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

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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.

309 pages, Hardcover

Published February 22, 2005

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About the author

Keith Ferrazzi

24 books392 followers
Keith Ferrazzi is an entrepreneur and global thought leader in high performing teams and Chairman of Ferrazzi Greenlight and its Research Institute. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Who’s Got Your Back and bestsellers like Never Eat Alone, Leading Without Authority, and Competing in the New World of Work. He is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes, Inc, Fortune, and other publications. Ferrazzi’s twenty-year history of transforming C-Suite executive teams has made him an agent of transformation among the world’s greatest and most sought-after coaches.

Widely recognized as a thought-leader among his peers, Ferrazzi is a frequent contributor to CNN and CNBC. He has authored numerous articles for leading business and consumer publications, including Forbes, Inc, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and Reader’s Digest. An early leader in the quality movement, Ferrazzi was the youngest examiner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. He has been named a "Global Leader of Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum, one of the top "40 Under 40" business leaders by Crain's Business, one of the most distinguished young Californians by the Jaycees, and one of the most creative Americans in Richard Wurman's "Who's Really Who". Ferrazzi's extraordinary rise to prominence, which includes a stint as the youngest Chief Marketing Officer in the Fortune 500, has even inspired a Stanford Business School case study.

As CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, he draws upon a rich professional history to help guide organizations and business leaders worldwide. Ferrazzi was previously Chief Marketing Officer at Starwood Hotels, he oversaw marketing activities for global brands including Sheraton, Westin, The Luxury Collection, St. Regis, and W Hotels. Ferrazzi also served as Chief Marketing Officer for Deloitte Consulting, a leading global management consulting firm, where he developed and managed the industry's first globally integrated marketing organization. His creative marketing strategy drove the ascent of Deloitte's "Consulting" brand recognition from the lowest in the industry to a primary position and spurred the highest featured growth rate in the industry.

Ferrazzi actively supports numerous civic, charitable and educational organizations. He serves on the Yale University Board of Alumni Governors and the Board of Trustees of the Kiski School in Pennsylvania and is also a Fellow of the Berkeley College at Yale. Additionally, Ferrazzi founded Big Task Weekend, an executive roundtable that brings together some of the nation’s top leaders to focus on improving the health and wellness of Americans. Ferrazzi’s interests also include studying the relationship between leadership success and spirituality. He received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

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