My Wakeup Call – EP 107 Keith Ferrazzi

Transcription below:

Mark: Welcome to another episode of My Wakeup Call. If you’ve listened in, you know that I get to bring you fascinating people who change the world and they honor both you and me with their presence, their insight and wisdom. And I’m really, beyond delighted, to have Keith Ferrazzi on, kind of, makes me want to cry. I don’t know. But I’ve known him for a number of years and–.

Keith: We’ve been through a lot together. 

Mark: We’ve been through a lot together and if you don’t know of Keith, you’ve been hiding under a rock and you need to get out of that. He’s best known for his first book, Never Eat Alone, which is still probably the top book on business relating, you know, it’s about, you know back then you could use the word networking and it didn’t, you know devolve into what it seems to be now and I’ve watched Keith’s evolution with great pride and I’m just inspired. And what I hope he’ll do is, he’s what I call a first class noticer, meaning he’s noticed stuff. That’s the mark of a true visionary and entrepreneur, they just see things that nobody else sees and he’s been on a journey and I don’t know if he can connect the dots, but Never eat Alone led to Who’s Got Your Back, led to Leading with Authority, and it parallels his own journey. And maybe he’ll even talk about because I know something about his background, he was a poor kid from Pennsylvania, I remember he used to see all the wealthy people at the country club, and he’d caddy and he’d see them connecting with each other. And then he goes to Harvard and he says, jeez, I think we can connect people. I think there’s a way to connect people and probably if you’re at Harvard, you’re much more intelligent than you are good at connecting. And so, he just saw how to do that, and he just launched this amazing movement and it’s gone deeper from just connecting, which is kind of nice, to having each other’s back. And he has a great new book called Leading with Authority and I think it’s, who’s got your front, meaning, he’ll talk about how do you co-elevate the people around you to step into their future, and you do that together. And but enough of me, Keith, thank you so much for being on man.
 
Keith: Mark, first of all, anytime I connect with you, I both feel centered and I feel grateful. So, thank you for that. And you want to correct one thing, which is the title of the book is Leading Without Authority, the ironic aspect of that is that too many of us think that we need to lead with authority and I think what you were alluding to, in my evolution, was I used to think that too. And you know, that kid who was born into poverty, father was a steel worker, immigrant Italian family and my old man, I remember and this is a story that I tell in Leading Without Authority, I remember sitting at my dad’s table, I was probably about 8 or 10 and he was still working at the time, but bemoaning and commiserating on the fact that he noticed things about how ridiculously the way of work was. And he would comment at the dinner table and basically bemoan the fact that the managers didn’t give a damn. In fact, sometimes the managers would tell my father, Pete, slow down, you’re throwing off the piece rate. Which basically was, you know, my dad was working like a good immigrant does, and it made others, it made the managers look bad because not everybody was keeping up with that rate, with that peak, at that pace. And I remember that and then not long after that, at the time steel industry was being usurped by foreign imports, ironically, the Japanese imports at the time, were crushing the steel industry and the steel industry crumbled in the 70s. And my dad was unemployed and an entire town, little tiny towns along the Monongahela, were destitute. And people were like us, you know, the only money we had was the graciousness of relatives or friends, or when the unemployment insurance ran out, which it did in a few months, we got welfare cheese from the government, right? And my mom had to become a cleaning lady. I had to go to work at the local country club for the same amount of money, 20 bucks a day that my mom made. So, that’s how I grew up. And it was, as you mentioned, Never Eat Alone was a ticket, when I realized that nepotism didn’t have to be born into, nepotism can be created by the relationships, the authentic relationships you create. I used to resent nepotism; I was jealous of it. And then I realized that the reality was, if people care for you, and you care back, that they opened doors, and so leading with authenticity and generosity became my ticket out of poverty, and into the halls of Harvard and Yale and etc. And then Deloitte, where I became one of the youngest officers in a fortune 500 company at Starwood, etc. And, but that was, that book was powerful and important, about how do you create those relationships, but it was still born from scarcity. It was still born from a young man, afraid of not having enough, because he never had enough. And while my heart was good, my lack of attention to the real intimacy, the real connectedness was absent. And it was probably about that time that I got to meet you. And it was people like you and Maury Schucman and, you know, some of the individuals that shaped my understanding of my clients at the time and friends, made me start to realize there was something more I needed in my life, and I needed some people that really had my back. And that’s when I started researching relationships that were deeper than networks and realize that the deepest relationships that you have with three people in your life predicted your, not just your success, but your happiness. And that’s what was born in, in Who’s Got Your Back. And a lot of people call it 12 steps for the rest of us because it basically, it advocates for us all to have Peer to Peer Support Group, as powerful, as a 12 step group would be, but just for you, around you, in your business and otherwise. But at the time, interestingly enough, I was still at the time coaching executives and executive teams, but I wasn’t drawing the direct parallel between my books and what I was doing for a living. It was odd. I don’t know why. But at the time I was writing Never Eat Alone, sales organizations, high potentials, people were using it. I wrote, Who’s Got Your Back and it was deeply influential to set cultural norms of lots of organizations. But I never really drew the parallel, I don’t know why. And, that started me about eight years ago on a path to write the book that brought it all together, that tied it all together, that made a recognition, that there’s a different way of being in the workplace, that is a pre-destination for your success, but also for your happiness. And I came up with a word along the way and I don’t know if you had remembered this, but this word is a new definition for collaboration and I believe that this is, the word is a new operating system for the way we should live our lives. And I call it co-elevation. Co-elevation, a commitment, a shared commitment to a mission among a group of people, call it a team. And that equal commitment to each other, where the commitment is to go higher together. And I’ll end with this, when I first started writing the book, I started writing another book, similar to the path  of Never Eat Alone and Who’s Got Your Back, I started writing a book with the assumption that I felt that every relationship, inside of every relationship was an agreement to be each other’s coaches. And I just didn’t think that most people knew how to do well, I felt that marriages weren’t each other’s coaches in the right way. No, fetching with each other is not the right way to be a coach of another individual in a relationship. I felt that in the teams, I was coaching, I watched how peers complained about each other behind each other’s backs, they do an end run to talk to the CEO behind the fellow executives back, there was no assumption that among the team was a commitment to coaching. And so, I started writing a book about how in every relationship and look at you and I, you and I’ve always been each other’s coaches. Your coaching to me has always been abundantly beautiful and wonderful, and needed to me and I’ve tried my best along the way to be of service to you in the same way. But I realized that what’s evolved is a real, a new operating system, or what Maury might call it, a new social contract, that I am actively coaching into teams in this world, teams like General Motors, teams like Delta Airlines, teams like Verizon, are adopting co-elevation as a mindset, but also a set of practices that I go over in the book, in Leading Without Authority. And Adam Grant recently said of this book, who is just an amazing young man, who was influenced originally by Never Eat Alone, that while everybody has been talking about the future of work, where everyone’s been talking about the need to work across silos and networks, he said that this is the first book that actually defines a practical operating system to get it done. And so, that’s the book that I’ve got today.

Mark: Your book is the rise, is you know, I throw these words around–.
 
Keith: By the way, you are the best “titler”, you’re the best “titler” that I’ve ever met. You’re 10:43 [inaudible], you’re beautiful, you’re spinning phrases.
 
Mark: So, here’s a marketing thing and I’ll write this up, Leading Without Authority is the rising tide that lifts all hopes. It really does. Something that I want to share with you, that you’re not aware of, you know that Warren Bennis speak about him frequently, he was my last living mentor. And his mentor was a fella named Douglas McGregor. Douglas McGregor started organizational development. He wrote a book called The Human Side of Enterprise; it was probably the first book in organizational development. And he talked about Theory X and Theory Y and Theory X was, you got to stay on people because they’re basically lazy and you got to stay in them to get, you know, a day’s work out of them. And he said, no theory Y is if you can elevate them, if you can treat them like human beings, who, and you help them get into their future, and you support them, It’s amazing what will happen. And so, as I was learning more about your book, and where you are, it’s just like, what goes around, comes around because this is, and there are many people and certain people listening, they are too young to know that the human side of enterprise in Theory X and Theory Y was huge. It was iconic. And this is the kind of–.

[Crosstalk] 

Keith: Maybe this is, yeah, I was going to say like, maybe this is Z because there is a distinction. There’s a patriarchy associated with what, how you just described in 12:24 [inaudible].

Mark: Right that’s right. 

Keith: And, even the greatest leaders that I have seen and I’ve coached, have this mindset and burden on themselves, that they’re responsible for the maintenance of energy of the team, they’re responsible for the transparency, right, etc. But where I coach, when I coach teams, is the real art form of a leader in a co-elevating commitment, is to shift the burden from their shoulders to the team itself. The team needs to coach the team, the team needs to hold each other accountable, the team needs to give each other feedback. Now, every one of those elements, there are eight elements of high performing teams that we have created diagnostics to, that are present in this book. But the diagnostic and the awakening are one thing, but it’s the practices. So, just take something as simple as feedback. In the model that you were talking about, X or Y, feedback came from your manager, there was no assumed contract that you had feedback peer to peer. It didn’t need to exist, the world of work that X and Y were born of, was a world of work, where the org chart mattered, where hierarchy was present, and it was useful, right? Where did authority come from? Where did coaching come from, etc. The world we’re working in today is different. The world we’re working in today is a world of networks. It’s a world where you have a goal and then you have a network of people needed to achieve the goal. That network of people needed to achieve the goal is your team. I don’t care who reports to you, the network of people you need to achieve your goal is your team. I don’t care whether or not you have titled authority for the goal. All you need to have is a vision for a goal. And all you need to do is enlist a network of people to achieve that vision. And now, you’re a leader of a team. Now, what’s powerful about that, is that the first person you invite into your team, you’re inviting them into their team. That’s different than the X to Y philosophy. Because the X and Y philosophy, even in the Y humanistic philosophy, you were still the leader at the top of the team, but the reality in the world that we’re living in today is that an individual who wants to achieve a vision for the sake of humanity or their company can invite a group of individuals into that vision, and then go on a path of Co-creation of that vision, and go on a path of Co-creation of achievement of that vision, and go in a path of Co-development, where everybody rises together and learns and develops. It’s a fundamentally different model. It’s a new operating system for work in our network. And it’s not surprising, I think I just got lucky because the guy who wrote Never Eat Alone, who taught you how to network, you now wake up and you are working in networks, where authority control, positional authority, positional control, and org charts are irrelevant to getting the job done. In fact, if you cling to it, you will be clinging to mediocrity, because abundance exists when my team includes people that are outside of my realm of authority and control and in fact could be even outside the company. Peter Diamandis is one of my dearest friends, has become a team member of mine and I am a team member of his, right, I literally have a portion of my brain worried about Peter in his businesses and as he does with mine, and that kind of co-elevating relationship means that we’re on the same team. And my ability to do the pivot that I did over the COVID crisis, and I’ve built two new businesses during this two month period, one, a middle markets business that allows me to serve, not at $90,000 a day of my own coaching, but at $20,000 a day where I have now brought on other coaches, and I can go into the middle market and an info products company that includes a $500 course that can teach any leader how to be a co-elevating leader, right? I mean, I wouldn’t have been able to do that if it wasn’t for people like Jim Kwik, who’s taught me info products and how that works and Peter and they’re members of my team, right? So, it is a new operating system and I really, and thank you, this whole interview has been, not only worth it to see you, but it’s been worth it to be reminded, the X, the Y, but there is something now I’m adding, which is this moving of the authority down into the fabric of the team. And it’s a new model. It’s a new model, because now we’re returning the team into the leaders of the team. And a little tagline I’m using is, “we need to go from overload”, which all leaders are feeling, “to shared load”. And that’s the shift that elevation brings.

Mark: You know, you just trigger something because I’ve been recently doing presentation to entrepreneur CEO groups and what I often hear from them, is they really like the vision and strategy and the bottleneck, is execution because to execute you have to do it through people. And a lot of these people, a lot of these entrepreneurs aren’t that good, and they feel burdened by that. And so, they default to vision and strategy, but I think you’ve just come up with the solution for them to disburden themselves because I will tell you, they’re avoiding the people they should be, because they don’t know how to do it, is felt through the organization. And actually, organizations are, you know, we don’t mean to burden the CEO, the, you know, the entrepreneur, you know, we’re just trying to do our jobs. But, I think your book represents a solution for those entrepreneurs and say, hey, here’s a way in which you can surrender control and being controlling and it’s amazing what will happen if you trust the people in your organization to team with each other, but you got to be willing to trust them because I’m telling you, I’ve done several of these things, and the bottleneck is the execution, we got to do it through people, and we’re not good with people. And I think Leading Without Authority, with what you’ve set up, is, it’s the linchpin. It’s the linchpin into the future, and it will disburden many entrepreneurs, so I’m so excited with what you’re working on.
 
Keith: Well, and let me say this, I am also, you know me, I still have scarcity in my gut. Right? I wish I could be and I’m, right now, I’m reading A Course in Miracles, Marianne Williamson’s work, associated with that. And it’s so difficult for me to let go and surrender. And I don’t and I believe I’m probably very similar to a lot of the entrepreneurs you’re talking to. And so, what I do in Leading Without Authority, is I give it to you in practicable, baby steps, because I don’t expect anybody to surrender tomorrow when their business and their livelihood and everything that they built, is at stake to a group of people that currently aren’t fulfilling, which you want them to fulfill. So, it’s interesting. Our teams aren’t stepping up, I hear this all the time, “my team won’t step up”. And the reality is, we’re not letting them, we have to acknowledge that. If we’re the leaders of the organization and our teams aren’t stepping up, then we’re the ones that are at fault. There’s a chapter in the book called, It’s All On You and once we recognize that it’s on us, now we start to shift some of that control, that chokehold that we have, on a team’s efficacy, on a team’s success. And you give them little by little movement so that the person you end up coaching is not only the team, but it’s you, in your own letting go in small increments, you coach yourself to let go more and it’s iterative, it’s not all of a sudden, right? Because my job, you know, Mark is, I don’t just write this stuff, I have to coach it. My job is to help General Motors, rebound out of bankruptcy, you know, back in those days, you knew me When we were doing that work, it was powerful work. My job is to serve Delta Airlines through this crisis. So, I don’t have the luxury of being a theorist. I am responsible for putting points on the table with my teams. And I, you know, and it’s working. I mean, these principles of co-elevation, I have a wonderful aerospace company out of Pasadena, formerly out of Pasadena, they moved their headquarters, that wasn’t able to go public, because the team was really not ready. But through our work, in less than a year, they were not only able to go public, but they were able to add 20 points to their stock price once they had and this was unfathomable to the team at the beginning. But once the team started leaning in and trusting the team to be the team–. You know, it’s funny, I’ve gotten to know some folks in sports, and I’m not a big sports person. I like playing it but I’m not a big watcher. I’ve got to know some people in sports and the power about sports is the coach of a sports team couldn’t imagine just sitting around coaching every individual player, they have to watch the team scrimmage. So, you know, and, as I’ve understood, until Jordan started to pass the ball, the team didn’t win. And it’s interesting, the teams don’t do that, though. You know, teams aren’t looking at the team as an entity. I think the team is an entity in and of itself, and the team needs coaching, and you as a leader or a team coach, and we’ve got to begin to coach to that level of co-elevation. And I give you the formula in this book, which is why I’m so excited about it.

Mark: Can I make an observation about your scarcity? Because I’ve known you for a long time. 

Keith: Yeah. 

Mark: Tell me how this land because I don’t know if you’re, how well you know Keith, Keith deserves to be at peace more than most people in the world for what he’s given. And it’s still elusive at times. When you said the words, I still come from scarcity, I’m thinking of you when you were younger, and you knew hurt and fear, you saw what happened to your dad, you saw that, you know, you had to, you know, live on food, whatever. And my guess is, you made a choice, I need to take control, or it won’t go well, and so I can’t trust the universe. But what’s happened is, having to take control is exhausting over the decades. It’s just pure exhausting. And, as I’ve known you, I think there is a  a desire to surrender control, but when the scarcity comes up, you default to, you better control it, or else it’s going to control you. And then what would happen is that would plummet you back into the hurt and fear underneath, I’m going to take control, but as you’ve been through so many things, and if you’re listening in, I think you’re going to relate to this. Sometimes we’re so afraid to re-experience the hurt and fear that drove us to success, but often having to be in control and controlling is just exhausting. But it’s what we know, and I think this book represents really a pivot in which, jeez, maybe I can trust the team. Yeah, you know, instead of having to be in control out of scarcity, if I don’t control it, it will control me, well, maybe I could actually trust it. Wow, that would be pretty good. But when you said this word scarcity, it just hit me in the cheekbones. And you know, because I know 24:57 [inaudible] and I say, jeez, Keith, I felt the pain of that and how exhausting it is and I just love where this is going, in terms of trusting your team.

Keith: And trusting the universe. Okay. I’m probably, maybe I’m a ticker too behind, on my brand recognition, in that I claim that I’m still scarcity oriented, right? I’m probably less so than I’ve ever been in my life.
 
Mark: Right, good to hear.
 
Keith: And it’s interesting, you know, I always have this little tactic that I use when I’m meeting new people, I do this thing called a personal professional check in. So, I’ll be having a group of individuals and I’ll say personally and professionally, what are you struggling with? And everybody goes around and shares, more and out of the work that we did around who’s got your back, you have to lead with purposeful vulnerability before you can really connect with people. And sometimes, I struggle with finding what I’m struggling with. And it’s odd, because, you know, financial insecurity, I’ve always had financial insecurity, for reasonable reasons, a long time ago, not so reasonable reasons now. But, you know, like, myself, like many other people, my net worth has been hit by a third, during this crisis. And I’m fine. I mean, I just, I really kind of feel great. And, I mean, that’s been a lot of work recently, to to do that but you’re right, this book has had a lot of impact on me. My team, you know, is closer today than it ever has been. And you’ve been with me at times when, no, I wasn’t living the leadership principles, that I was preaching. And I talked about that, I talked about that in Who’s Got Your Back. I always find that I publish a book and in the process, I reveal myself, in my own head as a fraud for the book that I’ve just published, because I’m not living to it, and then I work my ass off for the next few years to get closer and closer to it. At least I recognize my own fraudulent behavior and I work hard, you know I work hard, to always be a seeker, a better person, a better leader, a better whatever. And this book is probably no different. I mean, I’m not the perfect “leading without authority” leader. But I’m a lot closer than I ever have been. But that’s okay too, because I feel that if this is an operating system, or a value statement, that I will live in co-elevation. And it’s also, I think, it includes my personal life. I’m single now for five years, I don’t know if we caught up on that or not? But I’m single for five years now and I’m not going to get into my last relationship until I really fit to have faith, that I’m in a co-elevating relationship. And that’s different than what I used to do, which is be very comfortable with keeping company, you know, with people. So, I mean to look, it’s a journey and I think through a lot of failures and successes, I’ve learned a lot but also, more importantly, through the successes and the coaching, it’s a lot easier for me to coach teams through this and I used to do it myself. So, through the coaching of teams, I have a lot of these tactics and tricks on how to bring practices in your life, that shift mindset. You know, the old phrase, “you don’t think your way into a new way of acting, you act your way into a new way of thinking”. And I’ve always taken a practice approach in everything that I do, in Leading Without Authority, I give the reader the practices that they can start doing right now, that allow them to see co-elevation occur, like the taste of it, and then want to do more, similar to what I did in Never Eat Alone, with leading with generosity and authenticity and building your network that way.
 
Mark: And something that may coincide with this, I’ve mentioned to you I have a grandson, I get pictures of him every day, I see him almost every day, so we’re fortunate. And I’m in what I’m doing, and I think it’s a way of trying to heal something in me and I didn’t do with my own children because I was busy going out, earning a living. In fact, one of my kids nicknames for me, when they were growing up, was, “Hi Kids, Bye Kids, Love You, Kids”. But with my grandson, I want to immerse him in Eric Erickson’s basic trust versus basic mistrust. So, I will just watch him, and he will look at something and then he’ll make eye contact with me. You know, is this something neat? Is this something that hurt, am I going to be okay? And he’s not talking yet, he just started walking, and he’s going, ah, ah , but I’ll make this eye contact with him and I look into his eyes and I want to just immerse him in basic trust. Because when you go out into the world with basic trust, you go where you’re looking. When you have basic mistrust, you look where you’re going and it’s a shitty life. I’m trying to immerse him in that, and you can feel it because, in me, because I’m trying to, through him re-develop basic trust, because it’s exhausting to go through life with basic mistrust. And maybe, when you say, you know, maybe that’s what you’re trying to do, is maybe you’re trying to look at the world through the eyes of basic trust. No agenda, no, how can I work this and just say, I’m not there yet either. But I am telling you, as I look into my grandson’s eyes, I’m not I’m going to shortchange him. And it’s like he’s saying to me, was it good that I was born? Yeah. Are you glad that I was born? You have no effing idea. Am I going to be replaced by technology? I don’t know. But we’ll deal with it. But it’s, I’m just trying to bathe him in basic trust, because I just see so many people have basic mistrust, and a plausible life. So, I don’t know if you can resonate with any of that.
 
Keith: Well, of course, I mean, look I think, as you’re suggesting with your grandson, I think we were all born pure. And, you know, based on what we experienced, and how we experienced it, we then have to, if we’re lucky, we spend the rest of our lives unbundling that bullshit. If we’re lucky, if we’re lucky we do. For whatever reason, I never, I knew that the henx of the bullshit wasn’t something I wanted to live in. You know, that’s what originally made me reach out to you. I mean, I read your book, the original book, and get out of your own way at work, and get out of your own way and I love that. And I just really like, yeah, that resonated with me and I reached out to you and we started a friendship and it’s gone, how many years now? I think we can find a lot of healing in the people around us and you’ve got this beautiful, pristine love bundle of your grandson, that you can both serve and be served, right? I’m trying to do it with a little bit, more of a messy palate, which is your team, right? You’re in the eyes of your team and it saddens me a lot, you know, you and I talked a little bit about some of the journeys that I’ve done. I’ve gone to Peru, experienced in a journey called ayahuasca, which is a native drink that shaman take their tribes through, it’s a vision quest, and it’s very uncomfortable. But it roots out subconscious, brings it up and forces you to deal with subconscious in this journey and it leaves you in a place of resolution, it allows you to resolve things, in a short period of time. That intellectualizing doesn’t have the same impact, although I know you are or have been trying to hack the psyche with some pretty interesting tactics of vulnerability and other things that allow you to do similar things, go into the subconscious, bring it up, resolve it and feel it, like you say. I mean, feel it, as opposed to just understand it or experience it, you feel it and you reprogram. And I think this book would not have been able to be written if it wasn’t for that work is doing. Right, I wouldn’t have had faith and I wouldn’t have had practices and a formula, where I can find co-elevation. Because I wouldn’t have believed, if I didn’t believe I could do it, for myself, I wouldn’t believe that I could do it for others. But I’ve found the path, you know, my faith remains very strong too. I feel that, whatever faith, whatever you use to me, that grounds you and takes you higher. You know, you and I are coming at it from so many different perspectives, you clinically come at it as a therapist, and understand that as a doctor. I’m coming at it from much more experiential, from the business side. But anyway, by the way, I always thank you because our conversations, bring my blood pressure down. Sometimes you brought my blood pressure up in the past, I won’t deny that. But you’re–.

Mark: I remember that meeting too, Keith.

Keith: One? It’s got to be more than one. But, you know, you make me exhale. You know what I’m talking about when I say that. Just for those of you, who may not have heard Mark, when I first met Mark, one of the things he did was hostage negotiations. And what he taught me was, when you’re having a conversation with another individual, the place you need to get them to, is a place where they’re exhaling, and they realize that you care and that they’re listened to, for you to be able to influence them. And that’s in co-elevation, that principle is in co-elevation, from the perspective of you own, whether another person is going to hear your feedback, you need to get them to a psychological state that they don’t feel triggered, right, using the analogy, taking the analogy. Yeah.
 
Mark: So, I’m going to do a massive plug for your book right now. It’ll be on the podcast, but I’m sending you the video too. Here’s a massive plug for Leading Without Authority, go to your team and ask them, what would be the effect on you, your productivity, your morale, if you could have basic trust of everybody you’re in contact with? What would it mean to you if you could trust your teammates, trust the company, trust the leadership, trust yourself, as opposed to miss trusting? This book Leading Without Authority is the guide to make that happen. And I will tell you, I’m a little bit emotional, there are going to be some people, if you say that, and you say what would it mean to you, if you could develop basic trust? They’re going to start to cry, they’re going to start to cry because they’ve been living with basic mistrust for so long, it’s a monkey on their back. I am telling you. And if you’re listening to me, thank you for trusting me, I wouldn’t mislead you on anything. I don’t do that, Leading Without Authority is your guide to creating a company that resurrects basic trust in the people, in your company and if you pull that off, you have no idea what your company is going to be capable of. So, you really need to check this up.
 
Keith: I think we should stop right here. I really do. I mean, you’re such a beautiful man and a beautiful soul and your wisdom and your insight and just, you see me, you know, me, you’ve known me for many years. You’ve tolerated me for many years, and I could not imagine a better place to stop this conversation and pick it up, you know, just offline between the two of us.
 
Mark: Absolutely, absolutely. So, where people can, normally I say, where can people find you? You’re fortunate because, if you just look up Keith Ferrazzi, two Rs, two Z’s, although you should know the name by now, you’ll find all kinds of things that he’s doing, he continues to do. He had told me that Leading Without Authority, he thinks it’s the best thing he’s done, and I didn’t know if he was selling me on it, but I’m sold. It is the best thing he’s done, and you need to check it out. And you need to share with your teams. You need to give your team’s hope, because most of them don’t feel that. So, Keith, thank you for being on. I’m going to go get some Kleenex and if you’re listening in, thank you for, you know, listening in again to My Wakeup Call. I hope this episode particularly not only woke you up, I hope it lifted you up, because a lot of you need that. So, thanks again for tuning in. And it helps if you share this and subscribe and write some sort of comments. It helps the algorithm but that’s all above my paygrade, I don’t really understand it, but it helps if you could do that.
 
Keith: So, I mean, of course, the book is everywhere, you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. So, Leading Without Authority can be bought anywhere. I started a website recently, just because I wanted to serve the corporations that I serve, and I feel like we’ve been bullshitting about the future of work for 20 years. And the reality is, it’s come, in two months, it’s come, and I kept hearing people talk about, let’s go back to work or when are we going back to work? And I said, no, let’s stop that, let’s go forward to work. And I’ll have a website out called goforwardtowork.com, in the coming week or two. And it’s going to have a lot of best practices associated with, how do we start working in a new work order? But what I have done in the meantime, is, now that everybody is working remotely, there’s a uniqueness about working remotely and I actually feel that today working remotely, we can actually adopt some of the most extraordinary co-elevating behaviors in this medium. So, I had done $2 million of research, funded by Cisco, Siemens communications and Accenture and published 20 some studies in Harvard Business Review. And I put it all at a website called virtualteamswin.com, virtualteamswin.com. And in addition to the book itself, on that, is resources like how do you re-contract with your team? How do you have that dialogue with them, right? So, you asked what kind of resources are available, these are the things that I’m doing right now, to try to bring all of this into practice. And I look forward to seeing people there, you know, like you, they can follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., and engage in our ongoing dialogue. So, Mark, I’m so blessed to have you as a friend, you’ve changed my life, you know that. I mean, there was a pretty dark time in my life, in my personal relationship and otherwise, when the only person I could think of was to call you. And I did and you pointed me to resources as well as were there for me personally, that put me on a different level of trajectory of growth. And I will always be so grateful to you. You’re a real beautiful magician, when it comes to the work here, your words are embracing.
 
Mark: So, I want to share a secret with you that nobody knows, especially, you’re ready for it?

Keith: Go for it. 

Mark: You’re not an imposter.
 
Keith: You know, thank you.
 
Mark: You’re welcome. So, again, check him out, and thanks for tuning in to My Wakeup Call and for your support of this podcast, and we’ll be speaking again soon. Thanks, Keith. 

Keith: Thanks. I love you brother. 

Mark: Love you too.