Now Listening - Never Eat Alone
Despite my troubles with Audible.com, I’m pleased to report that my first audio book is a real winner. I’m learning a lot from “Never Eat Alone : And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time” (Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz).
I’ve been listening to it every day on my commute. The narrator is very good, and the content is top-notch. Keith is full of personal stories about connecting with people and building your network. He’s got a lot of advice as well. I’m actually thinking that I may need to purchase the paper book to have his tips ready-to-hand. So many are so good, but they slip your mind if you can’t flip back and refer to them.
What I’m learning
Networkers don’t have to be jerks. At its heart, networking is about making friends and being helpful to them. It isn’t about callous and shallow usage, and is certainly not about favor tallying. Those realizations are worth the price of the book to me.
Right at the start of the book, Mr. Ferrazzi says one of his ground-rules is that you should never keep score. That’s liberating. I started doing this a long time ago with lunch dates. If I go to lunch with a friend, I like to alternate paying, but I explicitly agree with them that we aren’t tallying prices. If we go to a more expensive restaurant one week and a lesser one the next time, we know that it will equal in the end. That little agreement has made a difference in comfort for us. I’m looking forward to seeing how deliberately not keeping favor tallies will enhance my social network.
Definitions
I kept being a bit put off about Keith’s apparent ease with the word "friend". Just today, I heard “Of course, everyone has at least ten friends.” Really? I got to thinking about that and came to an observation. I think that Keith just defines the word differently than me. He says friend where I’d say acquaintance, and he says close friend where I’d say friend. Defined like that, of course I have ten “good acquaintances”.
Actually, I’ve decided to try his definitions on for size. I think it may make a difference in my social experience.
Not ready for a conclusion
I’ll have more observations as I listen more to the book. For now, extremely worthwhile, if a bit mentally or emotionally challenging to consider trying to enact in my life. So far I’d give it an early "A" grade. I think it has the potential to deeply influence more than a few lives, which not many books truly do.
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