Never Eat Alone

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Keith Ferazzi

Notes

Personal Board of Advisors – It helps to have an enlightened counselor, or two or three, to act as both cheerleader and eagle-eyed supervisor, who will hold you accountable.

Bill Clinton – made it a nightly habit to record, on index cards, the names and vital information of every person whom he’d met that day.

The Networking Jerk

  • Don’t Schmooze – it’s better to spend more time with fewer people at a one-hour get-together,
  • Dont Gossip
  • Don’t come to the party empty-handed
  • Don’t treat those under you poorly
  • Don’t be too efficient – Your goal is to make genuine connections with people you can count on.Those who are best at it don’t network—they make friends.

One-page synopsis -The only criterion that I want to know what this person is like as a human being, what he or she feels strongly about, and what his or her proudest achievements are…try to find out what motivations drive that person. It often comes down to one of three things: making money, finding love, or changing the world.

Remember, you never, ever want to anger the gatekeeper…In building a network, remember: Above all, never, ever disappear.

Cloning – Groups for dinner events rather than individual meet-ups

Rules for Events:

  • Help the Organizer
  • Listen. Better Yet, Speak – the more speeches one gives, the higher one’s income bracket tends to be.
  • Organize a Conference Within a Conference – Arrange your own group dinner while at the conference.
  • Deep Bump – In two minutes, you need:
    1. Look deeply into the other person’s eyes and heart
    2. Listen intently, ask questions that go beyond just business
    3. Reveal a little about yourself in a way that introduces some vulnerability
    4. Stay connected
  • Follow Up:
    • During speeches, I’ll sit in the back and write follow-up e-mails to the people I just met at the previous break.
    • Everyone you talked with at the conference needs to get an e-mail reminding them of their commitment to talk again.
    • I also like sending a note to the speakers, even if I didn’t get a chance to meet them.

People you’re contacting to create a new relationship need to see or hear your name in at least three modes of communication — by, say, an e-mail, a phone call, and a face-to-face encounter—before there is substantive recognition.

Anchor Tenants – Bait for Dinner Guests…I also invite an extra six or so people to pop in before or come after for drinks and dessert. This group should be closer friends…These “bonus guests” will arrive a little before dinner has concluded. Just when most dinner parties tend to slip, the energy level spikes with a whole new group…Thursdays are wonderful days for dinner parties. It doesn’t cut into people’s weekend plans and yet folks are willing to go a little late knowing that they have only one day left in the work week.

Benjamin Franklin organized a dozen of his friends into a Friday night social group called the “Junto” – “The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his urn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy [physics], to be discussed by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased.”

Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO)