50 pages • 1 hour read
Keith FerrazziNever Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: The Self-Help & Business Genre
The information and data included in self-help and business books often intersect, especially in their shared advice for readers on increasing productivity, finding meaning in work, and creating lasting relationships. Never Eat Alone is no exception. Like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), which the authors cite a number of times, Never Eat Alone provides readers with actionable skills and techniques that promise to enhance the reader’s ability to make meaningful connections within and beyond their field or industry.
The self-help genre is a non-fiction category of literary composition. The form can vary from book to book, but generally, a combination of anecdotes, lists, tasks, and advice populate the chapters. Typically, the authors address the audience in singular, second-person pronoun “you” or plural, first-person “we” when offering advice. Ferrazzi, whose perspective governs the book, uses the singular, first-person “I” when writing his own stories. Because books of the genre are therefore frequently highly personal, the tone in these texts is often conversational and less dense than fictional or academic prose.
The authors title one of the first subsections in the book “Self-Help: A Misnomer” to inform the audience that their text will be both familiar and unique to readers accustomed to the conventions of the genre. Never Eat Alone tries to convince audiences of its uniqueness by emphasizing how the theme of “self-help” actually means “finding ways to make other people more successful” (9). As a sub-genre of self-help, business books follow the same conventions, albeit with a more focused concern on entrepreneurship, finance, productivity, and networking. Business books also rely on theories and data from fields like organizational leadership and social psychology. Never Eat Alone straddles between these two genres, often blending personal advice for making connections with practical tasks to amplify one’s role in a company. The authors situate their book in the context of a 21st-century work culture that values technological innovation, speed, and creativity.
Rhetorical Context: Subject, Purpose, and Audience
The rhetoric that drives a self-help book attempts to persuade an audience that an author’s philosophy, habits, and general recommendations will solve a persistent problem in the readers’ lives. In this conventional fashion, Ferrazzi and Raz lay out a context, present a problem, and provide a solution for the modern businessperson and office worker’s professional stagnation. For context, the authors argue that too many people working today believe that an individualized and competitive mindset, driven by ego and self-promotion, will guarantee success; the problem with this mindset, according to the authors, is that people are not taking advantage of the incredible tools available today (namely, digital technology and social media) to enhance their reach across industries, disciplines, and fields of business. The solution that the authors present is one based on the act of connecting with others, virtually and in-person, to construct a network of meaningful relationships that can be called upon at a moment’s notice to help yourself and, as the authors stress, to assist others in their missions and goals. The tone ranges from self-deprecatory and humble to self-assured and motivational.
As a method of persuasion, Ferrazzi and Raz use anecdotes about professional successes and failures to convince the audience of their expertise in the field of networking. In fact, the authors play on the trope of the “Networking Jerk,” a self-centered individual who only schmoozes and converses for their own benefit, by defining exactly what readers should not do to act like this person. By redefining a preconceived and negative notion about networking, the authors attempt to persuade their audience by addressing their fears and assuring them that the book holds the key to creating meaningful, authentic relationships.
Authorial Context: Keith Ferrazzi
Keith Ferrazzi is the current CEO and founder of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a research institute, consulting firm, and coaching service that studies human behavior in organizations. He is the author of several New York Times’s bestsellers, including Never Eat Alone and Who’s Got Your Back? (2009). He is also the author of the recent book, Leading Without Authority (2020). He served as an entry level joint analyst for Deloitte before being promoted to CMO. He later became the CMO at Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. He founded YaYa Media in 2000 before selling the company to American Vantage in 2003.
In the opening of Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi asks himself: “How on earth did I get here?” (3) As the son of a small-town steelworker and a cleaning lady, Ferrazzi learned the importance of building relationships in his early childhood when he caddied at a local country club. With his father’s guidance and a gift for networking, Ferrazzi eventually earned his way to Yale University for his undergraduate degree and Harvard Business School for his Master of Business Administration (MBA). As a new graduate student at Harvard Business School, Ferrazzi questioned how “a guy like me from a working-class family, with a liberal arts degree and a couple years at a traditional manufacturing company” could compete with the privileged “purebreds from McKinsey and Goldman Sachs” (3). After his years in executive positions, he started his own consulting firm to teach companies his unique style and skillset of cultivating relationships for individuals’ and others’ successes. The principles of Ferrazzi’s networking strategy are the foundation of Never Eat Alone, a text that instructs its readers on the power of relationships. According to his website, Ferrazzi’s 20-year history of transforming C-Suite executive teams has made him an agent of transformation and among the world’s greatest and most sought after coaches (My Story).
