Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time - Hardcover

Ferrazzi, Keith; Raz, Tahl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385512058 ISBN 13: 9780385512053

Publisher: Crown Business, 2005

Do you want to get ahead in life?

Climb the ladder to personal success?

The secret, master networker Keith Ferrazzi claims, is in reaching out to other people. As Ferrazzi discovered early in life, what distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships—so that everyone wins.

In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps—and inner mindset—he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on his Rolodex, people he has helped and who have helped him.

The son of a small-town steelworker and a cleaning lady, Ferrazzi first used his remarkable ability to connect with others to pave the way to a scholarship at Yale, a Harvard MBA, and several top executive posts. Not yet out of his thirties, he developed a network of relationships that stretched from Washington’s corridors of power to Hollywood’s A-list, leading to him being named one of Crain’s 40 Under 40 and selected as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the Davos World Economic Forum.

Ferrazzi's form of connecting to the world around him is based on generosity, helping friends connect with other friends. Ferrazzi distinguishes genuine relationship-building from the crude, desperate glad-handling usually associated with “networking.” He then distills his system of reaching out to people into practical, proven principles. Among them:

Don’t keep score: It’s never simply about getting what you want. It’s about getting what you want and making sure that the people who are important to you get what they want, too.

“Ping” constantly: The Ins and Outs of reaching out to those in your circle of contacts all the time—not just when you need something.

Never eat alone: The dynamics of status are the same whether you’re working at a corporation or attending a society event— “invisibility” is a fate worse than failure.

In the course of the book, Ferrazzi outlines the timeless strategies shared by the world’s most connected individuals, from Katherine Graham to Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan to the Dalai Lama.

Chock full of specific advice on handling rejection, getting past gatekeepers, becoming a “conference commando,” and more, Never Eat Alone is destined to take its place alongside How to Win Friends and Influence People as an inspirational classic.

From the Inside Flap:

A cover article in Inc. magazine on YaYa CEO Keith Ferrazzi's secrets to networking generated the largest response the magazine has received in the past ten years. Now Ferrazzi, working with Inc. writer Tahl Raz, explains the guiding principles he has mastered over a lifetime of reaching out to explain what it takes to build the kind of lasting, mutually beneficial relationships that lead to professional and personal success.

For Ferrazzi, the son of a small-town steelworker and a cleaning lady, the ability to connect with others paved the way to a scholarship at Yale, a Harvard MBA, and a prestigious posting to management consulting giant Deloitte Consulting. He discovered early on in life that the key to what makes successful people different from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships. The sharing of knowledge, resources, time, and energy with people they know and trust is the foundation of their success. In NEVER EAT ALONE, Ferrazzi distinguishes such genuine relationship-building from the crude, desperate glad-handing usually associated with the word "networking." He distills the ways he uses to reach out to others into practical proven principles, such as:

· Look for mentors: Link up with people who can help guide your career and can introduce you to the people you need to know. Then become a mentor yourself.

· Be interesting: Develop the style, knowledge, and expertise that will draw others to you.

· Build it before you need it: Create lists of people you know—and those you want to know—and maintain ongoing contacts with them throughout your life and career—not just when you need a favor.

· Never eat alone: Avoid the fate of "invisibility"—use potential social settings to constantly reach out to colleagues and future contacts.

Ferrazzi's form of connecting is based on a spirit of generosity. He cautions readers not to keep score. Helping colleagues connect with other friends creates the kind of goodwill that inevitably pays its own dividends. Full of specific advice on handling rejection, getting past gatekeepers, and more, NEVER EAT ALONE is destined to be the How to Win Friends and Influence People of the new millennium.

About the Author:

KEITH FERRAZZI is founder and CEO of the training and consulting company Ferrazzi Greenlight and a contributor to Inc., the Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. Earlier in his career, he was CMO of Deloitte Consulting and at Starwood Hotels and Resorts, and CEO of YaYa Media. He lives in Los Angeles.

TAHL RAZ is an editor at Fortune Small Business. He’s written for Inc. magazine, the Jerusalem Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and GQ. Raz lives in New York City.