Life Musings

This has been excerpted from "The 10 Secrets of a Master Networker" by Keith Ferrazzi. It's an article that's well worth reading.

"Well, what do you want?" Ferrazzi will ask any would-be networker seeking instruction in the art. What do you want?

"If your aspirations lie with the crème de la crème," he says, "that is, if your aspirations are to be one of the top x people in the world in whatever you do, if you're so bold as to want to be president of the United States or a respected CEO in the Fortune 500, I would argue that you won't get there by knowing a lot of middle-level people." You need to know the right people, for the right reason.

As a Yale undergrad, Ferrazzi, who grew up outside Pittsburgh, thought he wanted to become the governor of Pennsylvania. So he became the president of Yale's political union. When he was looking to join a fraternity, he researched which one had the most active politicians as alumni. (Sigma Chi wasn't chartered at Yale, so he founded a chapter.) When he was a sophomore, he ran for New Haven City Council, but lost. From 1991 through 1999 at Deloitte Consulting, his first job after Harvard Business School, he desperately wanted to distinguish himself from the other striving postgrad consultants. Since Michael Hammer of "reengineering" fame was the guru of the moment, Ferrazzi befriended him and helped Deloitte ride Hammer's fame. Ferrazzi became the youngest person ever elected partner at Deloitte Consulting. The more focused Ferrazzi's goal was, the more outrageous his networking fortunes became.

In November 2000 the YaYa board named Ferrazzi CEO and handed him two goals: establish a viable business model, and then either find a major investor or sell the company to a well-heeled strategic acquirer. At the time, YaYa had the tech capability to invent on-line games that corporations could use to attract and educate their customers, but the company had no customers -- or revenue. "I was hired to get a new concept heard for the first time in the marketplace," Ferrazzi says. He mapped out the most important players in the on-line-games industry, from CEOs and journalists to programmers and academics. He knew almost all of them within a year. And in 2002, YaYa recorded $8 million in sales.