Stein - Negotiate Like a CEO

This book will help you protect yourself in employment, or if you're an entrepreneur, in your relationship with the company you founded.

Why do you need protection?

Because people just like you get fired! Yes, just like you! They get fired all the time! It doesn't matter whether you are a regular employee, a manager, an executive, an entrepreneur, or the CEO, people just like you get fired for all sorts of reasons, both economically rational and irrational. Many get fired for legal reasons, but not always. Some get fired for doing a bad job. Others get fired because someone didnt like them, even though they were doing a great job. Still others get fired for financial, sexual or other wrongdoing.

Founders arent immune, not by a long stretch, or any stretch for that matter. Entrepreneurs are regularly forced out, squeezed out and fired from companies they birthed, sometimes to watch painfully from afar as others make millions, while they earn little.

Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Operating Officers, Chief Marketing Officers, and Executive Vice Presidents of World Wide Sales all regularly get fired. And everyone on down the corporate ladder, including you, can and do get fired and cheated out of money, stock, commissions, and much more.

If you think youre invulnerable, think again.

If you think it cant happen to you, dream on.

Sometimes the person doing the firing even stood up at the employee's, entrepreneurs or executives wedding. And if you think its only best men and groomsmen who do the deed, think again. Female employees, executives and entrepreneurs get cheated just like men do. In other words, bridesmaids stab just as badly, but not in as great numbers because women dont yet run corporate America.

The great thing about representing entrepreneurs and founders is they are always on the cutting edge. The cutting edge of their sliver of the world. One is the best in the world of computer chips. If he succeeds, his company will produce transformative chips that allow cars to drive more automatically, tractors to plow more efficiently, and planes to fly more safely. Another is the best when it comes to mobile internet games. The best mobile games are worth billions in revenue, literally.

Executives (who are not entrepreneurs) may not be creating or inventing in the same way, but to represent the finest executives is to learn from the best. One is the best in the world of managing billion-dollar organizations within multibillion-dollar companies. If she succeeds, her company grows and grows and grows. Another is the best when it comes to running elite sales teams. When he succeeds, his companys stock price goes up and up.

Representing entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and around the country, Ive been blessed with meeting so many on the cutting edge of so many different fields. Medical devices, internet security, computer chips, games, pharmaceuticals, retail, shipping, banking, surgery, software, internet marketing, server farms, finance, the list goes on and on. Constantly surrounded by people who are the best at what they do means learning something new almost every day. Its like an extended college education.

Make no mistake, though. Because entrepreneurs or executives are the best at what they do doesnt mean anything other than that. He may be the best at medical devices, but a terrible friend, father and lover, and crooked to the core. She may be the best at internet security, but the least empathetic, least sympathetic, and biggest liar you have ever met. And it certainly doesnt mean they are good at soccer or swimming or chess or investing or anything other than what their specialty is.

It also doesnt mean the best entrepreneurs and executives know how to negotiate their own employment agreements, nor how to protect themselves in employment, nor the arena of employment negotiations. They may even be failures at company politics.

Just because they got kudos their whole lives at whatever they did, doesnt mean they will survive a layoff or avoid being cheated out of lots of money. Ive known multiple CEOs to suffer losses at the hands of fast-talking stockbrokers.