never eat alone blog

Inspiration for Change

"When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break through their bonds, your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents come alive, and you find yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be." – Patanjali

Go Canada! Part II

So the amazingly positive Air Canada saga continues. I am coming back from my talk and the book signing was running late and I didn't want to just walk away. Result was that I got to airport LATE again and found a long security line. FINALLY get through security and as I'm rushing to the gate, a lovely woman from Canada Air comes to me and says, "Mr. Ferrazzi?  Don't worry, you have time."  I looked at her, puzzled.  "Someone in HQ is on your community site and read your blog and got us a message.  We looked to see when you were returning and sent me to just say thank you for your blog!" 

I think I'm going to take Air Canada again and as often as possible!  These folks are amazing!

Go Canada!

It's always incredible to meet people who obviously see their job not just as a JOB, but as an unending opportunity to help others. Well, I cannot remember a more amazing and better experience with travel service than I had this morning with Air Canada.

I got to the airport an hour early for my flight. Guess what I forgot? My passport. 

My first Air Canada agent alerted the gate that I was going to try to get my passport in time for the flight. She got clearance to allow me to board up to 10 mins before takeoff, when normally the flight would be closed an hour before. Meanwhile my driver had jumped in the car to go back to the house for the passport -- but heck, that's an hour round trip if we're lucky!

I was standing around waiting, looking worried, and a second AC agent noticed. As we chatted her heart went out to my situation.  She was so sweet and was noticeably concerned that the audience of 5k that I was traveling to speak to would be unhappy with my mistake. She enlisted yet a third agent and designed a plan. Agent III would usher me through security without the passport, while Agent II waited outside for the driver to arrive. We knew he was now 10 minutes away - exactly the amount of time before takeoff! We were calling back in forth, marking the time and locations with the precision of spy show.

Three minutes before departure, my driver pulls up with the passport -- no idea how he did that run!

Agent II runs up and gets by security with the passport where she hands it off to Alex who now has a minute to TICKET ME against all the red flashing screens. I saw him pleading with the gate people and somehow....THEY DID IT!  I'm now on the flight, typing this blog, about to be wheels up and the flight was on time-- amazing.

Thank you Air Canada! Thank you Mike! 

Anyone got a customer service success story to rival that one??

Quote of the Day

"If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn't ask me, I'd still have to say it."
                                                                                       — George F. Burns

Do you agree?

Who's Going to Find You Your Next Job?

Well, the simple answer of course is YOU! Rarely does anyone hand us anything on a silver platter in this world. Your next guess might be "someone who's close to me." But my friend Peter Roche had an interesting blog the other day about Granovetter's landmark 1973 study that showed that "weak ties" - friends of friends, for example - are more likely to land you your next gig.

Tip 136 - Two Hot Tools for Becoming an Instant Expert

A snippet from this week's Tip of the Week - sign up here to get them!!

"The Internet offers so many opportunities to build and enhance your personal brand, letting potential employers and anyone else know before you walk through the door that you've got something incredible to offer. Of course, to be a real expert on anything, the first prerequisite is actually deep familiarity and facility with your subject matter. But after that, it's all about finding ways to show people you're an expert. Chances are you've already heard you should have a blog, a LinkedIn account, and - of course! - a Keith Ferrazzi Community profile. But here are a couple of tools you might not have heard about yet that can help you up your expert profile."

Follow Me on Twitter

I'm twittering now - follow me, it'll be fun!

Guest Post: Dan Schawbel on Reputation Management

Today, a guest post on reputation management from Dan Schawbel, Gen-Y brand management machine. Actually, Fast Co has called him a "personal branding force of nature," which is arguably even better. Lots of great stuff to be found on his Personal Branding Blog.

Five Free Tools for Personal Reputation Management
By Dan Schawbel

So what is “reputation management”?

Reputation management means tracking your personal brand both online and offline and reacting when necessary. 

A lot of people think that personal branding is synonymous with reputation management, but I like to position it as routine maintenance, after you’ve already established yourself.  On the web, reputation management means monitoring and potentially interacting with sites and users that have cited your brand name. Offline, reputation management means assessing the success or failure of your brand by seeking feedback from your network.

Reputation management is mandatory these days for career development and personal brand management. The general public is generating content like crazy. There are over 80 million YouTube videos, over 110 million blogs and over 230 million profiles on the largest social networks (Facebook & MySpace).  Content that is created on one website can travel to others and people can comment on you instantaneously.  Do you know what people are saying about you?

Below are my Top 5 recommended tools for your personal reputation management – all free! 

1.    Google - Google.com/alerts

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. You can subscribe through email and RSS readers.  PR agencies often use alerts to track their campaigns.  You can monitor a news story, keep current with your industry and competitors, and see who is writing about you.

2.    Blog posts – Technorati.com

If you have a blog, then you have to be on Technorati, which is the largest blog search engine in the world.  Technorati tracks “blog reactions” or blogs that link to yours, upon registration.  Search for your name on Technorati and subscribe to RSS alerts. Then when someone blogs about you, you’ll be notified.

3.    Blog comments – backtype.com

Recently, a new service came out to solve the problem of how to monitor blog comments.  Think about it: If you’re only tracking posts, not comments, you could really be missing out on a lot of chatter about your brand. BackType is a service that lets you find, follow, and share comments from across the web. Whenever you write a comment with a link to your website, BackType attributes it to you.

4.    Discussion boards - boardtracker.com
Discussion boards are yet another channel where people can gather in a community and talk about YOU.  Most people disregard discussion boards until they see other sites commenting on information they viewed on them.  Use boardtracker.com to get instant alerts from threads citing your name.

5.    Twitter – search.twitter.com
Twitter messages (tweets) move at the speed of light and if you don’t catch them, they’ll spread like a virus.  Using Twitter search you can locate any instances of your name and either tweet back or remain silent. 

All five of these free tools can be used to monitor your company’s brand name as well.  If you aren’t taking care of your online reputation, others will.  It’s time to find out what people are saying and do something about it. 

Dan Schawbel is the leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y. He authors the Personal Branding Blog and publishes Personal Branding Magazine. Dan's upcoming book is called  Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, Spring 2009). 

Q&A with Marilyn Carlson Nelson, author of How We Lead Matters

My friend Marilyn Carlson Nelson has a wonderful new book out called How We Lead Matters: Reflections on a Life of Leadership. Marilyn is the chairman and former CEO of Carlson, a global group of companies in more than 150 countries countries. Many of those companies are hotels (Radisson, Regent, Park Plaza, to name a few).

I asked her to share her insight directly with readers of this blog by answering a question.

Keith: What's the best tip you have to help employees at all levels become strong leaders in the workplace?

Marilyn: Be certain that you want to “do” as much as you want to “be.”  You might aspire to be a Director, Vice President or even a CEO, but it’s important to know what the job entails beyond the prestige of the title and that you are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to fulfill the job.  During the time you are in that role, you may not have much work/life balance.  Take responsibility for that choice.  High performance roles require sacrifice. After all, when was the last time you heard an Olympic athlete complain about work/life balance?

Visit Marilyn's site to read about the two cool ebooks you'll get for free if you buy her book online by September 19.

Good "Big Picture" Piece on the Financial Meltdown

From Bill Taylor, blogger and co-author of Mavericks at Work:

"I don’t have any fail-safe advice to help you avoid making terrible decisions about your life. But as we deal with the fallout from so many executives making such terrible decisions, the simplest advice seems the most appropriate. Figure out what you care about and devote yourself to that purpose. Stay the course, even when your colleagues wander off course. And never forget that if something sounds too good to be true—from no-money-down-mortgages to instant riches with a hedge fund—it probably is."

Read the whole piece here.