The 10 Secrets of a Master Networker

On his last day at the company -- as on most days -- he made more than 40 phone calls, one of which was to Sandy Climan, a well-known Hollywood player who once served as Michael Ovitz's right-hand man at Creative Artists Agency and who now runs an L.A.-based venture-capital firm called Entertainment Media Ventures. What's interesting about the call, and the dozens of others like it that Ferrazzi made that day, was that long before they knew Ferrazzi, many of the people he spoke with had been on one of his lists.

Three months later, Ferrazzi had five job offers. Climan had him meet with people from YaYa, one of the companies in his firm's portfolio. It didn't hurt that one of the other investors with a stake in YaYa, Knowledge Universe, was backed by Michael Milken. Milken had been on a list for years, until Ferrazzi finally connected with him through a nonprofit cause. Ferrazzi has since come to consider Milken a mentor. "You build your network before you need it," says Ferrazzi. "When someone comes to me for advice on how to build a network because they need a job now, I tell them it's useless. People can tell the difference between desperation and an earnest attempt to create a relationship."

Rule 4: Never eat alone.
The dynamics of status in a business network are similar to those in Hollywood: invisibility is a fate worse than failure. Above all, never, ever disappear. "Keep your social and conference and event calendar full," Ferrazzi tells me. "I give myself one night a week for myself, and the rest is an event or dinner."

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."

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.

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