He’s a little version of me . . . literally. I’m 6’2″ and he’s 5’7″. He’s almost like my adopted son. He’s an amazing, loving and honest person, but like any child he can also drive me crazy.

One way that Jacob drives me crazy is that he doesn’t understand what following up is. Follow-up is the key to life.

Now Jacob knows how to follow up with women, but sometimes when I give him work tasks he will follow up on his own schedule. He’s fine with me writing this blog, by the way, because he’s always contributing – in the blog, being there for all you guys, and he is always about self-growth. He will always admit both his strong points and his weak points.

Follow-up is the key to anybody being very successful in life. This is not just about dating either.

Granted, if you get a phone number from a woman you need to follow up with her. If you’re the least bit interested, you should follow up right away. I always say that you should give someone a call within 24 hours.

Call them (or call them back) and rephrase something you talked about with them that interested you. That way the conversation feels like a never-ending conversation. Things will flow really easily.

A lot of guys will get a phone number and they’ll wait two weeks to call that woman. Then when they do call, the woman will wonder why it took him so long to call. Even if you say that you were traveling or give some other reason, the woman will no longer be interested.

By not calling for two weeks, you just look like another ass. You look like a guy who is playing games and didn’t make her a priority.

Every woman wants to feel like a priority. I don’t care if it’s the first time you go out with her or the hundredth time you go out with her, every woman wants to feel special.

Follow-up is the key in dating and in every other part of life. If you are in sales and you get a sales lead on which you don’t follow up right away, you are never going to make that sale.

Someone calls you at your office and it takes you four days to follow up with them. In this day and age, there are so many different ways to communicate – you have emails, texts, and cell phones. So you don’t even have to be home or at your office to send someone a message.

If you can’t call someone right away, how hard is it to just send somebody a quick email saying “I’m busy for the next day or two, but I really look forward to speaking with you after that. Have a great few days!”

It’s all about following up. All successful people understand that follow-up is one of the things that made them successful.

You want to be successful at dating?  You better learn how to follow up.  If you want to be successful in business, you better really learn how to follow up.

So many people put things off. Those are the people who wake up every New Year’s Day wondering why they aren’t making enough money or aren’t successful in their dating life. They are the ones who write down the same New Year’s resolutions year after year.

If you really want to succeed with life — with women, in business, or in anything else — you need to learn to follow up. If you’re poor at following up, put a “to do” list together every single day. As you do each thing on the list, cross it out.

At the end of the day, look at your “to do” list and transfer all the items that aren’t scratched out on a new piece of paper as your next day’s “to do” list. Every time that you think of something you need to do, write it down right away so you don’t forget.

Say you’re busy doing three or four things and all of a sudden you remember that you need to call Joe. Since you are in the middle of another task, just write down “Call Joe” on your list and that way you will remember to do it after you’re finished.

Another reason to make this list for yourself each day, is that writing everything down gives you a way to prioritize. You can put older tasks on the top and newer ones on the bottom, or maybe you put the most important things on the top of the list. The important thing is that you re-look at your “to do” list every single day.

When I was dating a lot, I would write down every woman that I met. I would write down what they were about, who they were and when I called them (or was going to call them).

I would write all that down automatically — “Met Jane at Whole Foods. Call her Tuesday.” Then I would write things I learned about them like, “Called Jane and met her yesterday. She was cool, liked ….”

I would do this because I know in life we get really busy, and then all of a sudden you’ve forgotten to call a great woman because time got away from you. If you do call her after three or four days have gone by, she’s going to look at it as you being rude.

So get a yellow pad, start writing things down and get that “to do” list together! Review your “to do” list several times a day, and make sure you remain focused and on track.

All of you can thank Coach Jacob for this great blog. I wrote it, but he made me feel it.

Click here to listen to me talk all about my personal tricks to how to become successful in every part of your life — and how to create a roadmap on how to get there.

When you say you are going to do something, do you actually follow through and do it? When you say you’re going to meet somebody, do you actually meet them at the time you stated you were going to meet them? When you’re going to do a favor for somebody, do you do that favor or does the person have to ask you to do it over and over again?

Living life with integrity means actually committing to the things you say and to the actions that you promise. Nothing irritates me more than when someone tells me they are going to do something, and then I have to hound them to get it done.

It’s annoying to have to ask someone five or six times before they will do what they said they would do. This is especially true in professional or business situation.

In business, if you have to ask someone somebody five or six times to do something, then it means that person is really not a good worker and doesn’t take pride in their work. Even in a personal setting, you should never have to ask a friend to something several times before they will do it. The same thing is true in a relationship.

Become somebody who commits to your word, and other people with really respect you so much more. Even more importantly, be a person of your word so that you can respect yourself.

Surfing the Internet, checking prices and lowballing people are all fun to me. I mean, you never know who may say yes to one of those lowball offers.

What amazes me, though, is that no matter how many times I sent a lowball offer, that almost no one came back with another offer. I would estimate that out of every ten lowball offers I made, MAYBE one person would even call me back to talk about it. Yes, one out of ten!

If someone lowballs me, I get back to them right away because it truly means that they are a buyer and that they’re ready to buy. People have no follow-up skills at all. It’s amazing.

So the other day, I finally did buy a car. I bought a used BMW from Max at Beverly Hills BMW. Not only was my experience fantastic, but he actually got back to me quickly and found the car I wanted. The whole deal got done in a matter of a half-hour (and it was a great deal too by the way).

No matter what you do in life, being professional is really important. Some people are just so unprofessional and have no follow-up skills. None.

How many times has someone with whom you were thinking about going out on a date called you, and you didn’t get back to them? Then four days later, you realized you never got back to them and knew that by that time it was too late.

Life is about following up — whether it’s in dating, buying a car or in any other area of your life. If someone contacts you, you follow up with them.

You don’t make them wait. You get back to them in a timely manner. You are friendly when you speak to them. These are attributes of a great salesman.

It’s amazing, though, how many people are bad at the simple things. I am sure the same people who didn’t follow up on my lowball offers are complaining right now about the lack of money coming in this month.

Without follow-up skills, you will not make money. Without follow-up skills, you will not have a great dating life. Plain and simple: life is always about following up.

No matter how busy I am, I will always follow up with people. Always.

So if any of you live in Los Angeles and are looking for a great deal on a BMW, I suggest you contact Max at Beverly Hills BMW. Not only will he follow up with you, but he will also make your buying experience a great one.

Josh: I’m curious about how you suggest following up with somebody you’ve just talked to that day – if you want to see that person again.

David: It goes back to gathering information. Remember when we were out on the street and I talked to the Pomeranian couple?

Josh: Yeah.

David: And then we saw them in Barney’s later? What did I do? What had I learned about them?

I learned what they do for a living. I learned that they are from LA. I learned about some neighborhoods that they really like (because I’m buying a house.) She told me about a real estate deal that she did and how she got through to the guy to get the best possible deal.

So how did I follow it up?

I already knew five or six things about them, so when I saw them in Barney’s the second time I remembered that they were from LA. I said to them, “what, so we don’t have a Barney’s in LA? What are you doing here?”

The woman responded, “oh my god, that’s so funny,” and then she started talking about why she doesn’t like the Barney’s in LA. We then went further in the conversation.

That’s what it’s about: gathering that information. Knowledge is powerful. If you don’t remember stuff, get a little recorder or a BlackBerry. I tell guys all the time to put notes in their phones.

Your memory is all you have, so you have to start using it to remember things about people. If you don’t remember something about somebody then it means that you didn’t connect with him or her in the first place. It’s all about connecting. It’s all about having fun and learning things about other people.

That’s why this is so important. As we just talked about, Howie, you have to draw out emotions from the other person. If you can elicit their emotions the first time, then the next time you see them you can go right into that emotion again.

Josh: How do you use emotion without constantly feeling like you have to amp up the emotional level? How do you just keep everything on an even keel and still be strong man? It seems like I have to keep amping up to the next topic.

David: That’s what we were talking about earlier, the overcompensation. I keep my energy high. When I talk to somebody, they know that I’m interested. When I talk to you, you all know that I’m really interested in what you are saying, right?

How do I do that? I change my voice tone just a little bit. You notice the way that my voice tone changes just a little bit every single time I’m speaking? I’m not speaking in monotone.

You don’t have to be over the top. I think that when guys first start to learn how to do this, they get so over the top. It’s like they have to climb over the mountain first.

What I do is just say, “wow, that’s so interesting.” It’s genuine; it’s about being authentic. Do you really give a shit about what the other person is talking about? If you don’t give a shit, then you aren’t connecting with them, and what is the point? Unless you’re trying to have some one-night-stand and you’re going to fake it with her for an hour, what’s the point?

Faking it for an hour and a half is what I find overcompensating. If you’re genuinely interested in someone, you will naturally be very interested in what they are saying. You’ll be having a good conversation because you will be connecting with them.

Josh: What about the topic itself? How do you keep talking about those emotional topics without petering out? Is it just your emotional energy level taking over?

David: It’s all about energy. You’re never going to peter out if the conversation is going well.

If you talk to some woman for ten minutes and you do start petering out, you have to say to yourself, I would rather give the best two or three minutes of myself 100% (and tease her a bit with how amazing those two to three minutes were) than continue and half-ass it.

Make the determination: do I like her enough to ask her out? Then you have to do something. If you’re at a mall, say, “you know what? You and I need to go fill this bag,” or, “I’m going to call you. I have to go meet my buddies right now, but give me your number. I’m going to have you a call and we’re going to get together.”

This is how you build upon it. Sometimes you think that you have to talk to a woman for such a long period of time, but in reality all you have to do is give her a couple of strong and powerful minutes of yourself. Intrigue her and tease her a little bit and then get her phone number.

You can then get your energy back a little bit and call her up on the phone later. You’ll then have a conversation based on some of the things you talked about the first time you chatted. Does that make sense?

Josh: Yeah. But in this situation, when we were talking to the tri-athletes, I’m thinking about what you’ve taught me so far, and I wanted to say, “I have to get back to my friends, but I really want to finish this story sometime. Give me your number and I’ll call you…”

David: Exactly! Let’s say she hadn’t yet find out the results of her race. Say to her, “give me your number, I want to find out the results.” After doing a triathlon, she’s probably craving sugar or carbs or whatever, so say, “after you find out the results, we’re going to get together and carb out.”

Make it fun! Make it an adventure.