The Trick Is Not Minding That It Hurts

What nobody tells you about power, money, and winning in business

There is a moment most executives recognize but rarely talk about. You’re sitting in a meeting where the language is polite, the slide deck is professional, and everyone in the room knows someone is about to get destroyed. The budget. The team. The product. The career.

They call it a strategic review. What it actually is? A knife fight with better lighting.

Business isn't fair. Meritocracy is largely a fiction. The people who talk like sages are usually improvising behind the scenes, and the gap between the official version of how companies work and what actually happens inside them is exactly where careers are built—or quietly ended.

The Trick Is Not Minding That It Hurts is the book that lives in that gap. It is a blunt, unsentimental field guide to how the system actually works and how to survive it without losing your sanity.

After two decades inside the world’s most competitive environments—including senior leadership roles at Facebook, Alibaba, and Expedia, followed by years in the private equity trenches—Lee McCabe has seen how power is built, how decisions are really made, and why the "official story" is often the most dangerous one to believe.

If you are ready to stop being naive and start navigating the real world of business, this is your guide.