Talent Acquisition On a Budget

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Everyone says business is about strategy, tactics, and system.

Speaker 1 Today's guest, Dave Kirpin, proves it's actually about relationships and he's built seven companies and successfully exited two.

Speaker 1 While others chase algorithms, Dave proves that people still buy from people they trust. The show starts now.

Speaker 2 All right, welcome back to the show. Today, we're on with Dave, and this is an individual who his book's amazing.
He's built seven companies, he's exited from two. He's doing something that I love.

Speaker 2 But before we get into it, thank you so much for being on the show thanks for having me great to be here

Speaker 2 so tell me more about apprentice and what you're doing especially since you're doing this wonderful thing where you're supporting your family and you're helping your daughter out learning business as well i absolutely love that tell me more about what apprentice is sure so with my first uh several businesses i didn't have enough money as I was starting the businesses to hire full-time staff.

Speaker 3 And so we started hiring college students in my first company that my wife and I sold a couple of years ago, Likable.

Speaker 3 At one point, we had 60 college students working for us and just 12 full-time staff.

Speaker 3 And I found it was a really great way to develop talent, to access really great talent without paying full-time salaries. And

Speaker 3 I kept doing it with different companies. And I would hire many of the students full-time when they graduated.

Speaker 3 And they would jump into more senior positions like marketing director and chief of staff.

Speaker 3 They co-authored books with me

Speaker 3 because I had had the opportunity to get to know them and they had the opportunity to get to know me and understand how I like to work, et cetera.

Speaker 3 And so I had a young man that came to me after working for

Speaker 3 me for two years while he was in college. And he said, Dave, I think there's a business model here connecting college students like me with entrepreneurs like you.

Speaker 3 I've learned more from you than I learned in three years of college. And I know I've been very helpful to you as well.

Speaker 3 He had co-authored a book with me. He had worked on a million dollar real estate client almost exclusively for me.
And I said, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 3 And so we started a business together that was called Apprentice, scaled pretty quickly to a million dollars.

Speaker 3 He was young and a bit over his head. And I actually empowered him too much.

Speaker 3 He ended up moving away from the business, but it became a really wonderful opportunity because my daughter was

Speaker 3 in college right now. And so

Speaker 3 I took the transition as an opportunity to help teach her about business and help build the business with her, her, rebuild the business with her.

Speaker 3 And so now, yeah, so now I get to work with my daughter and hundreds of college students that continue to support entrepreneurs and small businesses in four different areas: marketing, biz dev, data and analytics, and operations.

Speaker 3 And it's been a blast. You know, I am very, very

Speaker 3 fortunate and grateful. And not,

Speaker 3 it's very clear to me that I have a wonderful luxury right now in my life that I can afford to build a business with my daughter, to teach her, to take it slow, to be patient because of my previous exits.

Speaker 3 And I feel really, really blessed every day that I can live that

Speaker 3 sort of life.

Speaker 2 I love that you're doing it, but also more importantly, is kind of what he said, that he learned more interacting and working with an entrepreneur live than he did in all three years of college, which I think is the experience for most of us that have gone to college.

Speaker 2 And there's this bit of a push right now saying, Do you go to college? Do you not go to college?

Speaker 2 What your daughter is still in school, which I completely support. I'm curious, as an entrepreneur who's exited and done this, where are you still?

Speaker 2 Obviously, you stand specifically on a certain spot when it goes to university. Why have you decided and what makes you still believe in college as a viable form?

Speaker 3 Well, to be clear, it's not that clear to me.

Speaker 3 My wife is more traditional

Speaker 3 in

Speaker 3 wanting our kids to go to college, but I am totally okay.

Speaker 3 I have a daughter that's 20. Charlotte works on the apprentice business.
I have a daughter who's just turned 17 today, the day of this recording,

Speaker 3 and she's studying neuroscience at UFSC this summer as a high school student, and she probably will go to college. And then I have a son who is nine.

Speaker 3 That being said, if any of my, I have said many times, if any of my kids came to me and said, Dad, I'd rather build a business than go to college, I would offer $250,000 to start a business

Speaker 3 in lieu of college. I do think young people, well, I think people learn a lot more from doing.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 it depends what they want to study. If you want to be a doctor, you got to go to college because then you got to go to medical school.

Speaker 3 If you want to be a lawyer, you got to go to college because then you want to, because then you got to go to law school, et cetera.

Speaker 3 But if you want to be an entrepreneur, no, you probably don't have to go to college ultimately.

Speaker 2 So for the apprentice, when people come into that environment for apprentice, which working on, do they have to be college students or do you work with individuals who are not college students as well?

Speaker 3 They do. They do.
That's the current model. I've thought a little bit about,

Speaker 3 thought more than a little bit about expanding it,

Speaker 3 stay-at-home moms,

Speaker 3 people transitioning in life. I think there's a very interesting model there.
I think the challenge to be quite frank and quite transparent is from a dollars and cents perspective.

Speaker 3 I pay all of our apprentices, we pay all of our apprentices.

Speaker 3 And if I were paying, you know, 45-year-old

Speaker 3 going back into the workforce, you know, there would be an expectation that would be different from what a college student might have, as a young person might have as an expect, as an expectation.

Speaker 3 Now, an 18-year-old that wants to learn the trade of entrepreneurship and

Speaker 3 is in school, that could be interesting too.

Speaker 3 The challenge there is that the value prop that we offer

Speaker 3 our clients is really, really smart-driven

Speaker 3 students. And so they're expecting a Harvard kid.
And if we bring them somebody that's not in college, there's unfortunately a reality around the perception of what the value is there.

Speaker 3 They may be wrong about it, but the perception is reality to an extent. So I have to be cautious about it.
But it's an interesting question, certainly. And I do,

Speaker 3 one of our core values, my favorite core values

Speaker 3 of the company is bi-directional mentorship. I believe very, very strongly that we all have something to learn and something to teach, whether we're at Harvard or

Speaker 3 have had seven businesses and

Speaker 3 written five books or are a homeless person. We all have something to learn and something to teach.
And I do really believe that. So in an ideal world, yeah, we could all be apprentices.

Speaker 3 I would love to be an apprentice for

Speaker 3 Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or Melinda Gates or Oprah.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 it's not an ideal world. So there are some real challenges.

Speaker 2 So you talked about, you know, if one of your little ones came to you and said, listen, I just want to start a business. I'm going to give you 250K.

Speaker 2 You know, we're going to, you're going to go rock and roll in this. And you have these

Speaker 2 apprentices? Apprentices? I don't know what the plural of that is. We're going to use that as a little bit of a train.
Apprentices. All right.
I got there. Woohoo.
Yay, me.

Speaker 2 me i was educated in florida so yay me so i got that one but as someone's coming in if you gave them 250 000 there's going to be a playbook there's going to be like hey you've you've built seven companies you've done two exits became a new york times bestseller what is the playbook that you look at so okay here's the cash here's 250k what are the things that you go listen this is what you have to knock out right you know here's the list of these things that you're like these are the things that i'm going to look for before you decide to go throw this quarter million dollars at something what are some of the things that you look at as a potential as someone who's you know may not be able to have the opportunity to work with Apprentice?

Speaker 2 What are some of the things that they're going to run into going, all right, this is someone who's done this? They've been successful. What are the next steps?

Speaker 3 So I love Vern Harnish's one-page strategic plan. I've learned a lot from that.
And so

Speaker 3 what I'll say it's not first is a 50-page business plan, you know,

Speaker 3 with

Speaker 3 a ton of data analysis. I think people get caught up sometimes, again, maybe in college and business school, et cetera, in some of the formalities there.

Speaker 3 So I think a one-page strategic plan is valuable.

Speaker 3 And the most important thing about building any business, and I do lectures on entrepreneurship to kids as young as fifth grade and high school students and college students and

Speaker 3 successful entrepreneurs out there in the world.

Speaker 3 The most fundamental thing is, is there a problem?

Speaker 3 Is it solvable? And then depending on what your goals are, is it scalable? For a fifth grader, when my daughter

Speaker 3 was 10 years old,

Speaker 3 she came to a

Speaker 3 farmer's market, organic farmer's market, and it was a hot summer day, and she had gotten some bread and a cupcake. And she said, Dad, I'm really thirsty.
Nothing to drink.

Speaker 3 And I said, you're right, there's nothing to drink.

Speaker 3 How do we solve that problem? And she said, well, we need to get

Speaker 3 something to drink. Water is lemonade, et cetera.
I said, cool. You think anyone else has that problem? She said, yeah, everyone.
It's really hot.

Speaker 3 So she started an organic lemonade stand at the organic farmers market. And that summer she made $6,000 in eight weeks at the age of 10.

Speaker 3 There's only so much that that could scale, but it still comes down to, is there a viable problem? And can I figure out a way to provide the solution for that? And

Speaker 3 I think that's ultimately why I would fund a $250,000 business for my kid, or with my investor hat on, why I would fund any business of an investor that comes to me and pitches me.

Speaker 3 Is it a viable problem? Can you solve it? Do you, can you put together the team to help solve it? And then is it scalable, repeatable, et cetera?

Speaker 2 So, you know, one of the reasons it's a little bit harder to scale in that environment is pretty obvious for anyone listening. You've got a local environment.

Speaker 2 It's an organic market, unique situations.

Speaker 2 When when you go to scale other businesses that you've done and you've run into what are some of the things that you look at that are like hey this is one of the things i look at to scale we talked about systematizing a little bit there you need like you know putting that together but what are the things that you look at when you're trying to be either as an investor or scaling yourself what are the kind of the breakdowns of hey this is i need to do for scaling because i'm guessing this is a question that your apprentices

Speaker 2 are asking you when they come in as well

Speaker 3 What are the, sorry, what are the processes?

Speaker 2 What are the, you got to have a what are the things you look at for scaling when you're trying to get into and you're trying to actually properly scale?

Speaker 2 Because to go in and, you know, you and the missus created a company that was a beautiful exit. How do you scale effectively? And how are you teaching your apprentices how to scale effectively?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 it has to do, well, there's a couple of aspects of it. First is scaling yourself and building a great team.

Speaker 3 You cannot do it all. Too many folks try to do it all.
And that's my latest book, Get Over Yourself, talks about delegating and building a team and

Speaker 3 scaling yourself so that

Speaker 3 you have others on your team that are working with you and for you.

Speaker 3 And then scaling a customer base

Speaker 3 involves figuring out a predictable, repeatable sales process and or predictable, repeatable marketing process to generate.

Speaker 3 customer, anyone can generate customer one for anything.

Speaker 3 Pretty much.

Speaker 3 Can you keep customer one? And then more important, can you

Speaker 3 predictably generate customer two, three, four,

Speaker 3 20, 30, 40, 200, 300, 400? And I failed a lot of times, to be clear. I mean, success is

Speaker 3 wonderful, but fleeting. And, you know, the biggest example of a failure, I raised $5 million for a company.
that

Speaker 3 unit economics just didn't work. We were spending too much money to acquire

Speaker 3 customers that didn't provide enough value for us. So the economics have to work when you're scaling.

Speaker 3 If it costs you $100 for a customer, that customer has to be worth at least $400 to you. And

Speaker 3 if you spend $100 for a customer and then the customer is worth $50 for you, you don't have a business, right?

Speaker 3 You have a losing proposition. So figuring out those unit economics along the way is really important.

Speaker 2 So how do you get over yourself? Because it's really important because a lot of we have this whole this culture right now, which is all about the grind.

Speaker 2 Get up at 4 a.m., work out seven times, have 15 meetings, then you know that that's this whole idea and putting, not putting family first, not making that a priority, not making health first.

Speaker 2 And then, so we're in this culture that doesn't normally feed to long-term success. How do you, as you said in your new book, how do you get over it? How do you get out of your own way?

Speaker 2 How do you get over yourself?

Speaker 3 Well, the first thing to do, and this may seem ironic because, you know, we're talking about scaling, but the first thing to do is to, is to understand what your priorities are in life.

Speaker 3 Nobody ever said on their deathbed, I wish I had built a bigger business. I wish I had made more money.
I wish I had scaled more.

Speaker 3 But many, many people have said, I wish I had had more time with my family, more time with my friends, more time to take care of myself, more time to travel, more time to pursue X passion, et cetera.

Speaker 3 It's really, really important to identify one's priorities and then truly put those first.

Speaker 3 That comes first. If we're not doing that, then none of the rest really matters.

Speaker 3 Then, okay, with respect to building whatever business it is that you are, in fact, secondarily focused on, it's a matter of setting boundaries, really firm boundaries and sticking to them no matter what.

Speaker 3 So for me,

Speaker 3 I finish work at three

Speaker 3 and i pick up my son off the school bus at three o'clock or camp in this case at three o'clock and that's it it's not uh negotiable and

Speaker 3 you know back in the day when we were when we were scaling uh more and more i was a much more um ambitious uh uh a growth marketer growth you know entrepreneur um i still did that

Speaker 3 But maybe I went after the kids went to sleep and my wife went to sleep, I would work another four or five hours. And that was my grind time.
But that time

Speaker 3 felt good because I had already, I had prioritized what was important first. I had already done that.
And I think

Speaker 3 when you're, when you're working nonstop,

Speaker 3 you're, you're often losing that joy and

Speaker 3 then there's regret. And then it's, it's not.

Speaker 3 Even if you're successful, it's not valuable. And often we're not successful.
So we have to make sure at the end of the day,

Speaker 3 we have our

Speaker 3 priorities really, really clear with ourselves.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. I spent eight years in hospice watching people die around their IT division.
So I was in the rooms with those. And I lived in South Florida.
I live in Boca Raton.

Speaker 2 And the hospice was some of the wealthiest people I had ever met. And being in the rooms for hours rolling out an EMR,

Speaker 2 I would be in the, because it was 19. 90.

Speaker 2 So we had to do long updates and it took a long time. I was in the room with these individuals and there wasn't a single one of them that ever said, this is my business experience.

Speaker 2 They would talk about their kids. They would talk about the experiences they had in life and they would talk about their priorities.

Speaker 2 And as entrepreneurs, we definitely don't establish our priorities in any way, shape, or form. We just go out and smash into the wall.

Speaker 2 You also talk about something that most people don't talk about, which is a lot of human behavior.

Speaker 2 about how important it is to connect with people, how when you sat on a plane and at the end of the plane ride, you had an investment. You talk about, you know, these ways to connect with people.

Speaker 2 And now with social media, I know you've written a book about this as well. Building rapport is one of the most magical, powerful things you can do.

Speaker 2 And there's so many times where you've said as well for you that people connected with you better than or knew more about you, about them than their own family.

Speaker 2 How do you do that in a social media world? How do you build that world when, and I already got ripped on before we started recording that my LinkedIn is garbage, which it is. I am working on it.

Speaker 2 If you have advice, I will, I will, I will humbly do it. But how do you build this rapport?

Speaker 2 How do you build connection in a social media where we're so overly connected, but in a real world, not connected in any way, shape, or form anymore? How do you build that rapport?

Speaker 2 And how do you do those things?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 it's harder on social media

Speaker 3 to be clear.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 on the other hand, so it's harder to listen at scale, but it is easier to talk at scale and social. So

Speaker 3 by sharing

Speaker 3 content, we can build

Speaker 3 a profile by being valuable to others.

Speaker 3 Just like by being valuable to others in the real world, if you will, in the physical world,

Speaker 3 by being valuable to others in the social media world,

Speaker 3 we can build our reputation, et cetera. So I've built my social...
following by sharing lots and lots of content over the years

Speaker 3 by trying to be as valuable as possible i've probably written 600 or so articles and done, you know, hundreds of videos and

Speaker 3 hopefully, I think my content's been

Speaker 3 well received for the most part over the years. And that's what's helped me create

Speaker 3 an online persona and a following, if you will, that has scaled very well.

Speaker 3 The listening

Speaker 3 is also really important.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I think the best way to do it ultimately is to

Speaker 3 focus

Speaker 3 10 minutes, 15 minutes, a certain block of time per day on

Speaker 3 just following other people and

Speaker 3 responding to them, engaging with them, et cetera. And those can be people that are important to you, that are close in your life, friends, associates, et cetera.
Or they can be

Speaker 3 potential prospective clients. I think there's no better way to build a relationship with a prospective client than checking out their social media and engaging with them and responding to them and

Speaker 3 connecting with them there. And they can even be aspiring

Speaker 3 influencers in your life.

Speaker 3 I connected with Barbara Corcoran online by

Speaker 3 seeing that she didn't have much of a LinkedIn presence and helping her get into the LinkedIn influence person.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 she was so grateful that I helped her, that she's been a great friend to me. We pitched her for a business.

Speaker 3 She's endorsed a couple of my books.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 that's how I've done that with Barbara Corker. And so if anyone else, you know, and I already had a lot of followers and a lot of so-called success, et cetera.

Speaker 3 So anyone listening can connect with anyone out there.

Speaker 3 It's a matter of looking, you know, seeing people and following them and engaging with them and figuring out how you can add value.

Speaker 3 When I lecture at colleges,

Speaker 3 college students or my apprentices, even like I did this lecture with my apprentices just a couple of weeks ago, they say, I say,

Speaker 3 reach out to people, figure out how you can help them.

Speaker 3 And they say, well, how could I help a Fortune 500 CEO? I'm just a college student.

Speaker 3 And I said, well, you could probably reach out to just about any Fortune 500 CEO and say, I'd love to teach you how TikTok is used and

Speaker 3 help you understand, you know, in 15 minutes how my generation uses TikTok or ChatGPT for that matter. Right.

Speaker 3 And any smart, successful person is going to want to pick the brain of a young person that understands TikTok and ChatGPT.

Speaker 3 Those are two

Speaker 3 companies that are fundamentally changing the way, not only the way we do business, but the way we live. And so

Speaker 3 it goes back to that idea that we all have something to learn and something to teach.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. And especially when it comes to the things that we have no concept about, none whatsoever.

Speaker 2 Again, LinkedIn for me, even though I have a strong IT background, I purposely tried to protect my own identity. So for years, I'm not going to line.
No one's going to know who I am.

Speaker 2 And then we grew 100,000 followers on Instagram and I immediately stopped posting because it was getting too personal. It's like, oh, no, I don't want to do that.

Speaker 2 So yes, if you have any people in the apprentice program who want to yell at me about how to do LinkedIn,

Speaker 2 I would gladly take that phone call.

Speaker 2 And TikTok, yeah, even better. No clue, no clue whatsoever.
One of the things you've done very, very well is you've done rounds of funding and getting people to invest in your companies.

Speaker 2 You know, it doesn't always work out and that happens. How do you build rapport? How do you build connection and to get the investment going?

Speaker 2 Because again, you've raised a ton of cash and you've had very successful exits. When someone comes in, what are you teaching your apprentices?

Speaker 2 What are you teaching them saying, hey, this is how you build rapport. These are the questions you ask.
This is how you can do it.

Speaker 2 And because when you go to scale, a lot of people need money to scale. Just it is, you will reach a point where you need it.
How do you do that process?

Speaker 3 I think there's two, there's three important aspects to fundraising.

Speaker 3 One, one, and this is the most obvious, the easy one. I'll get this one out of the way.

Speaker 3 First is to have a pick-ass deck that walks through the problem and the solution of the team and the strategy, the go-to market, the basics. You can literally Google like, you know,

Speaker 3 perfect, you know, best, best fundraising decks and get dozens of examples of really, really good decks. So that's, that's one thing.
The second goes back to

Speaker 3 building rapport, getting warm intros to people that, and, and, and, and building around connections.

Speaker 3 So, whether it's this, the college that you went to, or the hometown that you grew up in, or the sports team that you both follow, is finding common ground, building rapport with the person.

Speaker 3 And then the third piece that is often overlooked as well, the second is overlooked because especially technical entrepreneurs and folks that aren't necessarily thinking about people skills, they maybe lose sight of the fact that ultimately people invest in other people.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 it's just like any building any relationship. The relationships are built based on building rapport and finding common ground.

Speaker 3 But the third aspect is

Speaker 3 understanding what somebody wants to invest in, what they have invested in in the past, et cetera.

Speaker 3 If you come to me,

Speaker 3 so I always want to add value with my investments.

Speaker 3 So if you come to me and I'm a, let's, at the risk of alienating over half your audience, I'm a people person. I'm not an animal person.

Speaker 3 Not my thing. So if you come to me

Speaker 3 and you've got like a pet food supplement

Speaker 3 that you're that that that you want to bring to market, like I can't add any value.

Speaker 3 I have no interest it doesn't make any sense for me as an investor thinking through finding the investors that have invested in stuff or built companies that are tangential very similar to even if you think they're competitive to what it is that you're building and doing that's really valuable because if you come to me and with something that's very similar to something i worked on but you have a new you have a new twist on it I'm going to be super interested.

Speaker 3 I gave, you know, however many years of my life to building some business business or investing in a business, that's something I'm going to want to keep talking about and keep working on.

Speaker 3 And similarly, that's what

Speaker 3 other investors

Speaker 3 they'll want to do, something that they know and that they understand. So thinking through talking to the right people based on that,

Speaker 3 building rapport around mutual interests and connections. and then having a kick-ass deck that quickly and effectively summarizes the basics,

Speaker 3 problem solution, team, go-to-market strategy, et cetera.

Speaker 2 I love that it's a systematic approach, that you're not just randomly talking to anybody. You're like, okay, this person is not a pet person.

Speaker 2 My stuff's pet. I need to go find this.
So doing the research beforehand so you have that.

Speaker 2 One of the things that, you know, again, when I was doing research and learning more about you was that you have this ability to build that rapport and that connection very quickly.

Speaker 2 Now, we all know the basic stuff: like, hey, I went to the same school. I went to Harvard.
Oh, I've lectured at Yale. Oh, I'm a Wall Street Journal bestseller.
You're a New York Times bestseller.

Speaker 2 So there's things that they're crossovering, but those seem very surface level. How do you build the real rapport where someone is like, wow,

Speaker 2 I want to talk to him again? This is Dave really, I connected with Dave. I connected with Dave better than I talked to my own family sometimes.
How are some of the ways that you do that?

Speaker 2 I know the number one way that you always talk about is just ask a question, then shut up. Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 2 It's just absolutely, it's really important to do that because most people don't do that they as you know as you said so so well people will talk or listen to reply instead of listening to authentically listen how does one do that how does one put themselves in environment is there ways that you can enter books or resources or your books and resources where someone can learn because it's a skill to to offset this desire to want to just speak and not be replied to

Speaker 3 Yeah, so broadly speaking, asking questions and listening and listening to understand versus listening to reply is really, really valuable and then the strength of your questions makes a difference too and so you got you you you touched touched on um

Speaker 3 like

Speaker 3 the ground level stuff um but if you can go deeper um

Speaker 3 it's better and some people have a hard time with this it's not easy for sure but um there's also available information publicly in in many cases, like on LinkedIn, for example.

Speaker 3 One area that I think is really powerful

Speaker 3 is charities, is charities that one supports, right? So because even no matter how wealthy or

Speaker 3 not people are, typically people have charities that are important to them.

Speaker 3 Many of those instances include really personal

Speaker 3 things. So

Speaker 3 if you

Speaker 3 see

Speaker 3 that I'm a big donor online to the MS Society and you have somebody in your family that has MS, you know, that's something that if you connect with me around that, that's going to build a really strong connection quickly.

Speaker 3 And you get me talking about how my mother-in-law and my brother-in-law have MS, and how my wife was on the board, and how we've been very active

Speaker 3 in looking for cures and

Speaker 3 services for those afflicted.

Speaker 3 That's how you can quickly go from,

Speaker 3 you know, start to go

Speaker 3 in a matter of moments with someone, right? Now we share a bond. It doesn't have to be MS, right?

Speaker 3 It could be cancer, it could be whatever it is, whatever somebody's really, a charity that somebody's really passionate about is going to be a quick way to

Speaker 3 build a stronger bond than, say, the fact that we both went to the same college.

Speaker 3 Although, for some colleges, I mean, talk to a Michigan person or a USC person or certain schools where they won't shut up about it too. Then, then, then, then that can work well too.

Speaker 2 In sports, sometimes, but the charities work intensely. I've got a buddy of mine who's got MS and we talk about it and I don't know, he does it.

Speaker 2 If someone wants to come in and I know time's limited, how does someone get a hold of you and how does someone connect to be part of the apprentice program? What are the qualifications?

Speaker 2 What are the things that they need to know?

Speaker 2 How do they, again, pitch to you in a way that's going to get them to that higher level where they get to interact with you or your work from your clients and be a part of the apprentice program as a whole?

Speaker 3 So chooseapprentice.com is our apprentice website. That's where folks can learn about what we're doing there.

Speaker 3 I have free office hours every Thursday afternoon. So anyone on the planet that wants to meet with me for pro bono coaching can go to schedule dave.com and chat with me there.

Speaker 3 And then I'm pretty open on social media. So folks can can reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram,

Speaker 3 Facebook X,

Speaker 3 et cetera. And college students, but chooseapprentice.com is great for both college students as well as entrepreneurs and small business owners that are looking to scale.

Speaker 3 And then all of my books are available in bookstores everywhere and

Speaker 3 Amazon, et cetera.

Speaker 2 Is there anything that you want to have people like, I wish they would have had this prepared before they jump on a call with you to save some of their time?

Speaker 2 Do you want to like, hey, I wish you'd really have this, this, and that?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 3 well, look, the time, if you book out office hours with me, then the time is yours. And

Speaker 3 some people are very well prepared and they have an agenda and they have asks and they have background or information.

Speaker 3 And then some people have absolutely no idea what they're doing and they just want to meet me. I don't really care, but it's really up to folks out there to make the most of their time, right?

Speaker 3 It's like the more like you prepared for this interview, did some research. The more research you do, the more prepared you are in life,

Speaker 3 the better an outcome you'll probably get out of your time with somebody.

Speaker 2 and most importantly for anybody who's listening uh make sure your linkedin is done properly because if not you will get picked on for it and i'm gonna go work on that now no i mean uh i i i was surprised because i i would think that i was surprised the wall street journal bestseller uh

Speaker 3 you you i you know it's a you you have a great title charles you you are the wall street journal best-selling author with the smallest linkedin i've ever seen uh i'm in which that's it was my goal truly it's a bit of a backhanded compliment, but on the other hand, that you could achieve that level of success in this day and age with

Speaker 3 that strategy is actually quite impressive.

Speaker 2 We can talk about that strategy if you want. It's not that complicated, but I really appreciate you coming on and tracking down and also donating your time so much.

Speaker 2 Most people don't give up their time to have people call in if they're prepared or not prepared, just to actually want to help people out and apprentice and kind of mentor people. It's a huge thing.

Speaker 2 So I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 Yeah, my pleasure. Great to

Speaker 3 meet with you and connect here. And if I can help one person, then my day has been made that much better.

Speaker 1 While everyone's chasing the latest growth hack or productivity trend, the fundamentals of business remain unchanged. Problems need solutions, relationships need nurturing, teams need building.

Speaker 1 Stop looking for shortcuts and start investing in the basics that actually create lasting value.