6 Effective Ways To Get What You Want In Life

Here are the highlights from my recent interview with Dave Kerpen, New York Times bestselling author and founder of Likeable Local, and his thoughts on outsourcing social media, being selfless, differentiating, staying top of mind and gratitude.

William Arruda: Let’s talk about the connection between your new book, The Art of People, and the kind of work that you're doing in the social media space.

Dave Kerpen: How can you really even think about people skills without considering social media today? So many businesses want to grow, and they want to figure out how to use social media, but they don't really have a lot of time. And that's where our software comes in. But there are certain things that you can't automate. And people skills are one of those things. No matter how much you take advantage of technology, tools, software, at the end of the day you still have to be a person, and you have to relate to other people.

You can outsource content, advertising, and paid tools to help grow your social media presence. What you really can't outsource is your individual responses to people and how you talk to individuals. It's impossible to outsource the one-to-one conversations. It’s okay to have a social media assistant, but you've got to be transparent about it.

Arruda: You have identified the most important question you can ask if you want to stand out in a meeting. I'd love for you to share that.

Kerpen: I can't have meetings with salespeople every day. But there was this one guy, Michael Kislin, who said, “Dave, I have one question for you, and I promise I will not try to sell you anything.” This got my attention.

So I sat down with him, and he said, “Any thoughts as to how I can help you?” I said, “I happen to be fundraising right now. You could be helpful by introducing me to a venture capitalist.” So he said, “You got it. I'll introduce you to a VC.” And I said, “Well, thank you. Tell me about yourself. Like, what do you sell? How much is it?” And he said, “You know what, Dave, I told you I wasn't going to come in here and do that today.”

So he basically refused to sell. He followed up by introducing me to a VC who didn't invest in us, but the sentiment was there. A few months later, I called Michael up, and he became our financial planner.

If you act selflessly at first, it's very powerful. That kind of thing is unforgettable. But you have to do it authentically. You have to truly want to help and have some ideas about how you can help. That's the difference between somebody who’s going through the motions and somebody who’s very successful with this tip.

Arruda: Is there another “people skill” that you get especially excited about?

Kerpen: I think that listening is the single most important skill in social media and business and really in life. I recommend truly zoning in, making eye contact, focusing exclusively on that person. And by the way, there's an enormous difference between listening and waiting to talk. Most people are thinking of what they're going to say next, and they're planning. The true listener is really just seeking to understand and will think about what to say next after they're done listening to what the person has to say.

Arruda: You have techniques for effective networking. Can you share one?

Kerpen: Sure. I have a chapter in the book called “Wear Orange Shoes: The Secret to Networking.” When I was first fundraising for Likeable Local, I was trying to track down this one particular venture capitalist named Dave McClure out of Silicon Valley. He was in New York, where I lived, for a conference. There were probably over 500 entrepreneurs at this conference, so I found myself really struggling throughout the day to meet him. I was kind of bummed out. And I hear, as I'm staring down at my phone, “I need to meet the man that's wearing those *** shoes.” And there's Dave. And of course, I was wearing bright orange shoes as I tend to do. Within several weeks, Dave invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in our business. In a crowded place, having a specific personal brand that helps differentiate you is a very powerful thing.

Arruda: For those of you who've never seen Dave in person, he always has on a lot of orange. It’s the brand color for Likeable. Let's talk a little bit about how to stay top of mind. We get 8 million emails and phone calls. And we're tweeting and we’re Facebooking and we're in meetings. It's pretty hard to stay top of mind.

Kerpen: Social media has brought an opportunity for you to stay top of mind by essentially staying top of feed, on top of people's newsfeeds on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Instagram. And the way to do that is to curate and share awesome content. We have found that it doesn't even need to be original content, by the way.

Dentists typically send two postcards a year. You think, “Well, that probably costs a lot.” And it does. But what if you could send two postcards a week? And what if that was basically free? Well, it starts to get pretty interesting. Social media allows you to stay top of mind as long as you're adding value. I’m not talking about trying to sell stuff every day.

Arruda: You must have a mind-shifting takeaway for folks.

Kerpen: Gratitude is the greatest drug on the planet . And there is no side effect. From hand-written thank-you notes to taking two minutes and writing down as many things you're grateful for as possible: when we actually take a moment to focus exclusively on gratitude, it shifts our mood. This is real stuff. This really works.

William Arruda is a personal branding guru and cofounder of CareerBlast. He is the author of 13 Things All Successful Professionals Do To Fuel Their Careers.