In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps – and inner mindset – he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on his Rolodex, people he has helped and who have helped him. He then distills his system of reaching out to people into practical, proven principles.
If you are still not sure if the book is worth reading, go through the following 30 Quotes sourced from “Never Eat Alone”.
- “Success in any field, but especially in business is about working with people, not against them.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Business is a human enterprise, driven and determined by people.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Your network is your destiny, a reality backed up by many studies in the newly emergent fields of social networking and social contagion theory. We are the people we interact with.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “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.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “I’ve come to believe that connecting is one of the most important business—and life—skill sets you’ll ever learn. Why? Because, flat out, people do business with people they know and like. Careers—in every imaginable fieldwork the same.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Real networking was about finding ways to make other people more successful.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “By giving your time and expertise and sharing them freely, the pie gets bigger for everyone.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Poverty, I realized, wasn’t only a lack of financial resources; it was isolation from the kind of people who could help you make more of yourself.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “It’s better to give before you receive. And never keep score. If your interactions are ruled by generosity, your rewards will follow suit.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be the best in the world, as long as you know that doing so also means wanting to be the best for the world.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “A network functions precisely because there’s recognition of mutual need. There’s an implicit understanding that investing time and energy in building personal relationships with the right people will pay dividends. The majority of “one per-centers” are in that top stratum because they understand this dynamic—because, in fact, they themselves used the power of their network of contacts and friends to arrive at their present station.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Our careers aren’t paths so much as landscapes that are navigated.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Wherever you are in life right now, and whatever you know, is a result of the ideas, experiences, and people you have interacted with in your life.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Organizations can’t change their culture unless individual employees change their behavior – and changing behavior is hard.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “There is only one place to find real peace, real harmony. That place is within.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Who you know determines who you are—how you feel, how you act, and what you achieve.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Lifetime corporate employment is dead; we’re all free agents now, managing our own careers across multiple jobs and companies. And because today’s primary currency is information, a wide-reaching network is one of the surest ways to become and remain thought leaders of our respective fields.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Audacity was often the only thing that separated two equally talented men and their job titles.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “We are the people we interact with. Our paychecks, our moods, the health of our hearts, and the size of our bellies—all of these things are determined by whom we choose to interact with and how.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “The choice isn’t between success and failure; it’s between choosing risk and striving for greatness, or risking nothing and being certain of mediocrity.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Over time, I came to see reaching out to people as a way to make a difference in people’s lives as well as a way to explore and learn and enrich my own; it became the conscious construction of my life’s path.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “If you plan your whole life, by definition you can’t get lucky. So you have to leave that little slot open.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “There is genius, even kindness, in being bold.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “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.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “The problem, as I see it, isn’t what you’re working on, it’s whom you’re working with.” – Keith Ferrazz
- “You can’t feel in love with your life if you hate your work; and more times than not, people don’t love their work because they work with people they don’t like.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Power, today, comes from sharing information, not withholding it.” – Keith Ferrazzi
- “Until you become as willing to ask for help as you are to give it, however, you are only working half the equation.” – Keith Ferrazzi
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