Never Eat Alone

by Keith Ferrazzi

  Next, take ACTIOM It's called a Networking Action Plan for a reason. To prepare yourself to run a marathon, you must get out there and jog every day. With a plan in place, it's up to you to start reaching out. Every day!

  Step Three: Create a Personal "Board of Advisors"

  Goals, like everything else I write about in this book, aren't achieved alone. With a plan in place, you're going to need reinforcement to stay focused. As in any business, even the bestconceived 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 call this group my Personal Board of Advisors. They may be made up of family members; perhaps someone who's been a mentor to you; even an old friend or two.

  My board came to my own aid at a critical juncture in my career after I left Starwood Hotels and Resorts, the company that owns such brands as the W Hotel and the Westin. I was adrift. For the first time in my life, I couldn't lay claim to a title or a job. I had to reassess my mission.

  I had come to Starwood from Deloitte to accept what was an irresistible offer: to be the youngest chief marketing officer in a Fortune 500 company (a goal I had set for myself three years earlier) and reinvent the way an industry thought about marketing.

  But my new job didn't go exactly as planned.

  Juergen Bartels, the president at Starwood who recruited me, promised to mentor me and pave my way toward becoming a future leader of the company. My goals for the company were large and required changing an entire company's way of thinking.

  Up until that point, marketing in the hospitality industry was a regional affair, often left to individual hotels. But the cost of that arrangement was a lack of company-wide brand consistency. Our plan was to consolidate our marketing functions under one roof with a global outlook. Rather than allow each of our regions around the world to set their own individual marketing strategies, I wanted to centralize our marketing operations more in order to clarify our message and create greater impact in the marketplace with a cohesive brand. After all, our primary customers—business travelers—were increasingly global and expected consistency.

  Shortly after I was hired, however, Juergen Bartels left the company. Corporations, like any bureaucracy, tend to resist change, especially when the change doesn't have the support of top management. It became clear, a year into my job, that under the latest president I wouldn't be able to garner the kind of support within the company I needed for such a radical reorganization.

  The new president made it clear that we would not be moving forward with our plan to reorganize the marketing department. The writing was on the wall for the plan and for me personally. Without the go-ahead needed to make the kind of bold decisions that I felt would ultimately lead to company success and a more senior personal position, I knew I wouldn't be able to reach my goals here.

  I was shocked. I left work early that particular day and jogged mile after mile through the beautiful paths of New York's Central Park. Exercise has always been a refuge where I do some of my best thinking. But some ten miles later, I was still in shock.

  The next morning, as I walked into the office, I knew that my future was somewhere else. All the accoutrements of a top executive's life—the large, cushy office, the mahogany furniture, the corporate jet, the fancy title on the door—meant nothing if I couldn't implement the ideas that made work fun, creative, and exciting. I officially resigned soon after, and if I hadn't, I know I wouldn't have been long for the company anyway.

  It was time for me to establish a new goal. Should I seek out another position as chief marketing officer, proving myself by building bigger and better brands, striving for greater revenue (and profits), and helping to turn a company into a brand icon? Or should I set my sights even higher? My ultimate goal was to become a CEO. But it seldom happens for those in marketing. I had spent the greater part of my career convincing top management that marketing can and should directly influence all operating activities, yet I was not responsible for all of them.

  To truly define the brand, the ultimate marketing job was to be the CEO. If I chose the latter direction, what else did I need to learn to become CEO? What were my chances of getting such a job? What sacrifices or risks were involved?

  Honestly, these questions weren't clear to me at the time. In the wake of my disappointment, after years of go-go-go, I felt lost. I needed to figure out what I wanted to be all over again.

  And I was scared. For the first time in ages, I had no company to attach to my name. I loathed the thought of meeting new people without a clear explanation of what I did.

  Over the next few months, I had hundreds of conversations with the people I trust. I took a Vipassana meditation retreat where I sat for ten hours each day for ten days straight—in silence. For a guy like me, who can't shut up, it was torture. I wondered if I might fritter away all my time thinking. I wondered if I should go back to Pennsylvania and find a smaller pond to inhabit.

  During that time I wrote a detailed twelve-page mission statement asking such questions as What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What are the various industry opportunities available to me? I listed the venture capitalists I wanted to meet, the CEOs I knew, the leaders I could turn to for advice, and the companies that I admired. I left all my options open: teacher, minister, politician, chief executive officer. For each potential new direction, I filled out a Networking Action Plan.

  When everything was laid out, I reached out to my personal board of advisors. I didn't have the qualifications to be appointed a CEO with a major corporation. Yet when I looked inside myself, that was exactly what I wanted to do.

  Sitting down with Tad Smith, a publishing executive and one of my best friends and advisors, I was told I had to get over the prestige of working for a Fortune 500 company. If I wanted to be CEO, I had to find a company I could grow with.

  It was exactly the advice I needed to hear. I had been too focused on big companies. While the dot-com crash had made entering the digital world a whole lot less palatable, there were still some very good companies in need of business fundamentals. Now I knew this was where I needed to look, and I began refining my action plan.

  From that day on, many of the calls I made, and the meetings and conferences I attended, were aimed at finding the right small company to call home. Three months later, I had five job offers.

  One of the people I reached out to was Sandy Climan, a wellknown Hollywood player who once served as Michael Ovitz's right-hand man at Creative Artists Agency and who then ran an L.A.-based venture-capital firm called Entertainment Media Ventures. I had gotten to know Sandy during my time with Deloitte, when I was exploring paths into the entertainment world. Sandy introduced me to the people at a company called YaYa, one of the investments in his firm's portfolio.

  YaYa was a marketing company pioneering the creation of online games as advertising vehicles. They had a good concept and the strength of committed employees and founders. They needed a bigger vision to get the market's attention, some buzz for their then-unknown product, and someone who could use all that to sell, sell, sell.

  In November 2000, when the YaYa board offered me the CEO position, I knew it was the right fit. The company was located in Los Angeles, and it offered the sort of unconventional route into the entertainment world I had been looking for and a chance to bring my experience as a marketer to the CEO job.

  If Virginia Can Do It, You Can Too

  A few months a g o , a friend of mine told me about a woman named Virginia Feigles, who lived not too far a w a y from where I grew up. He had been inspired by her tale of triumph. Hearing her story, I felt the same way.

  At forty-four, Feigles decided she no longer wanted to be a hairdresser; she wanted to be an engineer. From the get-go, there were naysayers, people w h o insisted it couldn't be done. Their negativity simply provided more fuel for her fire.

  "I lost a lot of friends during this whole thin
g," Feigles says. "People become jealous when you decide to do what no one thought you w o u l d , or could. You just have to push through."

  Her adventure reads like a Cliffs Notes guide to career management where a bold mission and a commitment to reach out to others combine to create opportunities previously unavailable to a high school graduate. It also conveys a harsh dose of reality: Change is hard. You might lose friends, encounter seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and face the most troubling hurdle of a l l — your own self-doubt.

  Feigles had always planned to go to college. Raised by a single mother in small-town Milton, Pennsylvania, the opportunities were slim. She was married by seventeen and pregnant a year later. She worked full time as a hairstylist in her husband's salon and raised her only son. Twenty years went by. W i t h her second divorce, Feigles rethought her life. Growth, she reflected, came only from change. And change came only from new goals.

  She was working part-time as a secretary at the chamber of commerce when she realized life had more to offer. "I just thought, 'This is stupid. W h y am I on the wrong end of this? Not everyone who has a Ph.D. in physics is Albert Einstein.'"

  W h i l e it's true not every engineer is a genius, they all know algebra—something Feigles couldn't claim. So she buckled down and learned the subject within a few months.

  After a summer stint at community college, she decided to apply to a top-tier civil engineering school at Bucknell University. The associate dean, Trudy Cunningham, didn't sugarcoat the situation. " W h e n she arrived, I told her that life was about to get hard. She's an adult with a life, an apartment, a car, and she was competing with kids w h o were living in dorms and having their meals cooked."

  Luckily, Feigles had always been an avid connector all her life. She was a member of a number of community organizations, serving on the boards of the Y M C A , Milton Chamber of Commerce, and Parks and Recreation Committee. She also had stints serving as president of the Garden Club and the Milton Business Association. She had supportive friends and advisors all around.

  For the other students, the end of class meant keg parties and football games. For her, it meant a night working at the salon followed by grinding study sessions. Feigles doesn't remember a d a y she didn't think of quitting.

  She remembers getting back her first physics test. She failed. "Another student thought it was the end of the w o r l d . I told her not to worry, I wasn't about to commit suicide," she recalls with the w r y insight reserved for someone who's been through it. She ended up with a C in the class.

  M a n y sleepless nights and several Cs later, Feigles found herself among 1 3 7 other engineers in the graduating class of 1 9 9 9 . No one was more astonished than the graduate herself: "I just kept on thinking, ' W h a t have I done?' And then repeating to myself, 'I've done it, I've actually done i t ! ' "

  W i t h her goals completed, her network has grown—and not only in terms of friends and new business contacts. Today, she's newly married—to her former boss at the chamber of commerce— and busy with a budding career at the state's Department of Transportation. Recently she became chairperson of the Planning Commission, where she used to take notes as a secretary.

  Reaching your goals can be difficult. But if you have goals to begin w i t h , 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.

  C O N N E C T O R S ' HALL OF FAME PROFILE

  Bill Clinton

  "Know your mission in life."

  In 1 9 6 8 , when W i l l i a m Jefferson Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, he met a graduate student named Jeffrey Stamps at a party. Clinton promptly pulled out a black address book. " W h a t are you doing here at O x f o r d , Jeff?" he asked.

  "I'm at Pembroke on a Fulbright," Jeff replied. Clinton penned "Pembroke" into his book, then asked about Stamps's undergraduate school and his major. "Bill, why are you writing this d o w n ? " asked Stamps.

  "I'm going into politics and plan to run for governor of Arkansas, and I'm keeping track of everyone I meet," said Clinton.

  That story, recounted by Stamps, epitomizes Bill Clinton's forthright approach to reaching out and including others in his mission. He knew, even then, that he wanted to run for office, and his sense of purpose emboldened his efforts with both passion and sincerity. 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.

  Throughout his career, Clinton's political aspirations and his ability to reach out to others have gone hand-in-hand. In 1 9 8 4 , when he was governor of Arkansas, he attended, for the first time, a national networking and thought leadership event called Renaissance Weekend in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Clinton secured an invitation through his friend, Richard Riley, w h o was then governor of South Carolina. Attending Renaissance Weekend was like a trip to a toy store for a guy like Clinton, w h o wasted no time meeting others and making friends. Here's how a Washington Post article from December 1 9 9 2 describes Clinton in action at the event:

  M a n y guests, reflecting on Clinton's presence, remember images more than words: how he would roam from discussion to discussion and take a spot at the side of the room, leaning casually against the w a l l ; how he would seem to know everyone, not just from their name tags, but remember what they did and what they were interested in. "He hugs y o u , " said M a x Heller, the former mayor of Greenville. "He hugs you not only physically, but with a whole attitude."

  W h a t Heller is referring to is Clinton's unique ability to create an almost instantaneous intimacy with whomever he's talking to. Clinton doesn't just recall your personal information; he uses the information as a means to affirm a bond with you.

  From Clinton, two lessons are clear: First, 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.

  Second, be sensitive to making a real connection in your interactions with others. There is almost an expectation among us that whoever becomes rich or powerful can be forgiven for high-handed behavior. Clinton illustrates how charming and popular you can become, and remain, when you treat everyone you meet with sincerity.

  4. Build It Before You Need It

  Build a little community of those you love and who love you.

  — MITCHAL BOM

  Forget the images we all have in our heads of the desperate, out-of-work individuals scooping up every business card in sight while fervently mingling at business conventions and jobhunting events. The great myth of "networking" is that you start reaching out to others only when you need something like a job. In reality, people who have the largest circle of contacts, mentors, and friends know that you must reach out to others long before you need anything at all.

  George, for example, is a smart guy in his twenties who was introduced to me through a mutual friend. George worked in public relations in New York and aspired to start his own PR business. He asked me to lunch one day looking for advice and encouragement.

  Ten minutes after we sat down, I knew he was on the wrong track.

  "Have you started to reach out to potential clients?" I asked. "No," he told me. "I'm taking it step by step. My plan is to work my way up in my current company to a point where I can afford to leave. Then I'll incorporate, get an office, and start searching for my first customers. I don't want to start meeting with potential clients until I can present myself as a credible PR person with my own firm."

  "You've got it totally backwards," I told him. "You're setting yourself up for failure."

  My advice was to start finding future clients today. Had he thought about what kind of industry he wanted to specialize in? Had he thought about where the top people in that industry hang out? Once he could answer those questions, the next step was to go hang with this new circle of people.

  "The most important thing is to get
to know these people as friends, not potential customers," I said. "Though you're right about one thing: No matter how friendly you are, if the people you approach are any good at what they do, they won't hire you right off the bat to do their PR. Which is why you should offer your services for free—at least at first. For instance, maybe you can volunteer your time to a nonprofit organization they're involved in, or aid in publicizing a school fundraiser their kids are involved in."

  "But won't my employer be angry at my expending so much energy on other things?" George asked.

  "Doing good work for your employer comes first," I told him. "Finding time to manage your outside work is your responsibility. Concentrate on an industry that your present employer doesn't service. Remember, if you haven't done the necessary legwork on the day you decide to open your own business, you'll be back at your old job in no time flat."

  "So I should work for these people for/ree?"

  "Absolutely," I said. "Today you are unproven, and breaking in is tough. Eventually you'll have a growing circle of people who have seen your work and who believe in you. That's the kind of connections you're looking to create if you're going to start a business, or if you're looking to change jobs or careers."At some point, while you're still working for your current employer, start looking to turn one of your contacts into a real, paying client. Once you've got an established client that will provide references and create some word-of-mouth, you're halfway home. Then, and only then, is it time to go back to your company and ask to go half time, or better yet, turn them into your second big client. If you quit at that point, you've hedged your bets. You have a group of people who will help transition you into a new career."