Elliott Kerr won't be mistaken for Tom Cruise any time soon. For one thing, the founder and president of Mississauga-based Landmark Sport Group Inc. is at least a foot taller and a decade older than the movie star.

For another, Kerr isn't just a fictional sports marketing agent like Cruise's character in the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire. He's the real deal, wheeling and dealing on behalf of more than three dozen clients ranging from top professional and Olympic athletes to star sports broadcasters.

Among the clients for whom Kerr conjures up plum employment contracts, endorsement deals, speaking engagements and corporate sponsorships are Olympians Catriona Le May Doan and Silken Laumann, former boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter - all of whom are now motivational speakers - Cindy Klassen, Daniel Igali, Karen Furneaux and Ian Miller. His stable of professional athletes includes Dawn Coe-Jones, David Hearn, Rob McMillan and Adam Short.

High-profile sports broadcasters Kerr represents include Rod Black, Bob Cole, Chris Cuthbert, Barbara Underhill, Michael Lansbury, Paul Martini, Debbi Wilkes, Bill Watters and Daren Millard.

Ken Kerr, Business Edge
Landmark boss Elliott Kerr represents the full spectrum of professional and Olympic athletes.

Now at the top of his game, a surprisingly relaxed-looking Kerr recently took time out of a frantic schedule to sketch out how he acquired the reputation of being Canada's Jerry Maguire. It happened to be a day when headlines were trumpeting his latest David-trounces-Goliath victory on behalf of a client.

This time out, CBC had played the dastardly giant, abruptly cancelling a long-term contract Kerr had negotiated for veteran sports broadcaster Chris Cuthbert. Tough break? Not after Kerr promptly persuaded TSN and CTV to show him the money they were just panting to offer Cuthbert.

Although Cuthbert declines to confirm or deny media rumours to the effect that his new annual salary exceeds the $350,000 CBC paid him, he's eager to praise his agent. "He's first-rate down the line. He took my pay structure to a whole different level when I first hired him about eight years ago. And throughout my ordeal (after being fired), he gave me every impression that I was his only client."

That sentiment is echoed by another of Kerr's clients, champion speedskater Catriona Le May Doan. "Elliott has a lot of passion for what he believes in. I know he's a great negotiator and I trust him completely to take care of my stuff. But the biggest thing is that (his clients) are real people to him with real lives. He was excited when I told him I was pregnant and now that my daughter is 11 months old, he's very interested in how she's doing."

Both clients' comments corroborate Kerr's professional philosophy that, come to think of it, exactly mirrors the ideals it took Jerry Maguire a whole movie to arrive at. "We're not in this to just make as much money as we can," he explains. "Yes, you have to grow your business, but what it's really about is what's best for our people, even if a classic business model would say that's not the most financially efficient thing for us to do as a company."

But we're getting ahead of the story. Kerr says what would eventually lead to grossing more than $3 million a year at the helm of Landmark began with the good-guys-finish-first ideals instilled by his parents while he was growing up, mostly in St. Catharines.

With encouragement primarily from his mother Joyce, who was an avid athlete, young Elliott devoted himself to a variety of sports. His dream was to be a professional hockey player. But when he realized he "wasn't ever going to be good enough," he hit the books instead, acquiring an MBA and landing a job in sales at the head office of the Ford Motor Co.

It wasn't enough. What he really wanted was to somehow incorporate sports into his professional life. So Kerr pursued and pestered the suits at top international sports and marketing agency IMG for a solid two years until they found a spot for him. Over the next four years, he impressed his bosses so much that they wanted to appoint him head of North American sales and move him to Cleveland.

Kerr said no. And then - again à la Jerry Maguire, albeit without actually being fired - he set out to build his own sports marketing agency from scratch. The sum total of his assets: $8,000 in cashed-in Canada Savings Bonds, a bit more in savings and some credit cards, which were soon maxed out. Kerr operated out of his apartment for the first six months and concealed that fact by employing an answering service and scheduling client meetings elsewhere.

After weeks of fruitless slogging, he landed his first client in 1987, star Toronto Blue Jay Jesse Barfield, who was in high demand after hitting 40 home runs that season. Little by little Kerr signed up more clients, including corporations, such as Toshiba Canada, for which he arranged sports sponsorships.

What made Kerr's survival possible in Landmark's early days - and what he says he "couldn't have made it without" - was the support of his mother, who acted as his secretary in the evenings on top of her own full-time job. So instrumental was she in her son's life and success that he says her death three years ago devastated him to the extent that he dropped out of his own agency for two months.

After re-evaluating "where I wanted to go from there," the never-married Kerr says he bounced back by giving back. By that time, he had moved his office from downtown Toronto to Mississauga, mostly to subtract commuting time to and from his home in Port Credit.

That's when he noticed that, despite being Canada's sixth-largest city, Mississauga didn't have its own annual marathon. Voila, after conferring with feisty Mayor Hazel McCallion and doing two solid years of preparation, he launched the first annual Mississauga Marathon last year.

Kerr being Kerr, it just naturally turned out to be the biggest first-year marathon in Canada, with all proceeds going to the Credit Valley Hospital Foundation.

What hasn't Kerr done yet that he's still dreaming about? "I would love to own an NHL franchise.”

Why?

"Well, I know it would be an enormous stretch," he muses. "But many of the things I've accomplished in my life, I was told I couldn't do."

Any other reason for wanting to put on a big-league hockey boss's hat?

"Combining my passion for sports with what I've learned on the business side of it," says Kerr, "I'm convinced I could bring leadership and business savvy to a sport that's not always been conducted like that."

Does that mean he's just itching for a chance to use his legendary negotiating skills to solve the NHL stalemate that robbed hockey fans of the past season's games and playoffs?

Uncharacteristically, Kerr dodges a direct answer. What he does say is a nutshell description of his own modus operandi.

"I'm worried about how the current leadership on both sides can get the deal done so we don't see another cancelled season. Somebody needs to back down, or step up, so they can start the new season fresh and then get serious about rekindling loyalty among a lot of unhappy hockey fans."

Unconsciously slipping into the plural pronoun that punctuates all his statements about his own clients, Kerr says: "We can't buy back that loyalty. We're going to have to earn the fans' respect again and that will take some doing."

(Terry Poulton can be reached at poulton@businessedge.ca)