It is noon on a Thursday afternoon and Brett Yormark is on the run. It is the off-season for the New Jersey Nets, but their chief executive officer is running from meeting to meeting Ð heading out of one to rush back in his office in an industrial complex in East Rutherford for a call. His schedule is filled from morning until night. And when we say morning, we mean really early in the morning.

"Yeah, my alarm hits very early," Yormark says matter-of-factly. "I was working out by 4:30. I had my first meeting with one of my sales guys by 6:30. I did pop out for an hour to take my kids to school and then came back. I start early, but that's OK. I've always done it. My body is accustomed to it.

"I think it's this way for anyone in our business, now more so than ever. It's always been a 24-7 deal, but now it truly it is. I took a long weekend recently and it was a great time for me to do my strategic thinking. I take a step back. I was on the Blackberry and I'm making conference calls. But it's 24-7. You've got to be this way. It's the world we live in."

The world that Yormark lives in is marketing and he has one of the more difficult marketing tasks right now. He must sell the New Jersey Nets -- a team that has seemed a difficult sale throughout its history and now has the added burden of trying to draw fans while openly letting those fans know that the team will ditch them as soon as it gets the go-ahead to break ground for a move to Brooklyn.

If it seems as if he enjoys this challenge, it is hard to tell if that is the salesman in him or that he was born for this task. At 42, the former Franklin Lakes resident who now lives in Clifton, is the youngest CEO in the National Basketball Association Ð and his twin brother, Michael, is the COO and president of the Florida Panthers of the National Hockey League.

Brett Yormark actually started with the Nets in 1988 selling tickets, left and came back in the mid-1990s as a senior vice president of sales. He left again to work for NASCAR, helping turn that from a southern sport into a national craze, and signed back on with the Nets in 2005.

He came at the end of a golden era in franchise history on the court, but for the last two seasons they have missed the playoffs. They have dealt away almost every piece from those playoff runs, including the future Hall-of-Famer Jason Kidd, who was the face of the franchise. Add in the Brooklyn saga and you have a marketing-school sample of everything that could go wrong.

"Listen, I could feel sorry for myself," Yormark says. "I mean, we have probably one of the most antiquated arenas. We've been delayed for Brooklyn. We haven't made the playoffs for two years in a row. We exist in a market where there are all new arenas now and you've got legacy teams.

"But I don't look at it that way. I could, but I don't. I look at it like, what do we have? What are our advantages? What are our points of difference in the marketplaces? And we go out there and try to exploit those and try to get people to buy us. A guy like me, I probably wouldn't enjoy working for a legacy team or one that has a great tradition. I'm not saying they're order takers, because no one's an order-taker today. Look at Yankee Stadium -- they're having problems selling tickets and it's the first time they're out there aggressively selling tickets in years. But I like challenges. I like to overcome challenges."

Spheres of influence

For Yormark and the Nets, John Klein of Alpine would seem to be a perfect test case. He is a season-ticket holder. A season-ticket holder with four floor seats. Four seats on the floor. Next to the bench and next to part-owner Jay-Z.

He is a dedicated fan with two sons and a wife who are on board as huge supporters of the franchise. He has hosted influencers -- parties that Yormark created which bring Nets players, coaches and executives to meet and greet with friends of the season-ticket holder, potential ticket buyers themselves.

But if he is a dedicated fan in New Jersey, converting him to a Brooklyn Nets fan might be a much larger task.

"We have not decided," Klein admits. "I'm waiting to see the product. I'm disappointed they're moving. New Jersey, in my opinion, could be a great fan venue. The Giants and Jets fill the stadium. I think the Devils set a record at the Rock. I know New Jersey people follow their teams.

"Now you're going to go to Brooklyn. I don't know what'll happen. My opinion, as a franchise, it's too close to the Knicks. They will have to develop a fan base. That'll take a while."

As a businessman he sees troubles, too, on building the new and expensive arena in Brooklyn without a built-in fan base to cover the costs.

"Spending that much on an arena, the Nets will have to have a pretty extreme ticket price to cover that expense," Klein says. "Without a product to cover that, there is a possibility that they will struggle. The one thing I'll give Brett credit for, he's very unique to come up with ideas. He's one of the top guys in doing that. I think he'll be challenged in Brooklyn if they don't have a product that's a contender. Brett is very clever when it comes to these programs, but I think this will be one of his biggest challenges because he may lose a big part of the fan base here and have to recreate it with Brooklyn and Manhattan."

Unless LeBron James is waiting as a member of the Nets to cut the ribbon on the new arena, when -- if -- they arrive in Brooklyn, that dilemma seems bound to grow even more troublesome for fans of lesser means.

Relationship marketing

Yormark is well aware of the perception and he has worked hard and creatively. He has created a slew of programs to draw interest to the Nets and keep them relevant. With jobs in jeopardy, he created the Nets Employment Program, encouraging fans to send their resumes and, in return, receive free tickets, as well as having their resumes sent on to the team's 120 corporate sponsors. Season-ticket holders who lose their job before next season are eligible for a full refund on their tickets.

When gas prices spiraled, he offered free gas cards to fans who bought season tickets. He has promoted the influencer parties and created a tournament in which corporations competed for a chance to win free sponsorship and tickets Ð as well as playing a game at the Izod Center.

He has grown sponsorship exponentially -- including getting sponsors for things that are like air -- sponsoring the offseason or a playoff series that never came. And he has managed to hang on to a semblance of a fan base in New Jersey. Even in these economic times, the Nets early offseason sales were up 22 percent over last year.

"We said to our fans in New Jersey, 'You know what? We're going to investment spend as if we're staying for 20 years,'" Yormark says. "The entertainment is going to be the best it's ever been. We've done that. Our game operations are better than they've ever been.

"What I've said to them is, 'don't vote with your wallet yet regarding Brooklyn.' Now, in a market like this I can do that. Most people don't know what they're doing next month or next year versus three years from now. Enjoy the Nets experience as long as we're here and when we move then you'll vote with your wallet whether you want to follow us or not. Being very open and honest has been a key to our success Ð and we have truly marketed this thing like we're staying for 20 years. We have not marketed as if we're a lame duck team that's leaving."

Yormark is busy on this day and another meeting is waiting. But even as the interview creeps past its scheduled time, he is willing to take another question, to sell another ticket.
"I constantly bet on myself," he says. "That's what we do here. The leaders of this organization, we have the autonomy to bet on ourselves and have the freedom to go out there and see if something's going to work.

"So I've always worked in challenging situations because I look at myself as a bit of a game-changer. I like to go in and I like to make a difference. That's what I do. And, if I couldn't make a difference because a team had already hit its peak, I don't know if I'd be satisfied. I come in every day. I'm energized. I look forward to creating value. I enjoy it."