The Jasmine Star Show

Building Teams That Win: How Relationships Fuel Success with Keith Ferrazzi

• Jasmine Star

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Have you ever felt like leadership is a lonely road? Keith Ferrazzi is here to prove otherwise.

In this episode of The Jasmine Star Show, I’m sitting down with Keith—executive team coach, keynote speaker, bestselling author, and founder of Ferrazzi Greenlight—to uncover the secrets of high-performing teams, radical collaboration, and why leaders should never "eat alone." Oh, and did I mention that this conversation was so powerful that I restructured my team meetings at the start of 2024 because of Keith’s work? Yeah, it’s THAT good.

Here’s what we dive into:

✔️ Why relationships are the key to long-term success in business

✔️ The shift from leadership to "teamship" (and how it changes everything)

✔️ How to build a culture of candor, trust, and accountability in your team

✔️ The 3 biggest shifts you can make TODAY to improve collaboration

✔️ How to connect with the right people—even if they’re outside your current network

Keith’s wisdom has shaped how Fortune 500 teams operate, and today, he’s giving us an inside look at how small business owners and entrepreneurs can apply these strategies, too. Grab a pen (trust me, you’ll need it!) and let’s dig into this game-changing conversation. 🎧

Click play to hear all of this and:

00:00 - How a single introduction led Jasmine to Keith Ferrazzi

04:10 - The story behind Never Eat Alone and the power of building authentic relationships

09:30 - What is "teamship" and why is it the future of leadership?

13:20 - The three shifts every leader needs to make for better collaboration

21:45 - How to create a team culture of candor and accountability

30:10 - Jasmine’s personal leadership challenge (and Keith’s advice for fixing it)

38:00 - The 5 “packets of generosity” that open doors to powerful relationships

42:35 - Final takeaways: How to apply these strategies in your business today

Listen to Related Episodes:

Keith Ferrazzi is a leading executive team coach, entrepreneur, and bestselling author known for his work on relationships, leadership, and organizational transformation. His books, including Never Eat Alone and Leading Without Authority, have changed the way businesses and leaders think about collaboration.

🔗 Learn more at Ferrazzi Greenlight

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Jasmine Star 00:00:00  Welcome to the Jasmin Starr Show. Where? Here. You probably have heard me say that good people know good people. So a few months ago, I was texting with a gentleman by the name of Nick Sonnenberg. Now, if that name sounds familiar, it is because Nick was a guest on my show, and there we talked about building systems and systems that scale. And so what he wanted to do is build a real, authentic connection with me. And Nick and I have now gone on to do multiple things. I speak in his community, and he's been on this podcast, and he's just one of those movers and shakers, AKA he's a good person, not as just a business ally. He's a good friend. And so he reached out to me with this singular text that said, do you know Keith Frazee? To which I replied, no, not personally. This is his text message. This is Nick's text message with permission. I'm sharing. He's brilliant. Big heart magnetic connector. Every year, Keith goes out of his way to make sure I have somewhere to be for Thanksgiving.

Jasmine Star 00:00:56  World class speaker and world leader in helping teams co elevate. I was like say less. Make an introduction to me please Nick. And so since that time I have dove headfirst into Keiths work, really deeply understanding why he believes people shouldn't eat alone. What? You're like, wait a minute, what? And why people shouldn't lead alone. At the beginning of 2025, I restructured our team meetings after deep dives of listening and reading Keith's work. So Keith doesn't know all the deep digging I have done around what he has been doing. So let me read a little bit about what the world sees him, and then bring him into the show to have you get to know him. Keith is an executive team coach, a keynote speaker, influential thought leader, founder of Verizon Greenlight where he has spent more than 20 years coaching fortune 500 companies and focuses on team transformation. He is a business coach that challenges the way that teams work to achieve breakthrough results. But hold on, hold on, I'm going to shoot him right now.

Jasmine Star 00:01:53  And you're like, jasmyne, let us at it. Yes, I know, but I want to read something from his website you'll see on his website. In big, bold words, we unleash unsuspected growth and radical adaptability by maximizing team performance. Y'all prepare your hearts. Keith, welcome to the Jasmine Starr Show. I wanted.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:02:11  My mother to listen to that.

Jasmine Star 00:02:13  Recording.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:02:14  He's good. Good. Please do this. This is wonderful. Jasmine. Thank you so much for having me. I am happy you're beautiful. Home. This was. Thank you.

Jasmine Star 00:02:20  Thank you, Keith. And you know, I am a I'm a rather private person. I'm what you might call, like, an outgoing introvert. And so when I get to bring people into my sanctuary, in a place that I get to build and dream and get to do it with other big thinkers and big dreamers, it is an honor. So thank you for coming out of your way, ladies and gentlemen. He flew here for this interview and this is a place of service for him.

Jasmine Star 00:02:40  So what I want to do is I want to get into team building specifically. But how about we start with one of your multiple books, but the first book that hit New York Times bestseller, and what kind of shifted the way that people saw you?

Keith Ferrazzi 00:02:52  So I spent most of my life in large corporations. I was the chief marketing officer of Deloitte. I was the first chief marketing officer at Starwood Hotels, head of sales at Starwood. When we were creating the hotel chain Saint Regis, you know, the startup preferred guest program. And then I started my own firm. And the reason I did is because I was looking at the two teams that I was a part of, the team at Deloitte and the team at Starwood. And the reality was we crushed it at Deloitte. And a lot of it was because we were a band of brothers and sisters taking hills together, kicking each other in the butt. I call it co elevating, right, collaborating, pushing each other higher. And at Starwood we were very competitive.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:03:33  It was not the kind of a culture that embraced psychological safety. There was a lot more backchannel conversations than there were direct conversations. And the reality is that Starwood, we had to sell ourselves to Marriott, right? We didn't achieve the kind of breakthrough outcomes that we did at Deloitte when we were the lowest of the big eight going to where we are today. So I decided to start a firm Razer Greenlight. And I wrote a book early on, and it was very much because I was a sales and marketing person. It was very much about how the interdependency of sales and marketing would define the future of business success, at least from a growth perspective. And what I realized and, and I wrote a book called Never Eat Alone. It's all the importance of the richness of relationships. When I was a chief marketing officer, I used to talk about something called high touch marketing, the ability to have marketing where you identify the most important relationships that could elevate your brand, that could elevate the growth of your business, that could really, you know, push you forward as an organization.

Jasmine Star 00:04:31  Okay. Can we pause here for a second? I'm a natural born storyteller. My father didn't learn how to read until I was about 25. And so we learned alongside with my dad to read. And so he would tell a story from memory. So if we pause here and you say that creating those relationships and to never eat alone, can you go back and think of in your early career where you decided probably not consciously after post writing the book, but before we use like I'm going to eat with somebody, like, get us into that.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:04:55  Let me I'll start with something. Even earlier, my dad was an unemployed steelworker in Pittsburgh steel industry and crashed all around us. Mom had to become a cleaning lady. I had to go work at the local country club just to make 20 bucks a day, which is what my mom was making as a cleaning lady. And there was a woman named Mrs. Poland. So Mrs. Poland, she was the best female golfer in the club, and she wanted to be the best golfer in the club.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:05:20  But that was difficult because the club was owned by a guy named Arnie Palmer, who was a pretty good golfer at the time, Arnie Palmer.

Jasmine Star 00:05:26  Yeah, I get it.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:05:27  And so what Mrs. Poland taught me was very interesting and very powerful. After she had me as her caddie one time, she asked me to be her caddie again, and I was like a big deal, because sometimes you only got out once a week.

Jasmine Star 00:05:41  How old are you at this time?

Keith Ferrazzi 00:05:41  Probably. Well, I actually lied. I should have been 13. Okay, but I was ten.

Jasmine Star 00:05:46  Okay. Oh, wow. Okay.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:05:48  It was a little bigger, boy. Okay, that I was ten. And then she had me play caddy for that time. And she had asked for me again at this stage was a really big deal. And Mrs. Poland asked me a simple question. After three days she said, Keith, what do you want to do with your life now? My dad and I had conversations about this.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:06:08  My dad was an immigrant. They came to this country to allow their son to have anything in the world. And we talked about it. We were like, one of these days I was going to be governor of Pennsylvania. I was going to fix the steel industry in Pennsylvania. God knows why. I thought the governor could do that. But anyway, I was going to fix the steel industry in Pennsylvania. I was going to be the United States. I was going to fix American manufacturing. And that's what I wanted to do with my life. Crazy ambitions. And of course, I couldn't share that with Mrs. Poland because she was a rich lady and I was a poor kid, and all I kept playing on in my head were all those kids who used to tease me at school because of the clothes we had, the car we drove, and I just I couldn't bring myself to be that vulnerable, to be that open with her. Ultimately I did. She got to beat it out of me.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:06:58  She's like, what do you want to do with your life? I said, well, I told her the story and she said, you know, Keith, you could and I would vote for you. Two weeks later, she went to get her local congressman to join her foursome to introduce me to that guy. It opened up doors that you can't imagine. I mean, that man took me under his wing. He ended up opening his library to me to study. He suggested I get involved in speech and debate. It was the change. I ended up going to Yale University because of that relationship. Right now, pause for a second. Years later, I asked Mrs. Poland, you know, Mrs. Poland, why did you do that for me? And she said, Keith, you took two strokes off my golf score. Such a powerful lesson for me. And the reason was I hustled. I was afraid of not getting that 20 bucks. Right. I showed up at the golf course a half of an hour early, just to understand where the pins were placed, how the greens were cut, and I absolutely hustled, hustled, hustled in service of that mission that I had to be the best caddie possible.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:08:05  I took two strokes off of her golf score. The lesson that I learned very early on is I didn't have to be born into a rich family. Every relationship that stood in front of me, that could open doors of possibility, that could make a new business possible, a new business relationship possible, a new client possible. All of that were relationships that I could proactively build. And if I build those relationships, I'd have all the success that I ever wanted, political or otherwise. So that, you know, it's not just about never eating alone. It's really about how authentic relationships define the future of your success. And that's how I started my business. I wanted to make sure that sales and marketing people knew that those relationships were crucial to breaking through growth in the company. I wanted to make sure. And then as I started to study and expand, the interdependency of executive teams are so transformative of whether business is going to be successful or not. What I witnessed at Deloitte, what we failed at at Starwood, the reality was, as I moved from never eating alone and the recognition that relationships would be important to never lead alone, and the power of team ship, even over leadership.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:09:21  That was a 20 year journey that redefined my life.

Jasmine Star 00:09:24  I mean, we could just end the podcast there, except for the fact that he was such a compelling storyteller that I actually want to get into the beautiful arc of Never Eat Alone, to never leave It Alone. A lot of the people who are here right now watching and listening are leaders and or aspiring leaders. These are people with teams of 2 to 222. And so I found your work particularly helpful to me, because what I want to do with my team is I don't want to lead alone. And so I'm going to start here. Can you explain team ship. Because some of the stuff that I was reading is you were shifting from leadership to team ship. So I want to use that word, but I want to normalize the vernacular. What is team ship to you?

Keith Ferrazzi 00:10:09  I'll do it by being a little contradictory to leadership. Okay. Meaning a great leader gives feedback. We all know that. Yes, but an extraordinary leader gets the team to give each other feedback.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:10:22  Okay. You know, like a great leader holds the team accountable. But an amazing leader gets the team to hold each other accountable. A great leader cares about the team and cares that the energy of the team is well managed. An extraordinary leader makes sure that the team gives a damn about each other, that the team lifts each other up. So the shift from leadership to team ship is a shift to recognize that you do not have to lead alone. If your leader and your feeling that it's all on you, running around, playing whac-a-mole, bringing all the great ideas, you are actually limiting your success. You need to expect more from your team, and the research that we've done over 24 years is ten critical shifts to level up your team, and they're all based in simple practices of how do you collaborate, how do you meet, how do you bring your team together so that they know their job is to elevate? And I call it crossing the finish line together? No single individual on the team should think of themselves as being successful until the whole team successful, which is exactly what you're looking for from a team.

Jasmine Star 00:11:33  So I'm a firm believer that with the content that I put out is you show your best, you give your best and insights and encourages people to follow through. There's ten shifts that you outline in your book, and I've made it a big goal and you all can testify. I do not do book tours. I do not have people come on just talking about their book. I have people come on for things that have actually implemented, and I'm taking part of so of the tin can we talk about two, two shifts that somebody can make today for their team size of 2 or 220 2 or 2022. What are the two things that right now we're listening, we're watching or say, Keith, this is going to be a game changer because then people want to go for the rest of the eight.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:12:09  I'll try to give you I'll give you three in the same period of time. Okay? Okay. So the first one is moving from conflict avoidance to candor. The average team, if you ask them the question, can we challenge each other in the room when it's risky to do so? The numbers are as low as one on a scale of 0 to 5, and typically they're in the low twos.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:12:32  Yesterday I was coaching a team where the score was 1.3. I said, okay, we recognize on a scale of 0 to 5, we do not challenge each other where we don't have the courage to debate each other in the room. That comes with a mindset that says, well, if I challenge my peer, I'm throwing them under the bus or if I challenge my boss, that's a career limiting move. Those are the mindsets that that guide that. But I don't care about mindsets. I know that sounds crazy. And most people come on here will probably talk about mindsets. I don't believe that you think your way to a new way of acting. I think you actuate to a new way of thinking. So I'm going to give you a couple of simple practices. There's a thing called to say.

Jasmine Star 00:13:10  That again, but slower to say that, I mean, it deserves I mean, please tell me this has been a pulled quote on Pinterest or Instagram. Write it. I'm sure.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:13:16  It is.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:13:16  I'm sure it's a T-shirt somewhere that says crazy, whatever. Yes, but you don't think your way to a new way of acting. You act your way to a new way of thinking. It's what we who are behavioral scientists think about when we say it's not about trying to change a person's mindset. That's a pretty tough job to do. I just want to give them a new practice, and if they do a new practice, they'll be like, oh wow, that was easy. I like that, that was beneficial. I'll do the practice again. Yes, you start doing practices, you change your mindset. That's right. So that's it. I'll give you a practice. It's called give you a couple of them a candle break in the middle of the meeting. Stop the meeting and say, you know what I'm not sure we're having as Richard dialogue as we feel we should. I'd like to do a candle break in groups of two talk, and come back in two minutes with the answer to the following question what's not being said in this room that we absolutely need to be saying, and I don't care what the topic is, you're you're falling behind in hold on, hold on.

Jasmine Star 00:14:16  But now let's go back to a story whenever you've coached, because this is what you do. And then you introduce the idea of a candle break. Have you ever been in the process where somebody took a candle break and then people come back and say, oh, this is the thing that we need to be said, like all the time. Yeah, we just did a juicy one. Yeah.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:14:28  I mean, look, yesterday I had 50 people in a virtual room, okay. Which feels unwieldy, but it doesn't need to be, because what I said to this group is, this is a fortune 20 company, okay? One of the largest companies in the world. We all know the brand. And I said to the group, you know what's not? We're talking about transforming the company. Over the next five years. It's been flat in its growth. What's not being said that should be said. Oh, right. And they went into breakout sessions and a couple of things. First of all, people were they came back and they said, we've been scared of rocking the boat because it's so big.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:15:09  We're afraid of breaking something. And, you know, so and so. It was interesting. There was not psychological safety to take big, bold risks and that wasn't being encouraged. There were people that had very specific initiatives. We've launched an entire division that has not been successful. It's not being well run. We should shut that division down. It was a multibillion dollar division, and this group of the top 50 leaders of the company, what will come from this session is is massively breakthrough in terms of lining up those answers, and some of them need further discussion. They weren't just answers by themselves. We ended up scheduling subsequent discussions just around some of those topics. Right. So this happens in every business where there's pent up insight, wisdom and opportunity that doesn't get brought out. That's just that's a simple and called a candle break. I'll give you another one. I don't know if in your business, if you have a critical initiative that's important for this year. I say most businesses have five big rocks they're working on at any given time.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:16:05  What's a big rock that you have? I want you to have the person leading that initiative stand in front of the team and say, I call it stress testing. They stand in front of the team and they say, I would like you to help me be successful by stress testing where I am on this initiative, not doing a report out where everybody listens and then politely doesn't say anything. I want you to beat me up and stress test where I am because I want you to not let me fail. That's the kind of camaraderie that I want to have among a team. And so stress testing is when a person stands up and says, here's what I've achieved, here's where I'm struggling. Always make the person report where they're struggling, and here's what I'm going to do in the next quarter. And everyone's heard that and they know they're going to stress test it. So they're taking notes. And then everybody goes into breakout rooms of two or just turns the person next to them, and they write down in a Google doc or somewhere, here's what you're missing.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:17:00  Here's a risk. You're not saying, here's an idea or an innovation that you might consider. And here's where I'd be happy to help. Now, that's simple act of sending everybody in the room to small discussion groups to critique the the thing that was just shared. You've just turned the kind of culture you dream to into an assignment. You want to challenge culture. Of course you do. You want a supportive culture. Of course you do. You want a curious culture? Of course you do. You just turned all of that into an assignment and people will step up. People say the culture change is tough. It's not just change the practices. You change the culture. So that simple stress testing is a big, big one for moving from conflict avoidance to candor. That's one of the three shifts move from conflict avoidance to candor. The next one is start to kill your meetings. Meetings has got.

Jasmine Star 00:17:50  To be one of the most.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:17:52  Debilitating, useless forms of collaboration that we use. The average meeting of 12 people have four.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:17:58  People think they're hurt, and what you want is you want people to really be thoughtful. You talked about yourself as being a bit of an introvert. I believe I'm a learned extrovert. I would much prefer if I had a little bit of time to think about a question, instead of just having to respond to it immediately. Okay, so if before a meeting you said to your team, here's a problem we're trying to solve, I want everybody to go into a Google doc and. Right. What do you think is the most important element of that problem? What do you think is the real problem we're trying to solve? What's your perspective on the problem we're trying to solve? And then what is a bold solution that you have for that problem. And everybody in your team writes that down. Now you look at that. And holy cow. First of all you may have an answer already embedded, but at a minimum, if everybody sees that in advance, you can dive right into fixing the problem, seeing everybody's point of view in the meeting when you have it.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:18:58  Normally the meeting is the beginning of the collaboration. The meeting could be the end of the collaboration. The cycle time of getting your answer could be so short you could do it all in a week. But if you started the conversation in the meeting, then there's the meeting. After the meeting and you walk down the hallway and people lobbying behind each other.

Jasmine Star 00:19:13  Yeah.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:19:13  So let's have the meeting in advance in asynchronous collaboration. And then we get in the meeting, we land the plane. That's called meeting shifting. And that's another.

Jasmine Star 00:19:22  Listed as kill your meetings. But yeah okay. Meeting shifting. That's a little nicer. Okay, cool. Your meetings are usually.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:19:27  Useless until the very end of the collaboration. And then the third is moving from what I would call individual resilience to team resilience. The world of work is tough. People are frustrated. They're fatigued. There's fractured relationships. It can be tough being in this world of work today. What if the team really felt that they had each other's back? What if the team felt that they showed up with a group of people that cared about them, cared about lifting them up, cared about their energy, knew that their mother was struggling in an assisted living, or that they were they had in the back of their head a spouse with a diagnosis.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:20:08  You know, that that was troubling. That stuff often doesn't get shared among teams. But there's a simple thing called an energy check, a practice where every month the team goes around and says, here's where my energy is and what's bringing it down. And if you do that every month with with having established a social contract that says we will lift each other's energy up. Where the team is responsible for hearing that and writing down call Jane next week when she gets her biopsy or whatever. Right. That idea of moving from individual resilience, where everything's on your shoulders to the team, has each other's back. That was actually the name of one of my books Who's Got Your Back? That's a powerful shift. So there's three shifts moving from conflict avoidance to candor, right? Meaning shifting where you're actually moving from collaboration, starting in meetings to moving to what I call 21st century collaboration. And then the third is moving from a individualized responsibility for your own energy and resilience to a team's responsibility to have each other's back.

Jasmine Star 00:21:14  There's three of them. Yeah. It's funny because you said it as three and I now here it is three. But I wrote it as four and I thought Keith gave us a bonus. So I wrote down a candle break, stop the meetings, put people in groups of two two minutes, come back and say what's not being said. Then I have a stress test.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:21:29  Stress test is one of two two different practices in the same chapter about candor.

Jasmine Star 00:21:35  Dang, you are a seasoned speaker, brother. You come in and you're like, correcting me on my notes while you're just dripping off the top of your head. One of the things that I have highlighted is like practices change culture.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:21:47  And that's what this book does. This book is 32 practices that you can use if your team and I want you to just consume this book like popcorn.

Jasmine Star 00:21:56  Yeah.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:21:57  You don't have to go beginning to end. You just open up the chapter. By the way, every chapter has a diagnostic that you can ask your team a couple of questions anonymously to determine where you are in the candor spectrum, where you are in the relationship spectrum, where you are on how agile are you as a team.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:22:14  So there's ten shifts. Each one has a diagnostic, each one has a hero story, but most important, each one has a couple of practices. You could just start crying.

Jasmine Star 00:22:22  If you didn't. So this is not part of my notes. But since you're here, can I be a little bit selfish? Yeah, please. So a lot of the book that I read, the podcast that I started consuming, I started implementing a lot of these shifts into our team meetings, and we've seen growth in some areas. But I would say that prior to the book, we've fostered a rather cancerous culture. And I think that we stress tests a lot, and I beg people to give me feedback. I'm like, please tell me where I'm wrong. And I would never be upset at somebody for telling me something that wouldn't work. I would be upset if you saw something and you didn't tell me, that's where I would get upset. So how do we. And of course, there's always room to get better.

Jasmine Star 00:23:00  So given these things, given that meeting shifting and individual resilience to team resilience, I feel like how do we uplevel? Like how do we take this and say, okay, that's a great level. This is where the Olympians dwell. Yeah.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:23:14  First of all, I want to take you back to what you were saying. You've done well, which is getting your team to be willing to challenge you. Yes. That's fantastic, but what I want to do is get the team to be able to challenge each other.

Jasmine Star 00:23:27  Thank you. Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:23:29  Yes.

Jasmine Star 00:23:30  Okay.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:23:30  Okay, okay. That's what stress testing does. You have a critical initiative that some member of the team is working on, and you're inviting the team to give them the kind of feedback that assures they won't fail. Okay. But also just general feedback. I do an exercise in one of the chapters, which is where you move from. It's your boss that gives you your development coaching versus your team gives you development coaching. I call that an open 360.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:23:57  So everybody in the team goes around and they can start with you and you can set the tone. And everybody goes around and says, you know, what I most admire about you as a leader is X boom, boom, boom, boom boom. And then, you know, because I care for you and your success is so important to our success, I might suggest boom boom boom boom boom. And then the next person gets the same thing. What they admire, what they might suggest. And if everybody continues to go around once a quarter and gives each other that feedback and what they've experienced in the past quarter, you start to realize is, wow, there's a bunch of well-intentioned, thoughtful people who can help me level up. So this is my coaches. I want to make sure that you're unleashing the team, being each other's coaches. So I wanted to make that little modification. Thank you. That's a big difference.

Jasmine Star 00:24:44  That's huge. As opposed.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:24:45  To putting it on.

Jasmine Star 00:24:45  Yourself, that's 100%.

Jasmine Star 00:24:46  That's 100%. And I can already see how we might be able to implement this I love it. Okay. So I think that when I started the year I cast a division. Now I was doing a lot of studying your work in addition to other things. This is normally in November and December of every year. I like to reflect on my year and say, okay, where are my biggest growth opportunities specifically as a leader? And I cast a division, and I used to think that I had to inspire people, and I think that it's a natural default to my energy, even if I don't intend to. The way that I speak and how I know how I can move a cadence in my voice if I stand on the stage, or if I stand in front of a team I know I can inspire. And you believe that the team can inspire each other. And I think that sometimes might overabundance of a natural skill set can diminish others. How do I step back and let the team inspire each other?

Keith Ferrazzi 00:25:37  Well, the practices do that, right? So there's a whole chapter in the book on shifting from sparse, and it's often sparse.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:25:45  It sounds like you're not bad at this, but others are sparse. Leader led celebration to team based celebration. So a real simple practice is once a month. Everybody should go around and give gratitude for somebody specifically on the team for having done something right. So if you tee that up right where the team is responsible for giving each other celebration and high fives and props, and you could do it every week, right? I mean, if you want to really pour it on for inspiration. So that's celebration. I also find that inspiration is intended to energize. So that thing I was talking about earlier, where where people understand each other's energy levels and what's draining it for having a tribe of people around you who give a damn about what, straining your energy and is helping you think about it, reminding you that they care. That is an energizer, right? So the in other words, the reaction to what drains your energy can actually lift your energy. So you don't always have to just be smiling and inspirational.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:26:49  The team could just be I care, right? I care and I want to help. What can I do? So between celebration and helping to lift where energy happens to be draining, those are two things. I also find that in both of them, they're very authentic, right? Cheerleading can be very powerful, right? There's certainly times for cheerleading. But I think that if you just meet people at their normal energy and bring them up or help them not go down, you don't have to hit up here on the energy level in order to lift a person's energy.

Jasmine Star 00:27:26  Can I say, yeah, can I break this down in a really personal example? Yeah. Okay. So there are things that I do that are energetically sucking to me, but there are things that I have to do. And if I talk to other team members and we talked about an energy check and they will openly tell me, like, this is so draining for me. And then I look across from them and what I want to do as a leader in a fixer is like, oh, well, we can hire to take this off your plate, or we can think about these systems.

Jasmine Star 00:27:49  But sometimes the fact of the matter is, there's going to be things that suck with what you do in this role. And I'm sorry, but don't.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:27:56  Have to take it all off their plate.

Jasmine Star 00:27:58  Right. So then how do I, like, restore that, like bought into the vision of like sit through the suck?

Keith Ferrazzi 00:28:03  Well, you know, first of all because somebody is sharing I learned this a long time ago because someone sharing their problem doesn't mean you have to fix it.

Jasmine Star 00:28:12  I know.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:28:13  Right? It means that they want you to empathize. They want you to understand, they want you to feel. And that could be perfectly enough. On the other hand, the team itself can solve that problem without you throwing resources at it like the team could reorient their resources. You know, part of the benefit of having one of the chapters talks about building agility into a team. I feel that if the team realizes that their job is not only their own success, but everybody's success knows we don't win as a team unless we all win.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:28:47  This was taught to me years ago by somebody who was in the military, and they said, you know, we just we the helicopter does not take off until all the soldiers are on, even if we have to go and drag them and bring them onto the helicopter. And that's what I want your team to be. Your team has to have that kind of responsibility that we all cross the finish line together in order to win. One of us. Winning isn't winning. Now, when that happens, you can relax and not always be solving the problems, always playing whac-a-mole always feeling like you've got to be the the answer. You got to pause and let the team. What if the.

Jasmine Star 00:29:22  Team can't be the answer? Can I give you like an example? So we have a really strong player on our team, and we have an open inboxes that email address that we share everywhere. It's info at Jasmine Starcom. So that is what's on LinkedIn. That is what we promote publicly. And so what we get is a ton of traffic to that inbox.

Jasmine Star 00:29:40  And the person who I have this, she's like, if I could just get rid of the info at like, that would just be so much off my plate because it drains me so much of energy. And I have thought about this ten Ways to Sunday. And I think to myself, we have had the most business opportunities come through that inbox now it's like the 1%. But I said, I can't just abdicate this to somebody who is a doer and a responder, like, I need somebody with a nose. So good to actually see what those opportunities, because these opportunities come, I cannot abdicate it.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:30:09  And this person is uniquely capable of sniffing out the 1%.

Jasmine Star 00:30:13  And they're saying at this point, at this point in time, I don't think it's a skill that only unicorns have. But given our team nature and I'm not going to go and throw somebody into it and the current team breakup, I think that she's by far, hands down the perfect person suited for it. But it's wildly dragging for her.

Jasmine Star 00:30:29  For her.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:30:30  Well, first of all, if there's a 1% lift, this is this is I don't know how coin operated this person is, but it could be that you start to align some incentives around why she would care about this box.

Jasmine Star 00:30:43  There are there are.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:30:44  So there are some incentives she feels. But despite the incentives, she still feels that this practice is dragging, dictating to.

Jasmine Star 00:30:53  Her, not debilitating. It's just one of the things you're like, oh yeah, it's one of those, right? Okay, okay. Right. That's fine. That's what I would also.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:30:59  Suggest that this could be an opportunity to train someone up.

Jasmine Star 00:31:03  I know you.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:31:03  Could say.

Jasmine Star 00:31:04  To her.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:31:05  Who on the team could you train up for this? You use international employees much. Not as American workers, that sort of thing.

Jasmine Star 00:31:12  Should we do, but maybe not as much as we should.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:31:14  I I'm a big proponent. Many of my team have shifted to the Philippines and to, Central and South America, and it's been amazing.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:31:26  I've been able to have folks who really don't mind doing that kind of work, who are just eloquent and fantastic, and instead of having to pay 60 to 120 K for that person I have, I pay 12,000 bucks a year for that person, and that's great salary for that. So it might be that you start to explore a better fit.

Jasmine Star 00:31:51  I actually just thought of something that just didn't occur to me at this moment is I believe that we would be able to train somebody, that this person can clean up at least 50% of the lowest hanging fruit. And even if we just lessened our main big hitters workload. That 50% would be a game changer for. I think we can even increase it from there. Okay, but.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:32:09  I wouldn't back off of the idea that you could train up somebody who could crush it, even with that 1%. Yeah, right.

Jasmine Star 00:32:16  You know. Absolutely.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:32:17  For now, the training opportunity is having to take 50% out.

Jasmine Star 00:32:21  Absolutely.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:32:21  Then maybe you tell them your job is to take 50% out, give the other 50% audit to the other person.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:32:29  But while you're doing it, tell that person what you thought the 1% was and then let them just train up on getting that direct, that direct feedback.

Jasmine Star 00:32:38  So let's take a little bit of a story break. Yeah. Because we're in a lot of practices. So if we are in your business and you have built out this team, can you share an example not too personal. We're not going to talk about the book. What has been an example with your personal team that you've seen this transformational team?

Keith Ferrazzi 00:32:57  No, I want to go back to something we sort of skated over originally. We were talking about the book Never Eat Alone. Yeah. Opening up doors of opportunity that you wouldn't imagine otherwise. And we talked about the migration over 20 some years for me into the team coaching business. Again, the reason I got into this business is I started my business to help the sales and marketing relationship be better. And I realized the executive team relationship is so broken that the relationships and the interdependencies between product and sales and marketing and delivery, all of that stuff, we could fix that.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:33:30  We go to a totally different level and that's where Team Ship came. So that was the evolution of the business. The most important thing that I take from Never Alone, that I use today, every day as an entrepreneur is my team are not the people who I hire. My team are the people that I need to hit it out of the ballpark. Nick has become a teammate of yours of sorts, right? An individual who's a dear friend, you too are co-creating creating cool stuff. You know, Nick has been the same thing for me. He's really helped me rethink productivity in such a genius and beautiful way. The other person I mentioned a little earlier was a gentleman named Peter Diamandis. Peter, founder of the X Prize. Singularity University, just finished writing a book with Tony Robbins on On Longevity, but he's a technology futurist. And during the pandemic, he and I became teammates. We basically were like, wait, you know, we're best friends. Where we were weren't probably weren't best friends at the time.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:34:30  But we're good friends. We are best friends now. We're good friends, and we don't see each other that much. Pandemic is hit. Why don't we meet once a week for an hour, and we both share what we're struggling with in business, and we become each other's coaches. Amazing. And then now I'm in his boards. He's a my boards, whatever. And because he's a technology futurist, he said to me, he said, Keith, you you have six books that you've written and they're so genius, why haven't you turn those into an online learning course, that people can come together over an eight week period and learn everything about deepening relationships, etc. and it was so funny about it because we as leaders need to develop teams that are crushing it. Peter Diamandis incubated a new business for me. I now have this this business, which is an online course that helps entrepreneurs develop the most important relationships in their life. It's called Connected Success and anybody wants to hear more about it, you can go to Connected success.com.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:35:29  But Peter incubated that business. I could never pay Peter to do that right. Nick was my in a sense, he was my outsourced chief operating officer. That helped me rethink productivity. I could never afford that full time in my business. As an entrepreneur, you should ask yourself, what are the big rocks I'm trying to serve? And who are the most powerful partners that are really on my team? Because I'm on their team. And that's important when you're when you read the book, never let alone. I don't want you to think only about your employees.

Jasmine Star 00:36:04  Good.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:36:05  I want you to think about the ecosystem that you're marshaling that helps you crush it.

Jasmine Star 00:36:10  Can I ask a clarifying question? Yeah. Do the people who will help you get to where you want to go need to be in your orbit now? Like, what if I know somebody outside of my orbit, but I don't have proximity to them and I don't even have a connected person. So right now, just in case, I'm going to seed it, okay, I'm gonna see this.

Jasmine Star 00:36:23  You're gonna see what I'm gonna do here. However, if I wanted to talk to somebody by the name of Peter Diamandis, I wonder who might be able to put me in contact with him. Right. So now I have a potential. Not that it would be a yes, but I have a potential. What about I think of person X and I don't have that. Can I still have that person in my orbit as the person to get to where I want to go?

Keith Ferrazzi 00:36:39  Yeah. The, the this is where we created that course connected success. Okay. People don't even imagine how abundant the world of partnerships could be. Like when I started, when I went from a a fortune 500 executive at Starwood and Deloitte and I started my own firm, I was like, okay, well, who's on my wish list? Who's on my dream list? If I'm going to be a writer, a speaker, a coach, who are the ones that are on my wish list? I wrote down, you know, back in the day it was like Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, etc. and I was like, okay, those are on my I didn't know them.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:37:17  But by virtue on.

Jasmine Star 00:37:18  Your wish list. For what?

Keith Ferrazzi 00:37:20  To develop relationships and create value between us because they were aspirational people in my business.

Jasmine Star 00:37:26  Got it right.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:37:26  Got it. And and I wanted to learn from that. So it was interesting when I found out that a, I had a mutual friend that knew Tony, I reached out to that mutual friend and I didn't say, introduce me to Tony. I want to learn from him. So do 5000 other people every day. You know, I reached out to him and I said, you know, I came from the fortune 500 world. I think Tony's stuff is really amazing. I would love to go to three of Tony's courses and write up an idea of how he could penetrate the large enterprise marketplace.

Jasmine Star 00:37:59  So good.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:38:00  Right? And so what did he do?

Jasmine Star 00:38:02  So good.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:38:02  He gave me entry, free entry to his courses. He put me in the front row. I got to know him. Okay.

Jasmine Star 00:38:07  Hold on. Not his courses, his live events.

Jasmine Star 00:38:09  He's live. That's different because that price tag is different. That experience is oh, I went to all of them.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:38:14  And when I got to know him, I was like, you know what? You know where you should be, Tony. You should be at the Ted conference. And I've been going to Ted for 30 years. And I called the folks that I knew at the Ted conference. I said, I'd like to bring Tony Robbins as my guest at the Ted conference, and like, 100%, let's do it. So I'm I was the one that brought Tony there. There's a wonderful story where he stood up and challenged al Gore. Al Gore was acting like a victim, saying that the Supreme Court stole his election. And from the audience, somebody shouted out, he said, nobody stole your election. You and I forget the whole phrase, but nobody stole your election. If you had been the person that you are right now on stage talking about inconvenient truth when you ran for president, you would have won.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:38:55  And that was Tony. And then all of a sudden it disrupted the whole conference. They brought Tony to the stage. Two of them had a conversation. It was like really, really powerful. But I brought Tony there that day. Right. And, you know, every person you have a desire to get to know, you've got to show up in your mind with five packets of generosity. Number one, sincere admiration. You know, knowing a person's life story before you meet them, knowing their achievements and letting them know how their life story and achievements have impacted you sincerely and authentically. One packet of generosity. Another packet of generosity is just go in and do the research and think about the things that they're doing that you could advantage. And a lot of times your hustle is sufficient, you know? And the other thing I always do is I'm always trying to think about how to make my network available to other people. So if somebody says to me, if I want to get to know somebody, I'll.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:39:53  I'll imagine who might they want to get to know. And could I find a way into that person to connect them? I remember the first time I met Arianna Huffington. It was because my client was the chief marketing officer of Chrysler, and Ari at the time was a very early speaker. She was probably getting $15,000 a speech or something. Now she's probably $250,000 a speech. But I reached out to her cold. I didn't know her. I said, hey, I've been admiring your work so much. I'm having the chief marketing officer of Chrysler over. I know he books a lot of speakers. Do you want to come over? Right? And he's like, and yeah, she came. And then I got to know her better personally. And now she's like a sister to me over all of these years. But I'm always asking the question, how can I connect somebody to somebody else that I can then show up with a packet of generosity? So my book, my first book, Never Eat Alone.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:40:46  And this is what we teach in, you know, in Connected Success. It's really imagining all of those people in your life who could open doors for you. And how do you get ahead of that? By opening doors for them.

Jasmine Star 00:41:00  I love it so, the five packets of generosity. Number one, sincere admiration. Number two, do the research. Well, I.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:41:04  Was just I was I was riffing. Every person might have different five packets of generosity.

Jasmine Star 00:41:11  Right.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:41:11  So in the book I teach all of these different things. So for instance, I mean, Michael Milken, who's just lives up in Los Angeles, he taught me years ago that health, wealth and children, if if you could have like, for instance, I really believe strongly in the space of longevity. I believe that I can live to 120 and thrive. Then I study longevity, and as a result, I'm constantly being willing to talk to friends of mine who are, you know, aging like I am. I'm almost 60.

Keith Ferrazzi 00:41:40  I'm in my late 50s. And to be able to say to somebody, have you ever thought about getting a full body MRI? Let me tell you how powerful that is. If you've ever thought about metformin, let me explain what that does for you, know, for you, blah blah blah. So being able to be a carrier for someone's health, like, is powerful wealth, you know, being able to introduce people to business deals, children, helping kids get internships, each of those or packets of generosity. But if you're if you're if you spend your life curating relationships and strong networks, then you spend your life realizing, how can you be generous to people?

Jasmine Star 00:42:14  Oh, I couldn't think of a better way to end this conversation, because I feel like you've been so generous to us by sharing everything it is, you know? And I think that the greatest gift that I can ever get as a teacher coach, mentor is when I see somebody do the work or take action. So instead of me saying, thank you so much, this is so inspiring.

Jasmine Star 00:42:35  What I want to say is, thank you for inspiring the actions that I will take to change my mindset. And I think that there's a lot of people here who are saying the same thing. And for those people who want to connect with Keith, you can find him on LinkedIn. And you can also find this cohort, this potential cohort that you could share your five packets of generosity with this next cohort. Connected success if you would like to go deeper. But I think more than anything, me empowering a team so that they empower each other. Me inspiring a team so that they inspire each other. And me challenging a team so they challenge each other is my big call to action. And then being able to step back. And the way that Nick had shared a packet of generosity. With an introduction to you, may I hopefully share those packets of generosity to introduce you to others so that this message gets out? Keith Veras, thank you. Amazing. Thank you so, so, so much.

Jasmine Star 00:43:25  My pleasure. Thank you. Send a message on LinkedIn or go and connect with one of the things that he has been sharing as proof and an indication that you aren't thinking about taking the action, you're taking the action to get to thinking. Thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show.