I recently interviewed Keith Ferrazzi on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today was the youngest chief marketing officer in the country and is a number one New York Times bestselling author. Keith Ferrazzi is the chairman of Ferrazzi Greenlight and is the author of several books, including Never Eat Alone. Keith, thank you for joining us.

Keith: It's my pleasure. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Adam: I'm looking forward to it too. You grew up as a poor kid in Pittsburgh, coming from an immigrant family that worked in the steel industry. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What were the key experiences and lessons that are instrumental to your worldview and to your success?

Keith: Fear of poverty is probably number one. When you are living in a world where- and by the way, this wasn't unique. In Pittsburgh, this steel industry had crashed in the 70’s. Steel industries, steel companies were closing down everywhere. And the unemployment rate was through the roof. To this day, those individuals have never recovered. Of course, Carnegie Mellon University and self-driving cars and all these wonderful things have given Pittsburgh rejuvenation, but not for those people. They still live in rundown shacks along the Monongahela. That and they're living on basic, not pensions anymore because their companies were bankrupt. They're living on welfare. So it's a pretty destitute community. Back in the day, you know, you couldn't afford gas to go from one city to another in the local community. I mean, that's how, that's how bad it was, in terms of how that shaped my view. Obviously, scarcity and fear is a pretty good driver of a kick in the butt. But there was something else along the way. I met a woman by the name of Mrs. Poland. Like the country. I had to go get a job at the local Country Club. I was maybe 10. And I was cutting, carrying golf clubs. And my mom had to go get a job and become a cleaning lady. My dad was at many jobs, digging ditches, whatever was necessary. And what happened at this early stage was, Mrs. Poland took a personal interest in me and I couldn't quite figure out why. My dad used to say to me, Keith showed the golf course a half an hour. And I couldn't debate him. I used to call the immigrants to Tourette's when my dad would say things that I wouldn't be able to debate with him. I'm like, Dad, there's nobody there. He's like, show up to the golf course, half an hour early. I was like fine, whatever. So showing up at the golf course half an hour early meant that I did get there before anybody else was there and because I was bored, I walked around and I noticed where the pins were placed. And therefore, I could recommend golf advice in which club to use approaching the green. I would see how the greens were cut. And so I could read putts better. And if they were cutting, therefore, if they were faster that morning, etc. And interestingly enough, because of that, combined with my fear and scarcity, which led to my drive, I couldn't afford to lose that job. That job was making me 20 bucks a day, which is the same amount of money my mom brought home to the family from cleaning a house all day. And so that combined made Mrs. Poland take an interest in me. Now, it was interesting, not because I was poor, because I took two strokes off of her golf score. What we all have to wake up to in our lives is that people are crucial to our success. If you don't serve those individuals, like a banshee, like if you don't just serve those individuals that are important to you, then you're not important to them. And as a result, you do not have a brand, you do not have a presence in their life that would make them be of service to you. And so you lead with service, you lead with generosity. And that's the key to all of our success. How do you be helpful to the people that are the most important people in your life? And what's great about that mantra is that it can cascade into anything including your spousal relationships, your children’s relationships, you know, your ability to serve your community and church or whatever else. So, it is so important, so important that we lead with generosity. Now, assuming you lead with generosity showing up as an authentic, loving, caring individual is the number two point of success, which is, if you really bonded with this person, if you really connected with this person, if this person knows that you care about them, and therefore have you bridged what would have been a transactional relationship. In the case of Mrs. Poland, she became like a second mom to me, her son became my best friend. And I went on vacations with their family, they opened up a new world to me of rich people that I didn't know. I only knew other poor folk like us. But they opened up an entirely new world. A buddy of mine wrote a book A number of years ago called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And it's very similar. But this is my rich mom.

Adam: I love that. And I actually recently interviewed Robert Kiyosaki, he’s the co author on my leadership blog. So great book, and you touched on some really important themes that we're going to dive into over the course of this conversation, one being leadership, another being relationship building. But before we do, I wanted to ask you more about your journey. You rocketed up the corporate ladder, becoming the youngest elected partner at Deloitte and the Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte Consulting at an incredibly early age. What were the things that you did to get to the top of such a competitive organization, and what are your best tips for listeners on how to climb the corporate ladder and excel within whatever organizations they're in?

Keith: Well, all of this is documented in my first book called Never Eat Alone. And I'm walking you in a sense through the chapters of that book, when I talk about giving without keeping score. And that's one of the chapters- giving without keeping score, the idea of deepening intimacy and connection, the idea of your success in a large organization has to do with your identification of the pathway of relationships, that will help you achieve the kind of success you hope to achieve at Deloitte. I built not only relationships with my direct supervisors, but I built relationships with the executives of the company. I was on their radar screen. I heard their talks in large rooms, or, you know, in 1000’s of people. And then I internalized it and asked, how can I be helpful? There aren't many people that listen to the CEO of the company they report to and ask the question, okay, how can I activate? But when the CEO of Deloitte said that they wanted to have the company bill be one of the topmost prominent brands in the world? I said, how do I activate? And so I called a professor of mine at business school and said, I'd like to write a white paper on professional services marketing. And I want to interview the chief marketing officers of other companies in the competitive space at Deloitte. And I even called the chief marketing officer, McKinsey. I said, I'm doing a paper at Harvard, and I'm doing this best practices research. I would be happy to turn around and give you the best practices research back. But can I interview you, and I even told him, you know, I said, I did an internship with Deloitte, which is accurate. So I number one, honestly told them I was going to share the feedback. I told them that I'd worked at Deloitte. But when I was done with this white paper, interviewing Accenture Times, called Anderson Consulting, Deloitte and others, I sent that white paper to the CEO of Deloitte and I said, I heard you'd say you want to be the best brand. Here's the formula your competitors are using to become strong brands in their organizations. He was blown away. And it gave me a personal audience with that individual and ultimately brought me into work for the CEO on brand building for the company, and made me the youngest partner elected in the firm and the Chief Marketing Officer before I was 30.

Adam: And then a couple of years later, you're 32, you are hired as the youngest Fortune 500 Chief Marketing Officer when you became the CMO of Starwood. What are the best lessons you learned from that experience?

Keith: Well, that's a different question. I'm going to finish the first question on this point, which is the first question, how do you, you know, work your trajectory? Sure. The person who got me that job was a business school associate, who was already in the company, called me and said, hey, Keith, you know, we're looking for a chief marketing officer, you should interview. And it was ridiculous because here I was, you know, just 30 and being told you should interview but it was because of a personal relationship with a peer. And so one of the important things to recognize is that you're not only looking up for your network, you need to be looking across your peers and down into the organization today, one of my clients is a former employee, we need to be looking at building those relationships in a 360-degree manner. Now the second piece is what did I learn. We had a brilliant, brilliant CEO, an executive. And I would say that I learned that not all organizations cater to the style of leadership that you are accustomed to, or that you want. I had a certain style of leadership that led me as the CEO of Deloitte did, very paternalistically. Very partnership-oriented. Starwood was a very different place, there is a very hard driver, finance type of person. And I really rebelled against that style of leadership. And instead of really trying to understand it, work with it, I pushed back on it a lot. We had a lot of success during the period of time that we were there. But I didn't enjoy myself. And my relationship with Barry was not the kind of relationship that I had with the executive at Deloitte that I worked with. And a lot of that had to do with my choice. And my indulgence, my entitlement, I felt that I deserved to be led a certain way. And I expected that. And the reality is that that's not all. That's not who all people are. And if you want to be successful, you've got to forgive others and ask yourself, what's my part? How do I show up differently? And I think that was one of the great lessons that my challenges and failures with my relationship with the CEO- they were my fault. Now, you could easily be a victim, and point to the behaviors of other people and say, they shouldn't treat me like this, they shouldn't say this. But in reality, we've got to recognize that we are fully responsible for the world that we have around us in our relationships. And it's up to us to decide how indulgent or entitled we tend to be or how much of a victim we want to be, versus claiming the stake of creating our own world that we want to live in.

Adam: And, Keith, to your point, one of the guests I had on this podcast early on was the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, and he wrote a book on leadership. And one of his core principles, which we spoke about on Thirty Minute Mentors is that before you can become a great leader, you need to become a great follower. And all too often, that is overlooked. And I wanted to ask you, in your experience, what do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader, and what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Keith: So I wrote my first leadership book, you could argue that every book I've written is a leadership book. But I wrote my first leadership book, it came out at the beginning of 2020, called Leading Without Authority. And I would say that the first awakening for me of real leadership is when you realize you've got to earn the right to lead that it's not presumed by your title. But the benefit of that is, being a leader isn't contingent upon your title, either. Anybody listening could be that kid at Deloitte, who becomes the chief marketing officer in five years. And the youngest partner ever, if you choose to ignore your title, and just be of radically transformative service to the organization, anybody can stand up and become a leader. And that's a personal choice. And it means that it is your opportunity to identify what is the vision that you see for the future of this organization, in the case of Deloitte was handed to me by the CEO, one of the biggest brands, what is your role in that? Well, I really wanted to reshape what a marketing function would look like. Who is your team? Well, I had no team. In the old vernacular of a team, my team ended up being those that I wanted to co-create a forward future for the company, anybody with a marketing position. My supervisor who would have to give me a break, because I'd be thinking about things and doing things that weren't necessarily my job, but they were beyond my job. And was I given that permission. The CEO, in this case himself, who I kept abreast of my thinking, right, they were on my team. Did they report to me, know if anybody asked them are you and Keith’s team? They say, what the heck do you mean? So the second piece is who's your team? The next piece is, you need to earn the right to lead with them. And I say lead with them in that real leadership is a co-creation. Real leadership helps people see a way forward with you, and that they create their own. And I'm dealing with this in my own firm, it's very easy for me having been in the business for 20 years. By the way, what do we do for a living in our company? We coach teams, that's what we do. We coach teams, the team at General Motors that's ushering the transformation of General Motors. And when I coach teams, I hope these teams awaken to the realization that all of them own each other's success. And I created a word called co-elevation, meaning a team co-elevates, it doesn't just collaborate, a team pushes each other higher, pushes each other higher. A team works hard to be of service to each other. A team really drives each other. And I was saying, I've got a situation right now where I've got an extraordinary new member of my executive team, running one of the divisions of my business, and I'm starting to see this individual emerge as an extraordinary potential future leader of the company. And, you know, I've been in this business 20 years, I know a lot of the problems and how to solve them quickly. But part of it is inviting this individual into co-creating a solution. The most difficult thing for me is including letting him make mistakes, like, not just cutting them off and telling him the answer. But letting him make mistakes and grow and learn and develop. Coaching people is really about coaching individuals through making their own decisions, making their own investments, making their own mistakes, and decreasing the cycle time of getting it right for themselves. And that's an interesting job as a leader. And that's a lot of what I write about in the book leading without authority, which you can get. I think I'm even giving away a free course on leading without authority.

Adam: Keith, you shared so much wisdom there. And I want to highlight a few points for listeners. And one of the interviews I did not do on Thirty Minute Mentors, but another platform I have was with a retired Admiral. And he told me that over the course of his entire military career, he could count on one hand, the number of times that anyone above him in the military told them that this is an order. Being a leader is about listening. And it's not about having a CEO on your business card. It's not about the title, manager, or being called boss. To your point, Keith, it's about being the kind of person who commands authority. So I think that's a really important point and a point that you hear over and over from guests on the show. And another theme that so many listeners- I'm sure- are nodding their heads when they heard you talk about the importance of learning from failure. Only a mediocre person never makes mistakes, a line that I learned from the great former mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan. And if you're too afraid to fail, you're too afraid to achieve anything of any kind of consequence. So it's extremely important as a leader to give the people around you, everyone around you, the room and the rope, to be able to learn, to grow, and if something goes wrong, so be it. We're all human beings. When you make a mistake, number one, acknowledge that a mistake took place. Number two, learn from it. And number three, move forward with a positive attitude.

Keith: I love those lessons. Thanks for sharing those.

Adam: Keith, I want to ask you about your book, Never Eat Alone. Firstly, the name, Never Eat Alone. What a brilliant name for a book. I would love to know how you got the idea for the name of the book. I could tell you as an entrepreneur, a challenge that a lot of people don't realize is how difficult it is to come up with names for businesses you have or for products you have. But beyond that, I want to ask you about the substance of the book which we touched a little bit on earlier, but it's really focused on networking, which is a topic that energizes many of us, but scares so many others. And I wanted to know, what are your best tips for listeners who might not be naturally predisposed to networking, and what are your best tips for the expert networkers among us on how to better build and more effectively develop powerful networks?

Keith: So the name of the book actually was just a chapter- Never Eat Alone was one of the chapters. It all emanated from me giving an interview with Inc. Magazine, where they were like, how in the heck do you make such early success in your life, and I gave them 10 tips. One chapter was constantly out there. Now I know that that's a drain for a lot of introverts. It's becoming a little easier in a world where we're using remote meetings more effectively. So it's less of a physiological drain on us. But I understand it's still an emotional drain, Never Eat Alone was just that; get out, get away from your desk, get out there, go down to the cafeteria, ask somebody for lunch, etc. So that was very simple, but it was such a compelling title that my publisher chose it. It's interesting. You say it's difficult to get some of those brand names. There are people who are really exceptional at it, and people who have seen what works and what doesn't work, you've got to trust. I've seen too many people make mistakes, because they allow their own ego to stand in the way of asking for help, or their own sense of being right to stand in the way of asking those who have seen it 1,000 times. So, I trust my publisher, is the answer to your question for this book. You know, it's interesting, I have subsequently written a number of books, my most recent one, which I'm very proud of as well, Leading Without Authority, is a very compelling brand and name it seems to be doing quite well. So I guess I'm learning something along the way, for the average person who's an introvert, but I would say don't think of networking as a volume game. Think of it as a very focused game of identifying the two or three people that are the overlap of who would be who would benefit you and who you like. And if you focus on building relationships with people you like, and that they would benefit you, it's not as difficult because you're not out there being insincere, inauthentic, which is what a lot of what introverts are fearful of in the networking game. Now, some people say, well, what do you mean, build a relationship with people that could benefit you- that seems so insincere. Well, it's not just because somebody could benefit you. And that you're proactive doesn't mean that the relationship isn't authentic. I would say that the most authentic relationships of our life, we're very proactive, which is the loves of our lives. I mean, when you see somebody at an event, you say, holy cow, that person's amazing. You talk to them, you find out they're even more amazing. And you go through a very purposeful way of thinking about what you wear, how do you get to know them, who do they know that you know, etc. It's very purposeful. Is it fake? No, it's all in service of a strong relationship, it's mutual. So don't be afraid to be purposeful about relationships. And then I would say, for those who are extraordinary at building relationships already, or networking already, I would say move from thinking about building one on one relationships to building communities. You know, hosting dinners with multiple people. Having forums where you pull people together to talk about topics. If you become a convener of multiple people, you expand your network exponentially, versus if you're running around doing it as an individual, networking one on one.

Adam: Great advice. And I want to dig a little bit deeper, because a challenge that so many of us have is, quote-unquote, staying on top of relationships. And when I was growing up, my mom used to delineate her relationships between the other moms who were part of her carpool, and everyone else. When you're out of sight, it's easy to be out of mind. And I wanted to know what is your playbook for managing relationships, especially for the many people who you meet and connect with but aren't necessarily in your carpool?

Keith: So the great thing about being in a remote and virtual world is that you can go way outside of your swim lane to start building relationships. The best way to do that, of course, is through referrals. Find out who you want to get to know who knows somebody you already do know and build that relationship. And that way, I would say, the other opportunity is to identify a targeted set of individuals that are you're, you're desirous of building relationships with, and find a reason to be on their radar. You can research so much about them, find out their hobbies, find out what they're being quoted in doing in the news, find out what their nonprofits are, there's so much you can do. And then ask yourself, how can it be helpful to this person and reach out to them with that mindset?

Adam: And once you've developed a level of connection, how do you stay on top of the relationship, especially once you've cultivated a number of relationships, and you have a day job. In some cases, entrepreneurs have multiple things that they're working on. How do you effectively manage all these different relationships so you can stay top of their mind? What's your strategy?

Keith: Well, the key is to really have a system, the intention is for you to say, strategically, what am I trying to achieve, question one. Question two, who are the most important people I should be reaching out to? And you mix those who you have some relationship with, and those who you're aspiring to build a relationship with. And then, what is my outreach strategy? And you constantly revisit that, as you decide where your strategy is and where your goals are going. So you know, it's matching people to your goals. I am always trying to achieve something, I always ask the question who? So I was coaching the CEO of an online food company this morning. And he was thinking about this change that he needed to make, because he found that the existing marketing platform that he was using is tapping out in growth. It's flattening. And he was trying to figure out what the new growth platforms he wanted to do are. And so he's going through this, I said, you're thinking about this wrong. Instead of looking for the answer, ask yourself who are the people that would best advise me? So don't try to dive in and figure out the answer yourself, ask yourself who would best advise me, and then reach out to those five individuals. So if you always lead with the question “who,” you will be much more successful.

Adam: Good advice. Now, thank you. In our remaining time, I want to ask you a few rapid-fire questions. We spoke about your background as the youngest CEO in the Fortune 500. What are your best tips for listeners on the topic of marketing?

Keith: Put yourself into the shoes of the buyer. Always ask yourself, how can I serve them in a way that would surprise and delight them always? And you'll do just fine.

Adam: How can anyone listening develop a winning mindset?

Keith: Hang out with people who have winning mindsets.

Adam: Like what can anyone do to become more successful personally or professionally?

Keith: Hang out with people who are more successful than you personally and professionally.

Adam: That’s great. Keith, thank you so much for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Keith: Truly, my pleasure, a lot of fun. Thanks a lot.

Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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