Keith Ferrazzi Quotes

Johnson’s reply was cordial and short. “When convenient, I’d be happy to meet.” So I went back to his assistant with the information that Michael said he’d be happy to meet and that I was now calling to find out when. And finally, we did in fact meet.

The future is dynamic and not fully in your control. Celebrate that fact instead of fighting it, and life gets a lot more interesting. Keep your eyes open, be humble and generous, and save time and attention for the spontaneous, the quirky, and the left field.

the book Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck, my old friend Tony Tjan and his coauthors studied people they called “Luck Dominant,” and found that 86 percent of them credited their success to “being open to new things and people.

Group meetings and one-on-ones using a tool like Google Hangouts, WebEx, or Skype can make you feel almost like you’re in a room together, once you get comfortable using them.

Jonah Berger, who conducted an exhaustive study of “most e-mailed” links on the New York Times website and wrote a book about the results, Contagious:

If I’m going to take the time to meet with somebody, I’m going to try to make that person successful. But David kept score. He saw every social encounter in terms of diminishing returns. For him, there was only so much goodwill available in a relationship and only so much collateral and equity to burn. What he didn’t understand was that it’s the exercising of equity that builds equity. That’s the big “aha” that David never seemed to have learned.

Competitive edge in the industrial era was won by constantly reengineering process and systems. Today it’s won by improving relationships.

The e-mail I sent was simple: “Dear Michael, I’m a friend of Jane’s, and she suggested I talk with you … Jane thinks we should know each other.” If I had had something specific to discuss, I would have put it right up front, but the best value proposition I had was the mutual friend who felt this would be a win-win. It’s sometimes effective to utilize several forms of communication when trying to reach an important new contact. An e-mail, letter, fax, or postcard often has a better chance of landing directly in the hands of the person you’re trying to reach.

Creativity begets more creativity, money begets more money, knowledge begets more knowledge, more friends beget more friends, success begets even more success. Most important, giving begets giving.