Chris Dessi: Dave, currently as I write this, your most popular post on Linkedin has over 2.7million views. What is it about your writing that you feel resonates with the Linkedin community?
Dave Kerpen: I try to write simply and concisely, and I like to tell stories. If my kids can read a LinkedIn post of mine, that’s a good thing.
My first “Success” interview will be with Chris Maloney. I love this guy. Chris and I met when he interned for me. Chris is a military veteran. He’s also an entrepreneur, and reservist. Chris even invited me to speak about digital & social media to his colleagues at Stewart Air National Guard Base. Chris has helped Silverback Social work on social media campaigns. He also worked with us on last year’s Westchester Digital Summit. I consider Chris a huge success. I should have been paying him to consult for me rather than have him intern. He wanted to learn about digital marketing. So he took an unpaid internship to immerse himself in our industry. He taught me more about operations and how to run my agency than I could ever teach him. He’s also a great guy, and a great friend. Here we go.
I’m not sure when I first fell in love with you. It may have been when we first met when I was 5. Or it may have been that time I told you I was going to marry you while on our first date.
We were only dating 10 months when I asked for your hand. How well can you know a person after less than a year?
But I knew.
In 20012 I spoke at Social Week Gives Back by the Pivot Conference. During that week I was first introduced to an APP called Banjo. They sponsored the event. Since then I’ve enjoyed tinkering with the APP, but recently there have been some dramatic changes.
Last week I went on Fox News to discuss Banjo (video below). Here are 6 reasons why this is the most powerful APP in the world right now.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But lately I’ve been implementing a little trick that has helped me. I think it can help you too.
My agency is growing. We have amazing clients. We also produce a world class conference. The conference and the clients are synergistic events on paper. In execution they are at odds. One takes from the other in time, energy and sweat equity. I needed to clone myself, or find a solution.
In September of 1997, I was in graduate school at NYU. I was living in Queens, NY sleeping on a twin bed in my brother’s living room. He was in Law school at St. Johns. My father had help me to get admitted into graduate school. I felt like a fraud. I studied harder than I’d ever studied before.
My brother calls Twitter “The Tweeter machine.” He’s 42. He’s educated. Over educated, one could argue. He’s a lawyer. He passed the bar exam. He’s a partner in his law firm. He says “Tweeter Machine” in jest. Because I enjoy it.
But – there doth be some truth behind those lies.
He picks fun at himself before I can pick at him. Such a lame thing for an older brother to do. That’s the tool of the younger sibling. But I digress.
I have lots of experience being out of work. It happened to me three times in a two-year span. Five times total throughout my career. I’m only 40, so that’s a pretty impressive streak.
Also – I split up a business partnership. I didn’t read the fine print of our contract. I battled my partner for almost a year. I made almost no money.