Never Eat Alone

Never Eat Alone

Book Report

The word networking has a very negative perception for most people; they imagine some guy shaking their hand, smiling, and marking them down in a Rolodex somewhere as merely another asset to tap someday. While there are people out there that match this mold, the truth is that actual relationships with people are a big key to success, and it’s also true that most people simply aren’t very good at quickly building mutually beneficial relationships with others. They either don’t have the social skills, see it as being vampiric and cold, or simply don’t see the larger benefit.

Never Eat Alone is a guide to networking in a socially healthy and mutually beneficial way, although it avoids the word “networking” on the cover instead using the subtitle “And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time”. The approach here isn’t shaking everyone’s hand in the room, grabbing business cards, and jamming them into an overstuffed Rolodex; instead, it’s a much more humane approach, one that actually appealed to me even though that picture of the shifty networker above really turns me off.

The book is broken up into four sections, which themselves are broken up into a number of short chapters. Interspersed throughout are short one-page profiles of people who are particularly good at building relationships quickly. While the profiles were interesting, it was the rest of the book that really contained usable advice and action points.

The book opens with a story of Keith employed as a caddie in a wealthy town adjacent to his boyhood home. During this time carrying clubs, he watched as the country club members found each other jobs, invested time and money in one another’s ideas and helped each other’s kids get into the best schools, get the best internships and the best jobs. “Before my eyes, I saw proof that success breeds success and, indeed, the rich do get richer” says Ferrazzi. “Poverty, I realized, wasn’t only a lack of financial...