale beige blouse that I thought was pretty spiffy, very fashionable. But when I looked at my tape I was aghast. I couldn`t believe how bad I was.”
The beige blouse and bare face made her look washed-out and pasty, and the laid-back posture she thought was cool and controlled came across as droopy.
”Dorothy mothers you, gives you a sense of who you are,” Penney says.
”She`ll say, `Sit up straight, cross your legs,` things your grandmother told you. Then she props those up with psychological short takes like, `You have these fabulous attributes, you have energy-so instead of sitting back, be yourself, be energetic, enjoy yourself.`
”She suggested I go with very bright colors and some kind of interest at the neck, and that I wear more pronounced makeup. Which I didn`t like because I don`t like bright colors and I`m ill at ease with much makeup. But when I saw what a difference it made on television, I certainly went with it. She makes you feel better about yourself, and you adore her for it.”
Clearly, Sarnoff is a firm believer in control. Control of her environment. Of the way she comes across to people. Of an interview.
What she is willing to discuss regarding her personal life can be summed up thus: When she`s not jetting off to Europe or to Washington (she has consulted to the State Department over the last five administrations), she maintains a dizzying pace that includes an active social life and lots of golf with her husband of 33 years, Milton Raymond, a financial consultant with Shearson Lehman Hutton, whom she adores and who adores her back.
”I devote my life to my husband,” she says.
Does she have any children?
”No, I`ve been very involved with my career.” Subject closed.
She claims no political affiliation, aligns with no organized religion and under no circumstances will reveal her age:
”It`s so limiting, don`t you think? Have you ever known anyone who would volunteer her birthdate?”
That the answer to that rhetorical question is ”Yes” somehow seems irrelevant. (For the curious, official sources don`t agree exactly, but place her in her early 70s.)
Sarnoff will reveal her astrological sign, though. She`s a Gemini, the sign of the twins.
”I think I am at least two people,” she says matter-of-factly. ”And maybe two isn`t enough-I seem to have a lot of talents. I just happen to have been born with them.”
Oh, would that this irrepressible sense of self could be marketed by direct mail, or perhaps found on the shelf at K mart where we could buy it and then stow it away for some moment when our image needs a shot in the arm.
Does Dorothy Sarnoff ever have a bad day? Ever get up on the wrong side of the bed? Ever entertain the teensiest bit of negative energy? Apparently not.
The day Sarnoff has a crisis of confidence, one suspects, is the day the rest of us might as well pack up our note cards and lecterns and go home.
