Keith Ferrazzi is the New York Times Best Selling Author of Never Eat Alone and Who's Got Your Back.
Keith grew up as the son of a lower-class factory worker and cleaning lady in Pittsburgh. With the help of the relationships he forged along the way, he managed to get into Yale, and later, Harvard Business School. Again on the back of key relationships, he worked his way up in Deloitte from an entry-level analyst to the Chief Marketing Officer before the age of 30. At age 32, he was hired by Starwood Hotels (a Fortune 500 company) as their CMO. In 2000, he left Starwood to found YaYa Media, an entertainment and marketing company, which he sold to an investment company in 2003. He currently sits as the CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight.
Keith is considered one of the world's foremost experts in networking and relationship building. In my conversation with Kieth, he distinguishes the two. Where networking typically comes across as a transactional activity that is a necessary evil, Keith focuses on relationship building. Keith explains that from a collection of thriving relationships will come a world class network.
To build these thriving relationships, Keith explains that we need to first start with gratitude to open the door for a future relationship. Once you've expressed your gratitude to that person and aligned yourself with their mission, lean on research and thoughtfulness to figure out how you can be of service. The more service you give, the stronger the relationship will grow.
Keith also offers us an actual game plan to build a network of amazing relationships. He calls this the Relationship Action Plan. In summary:
- Focus - What are your goals?
- Target - Write down names of individuals who are critical to what you are trying to achieve.
- Define - What you can do for them?
- Outreach - Come up with a cadence for reaching out to these individuals.
- Align - Develop a network of individuals who will help you connect with others. These "lifeline relationships" are those who are going to share their network richly with you, and vise-versa.
- Renew - Your goals change, therefore your network needs to stay up to date.
Let me know your best tips for building relationships in the comments or in a review on iTunes.
Check out the full episode at MillennialMM.com/KeithFerrazzi to hear more about how you can build amazing relationships, and therefore a thriving network.
Text "KEITH" to 66866 for more amazing wisdom from Keith in his email newsletter.
Links from the episode: