No one climbs
alone.
Warren Buffett built a fortune. Michael Phelps built a world record. Nelson Mandela built a country.
I wanted to know what made them so successful.
So I called them. They said start by asking who.
Relationships compound.
Find your First. Build your Circle. Read your Room.
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Coming October 20, 2026
“It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.”
— talking to Warren Buffett, in his Omaha office
Why I Wrote Lift
A radical idea.
I was publisher of Forbes, and the 400 list was the scorecard of American capitalism. We measured success by coastal cool and high-tech vibes. Then the data showed us something different. That is how we ended up in Omaha. The city had more millionaires per capita than San Francisco. And the millionaires were teachers, shop owners, UPS drivers. None of it made sense.
I picked up the phone and cold-called Warren Buffett and asked for an interview. When I asked what made him successful, he talked about seven neighbors and his father.
Greatness doesn't start inside people. It starts between them. That's what lets a person go farther than they ever could on their own.
That's the book.
“I have never felt more powerfully free, more my own man, than when I was a small part of an organized resistance to the power that imprisoned me."
— Senator John McCain, at ASU
Fourteen lives.
Fourteen long shots.
Fourteen astonishing comebacks.
Across luminaries in business, sports, politics and war, the same three forces were at work. Every one of them found Lift — in a connected community, a neighborhood, a team, or a culture.
[above, we could place a grid of photos; below grid: three columns headed Neighborhoods, Teams, Cultures, each with four images, name and descriptor beneath]
Neighborhoods
Warren Buffett, investor and philanthropist
Reatha Clark King, PhD and Fortune 500 director
Malcolm Forbes, media tycoon
Donald Trump, Manhattan developer and U.S. president
Teams
Michael Phelps, Olympic swimmer
Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, Nobel Peace Prize laureates
John McCain, senator and presidential nominee
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs
Cultures
David Petraeus, four-star general and CIA director
Nikki Haley, governor and UN ambassador
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russian dissident
Lou Lenart and Allen Cunningham, freedom fighters
“Lift debunks the myth that ‘self-made heroes’ climbed alone. What matters is deep connections with a family, a team, an organization that creates a Lift culture.”
—William R. Kerr, Harvard Business School
“Riveting stories, deeply revealing. Every reader will finish this book remembering the first person who saw who they could be, and wondering whose life they might yet help lift.”
— Barbara Barrett, 25th Secretary of the Air Force
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Cunningham is the former publisher of Forbes, where he led the magazine through the rise of the Forbes 400. He went on to run Zip2, Elon Musk’s first company, and served as chairman or board director of more than ten public companies. As a professor of leadership at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird and Cronkite Schools, he hosted the award-winning interview series Iconic Voices, featuring candid interviews with Warren Buffett, Michael Phelps, General David Petraeus, and other global leaders. His book, Lift, distills those encounters into lessons on achievement, resilience, and the relationships that shape extraordinary lives.
Ask Jeff a question about Lift:
Relationships Compound
Greatness doesn't live in people. It lives between them.
—Jeff Cunningham