Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time [Kindle Edition]

Keith Ferrazzi (Author), Tahl Raz (Author)

Book Description

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 one of Davos’ Global Leader for Tomorrow.

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The youngest partner in Deloitte Consulting's history and founder of the consulting company Ferrazzi Greenlight, the author quickly aims in this useful volume to distinguish his networking techniques from generic handshakes and business cards tossed like confetti. At conferences, Ferrazzi practices what he calls the "deep bump" - a "fast and meaningful" slice of intimacy that reveals his uniqueness to interlocutors and quickly forges the kind of emotional connection through which trust, and lots of business, can soon follow. That bump distinguishes this book from so many others that stress networking; writing with Fortune Small Business editor Raz, Ferrazzi creates a real relationship with readers. Ferrazzi may overstate his case somewhat when he says, "People who instinctively establish a strong network of relationships have always created great businesses," but his clear and well-articulated steps for getting access, getting close and staying close make for a substantial leg up. Each of 31 short chapters highlights a specific technique or concept, from "Warming the Cold Call" and "Managing the Gatekeeper" to following up, making small talk, "pinging" (or sending "quick, casual" greetings) and defining oneself to the point where one's missives become "the e-mail you always read because of who it's from." In addition to variations on the theme of hard work, Ferrazzi offers counterintuitive perspectives that ring true: "vulnerability... is one of the most underappreciated assets in business today"; "too many people confuse secrecy with importance." No one will confuse this book with its competitors.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Ferrazzi grew up in rural Pennsylvania, the son of a steelworker and a cleaning lady, yet his ability to connect with others led to a scholarship at Yale, a Harvard MBA, and a prestigious partnership at Deloitte Consulting. His skills at creating and maintaining a network of contacts are nothing short of those of a serious presidential contender. All business hopefuls seek to enter a sphere of players more powerful than themselves, and Ferrazzi says that sometimes all it takes is asking. The book is dense with suggestions. Seek out mentors to guide you and introduce you to the people you need to know and then become a mentor yourself. Use your initial conversation to show the other person what you have to offer them, and never keep score. Make others feel important by remembering their names and birthdays. And don't be afraid to open up and show vulnerability--it's a great icebreaker. Ferrazzi presents a whirlwind of ideas to widen your circle of contacts that goes way beyond the usual stale concepts of "networking." David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 1898 KB
• Print Length: 320 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0385512058
• Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (February 22, 2005)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000FCJZ4K
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,675 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #11 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Investing > Skills > Communication
  • #20 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Investing > Careers > Guides
  • #45 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Motivational

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

714 of 766 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Caveat Networker March 12, 2005

By Christine Kenney

Format:Hardcover

It seems like much of the efficacy of Ferrazzi's tactics lies in blurring the distinction between the personal and the professional connections. Not even church-going remains sacred.

At what point does a close-knit network become more invaluable than acquaintanceships struck during in-flight snackbreaks? Are 500 people willing to answer your calls (after the umpteenth time you've attempted to ambush them on the phone during their off hours) really an asset? Readers should keep in mind that one will not be able to fool all of the people all of the time with false pretenses of friendship. Ferrazzi's work would be more effective if he differentiated between intensities of friendship and the tactics most appropriate for each.

Further difficulties include:
-Networking Plan of Action (unfortunately acronymed NAP) includes scarcely a page of information about how to construct one.
-The arguments are often internally inconsistent: receiving an invitation to a 15 min coffee break is an affront, while sending one tops the personal arsenal list. Katharine Graham is eulogized as a champion of both "somebodies" and "nobodies." Yet Ferrazzi's lists of "people he'd like to meet" and his incessant extolling of the virtues of name-dropping seems to indicate "nobodies" are nobodies in his book. Finally, the distinction between a "networking jerk" and commendable behavior is, at best, subtle.
-For an individual so concerned with connectedness, it is curious that a bibliography or appendix of suggested reading is entirely absent.

May I suggest:
*How to Win Friends and Influence People: soft skills development
*Big Fish (a novel of "mythic proportions" by Daniel Wallace): a more sympathetic view on spin, for contemplating your own self-marketing plan or why Ferrazzi really left Deloitte.
*The Tipping Point: Chapter 2 is a more rigorous exploration of the roles the uber-connected play in social networks.

226 of 249 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Hardly "revolutionary" December 29, 2005

By M. DiVirgilio

Format:Audio CD

The book isn't that bad, but it isnt worth buying with so many other masters out there writing about how to get it done. Here's what's wrong....

First, it's billed as "revolutionary" concepts which I found to hardly be true. Almost evey idea was something that I've read in a Covey, Mackay, Peters, etc book. Recycled.

Further, he's so proud of his accomplishments it becomes exhausting to keep up with all the great things KF did in his life.

Finally, he writes often about how he was from poor, underprivileged family and he had nothing but his "revolutionary" concepts to break him into The Club. I believe it at first, until he started (and then repeated) to tell the reader about how he went to a private elementary and HS, then to Yale and Harvard BS. He was IN the club from first grade - hardly a life course that demonstrated how unique and terrific his practices were.

50 of 54 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Valuable Message; Details May Vary February 25, 2005

By Danger Mouse

Format:Hardcover

For all the five-star reviews that are going to pop up here in the next few days, be cognizant that the author of this book is a master networker, and is adept at calling in favors. What follows is an unbiased look at the book.

The author's message is simple yet powerful: Everything you do in life is enabled by others. The more people you know, the more you are capable of, and the more you are capable of helping others. The power of your network goes up exponentially with the number of relationships and with the strength of those relationships. Anyone who thinks that success is based solely on merit is sadly delusional.

The advice and techniques he gives are broken out by chapter. Some are insightful and useful, such as discovering what's important to people and finding ways to help them, how to work conferences, and how to connect with other well-connected people. Others are questionable from a style standpoint, and seem to serve as a boastful review of the author's own methods, such as his extravagant dinner parties, or interrupting a conversation midstream in order to call someone who is relevant to the current topic. He also emphasizes constant emailing and calling just so you don't fall off someone's radar, even if you have nothing to say to that person except "I exist". How annoying.

The book gets 3 stars for being important and relevant. It gets another for getting down and dirty in the details of connecting with people. It doesn't get the fifth star for being verbose, sometimes repetitive, and for taking such an extreme stance when most of us are mere networking mortals. At its core, the ideas in this book are incredibly valuable, once you adapt them to your own personality.