Never Eat Alone

by Keith Ferrazzi

  And it's possible none of it would've happened had not

  Carnegie encouraged his initial classes to open up and to share their stories. It's no wonder Carnegie never failed to stress listening as a crucial networking skill. In an age when computers and e-mail take the personal touch out of doing business, Carnegie's homespun logic remains as relevant as ever. People, after all, are still people, and w h o couldn't use a reminder of lessons like:

  • "Become genuinely interested in other people."

  • "Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves."

  • "Let the other person do a great deal of the talking."

  • "Smile."

  • "Talk in terms of the other person's interests."

  • "Give honest and sincere appreciation."

  Though he successfully applied the fundamentals of smart smalltalking to his own life, Carnegie was reluctant—at first—to share his secrets in book form. The course cost $75, and Carnegie wasn't keen on giving away its content. But Leon Shimkin, an editor at Simon & Schuster, was a passionate graduate of Carnegie's classes. Shimkin finally convinced Carnegie, to the benefit of us all, to write a book. "Perhaps by practicing the very sort of flattery and persistence that Mr. Carnegie himself advocated and admired—Mr. Shimkin won him over," wrote Edwin McDowell in the New York Times in 1 9 8 6 .

  For Shimkin, and millions more like him, Carnegie emboldened us with the belief that we can learn to get along better with other people—and achieve great success—no matter w h o we are or how poor we were.

  III. Turning Connections into Compatriots

  18. Health, Wealth, and Children

  What do you really want? Side by side, those five words may be the most universally resonant in the English language.

  As I discussed in the chapter "What's Your Mission?" the answer to "What do you really want?" determines all that you do and all the people who help you accomplish it. It provides the blueprint for all your efforts to reach out and connect with others. Likewise, when you understand someone else's mission, you hold the key to opening the door to what matters most to them. Knowing that will help you create deep, long-lasting bonds.

  In my initial conversation with someone I'm just getting to know, whether it's a new men tee or simply a new business contact, I 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. You laugh—most people do when confronted with the reality of their deepest desires.

  Get comfortable with that reality. Learning to become a connector means in some sense learning to become an armchair therapist. As you continue down this path, you'll become a keen observer of the human psyche. You'll have to learn what makes people tick and how best to satisfy whatever tick that may be. It means calling something BS when you see people being less than honest with themselves.

  The most successful relationship builders are, indeed, a nifty amalgam of financial guru, sex therapist, and all-around dogooder.

  Connecting is a philosophy of life, a worldview. Its guiding principle is that people, all people, every person you meet, is an opportunity to help and be helped. Why do I place so much importance on mutual dependence? For starters, because, as a matter of necessity, we are all social beings. Our strength comes from what we do and know cumulatively. The fact is, no one gets ahead in this world without a lot of help.

  Eliminating things like intimidation and manipulation, there is only one way to get anybody to do anything. Do you know what it is?

  This is far from a trivial question. Business is, after all, the ability to motivate a group of individuals to move an idea from concept to reality; to take a theory and make it a practice; to gain the buy-in of your employees and colleagues; to encourage others to execute your plans.

  If you're still not sure what the answer is, take heart; many people don't. There are hundreds of new books published each year grappling with how to engender loyalty and motivation. Most arrive at the wrong answer.

  They get it wrong because of the assumptions they make. It's in vogue for people to exclaim: Everything is new! Everything is different! Business has changed! The answers, people suggest, must be found in technology or new forms of leadership or funky organizational theories. But is there anything really new or different about people? Not really.

  The principles of how to deal with other people are the ones Dale Carnegie espoused over sixty years ago that have proven to be universal and timeless.

  The only way to get people to do anything is to recognize their importance and thereby make them feel important. Every person's deepest lifelong desire is to be significant and to be recognized.

  What better way is there to show appreciation and to lavish praise on others than to take an interest in who they are and what their mission is?

  There is an added nuance to discovering what matters to people. Helping someone accomplish his or her deepest desires is critical not only to forming a bond with someone but to keeping that bond strong and growing. Loyalty may be the forgotten virtue of the modern age, but it remains the hallmark of any strong relationship and a value many companies are working hard to bring into their day-to-day practices.

  Loyalty, to me, means staying true to someone (or something, like a brand or a customer segment) through thick and thin. Loyalty is a marathon rather than a sprint. As any good brand manager knows, you don't win customer loyalty quickly. It has to be earned. How?

  Let me tell you a story about Michael Milken: yes, the financial and deal-making guru but also a man who is a philanthropist and deeply insightful human behaviorist. Through Entertainment Media Ventures (EMV), Mike was an investor in the start-up company I joined after Starwood. And, during my recruitment as CEO, I made it clear to him and my friend Sandy Climan, who led EMV, that a big motivation of taking the job would be to learn from Mike while running the company. I had already gotten to know Mike independently a few years back while acting as an advisor to DuPont, when the company was starting a consumer soy-milk joint venture. Mike was someone I had always wanted to meet—one of my early aspirational contacts. I had discovered through some articles I had read about him that he had a great deal of interest in soy and its curative effects. He had suffered a bout with prostate cancer, which he turned into a passion for health care and the importance of preventative medicine. To Mike, diet was an integral component in that mix, and it became a personal and philanthropic passion.

  From the beginning of my tenure as CEO, I sought to build the company and further my relationship with Mike. He, in turn, took me under his wing and opened his world to me.

  If he was going to New York for one of his many CapCure fundraisers, which support scientific research to find cures for prostate cancer, or traveling to someplace to give out recognition and money to exceptional teachers through the Milken Family Foundation, I would try to catch a ride. My only goal was to watch how he worked and perhaps glean a few insights in the process. I made it a point to identify customers or prospects at whatever destination city he was going to, so it was time well spent for YaYa as well.

  Most of the time, we would sit quietly working. He would plow through one of the ten bags of reading he lugs with him wherever he goes, and I, of course, would be pounding away on my computer, e-mailing and connecting with abandon for YaYa revenue generation and business development. There was much to be learned in simply watching what he read and how he thought or reflected.

  On one trip in particular, Mike and I began to talk about people's passions, what really mattered to people. It was then that I received profound insight about people and loyalty. You see, Mike, in addition to having a brilliant quantitative mind, is also a relationship artist.

  I have seen him spend hours talking to people you'd never expect him to take an interest in: secretaries, the very old and the very young, the powerful and the powerless. He loves people, their stories, and how they view the world. When I mentioned that to him, I was reminded of w
hat Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him." Everyone had something to teach him.

  This focus on people was the reason so many of them showed so much loyalty to him. I feel that same loyalty. I asked how so many people became so invested in their relationship with him. What did he know that others didn't? Mike paused for a moment, as he does when he particularly likes (or dislikes) a question. Then he smiled.

  "Keith," he said, "there are three things in this world that engender deep emotional bonds between people. They are health, wealth, and children."

  There are a lot of things we can do for other people: give good advice, help them wash their car, or help them move. But health, wealth, and children affect us in ways other acts of kindness do not.

  When you help someone through a health issue, positively impact someone's personal wealth, or take a sincere interest in their children, you engender life-bonding loyalty.

  Mike's experience was, in fact, backed by research. Psychologist Abraham Maslow created a theory outlining human beings' hierarchy of needs. We all have the same needs, Maslow believed, and our more basic needs must be satisfied before our higher needs can be addressed.

  The highest human need, said Maslow, is for self-actualization— the desire to become the best you can be. Dale Carnegie astutely recognized this. But Maslow argues we can't attend to our highest needs until we attend to those at the bottom of the pyramid, like the necessities of subsistence, security, and sex. It is within this lower group—where health, wealth, and children reside—that Mike was saying loyalty is created. In addressing those three fundamental issues, you accomplish two things: 1) You help someone fulfill those needs they most need met, and 2) You allow them the opportunity to move up the pyramid of needs to tackle some of their higher desires.

  I reflected on my own experience and found he was absolutely right.

  Recently, a friend of mine was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Because of my relationship with the CapCure foundation, I knew the lead doctor there. I gave him a call to see if he could spend some time with my friend. Another friend, Mehmet Oz, the wunderkind who directs the Cardiovascular Institute at Columbia University and is a founder and director of the Complementary Medicine Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, is always taking the calls of people I send his way.

  I know intimately how in a time of anxiety a reassuring expert is worth all the wealth in the world. Throughout my father's heart-related illness, a family friend named Arlene Treskovich, who worked for one of the best heart doctors in Pittsburgh, gave us access to medical advice few blue-collar Pittsburgh families can afford. She was just doing what she was taught; her mother, Marge, had worked at the Latrobe Hospital and used to make sure that any member of our family or friends of our family who were hospitalized were treated like royalty, even if it was just an extra Jell-O from the kitchen when it was closed. To this day, I would do anything Arlene asked of me.

  Sometimes, all it requires is taking an interest and providing emotional support. Let me give you an example. Robin Richards was the founding president of music portal MP3.com and built one of the highest-profile Internet companies in the world. He skillfully navigated MP3.com through a very difficult period before selling it to Vivendi Universal, which subsequently hired him as a key executive. I met Robin around this time because he was leading a negotiation to buy our company.

  The deal ultimately fell through, but during the process, I learned Robin had a young child who had suffered from a terrible form of cancer. When he shared this deeply painful and private piece of information over dinner with me, the dynamics that so often attend a negotiation flew out the window. We discussed our shared experiences and I introduced him to Mike, who was equally passionate about finding a cure for this form of cancer. Robin and I are still good friends to this day, and I know we would both bend over backward for the other.

  Have you helped someone lose weight by passing on a good diet? Have you found a particular vitamin or supplement that has helped you and passed it on to others? These may seem like little things. But with these three issues, health and diet included, the little things mean everything.

  When it came to wealth, I thought of the many men and women whom I've helped find jobs. While it's not the same as making someone millions through innovative financing instruments, as Mike had done for many people, a job significantly altered these friends' economic situation. If someone I know is looking for a job, I reach out through my network for leads. If they've already found a job they're interested in, I call the decision maker. Sometimes I'll simply help someone revise his or her resume, or act as a reference. Whatever I can do. And I do the same for businesses. For the restaurants I frequent, for example, I make it my mission to send as much business their way as possible. I work hard to funnel customers to all my contacts who are consultants, vendors, and suppliers of all stripes. I know they are good, I trust them, and I want others to benefit from their expertise as well.

  People's children mean everything to them. I take it upon myself to mentor kids. It's fun, it's helpful, and teaching is the finest method I know for learning. The loyalty I've gained from placing a person's child in an internship, whether at my company or a friend's company, is immeasurable.

  Take my experience with Jack Valenti, the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Motion Picture Association. Texas born, Harvard educated, Valenti has led several lives: a wartime bomber pilot, advertising agency founder, political consultant, White House Special Assistant, and movie industry leader. He knows everyone; more important, every one who knows him has loads of respect for the man (in an industry not keen on doling out respect to anyone).

  Valenti had been an aspirational contact of mine for some time. I never sought him out, but he was somebody I knew would be very interesting, a hardworking Italian guy who worked his way up from nothing. I figured we had plenty in common.

  Our first encounter was pure serendipity. I attended a luncheon for cabinet members at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles during President Clinton's last year of office. I spotted Jack among the attendees. When we all sat down for lunch, I made sure he and I were sitting next to each other.

  Our conversation that afternoon was good, entertaining, and polite. I had no mission or purpose. I hoped it might, someday, form the basis for something more substantive.

  Not long after, a friend called me, knowing I was passionate about mentoring. "You know, Jack Valenti's son is looking for work in your industry. You might want to meet with him and give him some advice."

  Jack's son is a very bright chip off the old block, both charming and smart. I gave him some advice, introduced him to some people within the industry that he should know, and that was it.

  Several months later, at the Yale CEO conference, I saw Jack again.

  "Jack," I said, "I'm sure you don't remember me. There's no reason you should. We sat together for lunch once at a Democratic convention. But I met with your son a few months ago to give him some career advice. I was wondering how he is doing?"

  Jack dropped everything he was doing and couldn't have been more interested. He peppered me with questions about his son and what the best tack was to enter my industry.

  I followed up our encounter a day later with a dinner invitation, along with an array of political and entertainment honchos he could meet.

  "Sure, I'd love to come to dinner if my schedule allows," he told me. "But more important, I'd like to get together for lunch with you, me, and my son."

  Jack probably wasn't that interested in my dinner invitation. Who knows? But he was interested in the welfare of his son. Jack regards my dinner invitations with a lot more excitement than he would have if I had not had the chance to give his son some simple and sound advice.

  Too many people think an invitation alone is enough to engender loyalty. Back in my days at Deloitte, and I see it today in my consulting practice, a lot of people felt that taking clients an
d prospects out to a fancy dinner, a ballgame, or a show was the way to build loyalty. I've fallen into that trap myself. In the beginning of a relationship, those kinds of outings are merely forums that allow you to connect strongly enough with the other person to help them address the issues that matter to them most. However, we've encouraged some of our biggest Fortune 100 clients to begin to invite their clients and prospects into their executives' homes to have dinner, meet the family, and understand how they can really help their clients as individuals.

  But remember, if you're going to deal with people's most important issues, give those issues the commitment that they deserve. If not, your best intentions will backfire. Hell hath no fury like a person for whom you've promised the most intimate of help and delivered none.

  Can you walk the talk? It's easy for someone to say, "I care about people. I believe in helping and being helped. I believe that helping people become healthy or make money or raise successful children is paramount in life." Many people say those things—but then you see their actions, you hear about them from their own networks, and you discover they really don't believe any of it. You can be sure your network will broadcast your true colors very quickly and with lasting effects to all its members.

  Where do you start? You start with the philosophy, the worldview, that every human is an opportunity to help and be helped. The rest—whether it means helping with someone's health, wealth, children, or any other unsatisfied desires—follows from that.

  19. Social Arbitrage