Dhru Purohit Show - Friendship Is A Bigger Predictor of Longevity Than Cholesterol and Genetics: Here’s How to Build Your Community to Support Your Health with Keith Ferazzi

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

This episode is brought to you by Tiny Health, Bon Charge, and Birch Living. Most people think the biggest drivers of longevity are diet, exercise, or the latest health breakthroughs. But what if one of the strongest predictors of how long and how well you live is something we rarely prioritize: the quality of your relationships? Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Keith Ferrazzi to explore why meaningful relationships may be one of the most overlooked pillars of health and longevity. Keith shares the science behind connection, why accountability is one of the biggest predictors of success, and how surrounding yourself with the right people can transform your health, career, and happiness. He also explains the surprising power of generosity, creating a shared vision, and building a community that helps everyone grow together. Keith Ferrazzi is the founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a New York Times bestselling author, and a globally recognized expert on leadership and team performance. For more than two decades, he has advised Fortune 500 companies, startups, and government leaders on building high-performing, collaborative cultures. Previously, he served as CMO of Deloitte and Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and his work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal. In this episode, Dhru and Keith dive into:  (0:00) The Relationship Truth No One Talks About (4:00) Why Relationships Matter More Than You Think (8:15) The Biggest Relationship Mistakes Most People Make (11:07) Why Great Relationships Slowly Fall Apart (18:54) The One Conversation That Changes Everything (21:44) The Community Advantage Most People Overlook (25:57) Why Generosity Is a Superpower (32:32) The Accountability Secret Behind Lasting Success (36:24) Simple Habits That Strengthen Every Relationship (40:43) How to Repair Relationships Before It's Too Late (43:27) The Relationship Advice Everyone Needs to Hear Also mentioned in this episode: Who’s Got Your Back Never Lead Alone Never Eat Alone Beyond Connections’ exclusive 9-week program For more on Keith, follow him on Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, or visit his Websites: Ferrazzi Greenlight and Keith Ferrazzi. This episode is brought to you by Tiny Health, Bon Charge, and Birch Living. Right now, Tiny Health is offering my community their biggest offer yet: $50 off your first gut health test. Just head to tinyhealth.com/dhru for $50 off your first test. Your gut has a story to tell; Tiny Health helps you understand what it's saying. Right now, Bon Charge is offering my community 15% off their Red Light mask. Just go to boncharge.com/dhru and use code DHRU to save 15%. Summer is the perfect time to invest in better sleep. Right now, Birch is offering my community an exclusive 20% off during their Fourth of July sale.—just head to birchliving.com/dhru today. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everybody. Drew Perraud here today, and we have a very special interview for you. See, in 2014, I was given a copy of a book, and that book changed my life. That book was called Never Eat Alone and other secrets to success one relationship at a time. The book was by an author named Keith Farozy. Keith Farozy was Yale and Harvard MBA, and he became a top executive at a Fortune 500 company. And in this book, he was telling the story of his life. growing up and the lessons that he learned from his family and mentors that shaped his success. And he was sharing these habits that he learned.

The top habits and the top mistakes for people when it comes to relationships. And his argument was relationships are the hidden unlock for so many things in your life, but especially your success. And in today's interview, we have Keith on the podcast to talk about relationships at the intersection of health. And we're starting off by talking about one of the longest. running studies that's been going on. It's from Harvard and it's all about health, wellness, and health span. And it showed that people who take care of their relationships and invest in their relationships, that relationships was the biggest predictor of health over the course of somebody's

life. A lot to unpack there, a lot of lessons. And in our episode today with Keith, we also talk about the top mistakes that people make when it comes to relationship. If you guys know me and you follow my content, you know that I've been a huge fan of. of the community and friendship piece as being central to our health span and our happiness in life. When you don't have friends, when you don't have deep relationships, when you don't feel like you have friends that have your back, you feel lonely. You feel not understood.

You feel like you're trying to just deal with life on your own. And on the flip side, when you have incredible relationships and you have friends that have your back that are looking out for you, that are up-leveling you, you feel like you can accomplish anything. And your success in all areas of life improves. One perfect example of how I've applied this in my life and live it is I have a weekly men's group that meets every Thursday. We call it man morning. We go on a walk together.

And, you know, men aren't always great about talking about the stuff that is going on in their life. So we talk about things that we're navigating, stuff that's a little sticky and tough. And we also talk about things that we're celebrating in life, in business, in relationships, being dads. And that group and the dinners that we host monthly and the connection we have, we've been there for each other in so many different aspects. We share best advice with each other on how to level up our health. health. We're there for each other when one of the members of the group loses a parent, which just happened recently. There's so many ways that we're there for each other. And I could not imagine my life without this group of friendships and so many others that I have there. And I attribute

a lot of that of my thinking of how to invest in those relationships back to Keith Frazi, which I'm excited for you to hear from him today, even if it's a short episode. I think you're going to find a lot of value from it. Please check out Keith in his work. The book Never Eat Alone is fantastic. It's a great book for young people who are just starting their career. It's a great book if you need a relationship reset. Keith has a bunch of other books on his website as well too, which you can find in the show notes. Let's jump into today's interview with Keith Frazi, author of Never Eat Alone and many other books, a big influence in my life. Keith, welcome to the podcast. I've been a big fan since the first book, 2005. It was a game changer for me. And I want to start off with something that my

audience is a little bit familiar with, but we're going to dive into it a little bit deeper. So the longest running study at Harvard that they've ever done. It wasn't on cancer, it wasn't on heart disease, it wasn't even on Alzheimer's. It's an 87-year study on what makes a good life and a healthy life. And the findings, spoiler alert, were that the quality of your close relationships at 50 has the biggest prediction on your physical health at age 80, better than even cholesterol, genetics, wealth, fame, IQ, and a whole bunch of other things that they looked at. You've been teaching about the power of relationships now

for over 20, 25 plus years. Why was this finding from this study not a surprise to you? After my formative book that you're mentioning, never read alone, I started to study small groups of individuals and how these small groups of individuals were potentially transformative in each other's lives. and I looked at things like Weight Watchers.

Why was it that Weight Watchers had a higher statistical weight loss than programs that didn't have a community element? It was that group way in where a group of people that cared about each other showed up to hold each other accountable for their weight loss, etc. I studied AA programs where individuals who are in the gutter, literally, right, could turn their lives around with a group. of other of their peers without even a leader involved. The format of the AA program doesn't even have a leader involved. And these people are committed to what I call co-elevating, a committed to a shared mission for each other, but committed to helping each other further, right?

So I started studying these groups, and I wrote a book called Who's Got Your Back? And at the end of that book, as a part of the publicity, you know, I went on Good Morning America, and we did a co-elevation challenge. where a group of individuals came together, and they each had their own goals that some of them were frustrated and not achieving. Some were weight loss goals. Some were relationship, meaning love goals. Some were goals. Some were goals with families and kids. Some were professional

goals. Each of them had their own individual goals that they had been frustrating, not achieving. But they came together as a group with nothing more than a shared commitment to be supportive of each other over the next 18 months to see if they could help crack the, glass ceiling of whatever was sticking them. And across the board, they all had massive breakthroughs of achievement during that short period of time. And we used a format, which is nothing more than in every other week check in where each person showed up and said, here's what I've been working on, here's where I've been struggling, here's where I think I'm going. And the team would challenge them. The team would give them ideas. The team would offer help. And then you'd move on to the next person.

The point is that across my life, 25 years of being in this kind of work around the relational sciences, I have consistently seen people show up with health objectives, weight objectives, longevity objectives, and the same methodology of having a group of people who have your back, of having a small group of people who are willing to be generous to each other, willing to care enough to open up and be vulnerable and transparent with each other, willing to have candor and butt-kicking accountability, intimacy, generosity, candor, and accountability, the makeup of a small group of people who have that with each other allow us to be disproportionately successful in all of our goals, including health, well-being, happiness, joy, love, relationships,

and family. It's been absolutely a mainstay across my, my 25 years of studying this. One of my reflections is that I think a lot of people are nodding their head. They heard me talking about that study. They're hearing you talk about things that sound like a complete no-brainer. Okay, great. Have close friends. Maintained relationships. Be candorous with them. It's one of those interesting things because it's like, if you go to Times Square or you go to Hollywood Boulevard here in Los Angeles and you stop the average person on the street and you say, hey, do you live a healthy lifestyle? Most of them will say, yeah, because they all have a different definition of health.

One person is going to say yes, and to them, being healthy is only smoking, you know, one cigarette a day. Another person is going to say really healthy because a lot of their friends are super overweight and they're maybe a little bit overweight, but not as overweight as everybody else. And why I'm bringing this up is because when it comes to relationships, a lot of people think that, oh, yeah, I'm doing it pretty well. It's a no-brainer. You just, what do you do? you just have friends and people in your life that you stay in touch with. What you actually see, especially for this demographic that this study was kind of looking at, 40, 50 and beyond, what are some of the biggest mistakes are they making when it comes to relationships

that are not that obvious? They expect too little from their relationships, and they give too little to their relationships. I, in the study of the most powerful and important relationships in our life, I had to create a new word. It wasn't enough to say they collaborate or, you know, their friends. That didn't have enough impact to it. I created the word co-elevating where the nature of the relationship is a commitment to help each other go higher. I always say that I'm looking for my friend network to ground me more and take me higher.

and if you start to put a threshold of what a successful relationship is, and those four words, who of your friends, when you're not around, are out there actively thinking about how to be of service to you and take your goals personal and professional to the next level? That's one criteria. Who's being that generous?

Who of your friends are you fully capable of being absolutely vulnerable to a raw, emotional, transparent, way and they're doing that with you. That's what I call intimacy, true intimacy, to the point of vulnerability. Who of your friends tell you the truth and who of your friends you always tell the truth even when they don't want to hear it? That's candor. Who of your friends hold you accountable and never let you fail? That's accountability. Intimacy, generosity, candor, and accountability. When we put that as the threshold for a co-elevating relationship, the average American, 50% of Americans say that no one has their back. And of the 50% of Americans that say that no one has their back, 60% of them are married, which maybe speaks to the nature of our marital relationships.

People think their relationships are too delicate. they think that we can't lean on them. We can't be truly our selves. We can't call on them. But in this definition of what I call it, co-elevating relationship, it gains off when it comes to what your job is and what their job is in terms of how we've thought about the pristine, delicate nature of relationships of the past.

So that's the point that I would make, which is I think we expect way too little and we give way too little. these relationships that we call friends today. That's a great reflection. You know, what was interesting about the Harvard study is that in the findings, it was talking about people that weren't that successful with maintaining relationships, and they saw that stupid disagreements or not forgiving somebody and holding onto a grudge was the reason that somebody would throw away a lifelong friendship, something that had the potential to radically continue to improve their health and happiness. Something just so stupid was not worked through and they were using that

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to give your skin the recovery support. it's been missing. As you could imagine, the nature of the relationships that I'm talking about wouldn't have that in them, right? Now, look, I mean, for a living, I'm not in the business that you're in, right? I'm not full-time in the well-being, longevity, you know, space. I'm in the business of coaching executive teams. And I find that these attributes neat. They also are the litmus test of whether an executive team in a corporate context thrive. Executive teams that are conflict avoidant, they fail. These organizations have mediocre financial performance.

Marriages that are conflict avoidant, they dissipate and they end up in divorce. We've got to be able to lean in and tell the full truth and work it through and come to, you know, some form of an elevated solution as a result of our disagreement. agreements. One of the things I do with executive teams is I shift the commitment, the, the, the concept of who's responsible for your health? Who's responsible for your energy? Who's responsible for your mental well-being? Typically, the answer is you. You know, we go through the, we go through life and it's our job to make sure we don't hit a wall. And when we hit a wall, then we might go to professionals.

Who believes that there is a network of intimates around you who share the responsibility of each other's energy, well-being, care? And to that end, I make that social commitment among my teams that I coach. I say, listen, while we're working together, we should move our sense of resilience of being our own responsibility to being a shared responsibility.

So once a month, we're going to do an energy check. Everybody goes around the team and says, what one thing is more than anything else draining our energy this month? And we share it with each other. And we listen both with empathy, but we also listen with an understanding of, how can I be helpful? Can I just check in next week and say,

how's your mom doing? That's helpful. Can I say to you, I'm so sorry you're stressed off on this project, how about if I put one of my best project managers from my team, can I lend them to you? so that they could be supportive of this thing you're going through right now, right? I see that happen all the time, but right now, this thing I call a social contract,

which is what other companies call culture. I call it a social contract. What is our contract socially with each other? I want to shift the social contract to be shared resilience. We will care about each other's resilience. And when I do that, it's amazing. And I'm not even talking about, although it's possible, where teams can have health goals together.

Yeah, hey, let's lose weight, let's let's exercise, et cetera. My husband right now is worked with at a VC. And he is thrilled, like you can't imagine, he loves CrossFit and that kind of stuff. He's thrilled. They have a shared fitness challenge over the summer. And they put people in groups of 10, and these groups of 10 are competing for points.

of course it's a VC they're going to compete but they're competing for points in their fitness routines how many hours of fitness do you exercise a day and more importantly if you do it with a co-worker you get double the points so this weekend i've been being i've been being introduced in the last couple of weeks to more of my husband's co-workers than ever in my life before because now they're like showing up and they're working out with us because he gets double points Like this idea, and I love it. And my husband's energy toward exercise has ramped up significantly. And more importantly, I've been noticing that his friendships among these individuals have been shifting as well, which has really been beautiful.

Yeah. What I'm really hearing from you is this idea of putting out a shared vision, maybe even a goal. And then auditing your relationships. And a lot of people who are listening today have pretty good relationships. But maybe they want it to be better. But it's not going to get better unless if we put out a shared relationship. vision and an idea. And you can go to your friend in life and say, hey, we have a really good relationship.

I want an amazing relationship. Like, what would that look like for us to do stuff together, have a goal together? How can we support you? We spend roughly a third of our lives on a mattress. Think about that for a second. When you look at it that way, the quality of your sleep environment becomes a pretty important part of the health equation. The materials you're sleeping on.

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Right now, Birch is having its 4th of July sale and offering my community 20,000. 20% off. Just head over to birch living.com slash drew to save 20% off today. That's B-I-R-C-H-B-E-I-N-G-G.com slash D-H-R-U to save 20% off today. If you're in a business context, I would read my most recent book,

Never Lead Alone. If you're wanting to do it for yourself personally and your friend network, I would go back 15 years and read my book, who's got your back. And if you just want to do it for you personally and learn, like, I'm an introvert, how do I build better relationships and connect with people? I'd go back to my original book from 2005, Never Eat Alone.

But all of them have ways that you as an individual can shirpa and cultivate the kind of people around you that will be life changing to your well-being, to your joy, to your success. Let me tell the story about my mom. So my mom's 93. And I mean, she's crushing it. She still drives. She lives alone. She's back in Pittsburgh.

Mom used to have a group of ladies that I remembered when I was writing the book, Who's Got Your Back? I remember this group of ladies. They used to come over to the house every few, every so often. And all I knew is when that happened, Dad and I would get kicked out of the house because we weren't allowed to get in the way or listen to what they were talking about. And so, Dad, it was the best night of my young life as a little kid.

and I would go out and, you know, go get coconut cream pie somewhere together or whatever. Not the best well-being formula, but still it was great as a kid, be with my pops. And when I was writing Who's Got Your Back? I asked my mom about this and she lit up. She was like, oh, you mean the Card Club Girls? I'm like, yeah, the Card Club Girls. Tell me about them. They have played cards every single month for 65 years.

Never missed a card game. When my dad was unemployed, which happened a lot when I was a young kid, my dad was a steelworker in Pittsburgh during the 70s. Those ladies used to cook extra and bring it home to my mom so she could pretend she could stretch a nickel and have food on the table. When my aunt was passing away, those ladies sat on her bedside. And they didn't cancel the card game. They played with her one last time and said goodbye a few days before she passed.

When my dad died, they made sure my mom got out of the house every single day. There's three of them left. My mom jokes that one of these days, like one of them's going to be around alone and that they have to change the card game every single time one dies and that there'll be somebody playing solitaire thinking of the others. And I'm so blessed that my mother has this. It's amazing. But I realized I didn't.

And by the way, right now there's three of them. One of them has full dementia. And they still sit with her every month and play cards with her. Right? They're a tribe. I was so happy my mom had it, but I didn't have it. And I was not in a marriage at the time that was that. And I realized I had a lot of work to do.

And I certainly wasn't the kind of leader that was building it in my company and my team. And that was a real awakening to me to the need of this principal co-e elevation. My mom's 93. And she's got her church group. She's got her card club group. She's got all of these groups. And I'm absolutely certain that her longevity is directly tied to this sense of constant community that she has in her life, then she's manifested. But it's so available to every single

one of us. There's not a single one of us. And this is one thing I want to start activating on. There's not a single one of us that doesn't have the right or the option of pulling together a shared interest group. Like at the time when I was writing this book, I started, there were three couples, six of us that would have dinner once a month. And we just called it a co-e elevation group. And once a month we'd get together, three couples, and everybody would go around and say, okay, remember what I said I was going to do last month? Here's what I did. There was always a personal and a professional goal.

Here's what I did. Here's where I struggled. We peppered the person with questions. And then they made a commitment to what they would do for the next month. And all of us offered that if they wanted us to help in some way, we would. So that was it. Everybody got a spotlight, 15 minute spotlight. in one dinner.

And it was in those beautiful thing. And during that period of time, you know, we did this for years. During that period of time, some of the couples went through infidelity but stayed together. Some of them went through serious health issues, but we all were there for them.

We activated the kind of little house in the prairie community that we don't think exists anymore. You know, you know the book, Bowling alone. Yeah. We need to create it for ourselves. Don't wait for society.

to invite us in to a world that doesn't exist anymore. Create it for yourself is the key. You know, a huge part of creating for yourself is taking a look at these two mistakes that you highlighted earlier, not having high enough expectations. And that doesn't mean unexpressed expectations. It's sort of having a high enough vision for your relationships in your life, right? Both your partnership, your marriage, with your wife, your husband, whoever might be, your friendships.

And then the other one that you mentioned, this one's tricky for a lot of people. And this one is the through line of a lot of your work. In fact, of all your work, I've heard you even say a quote, paraphrasing here that if you would boil down your work into, you know, one thing that is the secret of success in career and business, it's generosity. And you're two big mistakes. The second mistake that we didn't get a chance to talk about is that people don't give enough.

You know, everybody wants to be in an incredible friendship. Everybody wants to have that friend that invites them to do great things and stays in touch with them and lifts them up when they're down and is there for them. But we often don't think are we that person for other people? So talk to us about giving, about generosity and your foundational approach that you teach people about with it. There's two things here. I do think that generosity is core.

But I, you know, I actually find, particularly with a lot of women, they feel that they give so much, but they never get the reciprocity. but that's a lot of that is because of a fear of being imperfect, a fear of letting people know we need help, a fear of letting our guards down and inviting people in to help because we are in need. And so that's why it's so important with this new social contract that I offer. It is reciprocal.

It's reciprocal by nature of the contract. So we say to each other, our job is to share what we're achieving, where we're struggling, ergo what we need and what we're hoping to do. And if everybody shares that with an intention

of being of service to each other, like it's interesting. I know anytime I'm sitting in a room, I will run a dinner party just because I'm bored with small talk and I'll go around everybody and say, hey, could all of us go around and do, what is the thing that's going on our lives

that's the sweetest right now? And what's going on in our lives that's the most sour? Some people call it roses and thorns or whatever. And it's a pretty innocuous share, but we do it. And I'm so shocked by how many people will sit and listen to other people's stuff and never offer to help.

And I think it's because they don't really realize that this is, they don't, maybe they don't think that they have an invitation to do so. I don't think it's because people are not wanting to be helpful. I just think they're just, it's so alien to our norm. And that maybe we think it would be an affront to ask. ask another offer help to another person because people might be afraid that they themselves are afraid of being offered help, et cetera. I don't know what it is. But just make it a contract. Like when you get your friend group, say, look, here's what we're doing this. We're doing

this to elevate each other. We're all going to be vulnerable about what we need. We're all going to be celebratory about where we're winning. And we're all going to be helpful to what we can do to stretch and help each other. That's the contract. So just define. it. Once you define it, it's comfortable. It's easy. And then you need to give process around it. So people will share. You share what you're doing, what you're struggling with, where you're going. And then people ask you questions. And then before we move on, everybody will offer something of help. And you've got to define to people an introduction to somebody that they know that could be helpful. Something, you know, some resource tool, me personally being of service, whatever it is. But you got to give people the lens and the coach.

and the process to make it easy. Because otherwise, what we're used to is sitting around not sharing and not helping. And that's what we spend way too much doing with people that we call friends. Yeah, super powerful. A group of friends of mine, about 13 years ago when I first moved to Los Angeles, there were a group of guys. We're all entrepreneurs. We all kind of moved here at the same time.

We were making friends with each other at different places. And then we put out the idea of, let's go for a hike. and the same group of guys kept on showing up for the hikes and the walks. And then one day somebody was like, man, this is great. I have Taco Tuesday that I do with my wife. And this has turned into like Man Morning Thursday. So we ended up calling that. We literally called it Man Morning.

And every week for whoever's in town, we get together, sometimes in Santa Monica at the boardwalk or Will Rogers before the fires happen, wherever. And we get together, there's a captain. And they'll often ask a question. If we don't have a question, the default question, is tell us one thing in your life that you're celebrating. Tell us one thing in your life that you're navigating. We stole that from the Summit Junto group that we were part of. And it's incredible how

often we look forward to this opportunity. Guys that wouldn't feel comfortable always, you know, they didn't grow up and examples of other men in their lives, fathers who were super sort of vulnerable in that way. And it's something that has become truly like our pride and joy. One of the things that we look forward to the most in the week. You know what makes me most happy about that? Is so when Jeff and Elliot and the boys started Summit, I gave them all these tools. They're in my book because they had decided to start the summit

because they had read Never Read Alone. And in their life, it was an impactful book. And then one of the things I talk about in Never Read Alone is start throwing an annual party that if you do it regularly for long enough, it will become an institution. And so that's when they started, did their first ski trip. And then as I sort of adopted them as mentees and young friends, as I was doing my research on who's got your back,

I started giving them the methodology for this peer-to-peer group, which turned into those hunters you're talking about. What I love about this is a seed that was planted 20 years ago was one of the things that still exists on May and Mondays, May and morning Mondays, or Thursdays or whatever it is. That brings me a lot of joy. We owe you a ton. We're going to have to...

Not at all. Not at all. But that's the point. Energetically, we owe you because that... And it's also the reminder for anybody who's listening here is that some of the most beautiful things in life are, also when you create this container that allows people to connect, or you create an environment that allows somebody to be vulnerable.

And then you hear down the grapevine that their life... has improved from it. There's a joy that's there because every single one of us has benefited from the work that somebody did that we never met, never knew, and yet our lives would not be the same without the work that they did. About three years ago, one of my business partners who was coaching teams with me, I coach a lot of Fortune 100 startups in the Bay Area around AI. He was coaching middle market and small enterprises for us under our brand.

He came to me as like, Keith, you know, I think we've left, we've left the juice of Never Eat Alone and who's got your back. We've kind of left that on the table. We need to just dust that off and do something with it. So he started something called beyond connection, beyond connection. And originally it was called connected success. But the whole idea was give people a cohort learning environment over a period of eight weeks where they could come together and and hold each other accountable and coach each other to develop the relationships that they want in their life, personal and professional.

And that's been one of the greatest joys. I mean, I'm doing a ton of cool stuff. Like, we're bringing this idea of small group success to the country of Bhutan, to right now I'm working with Dr. Oz in Medicare, Medicaid. It was funny. It's sort of full circle.

I met Dr. Oz because when I was researching, Who's Got Your Back? I went on his show. And he and I concocted a whole series of things you could do that would have each other's back. So, for instance, if you have a workout buddy, when you're done with your workout, switch your tennis shoes. Each of you take home each other's tennis shoes so that when you come the next day, you have to show up to make sure that the friend isn't left without their shoes. So it's just this, what can we do in our lives that force together the kind of peer-to-peer support, not letting each other down, right?

So we had these things that I met Dr. Ross, but if you spin ahead to his role today and turning around Medicare and Medicaid, so much of that is about community. How do we bring that to America again? So I'm blessed now to be working with, you know, a group of individuals that, you know, I don't care what you think about politics, but what they're trying to do, right now on Medicare and Medicaid and reinventing American health care is pretty impressive. Yeah, no, very impressive. It's a big vision and we'll take a lot, but you've got to have that vision to get people inspired

to all want to participate and support that vision to make it happen. To me, the takeaway here, the most important thing for folks is that if you have, it's a simple thing. If you have a goal, health, joy, well-being, whatever it is, if you have a goal, don't do alone, create a buddy system, and get committed in a small group of individuals who won't let each other fail and have regular check-ins, whether those check-ins are weekly like you and your men's group or monthly or quarterly, whatever it is, have your check-ins. And then make sure that you have a social contract among that team that includes vulnerable sharing of what you've done

and haven't done, a commitment to be generous to each other and serve each other as you're climbing up the hill together. And a commitment to candor and accountability that isn't just soft patchy on the back. Most friends let us fail. They don't tell us the truth. You know, somebody's lost three jobs. They consistently lost, they's consistently not lost weight. and they're the first person standing with you at the buffet, not saying, you know, maybe you don't want to pick up that cheesecake. Like, we let each other fail all the time. And the best friends won't.

The best friends won't. But we've got to activate that. That's not going to happen naturally. Couple rapid fire questions, but your answers can be as long as they need to be. Any best practices on bringing this to an intimate relationship? Your marriage, your longtime partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, anything that you've seen from your years of work in the space. So I'm actually building, I'm trying to build an app on this, which of course is not difficult with AI today. So with the ubiquity of AI, here's why. I got married last June. I have an extraordinary relationship. I have the best love I've ever had in my life.

I have deep commitment to the longest term foundation of a great relationship. So happy. So blessed. And I just asked myself, like, how could I f*** this up? Like, and the answer is it's not adhering to the stuff that I was talking about. So I had an idea. And if anybody out here wants to build this, I can give you the blueprint that I've written up about this.

But basically, every night, the AI asks me. me, what about my relationship drained my energy today? What about my relationship elevated my energy today? And then the app would ask my partner the same thing. Ask your husband, ask your wife. What drained and one elevated energy? And then during the next day, it would give me some tips of what I could do that could elevate my partner in my relationship.

So simple. And at the end of the week, it gives you a scoreboard of how you're doing, whether you're doing the stuff, whether you're elevating, whether you're down, et cetera. So it brings transparency and dialogue, but it also brings action to the relationship. Is there a lot more to it that I've been thinking about. But listen, I mean, the reality is in our most intimate relationships, we avoid conflict. we still are probably more selfish than we should be. We don't pause enough to fully listen and be heard. So I think that these things are things,

just like I would do with an executive team, we could do, you know, in personal relationships. Just as an aside, I mean, I once did a session for a group of executives, and these were very wealthy individuals. And one of the individuals said to me after, he's like, would you mind coming? and doing this for my family. I'm like, I, I'm not a, I'm not Dr. Phil.

I'm not a family therapist. He goes, no, but what I want is he said, my mom, my dad died, he was the, he was the patriarch of family, my mom's still alive. My wife and I run the business. I've got three girls, they've got husbands. We as a family could probably really do use for some intentional knitting together. What are all of our goals? how do we support each other?

What pisses us off about each other we need to iron out? Like, let's treat this community like you would, any other intentional community that you want to commit to making it better. I thought that was beautiful

and I did it and it was a ton of fun. I think the opportunity for the reminder that if you have the right tools and I'm a huge fan of the Gaiman method, I don't know if you know those guys and some of their work that's there. my wife and I did pre-marital counseling that we kind of pieced together ourselves with a couple therapists using the Gottman philosophy. And some of their stats are pretty wild that, that, you know,

the longest, healthiest relationships, if that's one of your goals, it's there, they actually will have fights on a regular basis. And it's actually people who don't fight at all that risk having all this internal suppression and resentment that ends up blowing up one day. So if you can find the right tools. That's a great opportunity. Your books are fantastic in that space too. There's an opportunity to bring to the surface the things that are causing friction in a relationship. And then the realization that is this something that is actually needs to be changed or is this that I married this person? This is just kind of who they are. Right? Or is this something that actually I need some help and understanding with. Okay. Somebody's listening today.

they held a grudge, they let her friendship go, they regret that, you know, advice to them on, you know, reconnecting with that individual. So I learned a lot studying the AA program, the 12 steps in general. And what I love about the 12 steps, the Dalai Lama said the 12 steps were God's greatest gifts to mankind in the last 200 years. Pretty powerful statement from the Dalai Lama. there's a step, I think it's step four or five, making amends. And what they teach you is, once you identify those you've harmed, and they ask you to write down the names of people you've harmed, it could be because they harmed you first.

It doesn't matter. It's like you harmed them, right? And what they teach you is, no matter what, when you're reaching out to make amends to somebody, you've got to lead with what was your part. not what was their part. You don't walk up to somebody and say, hey, I'd like to rekindle this relationship.

You know, you know you really screwed me over. Like, you don't do that. You don't do like, you don't reach out and like, hey, I want to like forgive you for having, you know, like lost me $100,000 two years ago or whatever it is. It's like you don't lead with what they did. You lead with your part. You lead with, hey, I wanted to apologize.

I have been distilled. and maybe even beyond that, either quietly resentful or maybe even a little bit passive-aggressive. And the reason is, because I was hurt, but that's not the point. The point is,

I've not been my best self with you. And I'd like that to change. You lead with what was your part. And sometimes it takes a lot of practice with some friends before you, You had a chance to go out and do it. Because even just, no, I just, I was, it was funny because I was thinking about one person and I might want to do that with, with the question you asked.

And I was, I was pretending it was him I was talking to. And I realized, even then I said, and I was hurt. Again, it was about what he did to me. Right. I should, that shouldn't have been in that chair. It should have been about, I want to apologize for how I've shown up in the last six months. Done. You know.

So that's a little bit of advice. Work your ass off to practice showing up and owning your part. Powerful. Keith, this has been fantastic. It's been a great opportunity to have you reconnect with your work. When I read Never Read Alone, the takeaway that I had at the age of, what was I, 20 years old, 21 years old, the takeaway that I had was how much of my philosophy of success was me, I got to do it, I got to figure it out, I got to navigate through life.

And the book was really the reminder that there are people that want you to succeed and the same way that you want people to succeed. And they're just looking for an excuse to engage in a vision together. And they're looking for an invitation to connect and buy the way. the way, if you do that authentically, it's one of the biggest supercharges for your career, your reputation, your community, your success when you give without keeping score and just show up for people. And so I owe so much of my career success to that framework. And yeah, I've shared this before in person with you, but, you know, with everybody listening,

thank you so much for your dedication to supporting people with this vision that you've put together, many years ago that has been shaped by the hard work of your parents busting their when you guys had nothing and giving you the opportunity and your peer group giving you the opportunity. Well, listen, this is why we brought back connected success and beyond connection because I had, you know, I've been doing this for 25 years and that core work is so still pivotal and foundational that we wanted to make sure it was accessible to people. So thank you.

The books, I hope, are available to folks, our eight-week courses available to folks. But more importantly, I appreciate the opportunity to unveil this stuff in front of you and your audience here. Drew, thank you. Thanks for the work you do. Amazing. You're on all socials and people want to check all this stuff out. We have a link in the show notes. And Keithferazi.com.

You've linked it all. Keith, thank you so much. Cheers. Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.

And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter. And it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy. to digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health.

We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.