Is this a life?
Ferrazzi, who has no children but has been in a 10-year relationship with another man, spends almost all his time working. "I wake up around 5 or 6 in the morning, and I go until 1 in the morning," he says. "Every free moment is a chance to E-mail or call someone. But I don't consider that work. That's my true joy. I have balance, but it's my own version. My career and my community-service stuff have always taken a front seat to my personal life. But, in a sense, that is my personal life. There's no distinction for me. Yes, I'd like to go to church more and meditate more. And it's been a while since I've taken a real vacation. But do I feel like I've sacrificed anything? No."
Rule 5: Be interesting.
To show that he was smart yet unconventional, Ferrazzi used to wear a bow tie to conferences. To emphasize his charitable nature, he is always passionately involved in one philanthropic cause or another. He is keenly aware that perception drives reality and that we are all, in some sense, brands. All his choices -- his Prada suits, his conversational style, his hobbies -- help him fashion a distinctive identity that is both interesting and attractive. And the cornerstone that supports the design of a person, he instructs, is content. "Being known is one thing, but being known for content is something else entirely -- and much better," he says. "You have to have something to say to be interesting to people."
"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."
In college, that something was politics. At his first job, at Imperial Chemical Industries, he mastered the ins and outs of total quality management. (He persuaded the industrial giant to craft a new position for him called head of TQM in North America.) Later, when he worked at Deloitte, reengineering was his hook. Today it's on-line games and "how the new medium will impact society and corporations."
What sets Ferrazzi apart from everybody else is the relentlessness he brings to learning and packaging and selling these hooks. YaYa's board knew that that characteristic would prove vital for a company whose market and product were totally untested. The on-line-games industry has always been driven by hits, by competing in a race for the latest, greatest diversion. But Ferrazzi began to trumpet the industry as the next powerful communications medium, an untapped $20-billion marketing vehicle perfect for product placements, branded gaming events, custom games-related training for businesses, and on and on. It wasn't long before he was not only attending games conferences but speaking at them, "which is always preferable," he says.
Once the pitch is perfected, getting attention is never a problem. Journalists are powerful (the right exposure can make a company), needy (they're always looking for a story), and relatively unknown (few have achieved enough celebrity to make them inaccessible). It's a combination that Ferrazzi has learned to exploit. He knows people in top positions at almost every major business magazine in the country. Which is why it's little surprise that in less than a year after Ferrazzi took over YaYa, with barely a shred of revenue to its name, the company -- and, more important, the content -- appeared in places like Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Brand Week, and the New York Times.
Fame sells. An executive at Honda motors spotted the article in Brand Week, and YaYa had its first big account; it would create for Honda a multiplayer on-line racing game to help sell the new Acura.
Rule 6: Manage the gatekeeper. Artfully.
Last summer Ferrazzi met Jane Pemberton, a former Disney executive, while flying first-class, as always. "That's where the decision makers sit," says Ferrazzi. (See "Where to Meet the Power Elite," at right, for Ferrazzi's recommendations regarding the most fertile venues for top-shelf networking.) Pemberton suggested that Ferrazzi might like to get to know Michael Johnson, president of Walt Disney International.
There wasn't anything obvious that Johnson could do for Ferrazzi or YaYa. There rarely is when Ferrazzi reaches out. But it couldn't hurt for Ferrazzi to know him, and who could say whether Disney would someday become a potential suitor? The only problem was getting through Johnson's gatekeepers; that's often the only problem -- but not for Ferrazzi. "When you don't know someone, the first concept is getting past the secretary," he says. "So Johnson's secretary says, 'I'm sorry, Mr. Johnson is traveling, he's traveling all month.' And I say, 'That's OK. Why don't you tell him a friend of Jane Pemberton's called? Tell him to call me back if he has some time.' I didn't push. The first call you don't push, because the admin doesn't know you, and you never want to get the admin pissed off at you; they're the gateway.
"Second call is almost the same thing: 'Hi, this is Keith Ferrazzi. I'm just calling back because I haven't heard from him,' as if the presumption is that I would have. It's totally innocuous, no obligation. On the third call, she's getting a little pissed. 'Listen,' she says with a little strike in her voice, 'Mr. Johnson is very busy. I don't know who you are....' I counter: 'I'm just a personal friend of a friend, I just moved into the city, Jane suggested that I should meet Michael, and I don't even know why, besides Jane being a good friend of Michael's. Maybe it's all wrong, maybe we shouldn't meet. I apologize.' That puts her on the defensive. Now she thinks that she's been a dick to a personal friend of a friend of her boss. She backs off, and I make a proposition: 'Why don't I just send Michael an E-mail? What's his E-mail address?' And at this point she thinks, 'I want to be out of the middle of this thing.' She gives me the E-mail address.
