never eat alone blog

Go Get Your Goals in ‘08

It’s a new year and 2008 is going to bring you what you want, I promise. How can I make that promise? Because I promise you are more likely to stick to your resolutions WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS. I just spent seven days in life-planning bootcamp that I put on for a group of my friends and I have all my goals clearly laid out.  A complete first draft of my next book by June. Getting my blood pressure down to 130/70 without meds. Going to a spiritual service every week… list goes on.

To be a successful goal-getter, you must first define your goal. It will likely fall into one of the seven aspects of what I call our personal success wheel: health & wellness, spirituality, job & career, intellectual & cultural, financial, deep relationships and giving back. Your goal must be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound.

But you can’t do it alone. This is the key to success where in the past you may have slipped! Choose three friends to serve as your accountability buddies. Knowing they are watching you will help you to stick to and reach your goals. I like to call it peer-to-peer pressure. They can cheer you on, send you inspirational songs and helpful website links, whatever it takes. I’m doing this with my sister and a few friends already.

But then you should also rally your friends to make improvements in their own lives. Don’t leave them in your dust – bring them along with your success.

To help you and your friends get your goals, my team has developed an application called Goal Post on Facebook. It is an easy and visual way to set your goals, choose your accountability buddies and keep track of your progress.

Come on, do it now, this works and will significantly increase your likelihood of achieving your goals, but will also be another way to PING your friends and associates and invite them in to be closer to you. And for you to encourage them to count on you to do the same for them! This not only good for you, but it will build your relationships, I promise.

To access the Goal Post application, click here. You can also login to Facebook and search for “Goal Post.”

So, to a healthier, happier and more successful year and you!

Warmest,

Keith

Rules of the Game

I often joke that the same principles that I talk about can help you in any and all relationships.  Just because my work is geared toward the workplace doesn't mean the same doesn't apply in a bar.

That’s why I’m excited that I have plans in January to meet pick-up artist Neil Strauss, the author of The Game and the new book, Rules of The Game.

Skeptical about what we have in common? Check out this excerpt from Neil’s newsletter:

Here's an assignment  I gave the guys in the Stylelife Challenge: Your mission this week is to make five people feel better about themselves - with no thought as to how you come across in the process.

This can include anything from telling a parent  how much you appreciate them; to making an awkward guest at a party feel wanted and included; to telling a person who just blew a lot of money on a car/outfit/haircut how cool it looks; to giving a homeless person  eye contact, smiling, and handing them five dollars. Start developing an instinct for what someone needs to feel good about themselves and their choices, and stop worrying about what they think of you.

Pretty soon, it'll become a habit, and you'll be a social magnet forced to sign up for Half Your Dating seminars to stop your cell phone from ringing all the time.

Guest Blog from Procrastinator's Guide to Marketing Author

Not long after his book, Never Eat Alone, was published, my son, Graham; husband, David; and I first met Keith at a Yale University Alumni seminar in Washington, DC. 

Undaunted by our lack of celebrity appeal, my son emailed Keith and asked if he would meet with us before or after his presentation that day. David and I had just finished writing our first draft of our first book, The Procrastinator’s Guide to Marketing, and we were hoping that he would provide us feedback on our book and advice on publishing it. And, David and I were hoping that Keith would agree to mentor Graham, another Yale graduate who was struggling to find his place in the New York art world.

True to Keith’s business philosophy, and his generous spirit and boundless energy, he agreed to meet with us over breakfast.

As they say, the rest is history.  Keith has indeed served as a mentor and friend to Graham (and my other son, Zach, in California!) and has been one of our book’s biggest supporters – so much so, that he wrote the Foreword.

So the next time you have a chance to reach out to others for help, even if you feel that they’re out of your league, go ahead and ask for it anyway. You may just find out how powerful your audacity and their abundant spirit truly is!

Here is an excerpt from an email I sent Keith right after our first meeting:

“Until now, Graham has walked through life as a preternaturally shy person who rarely expressed himself in public, Like you, his path to RISD and Yale were not guaranteed as part of his birthright. He is a gifted artist with a keen intellect, pure and simple. These traits defined and shaped his development – and represented what he most respected about himself – yet rarely articulated. Consequently, even those of us closest to him misunderstood just how important success in his chosen field means to him... I watched with wide-open eyes as you generously, carefully, skillfully and enthusiastically offered Graham a bright light with which to begin his new journey. He is still basking in its sunshine. Again, thank you.

And listening to you, it was clear that your true love is mentoring because your voice changed timbre as you coached and succeeded in carrying Graham many miles in a few pleasurable moments. This is a rare gift and quite unlike most educators, particularly the “solid” variety...

Imprint this weekend in your memory like a bright decal on a white washed wall... Think back with pride on the time when you agreed to meet with a young, struggling artist and made a significant change in his life, when you didn’t have to. And rest assured, I will remind Graham to do the same when it’s his turn. That’s how this whole thing works.”

Tip 100 Give the Gift of Relationships

This time of year has always been so tough for me personally. All the protocols around gift giving. Sometimes it's exhausting, frankly. How much should I spend? Should I get her a gift because maybe she will feel uncomfortable that she didn't get me one... And then there is the "what if they don't like it." Well, it's the thought that counts. My dad and I tried for years to get each other gifts and it just never pleased either of us, so Dad had an idea - let's each go out and buy ourselves a gift and wrap it from the other person and the surprise will be what the other person wrapped. It was a lot of fun. Dad always seemed to get a ham and stamps. Sometimes "gutchies" (underwear in Pittsburgh-ese).

Anyway, I think the best gift is just letting someone know you really do care about them. We don't get enough of that. So what tells someone you care? Well, a nicely worded card from you saying why they are special and what you hope for them - to find the potential in them that you see every day. And tell them you are truly there for them however they need you. Then, the physical gift will matter less than the spirit in which it is given.

So, this holiday season, be there to help others achieve their dreams.

Of course, if you are looking for something to share along with that sentiment, my team came up with a few ideas below.

Warmest Holidays,

Keith

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Give the gift of relationships this holiday season! Order by Thursday for Christmas, but the offers are available through the new year for a great start to 2008!

Take advantage of one or more of these limited-time holiday offers:

1.An autographed 3-pack of Never Eat Alone for $60. That's only $60 to cross 3 names off your shopping list and to give your friends, family, or colleagues the national-bestselling book on building relationships for success and happiness, signed by Keith Ferrazzi himself.

2.Never Eat Alone and DVD Bundle for $40. Take advantage of these two great products which retail for $55.  For this limited time holiday bundle, get them together for almost 30% off. On the DVD Keith Ferrazzi shows you how to eliminate artificial boundaries between personal and professional relationships.

3.Keith Ferrazzi webinar site license for $249 OR get the site license free with the purchase of 6 copies of Never Eat Alone for $117! This site license gets you and as many guests as you want a live and interactive webinar with Keith Ferrazzi.

Click here to select one of these great holiday offers.

Or if you simply want to purchase your own copy of Never Eat Alone click here.

Tip 99 Give Me Some Love

While there’s no substitute for a warm smile, firm handshake and face-to-face conversation, social networking sites such as Facebook can be useful tools for building relationships. They are great for finding and reconnecting with friends – and they give you easy access to all their friends. The sites can also be direct leads for business deals and new hires. An old friend recently e-mailed me on Facebook just when I needed help and now we are working on an exciting small project together. Social networking sites can also serve as valuable research tools. Profiles have photos and list job history, activities, favorite things, etc. I always advocate doing your homework before meeting new people, and what a great way to figure out personal holiday presents for clients and co-workers. If you want to know what music I’m listening to, find out what workout places I recommend and see some recent photos of me with a certain presidential candidate, please check out my profile on Facebook. Once you have a profile, type my name into the search box and then add me as your friend. I can’t wait to connect with you!

Growing Relationships and Growing Ivy

My consulting company, Ferrazzi Greenlight, does a lot of work with Ivy Funds. Ivy is an innovative company that uses relationships as a key way to differentiate itself in the market. Business has almost doubled this year.

Kathy Richman, VP Director of Sales, wrote in to let me and my Managing Director Peter know how a Thanksgiving gift worked for the company. I wanted to share her e-mail here.

Peter,

You recall in Jackson Hole, Keith shared the idea with our sales team to send a Thanksgiving gift instead of participating in the mass mailing of December.  We took your advice and sent our very well-received Henckels carving set to our top 3000 clients on November 16. There is no doubt ~ from the responses below ~ we stood out from the crowd this year!!!  The gift was great but the timing is what made it extraordinary!  Would it have stood out so much in December? Doubtful.

In addition, at your suggestion, Peter, we are sending a New Year’s card instead of a holiday card.

*       Many thanks for the tasteful gift from IVY....I do appreciate it!
*       Thanks for the knife set. It's such a perfect gift that I might want to send it to clients. Do you know where/how Ivy orders these?
*       Thanks very much for the cool gift. Believe me, it became the focus of my office for about 15 minutes… Have a great holiday and thanks for the great support (and performance)!
*       Just got a VM from one of our RJ advisors (John Lalley) – he called specifically to thank us for the carving set – said it was "beautiful" and took it home to his wife and she loved it, too! He also mentioned that was a unique gift and perfect for Thanksgiving...
*       Everyone that I have talked to loved it. 
*       I have been in the business for 20 years and this is the best gift ever! 
*       I have received several thank yous- one guy said the package and kit looked sharp.
*       One comment was we were first one to the party!
*       I have had tons of positive feedback on the knife sets.
*       They love it!
*       Thank you so much for the carving set. It is beautiful. I was pleasantly surprised to see it wasn't a box of candy!!!!
*       Since I sent you the last message, I have gotten at least 5 more compliments on the carving sets. People are loving them!
*       Big hit...many calls and emails of thanks!!!!

We look forward to learning more great Relationship Building ideas from FG next week!! Thank you for your partnership!!!

Kathy Richman

A Tribute To Aunt Rose

At 2:30 today my Aunt Rose died as my mom, my cousins Danny and Monica and I held her hand and sang to her.

Aunt Rose has been ill for quite some time and recently moved into the Heartland Hospice in Jeannette.  (Angels work there, by the way.) 

Sunday, I spoke to my cousin Danny (one of the closest Ferrazzi family members to me) who has been our Aunt Rose's primary caregiver and he thought Aunt Rose probably had less than a week or two. I figured that Aunt Rose may or may not even know I was there, but I wanted to be there for Danny. He insisted (as people often do) that he was fine and there was no need. 

Then I got his sister on the line to whom I will be forever grateful. Just sharing with Mon (Monica) the decision I was struggling with helped. Her advice was timeless. "Keithy, (what Aunt Rose used to call me and it stuck with many of my cousins) if you come home, only come home because you are doing it for you and whatever you need to do to bring closure to the relationship you have with Aunt Rose in this life." Powerful words, Monny.  It brought so many memories to my mind.

Aunt Rose's generosity was famous with innumerable volunteer activities. She would wear her knees out at the church every day. Everyone knew her because of how many funerals she would go to in order to say prayers. But Rose helped anyone in need, and to her family's frustration, most often before she took care of her own needs. Driving others when she could barely walk, praying for our lost souls and our lost keys (we always found them if Rose said her prayers), helping family and neighbors who were financially strained. Because of Rose, my dad was able to replace our old car when I was growing up. She was the matriarch of the Ferrazzi family and the glue for the family gatherings. I remember visiting her and watching her work while watching TV, as she would start months in advance of a holiday by making thousands of the Ferrazzi tortellini (a pasta) from scratch.

In just that moment on the phone, all this flashed through my mind and I missed her deeper than I had in a while and I missed the family. The big family gatherings have faded into memory since Rose couldn't host any longer and so many of her generation (and a couple of mine) have passed. I wanted to connect again. I was definitely coming home. I told Monny I would be taking the redeye home that night.

As I boarded the plane later that evening, after a great sushi meal with friends in L.A. and a couple preparatory glasses of pinot to make my sleep easier. And then I heard, "Ferrazzi!" This was no fan of my book, it was a heartfelt Western Pennsylvania accent that was shouting out to a neighbor. It was Barb Hafer. Barb was a successful statewide politician who had run for governor, married my headmaster of Kiski, (Jack Pidgeon) and gave me a paid summer job in politics when I was at Yale after that aborted trip to D.C. I wrote about in Never Eat Alone. I got a great big hug, and we caught up in the boarding area. She shared with me that Jack wasn't doing too well and was in an assisted living facility outside of Pittsburgh. I said I would try to get there (it was an hour or so in the other direction).  Landing in Pitt, I decided that I'd go direct to see Jack. I mean Danny wouldn't even be up at 6:00 A.M.  And anyway, how could I not? This was the man who built the institution of Kiski School, the boys’ boarding school that clearly paved the path for me into Yale. Jack once compared me as a young man to his roommate in prep school, George Bush Senior, which I think propelled me even further towards my interest in politics and making a difference on a bigger scale than I might have otherwise imagined.

I got to the facility unannounced and walked in to find Jack eating breakfast with all the other folks. I noticed so many of the women sat by themselves or in twos but Jack was at the "guys" table. As I approached his table, shouting out my own blue-collar holler to Mr. Pidgeon, I couldn't help but look into so many of the old women's eyes who seemed so lonely. I could only see dark between half-shut eyes – no whites at all. I was just staring into the empty eyes. 

Jack's table was a little more lively, from the angry guy sitting to my left who complained about everything –to the other men's amusement, I must say – to the former farmer across from me wearing a hunting shirt and suspenders.  I couldn't help but pause on the equality of old age.  Something I might have read about in Jack's English class. Here Jack was (East Coast Ivy-educated, a friend to so many of the most powerful Americans of our time) sitting with men like Dad (uneducated, steel or coal workers) and they were all waiting for their pancakes with anticipation. Their morning conversations of the wars they have gone through, literally and figuratively, occupied their table between long and oddly expected silences. 

"Sorry Jack, I can't stay too long because I have to go pick up mom on the way to see Rose."  That was all I needed to say. All the men at the table (minus Mr. Grumpy) seemed to get a little more animated as they confirmed, "That's the right thing to do." They all shared a reverence and respect for taking care of Mom.

As we arrived at the hospice, it began to snow. I had forgotten how damn cold it got back there.  All I was thinking was, "Why would anyone live here?" My mindset was still in the practical "I'm here to do something I need to do" state. The sky was gray, and the small mining-town houses around the hospital reminded me (painfully, I might add) of the poverty I escaped and so anxiously put behind me when I went off to college to become a "new man," or at least "reinvented."  Of course I found I never became truly new or reinvented anything. I've always been and still am that boy from Latrobe. It was an oddly familiar feeling. It was just like when I would come home from college, leaving behind one place not feeling like I fit in only to come home to a place not feeling like I fit in either.

I walked in to Aunt Rose's room first. Her eyes were open. She was staring forward as if she couldn't see and she was struggling with each very small gasp for a breath. It became clear after a few “Hi Aunt Rose, its Keithy. It’s Danny! It’s Monny and Nancy!” that no movement nor acknowledgement was going to be likely. I knew then that I had come in her last moments. The nurses assured that she didn't have long. We learned the clinical signs to watch for over the next few hours. The color of skin turning purple as oxygen was increasingly, in 10-minute increments, no longer getting to her arms and legs moving northward to her heart and lungs. We called the priest again. We all said The Lord's Prayer in unison reminding me of the Protestant and Catholic mix our family had as we uttered slightly different versions.

I had never been with someone in the very last hours of life. My dad died when I was living in NY. He had driven into Latrobe hospital to have his dialysis treatment and was flirting as he always did with the pretty nurses (pretty or not, he always called them pretty) and then he stopped laughing and died. He was laughing just before he died. That always made me happy.  And, I was always so grateful that his suffering was not prolonged. 

But here was Aunt Rose. We all tried to get her to respond, even her eyes, with no reaction.  "Look here, Aunt Rose." "We love you so much."  Then the eyes of those women from earlier came back to me. I started to cry. Partially for Rose, partially for those women, partially as I looked over at my mom and hoped this scene would be so distant into the future with her, and even partially for me. 

We are all going to end up here aren't we? How will I end up? Who will be with me when that time comes? I have to say, the nurses in that Hospice amazed us. They cared for us as a family, with intimacy and warmth for Rose every time they came in. This was a special place and I finally understood what "dying with dignity" was about. I thought of my Uncle Art who died in a hospital with no one around but unresponsive and seemingly uncaring or at best, numb, nurses who never even touched Danny's shoulder when his father passed away.

And how did I want to die? What a thought. But, it really made things easier for me. I knew so clearly what to do now.  Monica sat on the bed and held Aunt Rose. Danny and Mom pulled their chairs closer and I went outside to find a hymnal. I want to go with loved ones touching me. I want to go with people I trust telling me, "It's ok to let go." That my work is done here. I want to go with people reminding me that my time here was important to them and that I made a difference in their life. I want their tears of sadness and joy to fall on my hand. I hope to God that I can feel those tears. And I want to hear music.

So music it would be. After searching the entire hospital floor for a hymnal, I found a beautiful young nutritionist filling out paperwork and I discovered that she played guitar and had hers in the car. There we were, now, sitting with Rose and singing soft Christmas carols to her - particularly the ones about angels. Rose always collected angels - the similarity between her and the objects of her collection not unnoticed to us at all. This was a moment that I will always remember. So much love and compassion and in her dying hours. Here she was, Aunt Rose, again the one who brought us all together.

I walked out of the room briefly to stretch my legs and looked out the window. The ground and sky was white with so much snow. And it wasn't just falling, it seemed to swirl up and all around those tiny mining-town houses. And it was beautiful. I wasn't thinking "Why do people live here?" I was thinking, "In so many ways, I belong here." I was feeling what it means to be "a Ferrazzi." And I felt more peace than I had for quite some time. I felt blessed to be there.

I went back into the room and it was as quiet as it was outside.  We all sat and we hummed. I asked "Aunt Rose, will you give a hug to my Dad for me when you see him, please?"

Then at 2:37 today, just as Aunt Rose brought those she touched so much peace during her life, Rose died in peace and once again gave all of us in that room a gift I’ll never forget. I learned to live a little better today. In death, I saw what matters in life, and I want more of it. We all deserve it and we can have it. It’s waiting in every person we meet if we just calm ourselves enough to turn that person from a stranger into a friend or someone to love or be loved by.  Those nurses did that every day. Aunt Rose did that every day. I walked into that hospice not doing that. I walked out into the snow and listened to my muffled crunchy steps on the covered sidewalk. Every step toward a deeper commitment to what really matters.

Rose will always be the spirit that binds our family together and will continue to be remembered for all of the angelic beauty that was and is Rose.