Keith Ferrazzi: Never Eat Alone

If Virginia Can Do It, You Can Too

A few months a g o , a friend of mine told me about a woman named Virginia Feigles, who lived not too far a w a y from where I grew up. He had been inspired by her tale of triumph. Hearing her story, I felt the same way.

At forty-four, Feigles decided she no longer wanted to be a hairdresser; she wanted to be an engineer. From the get-go, there were naysayers, people w h o insisted it couldn't be done. Their negativity simply provided more fuel for her fire.

"I lost a lot of friends during this whole thing," Feigles says. "People become jealous when you decide to do what no one thought you w o u l d , or could. You just have to push through."

Her adventure reads like a Cliffs Notes guide to career management where a bold mission and a commitment to reach out to others combine to create opportunities previously unavailable to a high school graduate. It also conveys a harsh dose of reality: Change is hard. You might lose friends, encounter seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and face the most troubling hurdle of a l l — your own self-doubt.

Feigles had always planned to go to college. Raised by a single mother in small-town Milton, Pennsylvania, the opportunities were slim. She was married by seventeen and pregnant a year later. She worked full time as a hairstylist in her husband's salon and raised her only son. Twenty years went by. W i t h her second divorce, Feigles rethought her life. Growth, she reflected, came only from change. And change came only from new goals.

She was working part-time as a secretary at the chamber of commerce when she realized life had more to offer. "I just thought, 'This is stupid. W h y am I on the wrong end of this? Not everyone who has a Ph.D. in physics is Albert Einstein.'"

W h i l e it's true not every engineer is a genius, they all know algebra—something Feigles couldn't claim. So she buckled down and learned the subject within a few months.

After a summer stint at community college, she decided to apply to a top-tier civil engineering school at Bucknell University. The associate dean, Trudy Cunningham, didn't sugarcoat the situation. " W h e n she arrived, I told her that life was about to get hard. She's an adult with a life, an apartment, a car, and she was competing with kids w h o were living in dorms and having their meals cooked."

Luckily, Feigles had always been an avid connector all her life. She was a member of a number of community organizations, serving on the boards of the Y M C A , Milton Chamber of Commerce, and Parks and Recreation Committee. She also had stints serving as president of the Garden Club and the Milton Business Association. She had supportive friends and advisors all around.

For the other students, the end of class meant keg parties and football games. For her, it meant a night working at the salon followed by grinding study sessions. Feigles doesn't remember a d a y she didn't think of quitting.

She remembers getting back her first physics test. She failed. "Another student thought it was the end of the w o r l d . I told her not to worry, I wasn't about to commit suicide," she recalls with the w r y insight reserved for someone who's been through it. She ended up with a C in the class.

M a n y sleepless nights and several Cs later, Feigles found herself among 1 3 7 other engineers in the graduating class of 1 9 9 9 . No one was more astonished than the graduate herself: "I just kept on thinking, ' W h a t have I done?' And then repeating to myself, 'I've done it, I've actually done i t ! ' "

W i t h her goals completed, her network has grown—and not only in terms of friends and new business contacts. Today, she's newly married—to her former boss at the chamber of commerce— and busy with a budding career at the state's Department of Transportation. Recently she became chairperson of the Planning Commission, where she used to take notes as a secretary.

Reaching your goals can be difficult. But if you have goals to begin w i t h , a realizable plan to achieve them, and a cast of trusted friends to help you, you can do just about anything—even becoming an engineer after the age of forty.

In 1 9 6 8 , when W i l l i a m Jefferson Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, he met a graduate student named Jeffrey Stamps at a party. Clinton promptly pulled out a black address book. " W h a t are you doing here at O x f o r d , Jeff?" he asked.

"I'm at Pembroke on a Fulbright," Jeff replied. Clinton penned "Pembroke" into his book, then asked about Stamps's undergraduate school and his major. "Bill, why are you writing this d o w n ? " asked Stamps.

"I'm going into politics and plan to run for governor of Arkansas, and I'm keeping track of everyone I meet," said Clinton.

That story, recounted by Stamps, epitomizes Bill Clinton's forthright approach to reaching out and including others in his mission. He knew, even then, that he wanted to run for office, and his sense of purpose emboldened his efforts with both passion and sincerity. In fact, as an undergraduate at Georgetown, the forty-second president made it a nightly habit to record, on index cards, the names and vital information of every person whom he'd met that day.

Throughout his career, Clinton's political aspirations and his ability to reach out to others have gone hand-in-hand. In 1 9 8 4 , when he was governor of Arkansas, he attended, for the first time, a national networking and thought leadership event called Renaissance Weekend in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Clinton secured an invitation through his friend, Richard Riley, w h o was then governor of South Carolina. Attending Renaissance Weekend was like a trip to a toy store for a guy like Clinton, w h o wasted no time meeting others and making friends. Here's how a Washington Post article from December 1 9 9 2 describes Clinton in action at the event:

M a n y guests, reflecting on Clinton's presence, remember images more than words: how he would roam from discussion to discussion and take a spot at the side of the room, leaning casually against the w a l l ; how he would seem to know everyone, not just from their name tags, but remember what they did and what they were interested in. "He hugs y o u , " said M a x Heller, the former mayor of Greenville. "He hugs you not only physically, but with a whole attitude."

W h a t Heller is referring to is Clinton's unique ability to create an almost instantaneous intimacy with whomever he's talking to. Clinton doesn't just recall your personal information; he uses the information as a means to affirm a bond with you.

From Clinton, two lessons are clear: First, the more specific you are about where you want to go in life, the easier it becomes to develop a networking strategy to get there.

Second, be sensitive to making a real connection in your interactions with others. There is almost an expectation among us that whoever becomes rich or powerful can be forgiven for high-handed behavior. Clinton illustrates how charming and popular you can become, and remain, when you treat everyone you meet with sincerity.

Forget the images we all have in our heads of the desperate, out-of-work individuals scooping up every business card in sight while fervently mingling at business conventions and jobhunting events. The great myth of "networking" is that you start reaching out to others only when you need something like a job. In reality, people who have the largest circle of contacts, mentors, and friends know that you must reach out to others long before you need anything at all.