Most people have a lesson or two — pithy, easily remembered — they associate with their parents.
Rich Cohen’s dad, Herbie, has enough lessons to fill a book.
“If you’re conned into believing you’re free, escape is not an option.”
“Only dead salmon go with the flow.”
“Caring but not T-H-A-T much is the middle ground between clinging to it and winging it.”
“Power is based on perception, if you think you got it, you got it. If you don’t, you don’t.”
All these quotes appear in Rich’s delightful new book, “Adventures with Herbie Cohen: World’s Greatest Negotiator” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Most of Herbie’s bon mots are brief, funny, but also shockingly wise. “My dad is like Mel Brooks crossed with the Dalai Lama,” says Rich.
Herbie, 89, is the author of the 1980s business bestseller “You Can Negotiate Anything,” a publishing phenomenon that takes its place next to classics like “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. He made a successful career as a “guru of the corporate retreat…the wise man helicoptered in to settle the strike.”
He once resolved an MLB strike and a police strike in New Orleans in the same year.
President Jimmy Carter called on Herbie during the Iran hostage negotiations, as did President Ronald Reagan during the Gorbachev summits. Some have said that Herbie first coined the phrase “win-win.”
And he learned it all growing up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
“A lot of how you are has to do with the landscape you grow up in. He grew up in this neighborhood where there was constant interaction with old people, young people, everyone,” says Rich, 53. “He’d say, ‘That price was not put there by God.’ His point was that a [store] price is just as arbitrary as a thing at a yard sale.”
So after learning from the master, is Rich good at negotiating?
“No, I’m terrible at it!” he admits with a laugh. “I was always too embarrassed. If your father is a pro football player, you probably don’t want to play football unless you’re great.”