EXCERPT: 'Who's Got Your Back'

New book teaches how to build relationships that lead to success.

ByABC News via logo
May 25, 2009, 3:16 PM

May 25, 2009 — -- Keith Ferrazzi's new book, "Who's Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success -- and Won't Let You Fail" flips the idea of a self-help book on its head.

In his new book, Ferrazzi contends that people who build meaningful relationships with others can attain greater personal and professional success.

Read an excerpt from the book below, and then head to the "GMA" Library for some more good reads.

Maybe that sounds like the dubious title of some shameless self-help book, but it's pretty much the most accurate way to describe the life of Jean Nidetch. Jean was a plus-sized housewife who enlisted her friends to help her stay on a diet. What she ultimately accomplished is remarkable. But how she accomplished it is something every single one of us needs to understand.

Jean was overweight. She was overweight as a child, she was overweight in high school, and despite endless diet regimens, her waistline kept expanding throughout her twenties and thirties. Eventually, this five-foot-seven-inch woman weighed 214 pounds, wore a size 44 dress, and fit the medical definition of "obese." Jean tried diets and pills that promised to take off pounds, but she always gained back the weight she lost.

In 1961, at age thirty-eight, Jean started a diet sponsored by the New York City Department of Health. After ten weeks she was twenty pounds lighter, but starting to lose motivation. She realized that what she needed was someone to talk to for some support.

Her inspiration: Since she couldn't get her pals to make the trek with her to Manhattan to sign up for the official health department regimen, she brought the "science" of the program to their living rooms in Queens. Jean and her friends would all lose weight together. Out of those first meetings grew Weight Watchers, today widely recognized as one of the most effective weight-loss programs in the world. Nidetch's idea was simple: Losing weight requires a combination of dieting and peer support. She held weekly meetings with weight check-ins and goal setting to promote accountability, coupled with honest, supportive conversation about the struggles, setbacks, and victories of losing weight.

Eventually, Nidetch, who'd lost seventy-two pounds, rented office space and started leading groups all across New York City. In 1963 she incorporated. The company went public in 1968 and was sold to H. J. Heinz in 1978. (In 1999, Weight Watchers was again resold, to a unit of the company Artal Luxembourg.) As of 2007, Weight Watchers International had retail sales of over $4 billion from licensees and franchisees, membership fees, exercise programs, cookbooks, portion-controlled food products, and a magazine. Nidetch retired in 1984, leaving behind a legacy that has saved the lives of literally millions of men and women. As the company's current CEO, Dave Kirchhoff, notes, "Though the science of weight loss has evolved over the years, the core of Jean's program–support and accountability–has remained a constant."

What's so extraordinary about all that? Jean just wanted to get skinny, but through an inner circle of friends offering expertise, wisdom, honesty, and support she achieved far more than she ever imagined possible. Jean discovered what the great leaders and peak performers throughout history have always known: Exceptional achievement in work and life is a peer-to-peer collaborative process.

Behind every great leader, at the base of every great tale of success, you will find an indispensable circle of trusted advisors, mentors, and colleagues. These groups come in all forms and sizes and can be found at every level and in nearly all spheres of both professional and personal life, but what they all have in common is a unique kind of connection with each other that I've come to call lifeline relationships.

These relationships are, quite literally, why some people succeed far more than others. In Who's Got Your Back, I want to give you a practical guide to building an inner circle of lifeline relationships so you can do for your life what Jean Nidetch did for hers.

Well Connected and All Alone

Ten years after leaving the executive committee of Deloitte Consulting, I had been, at Starwood Hotels and Resorts, one of the youngest chief marketing officers in the Fortune 500. In 2003, my first book, Never Eat Alone, promoting the power of genuine relationships and generosity in our lives at work, had become a national bestseller. And from everything I heard back from readers and clients, the book was helping people change their lives for the better. I felt as if I was beginning to find my real purpose in life–helping others improve their careers and their companies. It felt so much more meaningful than putting "butts in beds," as I would joke, as the chief marketing officer at Starwood. Shortly afterward I had fulfilled a lifelong dream by starting my own consulting and training company, Ferrazzi Greenlight–or FG, as we called it. To the outside world, I seemed to have it all–success, money, recognition, well-paid speaking engagements, a stack of appreciative fan mail, and a professional and social network the size of a midsized metropolitan phone book.