Transcript

Talent Acquisition On a Budget - Dave Kerpen

From The Proven Podcast · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 32 min · 6,179 words · 53 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Talent Acquisition On a Budget - Dave Kerpen", an episode of The Proven Podcast published August 8, 2025 (32 min, about 6,179 words). It mentions 24 people, works and ideas, including Apprentice, Get Over Yourself, New York Times Best Seller, One-Page Strategic Plan, Organic Farmers Market.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Apprentice, Dave Kurpin, Likable
  2. – 10:00: Apprentice, One-Page Strategic Plan, Organic Farmers Market, New York Times Best Seller
  3. – 15:00: Get Over Yourself, Unit Economics, Systematizing
  4. – 20:00: hospice, South Florida
  5. – 25:00: Apprentice
  6. – 30:00: Apprentice, Listening to Understand, MS Society, New York Times Best Seller
  7. – 31:57: Apprentice, Productivity Trend, Wall Street Journal Bestseller

Notable quotes from "Talent Acquisition On a Budget - Dave Kerpen"

  • 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.
    about Apprentice · at
  • There's going to be hey, you've built seven companies, you've done two exits, you became a New York Times bestseller. What is the playbook that you look at? It's okay, here's…
    about New York Times Best Seller · at
  • 10 years old, she came to a farmers market, organic farmers 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.
    about Organic Farmers Market · at
  • That you look at that are Hey, this is one of the things I look at to scale. We talked about systematizing a little bit there, like you putting that together, but what are the…
    about Systematizing · at
  • Team. We 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 buil scaling…
    about Get Over Yourself · at
  • Failure, I raised $5 million for a company that unit economics just didn't work. we were spending too much money to acquire customers and that didn't provide enough value for us. So the economics have to work when you're.
    about Unit Economics · at
  • 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 and the hospice was some of the wealthiest people I had ever.
    about hospice · at
  • Stuffs 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. So, there's…
    about Wall Street Journal Bestseller · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Dave Kurpin — Person · 1 mention · first at
    What you can prove. Everyone says business is about strategy, tactics, and system. Today's guest, Dave Kurpin, proves it's actually about relationships, and he's built seven companies and successfully exited, too.
  • Barbara Corcoran — Person · 1 mention
  • Charlotte Kurpin — Person · 1 mention
  • Vern Harnish — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • Apprentice — Company · 12 mentions · first at
  • Likable — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Hiring college students in my first company that my wife and I sold a couple years ago, Likable. At one point we had 60 college students working for us and just 12 full-time…
  • MS Society — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Include really personal things. So if you know see that I'm a big donor online to the MS society and you have somebody in your family that has MS, that's something that if you…

Products & tech

Concepts & topics

Places & events

  • Organic Farmers Market — Place · 2 mentions · first at
  • South Florida — Place · 1 mention · first at
    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 and the hospice was some of the…

Full transcript with timestamps

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. Today's guest, Dave Kurpin, proves it's actually about relationships, and he's built seven companies and successfully exited, too. While others chase algorithms, Dave proves that people still buy from people they trust. The show starts now.

All right, welcome back to the show. Today, we're on with Dave, and this is an individual who his book's amazing, and he's built seven companies. He's exited from two. He's doing something that I love. But before we get into it, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thanks for having me. Great to be here. 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 starting the businesses to hire full-time staff. And so we started hiring college students in my my first company that my wife and I sold a couple years ago, Likable. At one point we had 60 college students working for us and just 12 full-time staff. And I found it was a really great way to um develop talent to um access really great talent without paying full-time salaries. And and I saw I kept doing it with different companies. And I would hire uh many of the students full-time when they graduated.

uh and they would jump into more senior positions like marketing director and chief of staff. They they co-authored books with me um 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 etc. And so I had a young man that came to me after working for uh for 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. I've learned more from you than I learned in three years of college. And um I know I've been very helpful to you as well. He had he had co-authored a book with me. He had worked on a million-dollar real estate client uh almost exclusively for me. And I said, "Yeah, you're right." And so we started a business together that was called Apprentice. Um scaled pretty quickly to a million dollars. Uh he was young and a

bit over his head and I I actually empowered him too much. um he ended up moving away from the business, but it became a really wonderful opportunity because um my daughter uh was uh is in in college right now. And so I took I took the transition as an opportunity to help teach her about business and help build the business with her, rebuild the business with her. And so now, yeah, so now I get to work with my daughter and um hundreds of college students that continue to support uh entrepreneurs and small businesses in four different areas, marketing, bisdev, data and analytics, and uh operations. And it's it's been a blast. You know, I I am very very um fortunate and grateful and not um 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 um because of my previous exits. Um and I feel really

really blessed every day that I can I can live that um that sort of life. I love that you're doing it. But also, more importantly, it's 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, and there's this bit of a push right now saying, "Do you go to college? Do you not go to college?" Uh, 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, obviously, you stand specifically on a Spartan spot when it goes to university. Why have you decided and what makes you still believe in college is a is a viable form?

Well, to be clear, it's not that clear to me. Um, I I I my wife is more traditional in in in wanting our kids to go to college, but I I am totally okay. We have I have a a daughter that's 20. Charlotte works on the apprentice business. I have a daughter who's just turned 17 today uh the day of this recording and she's studying neuroscience at USC this summer as a high school pro student and she probably will go to college and then I have a son who is nine. That being said, if any of my I have said many times if any of my kids came to me and said, "Uh, dad, I'd rather uh build a business than go to college, I would offer uh $250,000 to to start a business uh in in in lie of college." I do think um young people well I think people learn a lot more from doing and um it depends what they want to study. If you want to be a doctor you got to go to college cuz then you got to go to medical school. If you

want to be a lawyer you got to go to college cuz then you want to cuz then you got to go to law school etc. But if you want to be an entrepreneur no you probably don't have to go to college ultimately.

If so for the apprentice when people come into that environment for apprentice what you're working on do they have to be college students or do you work with individuals who are not college students as well? They do. They do. That's the current model. I've thought a little bit about thought more than a little bit about expanding it. Um, uh, stay-at-home moms, uh, 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. I I I pay all of our apprentice we pay all of our apprentices and if I were paying uh you know 45year-old uh uh 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. Um, now an 18-year-old that wants to learn the trade of

entrepreneurship and and is in in school. That that could be interesting, too. Um, the challenge there is that the value prop that we offer our our our clients is really really smart driven uh uh uh uh students. And so they they're expecting a Harvard kid and if we bring them a somebody that's not in college it there's a unfortunately a reality around the perception of what the value is there. They may be wrong about it but the perception is reality to an extent. So I have to be uh cautious about but it's a it's an interesting question certainly and I I do one of the one of our core values my favorite core values birectional of of the company is birectional mentorship. I believe very very strongly that we all have something to learn and something to teach whether we're at Harvard or have have had seven businesses and written seven book uh written five books or or are a homeless person uh we all have something to learn

and something to teach and and I do really believe that. So in an ideal world yeah we could all be apprentices. I would love to be an apprentice for uh for for for Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or Melinda Gates or Oprah. Um, but it's not an ideal world. So, so there are some real real challenges.

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 a 250k. You know, we're going to you're going to go rock and roll in this." And you have these apprentice apprentices. Apprentices. I don't know what the plural of that is. We're going to use that little bit of

apprentices. I got there. Woohoo. Yay me. I was educated in Florida. Duh. 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 you've built seven companies, you've done two exits, you became a New York Times bestseller. What is the playbook that you look at? It's 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 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. 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?" So, I I love Vern Harish's one-page strategic plan. I've learned a lot from that. And so, I the what I'll say it's not first is a 50-page business plan, you know, uh you with with a ton of um data analysis. I think people get caught up sometimes, again, maybe in college, in business school, etc., in in some of the formalities there. So, I I think a one-page strategic plan is valuable. Um, and the the most important thing about building any business, and I do I do lectures on entrepreneurship to kids as young as fifth grade and high school students and college students and successful entrepreneurs out there in the world. The most fundamental thing is, is there a problem? Is it solvable?

And then depending on what your goals are, is it scalable? For a fifth grader, when my daughter was was was in uh was 10 10 years old, she came to uh a uh farmers market, organic farmers market, and um 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." And I said, "You're right. There's nothing to drink. So, how do we solve that problem? And she said, "Well, we need to get some some something to drink, a water, a lemonade, etc." I said, "Cool. You think anyone else has that problem?" She said, "Yeah, everyone. It's really hot." So, she started an organic lemonade stand at the organic farmers market, and that summer she made $6,000 in 8 weeks at the age of 10.

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 I think that 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 uh uh business of of of an investor that comes to me and pitches me. 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, etc. So you one of the reasons it's a little bit harder to scale in that environment is is pretty obvious for anyone listening. You got a local environment.

It's an organic market. Unique situations. 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 know, like you 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 are asking you when they come in as well.

What are the sorry what are the processes? What are the you going to have what are the things you look at for scaling when you're trying to get into and you're trying to actually properly scale because to go in and you know you and the MS created a company that was a beautiful exit. How do you scale effectively and how are you teaching your apprentices how to scale effectively?

Yeah. So it has to do well there's a couple of aspects of it. First is is scaling yourself and building a great team. We you you cannot do it all. Too many folks try to do it all. And that's my my latest book, Get Over Yourself, talks about delegating and building a team and and buil scaling yourself so that you are you have others on your team that are working with you and for you. Um and then scaling a customer base involves figuring out a predictable repeatable sales process andor predictable repeatable marketing process to to generate customer anyone can generate customer one for anything pretty much. Can you can you keep customer one? And then more important, can you predictably generate predictably generate customer 2, 3, 4, 20, 30, 40, 200, 300, 400? And I failed a lot of times to be clear. I mean, success is uh is wonderful, but fleeting. Uh and uh you know, the biggest example of a

failure, I raised $5 million for a company that unit economics just didn't work. we were spending too much money to acquire uh customers and that didn't provide enough value for us. So the the economics have to work when you're scaling. You you you know you you have if you're if if it cost you $100 for a customer, that customer has to be worth at least $400 to you. And if you're if the customer if you spend $100 for a customer and then the customer is worth $50 for you, you don't have a business, right? You have a you have a losing proposition. So figuring out those unit economics uh along the way is really important.

So how do you get over yourself? Cuz it's it's really important because a lot of we have this whole this c culture right now which is all about the grind. 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 and then so we're in this culture that doesn't normally feed to long-term success. How do you, as you said in in your new book, how do you get over it? How do you get out of your own way? How do you get over yourself?

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. Um, 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. 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 expassion, etc. It's really really important to identify one's priorities and then truly put those first. That that that comes first. If we're not doing that, then none of the rest really matters. Um then okay with with respect to building whatever business it is that you are in fact secondarily focused on um it's a matter of setting boundaries really uh firm boundaries and sticking to them no matter what. So for me

I I finish work at 3 and I pick up my son off the school bus at 3:00 or camp in this case at 3:00 and that's it. it's not uh negotiable and 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 growth marketer growth you know entrepreneur um I still did that but maybe I went after the kids went 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 felt good because I had already I had prioritized what was important first. I had already done that. And I think um when when you're when you're working non-stop, um you're you're often losing that joy and and and and then there's regret and then it's it's not even if you're successful, it's not valuable and and often we're not successful. So, so we have to make sure at the end of the day we're we're we have our priority

priorities really really clear with ourselves. Absolutely. I 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 and the hospice was some of the wealthiest people I had ever met and being in the rooms for hours rolling out an EMR. I would be in the because it was 1990 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. They would talk about their kids. They would talk about the experiences they had in life and they would talk about their priorities. 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. You also talk about something that most people don't talk about which is a lot

of human behavior 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 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. 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. 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. If you have advice, I will I will I will humbly do it. But how do you build this rapport? 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 and how do you do those things? Yeah. So, um it's harder on social media to to be to be uh to be clear. Um but on the on the on the other hand, so it's harder to listen at scale, but it is easier to talk at scale on social. So, um by sharing uh content, we can build a a profile by being valuable to others. Um just just like by being valuable to others in in in the real world if you will in the in the physical world um by being valuable to others in the social media world um we can build our reputation etc. So I I've built my social following by sharing lots and lots of content over the years by trying to be as valuable as possible.

I've probably written 600 or so articles and done, you know, hundreds of videos and and and um hopefully I think my content's been been um wellreceived for the most part over the years and that's that's what's helped me create um an online persona and a following if you will that uh has scaled very well. Um the listening is also really important and um I I think the best way to do it ultimately is to is to focus um 10 minutes, 15 minutes, a certain block of time per day on just following other people and um responding to them, engaging with them, etc. And those can be people that are important to you that are close in your life, friends, associates, etc. Or or they can be, you know, 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 and and and connecting with them there. And they

can even be aspiring um influencers in your life. Uh I I connected with Barbara Corkran online by uh seeing that she didn't have much of a LinkedIn presence and helping her get into the LinkedIn influenc

and um and uh she she she was so grateful that I helped her that she she's been a great friend to me. Uh we pitched her for a business. Uh she's she's been uh she's endorsed a couple of my books. Uh, so that's that's how I've done that with Barbara Corker. And so if anyone else, you know, and I I already had a lot of followers and a lot of so-called success, etc. So anyone listening can connect with anyone out there. It's it's it's a matter of look looking, you know, seeing people and following them and and engaging with them and and and figuring out how you can add value. Uh when I lecture at colleges, college students um or my apprentices even like I I did this lecture with my apprentices just a couple weeks ago, they say I say reach out to people, figure out how you can help them. And and they say, "Well, how could I help a Fortune 500 CEO? I I'm just a college student." And I said, 'Well, you probably reach out to just

about any Fortune 500 CEO and say, I'd love to teach you how Tik Tok is used and um and help you understand, you know, in 15 minutes how that my generation uses Tik Tok or ChatGpt for that matter, right? And any any smart successful person is going to want to pick the brain of a young person that understands Tik Tok and ChatGBT. Those are those are two uh two uh companies that are fundamentally changing the way not only the way we do business but the way we live. And so it's it's it's um it goes back to that idea that we all have something to learn and something to teach.

Absolutely. And and especially when it comes to the things that we have no concept about none what's again LinkedIn for me even though I have a strong IT background I purposely tried to protect my own identity. So for years I was I'm not going online. No one's going to know who I am. And then we grow 100,000 followers on Instagram. And I immediately stopped posting because it was getting too personal. Like no, I don't want to do that. So yes, if you have any people in the apprentice program who want to yell at me about how to do LinkedIn, I would I would I would gladly take that phone call because and and Tik Tok. 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. 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? Because again, you've you've raised a ton of cash and you've had very successful exits when someone comes in, what are you teaching your apprentices? 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." And because when you go to scale, a lot of people need money to scale. Just it is you'll reach a point where you need it.

How do you do that process? I think there's two there's three important aspects to fundraising. Um, one one and this is the most obvious, the easy one. I'll get get this one out of the way first is to have a kickass deck that walks through the problem and the solution and the team and the strategy, the go-to market, the basics. You can you can literally Google like, you know, uh, 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 um building rapport, getting warm intros to people that and and and and building around connection.

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. Then the third piece that is often uh overlooked as well, the second is overlooked because tech especially technical entrepreneurs and folks that aren't necessarily thinking about people skills, they they maybe lose sight of the fact that ultimately people invest in other people. So it's a it's it's it's just like any building any relationship the the relationships are built based on find is building rapport and finding common ground. Um but the third third aspect is um understanding what somebody wants to invest in what they have invested in in the past etc.

If you if you come to me um so I I always want to add value with my investments. So if you come to me and I I'm 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.

Not my thing. So, if you come to me with and you're and you're you've got like a a pet food supplement that you're that that that you want to bring to market, like I I can't add any value. 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. I I gave, you know, however many years of my life to building some business um or investing in a business, that's something I'm going to want to keep talking about and keep working on and and and and similarly that's what uh other investors will will will they'll

want to do something that they know and that they understand. So thinking through talking to the right people based on that. Um building rapport around around around mutual uh interests and connections and and then having a a kick-ass deck that quickly um and effectively summarizes the the basics uh problem solution team go to market strategy etc.

So I love that it's a 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. I my stuff's pet. I need to go find this." So, doing the research beforehand. So, you have that. 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. Now, we all know the basic stuffs like, "Hey, I went to the same school. I went to Harvard. Oh, I've lectured at Yale. Oh, I I'm a Wall Street Journal bestseller. You're a New York Times bestseller." So, there's things that are crossovering, but those seem very surface level. How do you build the real rapport where someone is like, "Wow, I I I want to talk to him again. This is Dave really. I connected with Dave. I connect Dave better than I talk to my own family sometimes." How

are some of the ways that you do that? I know the number one way you always talk about is just ask a question then shut up. Yeah, that's it. It's just it 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 listen to authentically listen. How does one do that? How does one put themsel in an environment? Is there ways that you can is there books or resources your books and resources where see one can learn because it's a skill to to offset this desire to want to just speak and not be replied to.

Yeah. So, broadly speaking, uh 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 like the ground level stuff. Um but if you can go deeper um 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 on LinkedIn for example. Um, one area that I think is really powerful that

is uh is charities is charities that one supports, right? So because even no matter how wealthy or um not people are um typically people have charities that are important to them, many many many of many of um many of those uh instances include really personal um things. So if if if you you know see 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. 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 and in in in in in looking for cures and and and and services for those afflicted. That that's that's how you can quickly go from um you know start to go I in in um in a matter of moments with someone right now. Now we share a bond. It doesn't have to be MS,

right? It could be cancer. It could whatever it is, whatever somebody's really a a charity that somebody's really passionate about is going to be a quick way to to uh build a a stronger bond than say the fact that we both went to the same college. 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 that can work well too.

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. If someone wants to come in and they 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? What are the things that they need to know? 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 as a whole?

So, uh truthapprentice.com is our apprentice website. That's where folks can learn about what we're doing there. Uh uh I give uh I have free office hours every Thursday afternoon. So anyone on the planet that wants to meet with me for pro bono coaching um can go to scheduled.com and chat with me there. And then I'm I'm I'm pretty open on social media. So folks can can reach out and connect with me on on LinkedIn or Instagram uh Facebookx um etc. and college students. But but the choose apprentice.com is great for both college students uh as well as uh entrepreneurs and and small business owners that are that are looking to scale. And then all all of my books are available and bookstores everywhere and u Amazon etc.

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 like hey I wish you'd really have this this and that. Yeah, I mean um well look uh the time if you book office hours with me then then the time is yours and um some people are very well prepared um and they have an agenda and they have asks and they have backgrounder information 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 up to folks out there to make the most of their time, right? 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 in life, the the the the the better an outcome you'll probably get out of your time with somebody.

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 going to go work on that now.

No, I mean, uh, I I was surprised because I I would think that I was surprised the Wall Street Journal bestseller. Uh, you you I you know, it's a you you have a great title, Charles. you you are the Wall Street Journal bestselling author with the smallest LinkedIn I've ever seen. Uh I'm and which 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 um that strategy is is actually quite impressive. 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. Most people don't give up their time to to have people call in if they're prepared or not prepared. Just to actually want to help people out and, you know, apprentice and kind of mentor people. It's a huge thing. So, I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much.

Yeah, my pleasure. Great to great to meet with you and connect here and um if I can help one person, then uh then my day has been made that much better.

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.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Talent Acquisition On a Budget - Dave Kerpen"?

Dave Kerpen (Guest), Charles (last name not provided) (Host).

What is discussed in "Talent Acquisition On a Budget - Dave Kerpen"?

In order: 0:00 Apprentice, Dave Kurpin, Likable; 5:00 Apprentice, One-Page Strategic Plan, Organic Farmers Market, New York Times Best Seller; 10:00 Get Over Yourself, Unit Economics, Systematizing; 15:00 hospice, South Florida; 20:00 Apprentice; 25:00 Apprentice, Listening to Understand, MS Society, New York Times Best Seller; 30:00 Apprentice, Productivity Trend, Wall Street Journal Bestseller.

What is mentioned in this The Proven Podcast episode?

24 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Apprentice, Get Over Yourself, New York Times Best Seller, One-Page Strategic Plan, Organic Farmers Market, Unit Economics. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Talent Acquisition On a Budget - Dave Kerpen"?

The episode runs 32 min; the transcript is about 6,179 words in 53 timestamped sections.

More from The Proven Podcast

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated November 19, 2025.