Author: Keith Ferrazzi, Founder & CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight
There are literally thousands of ways to accelerate your effectiveness as an individual, professional, leader, business owner or CEO, but none potentially as effective as building real, genuine relationships with others.
In his book “Never Eat Alone: And other secrets to success, one relationship at a time,” Keith Ferrazzi, founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a marketing and sales consulting company, outlines an approach to connecting with others and building relationships that creates amazing value. Trust is a currency that is literally worth it’s weight in gold, and Ferrazzi’s approach simply focuses on growing his personal network of trusted, authentic and successful people, and connecting them with others in his personal network who may need assistance, insights, mentor-ship or opportunities. He states and I agree, that “the currency of real networking is not greed, but generosity.”
Yep, Ferrazzi is a real connector and enjoys every minute of it – and so can you! He outlines steps to help you build relationships that can help accelerate your career, or grow your business or enhance your personal life. He emphasizes to seek out relationships that can help you with your own success. Be genuine, be appreciative, be authentically curious about those who have succeeded doing what you want to do and don’t be a afraid to seek them out for their advice. Most successful people are more than happy to share their hard earned wisdom, advice, and occasionally may even offer to offer even more concrete assistance, like a mentoring, job opportunities, a business deal or financing. One old saying goes, “It’s not what you know but who you know.”
So Ferrazzi’s form of connecting with others is based on building relationships with people who can assist him, but also based on generosity, helping friends connect with other friends, building “value” relationships that contribute to others’ success. By being curious about others, what they know, who they are, what they think about and value, and seeking to genuinely appreciate people and how they can contribute to others in his personal network, Ferrazzi has unearthed a stunningly simple but highly effective way of generating incredible value – that lasts.
Roderick’s “Acceleration Scale” Book Rating (Out of 5 Stars):