Did your pre-nuptial agreement have a non-compete clause? Have you seriously considered naming your children "Standard" and "Poors?" No matter how busy you get, do you still find time to ignore the people you love most? If you answered "yes" to (or even laughed knowingly at) any of these questions, you may have that not-so-rare condition called "CEO Dad-ism." Left unchecked, this syndrome can result in permanent "CEO Dad-itude" and leave you blissfully unaware of how much your loving family may actually be taking steps to downsize your sorry butt.
Of course, the odyssey of CEO DAD, the protagonist of my new book and subject of my syndicated comic strip, is writ very, very large. He treats his family like a corporation and so must suffer the debilitating ordeal of being a lab rat for pseudo-science, a desperate near-criminal, and, finally, getting fired by his family on national television.
How does CEO DAD make it through the pain and become a better person? By, I hope, making you laugh all the way to work-life balance. In reality, it took some extremely painful and even life-threatening moments for me, Tom Stern, to wake up to how I had gotten my priorities all wrong. The fact that I can laugh at it now is a gift, and one that I take great pleasure in sharing with you, my readers, whose inner CEO DAD will no doubt relate to, laugh at, and learn from the fictional creation in this book.
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