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

by Keith Ferrazzi

Our achievements grow according to the size of our dreams and the degree to which we are in touch with our mission.

“But the truth is he’s a disciplined

Disciplined dreamers all have one thing in common: a mission.

First, it must be imagined. Then, one needs to gather the skills, tools, and materials needed.

The purpose of this exercise is to show that there is a process,

But your goals must be in writing.

An unwritten wish is just a dream.

Your goals must be specific.

Your goals must be believable.

Your goals must be challenging and demanding.

As in any business, even the best-conceived plans benefit from external vetting.

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.

I was adrift.

“People become jealous when you decide to do what no one thought you would, or could. You just have to push through.”

Change is hard. You might lose friends, encounter seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and face the most troubling hurdle of all—your own self-doubt.

Reaching your goals can be difficult. But if you have goals to begin with, a realizable plan to achieve them, and a cast of trusted friends to help you, you can do just about anything—even becoming an engineer after the age of forty.

In fact, as an undergraduate at Georgetown, the forty-second president made it a nightly habit to record, on index cards, the names and vital information of every person whom he’d met that day.

Clinton doesn’t just recall your personal information; he uses the information as a means to affirm a bond with you.

the more specific you are about where you want to go in life, the easier it becomes to develop a networking strategy to get there.

be sensitive to making a real connection in your interac...

“The most important thing is to get to know these people as friends, not potential customers,”

I’m confident that now, when he reaches out, his interactions won’t be tainted by desperation.

The idea isn’t to find oneself another environment tomorrow—be it a new job or a new economy—but to be constantly creating the environment and community you want for yourself, no matter what may occur.

The dynamics of building a relationship are necessarily incremental. You can truly gain someone’s trust and commitment only little by little over time.

And the law of probability ensures that the more new people you know, the more opportunities will come your way and the more help you’ll get at critical junctures in your career.

Are you making the most of the connections you already have? Imagine, for a moment, that all of your family and friends and associates are a part of a garden. Take a stroll through that relationship garden. What do you see?

All around you are golden opportunities to develop relationships with people you know, who know people you don’t know, who know even more people.

The big hurdles of networking revolve around the cold calls, the meeting of new people, and all the activities that involve engaging the unknown.

You’ve got to create a community of colleagues and friends before you need it. Others around you are far more likely to help you if they already know and like you.

He’d observed, even from the plant floor, that audacity was often the only thing that separated two equally talented men and their job titles.

Audacity in networking has the same pitfalls and fears associated with dating—which I was never as good at as I am the business variety of meeting people.

Mustering the audacity to talk with people who don’t know me often simply comes down to balancing the fear I have of embarrassment against the fear of failure and its repercussions.

The choice isn’t between success and failure; it’s between choosing risk and striving for greatness, or risking nothing and being certain of mediocrity.

The best way to deal with this anxiety is to first acknowledge that our fear is perfectly normal. You are not alone. The second thing is to recognize that getting over that fear is critical to your success. The third is to commit to getting better.

Set a goal for yourself of initiating a meeting with one new person a week. It doesn’t matter where or with whom.

The recipe for achievement is a medley of self-assuredness, dogged persistence, and audacity.

before you speak from a position of passion and personal knowledge—you need to know where you stand.

If you’re going to put your neck on the line, you’d better know why.

With an open-ended suggestion or question, you invite the other person to work toward a solution with you.

Too often people put on one face with their subordinates, another with their boss, and yet another one with their friends.

Do you understand that it’s your team’s accomplishments, and what they do because of you, not for you, that will generate your mark as a leader?”

We vote for the people we like and respect.

Choice spells doom for difficult colleagues and leaders.

When you don’t have others’ interests at heart, people will find out sooner rather than later.

When you look back upon a life and career of reaching out to others, you want to see a web of friendships to fall back on, not the ashes of bad encounters.

It’s a loop. In connecting, online and off, you’re only as good as what you give away.

People respond with trust when they know you’re dealing straight with them.

If you’re not making friends while connecting, best to resign yourself to dealing with people who don’t care much about what happens to you.

Those who are best at it don’t network—they make friends.

By knowing her boundaries and cultivating trust in others; by being discreet; by the sincerity of her intentions; by letting the other person know she had his or her best interests at heart.