The care and feeding of contacts is a relatively new concept for the business networker. In Power! How to Get It, How to Use It, a 1975 self-help screed on the secrets to becoming a corporate chieftain, Michael Korda advised that "masters players ... attempt to channel as much information as they can into their own hands, then withhold it from as many people as possible." That is, 30 years ago old-style connectors attained power through a monopoly of information, whereas today people like Ferrazzi view the system as social arbitrage, a constant and open exchange of favors and intelligence. It's a sort of career karma, too; how much you give to the network determines how much you'll receive.
Rule 9: Ping constantly.
Eighty percent of success, Woody Allen once said, is just showing up. Eighty percent of networking is just staying in touch. Ferrazzi calls it "pinging." It's a quick, casual greeting. He makes hundreds of phone calls a day. Most of them are simply quick hellos that he leaves on friends' voice mail. He sends E-mail constantly. He remembers birthdays and makes a special point of reaching people when they have one. When it comes to relationship maintenance, he is, in the words of more than one friend, "the most relentless, energetic person I know."
Rule 10: Find anchor tenants. Feed them.
By now, an invitation for an evening at Ferrazzi's is a hot ticket. Nearly once a month influence peddlers from different worlds gather to gossip, talk business, and schmooze at his Hollywood Hills home. But in the early days, before his dinner parties had cachet, Ferrazzi had to develop a very deliberate strategy for attracting the right people.
"You, me, every one of us -- we have our peer set, and we can always have dinner parties with our peer set, but if you keep having dinner parties with your peer set, why would somebody two levels above your peer set ever come to your dinner parties?" he asks. "The point is, you don't randomly invite somebody two levels above your peer set to your dinner and expect them to come, because they won't. They want to hang around people of their peer set or higher. This is a crass way of talking about it, but this is the formula."
So Ferrazzi developed his theory of the anchor tenant. "What you do," he says, "is find somebody in your peer set who has a friend who is two levels above -- the big swinging dick of the group, the anchor tenant. You get them to come and, in all invitations subsequent to that, you use the anchor to pull in people who otherwise wouldn't attend."
On a typical evening last summer, all the guests at Ferrazzi's could have been considered anchors. And the function of the festivity remained the same as it had been back when Ferrazzi was trying to land just one big name: mixing different people for good fun, lively conversation, and perhaps a few mutually beneficial encounters to boot. The doing of deals was inevitable. But so was a sing-along around Ferrazzi's baby grand.
The evening started with champagne, followed by cocktails served "early and heavy." On this night, political columnist Arianna Huffington stopped by for drinks but left before dinner. Other notables included Chrysler vice-president Jeff Bell; design impresario and TED conference founder Richard Saul Wurman; Disney president of interactive games Jan Smith; and Paul Bricault, senior vice-president at William Morris Consulting.
Around the long dining-room table Ferrazzi had placed name tags in an effort to orchestrate a symphony of successful interactions. A wealthy CEO might sit next to an official of a nonprofit that's looking to raise money, or a potential YaYa investor who is a rabid Republican might find herself next to a GOP heavy. On this night, Bell, a film buff, was seated next to a well-known movie director. As always, the meal was hearty and down-home to make people feel cozy. After dinner, led by a hired piano player, the guests retired for some singing and port wine. Several days later, Bricault called to thank Ferrazzi. "My wife told me," he swooned in a voice-mail message, "she wants to be Keith Ferrazzi when she grows up."
We're back at the Yale Club, and my tutelage is coming to an end. The afternoon is edging into night, and Ferrazzi is still networking away with the restless energy of an obscure presidential hopeful -- indeed, among those he's dancing with at this particular moment is the obscure presidential hopeful Governor Howard Dean of Vermont. (Ferrazzi is arranging a fund-raiser for the governor in L.A., and, as a small favor, he's asking if Dean might take on a fellow Yalie's wife as an intern.) We're in Ferrazzi's regular suite, and he's standing at the desk, one leg propped up on a chair, two phones buzzing, E-mails pinging, his fingers constantly fidgeting with a PalmPilot. In the course of three hours he's spoken to or left messages for some three dozen people in addition to Dean, including the managing editor of Forbes, the president of Martha Stewart Living, and the chairman of DuPont.
I've followed Ferrazzi for months now, talking or E-mailing at all hours, becoming accustomed to "Ferrazzi Time," a zone of operations in which the switchboards are always open. Deals, companies, jobs: they come and go -- the ringmaster of the Big Top remains. Yet, nearing the end of my time with him, I realize that one of the most basic questions in my notebook remains unanswered.
What about the manipulation, the gamesmanship, the using of people? Doesn't he ever feel uncomfortable, like a phony? Well, no. This is simply who Keith Ferrazzi is. And I can see that he's is a little disappointed in me, a little saddened that maybe I haven't completely understood.
