The networking book that says give before you ask

Keith Ferrazzi grew up in a working-class family in Pennsylvania, became a marketing executive and later ran a consulting firm. Never Eat Alone, written with the journalist Tahl Raz and published in 2005, became a popular guide to building professional relationships. An updated edition appeared in 2014.

The book argues that success depends heavily on the people you know and how you treat them. Its central rule is generosity: help people, share contacts and information, and build relationships long before you need anything.

Most chapters are practical, covering how to follow up after meeting someone, how to keep in touch without being a pest, and how to become someone others want to connect with.

The most useful advice is also the least glamorous. Follow up within a day or two, remember details about people, and keep in touch in small ways over years. Relationships built before you need help are far easier to call on than cold requests.

The criticism is about tone and setting. The book can read like a manual for collecting useful people, with a lot of name-dropping, and it suits outgoing people in American corporate life more than quieter readers or other cultures. Some of its tools, written before social media took over, feel dated. Read with those limits in mind, its core message of generosity and follow-through still holds.

The idea behind this caseLesson: Will AI take my job? →

1. 1Send a short, specific thank-you or follow-up message to someone you met recently.
2. 2Introduce two people who could help each other, without asking anything for yourself.
3. 3Make a list of ten people you have lost touch with and reach out to two of them this week.
4. 4Before your next event, pick one person to learn about properly instead of collecting many cards.