Ask the Writer: May 2008 Archives

Keith Ferrazzi is the best-selling author of Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship At A Time. When I worked for Keith in college, I had time to interview him about how building professional relationships, and about how Never Eat Alone can be applied to college life. The interview is two years old (almost to the day) and was first published on my old site. I have reprinted it here as part of my Ask the Writer series. This interview is about college only; writers interested in relationships and Never Eat Alone should follow this link. Although most writers hate to admit it, relationship building is important in finding a publisher. Business plays a key role in writing and in the university. As an instructor, I highly recommend students check out Keith's advice below.

 BP: Are fun and professionalism mutually exclusive? College students have a lot of fun, not necessarily drink or sex, but also simply keeping late hours, watching movies, playing games, and so on. Yet many still manage to maintain solid GPAs and social networks. Can fun and professionalism co-exist at college? Where is the line between excess self-gratification and overwork?

 KF: Having fun and being professionally successful are absolutely not mutually exclusive. The problem is when people get the impression that they have to overdo the fun in college because they won't have a good time once they start full-time jobs after college. And that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, most of the work I do with organizations is helping their people build stronger personal relationships within the firm, so they work better together, and, frankly, have more fun together at work. We practice what we preach in my firm Ferrazzi Greenlight, too. We're always doing things like touch football, outdoor boot camp workouts, and having parties at my house. Getting to know each other better through fun stuff like that actually adds to our respect for each other as professionals and people.

BP: In college, it seems that many students don't start networking until they reach their senior year: as if college is separated from the rest of life somehow (many people say that leaving college means entering the real world--implying that college is part of a fake world, or that it isn't true life.) Is what they say true? If so, what can college students do to enter the real world long before they are forced to?

KF: If by your senior year you don't already have relationships with working professionals who have mentored you and given you internships, then you won't be "networking." You'll just be job-hunting. If I could only give you one piece of advice it would be this: Build it before you need it. Start during your first year - and if you're past that, then just start now! - getting to know the people who can help you get where you want to go. Too many college students tell me they don't have time to start building these relationships. That's absolute B.S. You don't have time to meet or have a discussion on the phone with one - just one - working professional per month whom you admire, someone you respect and want to be like someday? Of course you can do that. It's all about choices. If you choose to hide behind the veil of "If I get good grades, then I'll get a good job" nonsense, you're job-hunting will be difficult, painful, and unforgiving. And don't use excuses like, "I'll never get a sweet job like Johnny because my dad doesn't own his own company like Johnny's dad does." That's bogus, too. My mom was a cleaning lady and my dad was a steelworker. I wasn't born with a silver spoon. But I chose not to let that hold me back. You can make your own nepotism. You can get access to people who can help you achieve your dreams. But you have to decide to do that and start now. Build it before you need it.

BP: It seems that college students are less likely to behave professionally in social situations, and some are completely disrespectful (come to class unshaven, disheveled, hung-over, or even drunk, attend guest lectures in pajamas, text message each other during tests, watch Lost trailers on their video iPods, etc.) What are your suggestions for impressing upon these students the importance of reconciling their social and academic lives?

KF: That's your call to go to class hung-over and un-showered. Just don't expect to be able to go to your professor when you need a reference letter and her write about how you have your act together. You're missing out if you think you have to disrespect authority to be cool with your peers. You're also not getting it if you think you have to act overly uptight to be cool with professors and industry professionals. There is a balance you can strike where your friends will respect you and older people will also be impressed. Honestly, just look at how most college kids act. You don't have to do much to really stand out as the good egg.

BP: In the last chapter of your book, Never Eat Alone, you write, "Balance is B.S." The chapter deals with the myth of balance between work and private life, and introduces a new theory--that business is human, and that all relationships should be treated as such. Is the same true for college life? How does the theory that work-life balance is a myth relate to academia?

KF: Here's an example. How much do you know about your professor's family? What about her career aspirations and dreams? What does she like to do on the weekends? If you had a personal relationship with her, you'd know things like this, and she'd know these things about you. All it takes is showing up at office hours and besides asking a couple insightful questions about the coursework at hand, mention that you know you can learn a lot from professors just by getting to know them, even aside from the actual coursework. Ask to have lunch. Heck, do your closest buddies a favor and invite them, too, because ten bucks says they wouldn't think to do this. Get to know your professors as people and they'll help you get into grad school or land jobs because they will care about you. And you'll probably learn more in their classes, too. 

BP: In closing, what are your final thoughts on building professional, mutually-beneficial relationships in college? Are there any experiences you have had--either when you were in college at Yale or later experiences with college students who have approached you--that would help to illustrate the importance of relationship building?

KF: Last year, a student from UC San Diego met me at an event for our fraternity, Sigma Chi. We had a brief conversation, and he asked me if I'd talk with him again to give him some career advice. I told him to read my book, Never Eat Alone, and then talk to my assistant to get on my calendar to join me for a workout at Barry's Bootcamp. It took him several months of calling back to get that next meeting to sync up, but we had a good talk then and were in touch intermittently after that. When spring came, he asked me if he could have an internship in my company. We didn't have any spots for paid internships, but he agreed to move to Los Angeles for the summer and work for us without pay. Well, he did good work, actually got me to speak at the World Business Forum, which was awesome, and got to build relationships with everyone in my company over the summer. Guess who we called when a paid position opened up this year? He's been working with us all year part-time and will start full-time when he graduates this summer. And it all started with him seeking help. Most college students are afraid to ask for help, but they just don't get it. There are so many people out there who, like me, are happy to help and want to help others succeed. Many more want to help than don't want to help. Don't be afraid to ask the people who can help you in your career aspirations. The worst anyone can say is No.

I had been very nervous about meeting Mr. Zukav before the interview, but as soon as I shook his hand and began to talk with him, all my nervousness melted away. Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, Mr. Zukav graduated from Pittsburg High School in 1960. Following graduation he attended Harvard University. In 1979 he wrote Dancing Wu Li Masters, which won the American Book Award for Science. In 1989 he wrote The Seat of the Soul, a book about evolution and happiness in life. The Seat of the Soul became a national bestseller, remaining on the New York Time's Bestseller list for over one hundred and thirty-nine weeks.  His books have sold over four and a half million copies and been translated into sixteen different languages.

GZ: So. I'll start by asking you a question. What is a famous person?

BP: Well, I'd have to say it's someone who is well known, maybe? Or has changed the world?

GZ: If Osama Bin Laden where someone that you knew, would you want to interview him as a famous person?

BP: Probably not. I would say that would be infamous. Is that close?

GZ: Yes, that's very close. What I'm sensing is that for your project you want to speak to someone who is the most well known positive influence that you know. That's important because fame is not. But being a positive influence in the world is. There are many people who are famous and are not positive influences in the world, and there are many people who are positive influences in the world--much more than I--who are not famous. So it is valuable to realize [pauses] it is valuable to realize what is important and what is not. Now, what does it mean to be a positive influence?

BP: Well, I would say it means to try and teach other people and show them what's good--right and wrong--things like that.

GZ: That's close. Intention is what makes a positive influence or a negative influence. Intention. For example, you may want to teach somebody how to hurt other people [pauses] or you may want to teach somebody how to help other people. In both cases you are teaching someone, but there is a big difference between someone who teaches people how to help and teaches people how to hurt, and that difference is intention. So if your intention is to be constructive instead of destructive, or to share instead of to hoard, or to contribute instead of to exploit, then your intention is a positive one. And my feeling is that you want visitors to your website to have the benefit of the people who have positive intentions [coughs].

BP: That's pretty much it, I think. You said it a lot better than I could have.

GZ: How do you get a positive intention?

BP: By trying to accomplish something good?

GZ: Yes, you choose it.

BP: Yeah.

GZ: You have to say 'this is what I intend; this is what I will do if the universe is willing for me to do it.' So an intention is not a wish, and it is not a hope, it is the conscious use of your will. You know what will is?

BP: Yes.

GZ: So your parents tell you 'you will do this' and you say to yourself 'I don't want to do this, but I will do it only because they tell me I will do it.' Or you say 'I will not do that.' Both of those are uses of your will. That will is very important because that's what allows you to make a choice. The choice that you make is the choice of intention. Do you see?

BP: I see.

GZ: Now, it is one thing to decide to have a positive intention, say, to help people. But have you ever decided to do one thing and then found yourself doing another?

BP: [nods] Uh-huh.

GZ: Tell me about when that happened to you [coughs].

BP: Oh, I can't think of a specific time, exactly, but I'm sure it's happened before.

GZ: Can you give me an example?

BP: I'm trying. Well, like when I said I was going to study for a test, but then I ended up doing something else instead.

GZ: Perfect example. Perfect. You set the intention to study for the test, but then you suddenly woke up to the fact that you weren't studying for the test you were doing something else. That happened because although you set the intention to do one thing there was a part of you--that you didn't know about--that had a different intention. And that intention was to watch a ball game, or to go running, or to do something else besides study. If you don't know about those parts of yourself, they choose your intentions for you.

BP: And you can't control them.

GZ: Exactly. Exactly! And those are your compulsions. And your fixations. And your obsessions. In other words the parts of your self that are 'out of control'. Somebody says something, and suddenly you're angry.

BP: You don't know why.

GZ: You don't know why. Even if you set the intention to be a peaceful person, you're suddenly enraged. So choosing your intention is not so simple, because to choose it and really be able to choose it consciously you have to start to become familiar with yourself, with all the different parts of yourself. And when you decide to do that, you decide to become the master of your own life. Some people think that being the master of their own lives--

BP: [shuffles with the tape recorder]

GZ: Is it alright?

BP: Yeah, sometimes it stops though and I have to check it, sorry [laughs].

GZ: Some people think that they are the master of their lives if they are the ones that decide when they get up in the morning, when they go to sleep at night, where they go during the day, what they do for a living, what clothes they wear. And they say to themselves 'I am a master of my life if I can do all those things' because some people can't, like a prisoner. A prisoner is in jail. A prisoner must wear the clothes that the jail says, the prisoner must get up when the regulations say to get up and go to sleep when the regulations say to go to sleep, and cannot travel where he chooses when he chooses. 'But I,' some people say, 'am a master of my life because I can do all of those things.' But these people are not masters of their lives as long as they cannot control their anger, or their jealousy.

BP: As long as they don't know themselves, right?

GZ: Exactly! Exactly. As long as they feel that they are less important than other people, or if they feel that they are more important than other people. Or if they feel that they are attractive, or not attractive. They're controlled by these things, and they're just as much in prison as the person in a penitentiary. Do you know what the word penitentiary means?

BP: Nope.

GZ: To be penitent. It means to think about things. So originally people were put in prison to think about things.

BP: What they did.

GZ: That's right. So you might say that while you are out of control in your life you are in a penitentiary [laughs softly], where you have time to think about what you've done, like hurt the people that you love, like...become angry when you have set the intention not to become angry. When you decide to start to know your self, so that you can be out of this prison, that's when you begin the process of being a master of your life [coughs]. And it's never too early, and it's never too late to start [smiles].

BP: I see what you're saying.

GZ: It's better to start early [laughs], but it's never too late to start, because it's always good to get out of prison.

BP: Yeah.

GZ: It's better to get out of prison earlier than later, but the important thing is getting out of prison, and that's what happens when you get to know yourself, so that you can choose your intentions, and hold, even while you are feeling all of the things that you are feeling inside yourself. Is this making sense to you?

BP: Uh-huh [nods]. I understand.

GZ: When you do that, you start to become a positive influence in the world, and then if the universe wants you to be a famous person the universe will make you a famous person. It's not you that does it; it's the universe. And if the universe doesn't want you to be a famous person, you won't be a famous person, because the universe will always provide for you what is best for you. The important thing is not whether you are famous or not, but what your intention is [pauses], and if your intention is to be a positive influence in the world, and you really want that enough, you will start to do the work that is necessary to learn about yourself. And if you do that long enough, you will begin to feel the results.

BP: I've read your book, your first--well, not first, but The Seat of the Soul--and I also have Soul Stories and Dancing Wu Li Masters, and I haven't started those yet, but I'm going to. I read it, but pretty much I just want to hear about your life story and how you got to where you are because I understand that you were in Vietnam?

GZ: This is my life's story.

BP: It is?

GZ: Yes, what I've just told you are the most important things that I can share for your website--[pauses. Something is beeping.]

BP: Is it you or me?

GZ: [chuckles]. It's for me [long pause]. You know that I was in the army, when I was about your age. A little older--not much. And at that time, I was a very different person than I am now, and the way that I changed was exactly the way that I have described to you.

BP: Getting out of prison.

GZ: Getting out of prison.

BP: And learning about your self.

GZ: And learning about myself. Some people can learn about themselves and decide to stay in the army, but when I learned about myself, my life began to change. This is what you can share with your visitors to the web site. These are more important things than...history. History is temporary, but when you make changes in yourself for the better, that's permanent.