Jeff B. Cohen - The Dealmakers Ten Commandments: Ten Essential Tools for Business Forged in the Trenches of Hollywood

Ten Essential Tools for Business Forged in the Trenches of Hollywood

Mentors, advisors, consultants, instructors: Who wants to spend time with someone whos a drag? Which is why I was so relieved when Jeff Cohen wrote a book. A guy I knew as fast on his feet, fun, smart and engaging had decided to pass along some of what hes learned in the Hollywood trenches from being a young actor to a top attorney and savvy dealmaker. I knew it wouldnt be a dreary dry tome, and thankfully, its just the opposite.

Jeff understands the entertainment business rules of the road, but hes also wise to all of the rule bending and breaking that industrys regularly practice and often without breaking a sweat. Jeff gets a kick out of much of it, which makes absorbing some of tougher lessons of The Town perhaps less bitter and depression-inducing.

But Jeffs book would really just be a time-burner if it was only about the tenor and tone of all the zigging and zagging that occurs among the frantic herds of nervous successes and the desperate wannabes. The Jeff Ive encountered around the biz and through working on Variety s Ten to Watch series of upcoming career profiles is extremely passionate about constantly rejuvenating our business with new creatives and execs. Advice-giving isnt a gig to sell books; its part of Jeffs life mission, and hes energetically and resourcefully committed to it.

There is a common thread between Jeffs busy law office, his extremely proactive and creative dealmaking and his commitment to not just assisting and educating the next generation but also serving as priest, rabbi and legal eagle to the timeless dreamers and salty pros who have no age. He generously shares a lot of brainstorming time because he knows great stories, projects and profits come from all corners of the biz.

Jeff is like you. He wants to make it happen.

Like some of you, Jeff does make it happen. A lot.

Like some others of you, Jeff knows what its like when theres not enough happening.

Hes been there.

He learned his lessons young, and if you havent walked a mile in the Ralph Lauren moccasins of a washed-up teen star, you wont know what thats like.

Lucky for Jeff, he learned from his burns early, and by the time he was in his 20s, he could afford a Beverly Hills doctor to heal the scars. If youre facing your own career cul-de-sac and its nowhere youd want to point to on Blockshopper, Jeff wants to share information that might provide a roadmap out. And up.

So maybe Jeff Cohen is a little of all of the professions I mentioned at the beginning of this, and just one more: coach. And certainly a positive, engaged and uplifting one.

Entertainment is a complex, often frustrating but always challenging industry.

Its challenging to gross a billion dollars, and its challenging to pay the rent.

Its hell on fragile egos, and its depleted more trust funds than Charles Schwabs seen in his dreams.

Its a challenge to navigate, yet some who are sharp-witted and strong-willed not only manage to do just that but they also manage another neat trick: they endure. If we still had a Greyhound Bus Terminal on the West Side, thats where Id send the faint of heart and soft of tush.

If you want to compete, at any level, whether its down in the streets or up in the suites, youve got to train your brain and steel your nerves for the long-distance course.

The Dealmakers Ten Commandments puts you in the locker room with a pretty damn good coach: Jeff Cohen.

Steven Gaydos

Vice President, Executive Editor

VARIETY

This book is about being great. This book is not about being good. They are two distinct ideas. If you want to be good, there are other books for that.

This book is a tool kit. Its a weapons cache to help you fight your way through brutal economic warfare, emerge victorious and claim your piece of the pie. It is not my aim to show you what a nice guy I am or how much I love puppies. It is my aim to provide you with real-world tactics, strategies and guiding principles to help you achieve your professional and economic goals. Its dark business created in the white hot crucible of ceaseless transactional combat.

Fire can keep you warm or it can burn down your house. Likewise, The Dealmakers Ten Commandments can help you create a terrific professional life or a horrific personal life. The principles in this book have been developed for dealing with enemies, competitors, bosses and subordinates. They are wholly inappropriate for dealing with lovers, friends, family and puppies for that matter.

You have been warned.

We are all dealmakers. Its in our DNA. Its part and parcel of being a human being. Ducks swim, tigers pounce, people barter. No wonder our professional lives are overflowing with transactions. We make deals with superiors, with subordinates, with customers, with suppliers, with collaborators and competitors.

The Dealmakers Ten Commandments provides a practical, no-nonsense methodology for negotiating deals, managing your time and handling crisis all at the highest level. This book consists of ten commandments, ten questions for self-mastery, ten tips and a healthy sprinkling of quotations.

THE DEALMAKERS COMMANDMENTS

The Ten Commandments were not a suggestion.

Pat Riley

The Dealmakers Commandments are the intellectual foundation upon which deals are made and business is conducted. Within them exists nuances and stratagems, but the commandments are the laws of physics that govern how everything interacts. Disregard them at your peril.

QUESTIONS FOR SELF-MASTERY

It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.

Sir Francis Bacon

In law school, professors terrify their pupils by utilizing the Socratic method. Instead of answering questions, they randomly call on students and ask them questions about various court cases. Its not only effective but also quite entertaining. Watching your classmates squirm is hilarious. Getting called on and being the one squirming is less hilarious. Regardless of the entertainment quotient, Socrates instructed Plato who instructed Aristotle who instructed Alexander the Great, so its hard to argue with the results.

Socrates believed that [t]he unexamined life is not worth living. The big idea being that self-knowledge obtained by thoughtfully answering questions is the path to true wisdom. Through rigorous self-examination, we exercise the muscles of critical thinking and introspection instead of robotically regurgitating facts and figures. It is not easy, nor is it supposed to be. A number of philosophers have argued that truly knowing yourself is the most difficult thing a human being can do. I strongly suggest that you take the time to look within, contemplate and answer the ten Questions for Self-Mastery posed throughout the book. The objective is to transcend the mere acquisition of knowledge and gain wisdom. Phones can be smart; only people can be wise.

TIPS

If you dont know what tips are, you should buy a different book.

QUOTATIONS

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.

Isaac DIsraeli

Quotes, quotes, quotes! Perhaps I love quotes so much because I both hunger for the wisdom of the wise and have a really short attention span. Speaking of quotes, heres one from Pablo Picasso: Good artists copy, great artists steal. In constructing the Dealmakers Commandments, I have stolen ideas from some of the best: Nietzsche, Lincoln, Bonaparte, Shelley and many others. The philosophy expounded in this book is an amalgam of the knowledge I have snatched from a diverse collection of intellects combined with my real-world experiences as a dealmaker. Quotation is no substitute for critical thinking and introspection, but why not use the experience of ages to speed us along the way?