The Art of Likeable Leadership – in Just 7 Minutes with Dave Kerpen

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Related Links and Resources:

Dave’s companies have blogs have lots of great free resources. There's a blog at www.chooseapprentice.com, there a blog at www.Likeable.com, there's a blog at www.likeablelocal.com,  and we worked very hard to make those blogs really a chart full of resources. We're just building the resources page for www.Remembering.live,  we will have a full guide to online grief.

Summary:

Dave Kerpen is a serial entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author of Likeable Social Media and The Art of People and global keynote speaker. Dave is the Founder and Chairman of Likeable Local, a social media software company serving thousands of small businesses, as well as the chairman and co-founder of Likeable Media, an award-winning social media and word-of-mouth marketing agency for big brands.

Dave also recently founded Apprentice, a platform that matches entrepreneur's with the best assistants while providing world-class mentorship for college students.

Dave's latest initiative Remembering.Live was built after he lost his mum during the pandemic and offers live memorial services and tribute website to grieving families like his own.

Here are the highlights of this episode:

1:46 Dave’s ideal Client: Well it does depend on each of those 4 businesses. I would say that in Likeable Local and Apprentice, we do quite a bit of a work with small to medium size businesses; CEOs that are looking to get the most bank from their buck, when it comes to social media, building their brand. And for Apprentice, all things in terms of assistance. Likeable Media works with real big companies & brands. And our latest company Remembering.live works with families that are grieving.

2:33 Problem Dave helps solve: For the Likeable companies, we really helping them build use social media better. Ten years in, there's still quite a few companies that aren't using social media as well as they could be. They still haven't fully understood it, they're still not making money from it. And so, we really help them better to understand, utilize, and benefit from social media.

3:23 Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Dave: I would say frustration, confusion, and disappointment. There’re so many folks that are frustrated either with their lack of social media knowledge or the fact that's it not bringing business to them. Or for Apprentice, they are not getting the most out from their assistants, they are feeling a bit back down by all the smaller task that needs to be done. I think it's that frustration and disappointments that leads to us getting business.

4:07 What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding Dave and his solution: The biggest challenge that I see is that Entrepreneurs are making in general is not delegating; it's trying to do too much, to be too caught up in their business and not working on their business. It's always a mistake I think to get involve in the details and the execution on stuffs. The most successful business owners and CEOs that I know are those I know that refused to work in the business and they make sure they bring on great people and great vendors to take care of those things, so that they can really focus on the big idea and really moving the ball forward.

5:03 Dave’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): Social media is still very misunderstood; a lot of people think about the social media for the talking part. But social media like all communication, is half talking and half listening. I will urge people to focus on the listening part. The first very specific step that I will do is go to Twitter, go to the search bar, and search for the name of your company. And search for the products that you have, search for the competitors that you have, search for the problems that you're solving. If you're a real estate firm, you might want to search for people saying 'looking for a house', go in the blank for your area. As I've done this experiment before, it's been amazing to me how many people say "oh my goodness, I have no idea people were talking about me! I have no idea people were asking for me, people were literally complaining about the problems that I actually solve." I think that listening activity and specifically using Twitter for it is all going to be a game-changer for folks. So, I would say that it will be the first thing that is worth doing.

6:26 Dave’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): I would say that our blogs have lots of great free resources. There's a blog at Chooseapprentice.com, there a blog at Likeable.com, there's a blog at Likeablelocal.com, and we worked very hard to make those blogs really a chart full of resources. We're just building the resources page for Remembering.live, we will have a full guide to online grief. I'm a very big fan of providing free valuable content to users and prospects.

7:30 What's next? I'm excited about two companies, so by that time who knows where they will be. I believe we are launching a spin-off of Apprentice called the 'Black Apprentices', to support young, black college students, as well as black-owned businesses. Also, we are likely starting a fitness at-home market place. The pandemic has brought about, obviously people aren't going to gym the same way and may never, and so we are thinking very seriously about starting a market place to connect trainers with clients. So that they can do at-home online workouts. But if you have any other ideas, anyone who wants to meet with me, I do free office hours every Thursday afternoon. You can go to scheduledave.com and I'm happy to be a sounding board for you and help you with whatever challenges that you are going through.