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.

Then, you wait. You wait for the person to call.

The, at some point, the phone rings. You look at the number but you don’t recognize it.

So what do so many of us do? We don’t answer it.

We don’t answer calls from unknown numbers nowadays because we’re paranoid. “Oh my God, an unknown phone number. Unknown calls are bad. How can I pick up an unknown call. They’re scary.”

Let’s think about this. You’ve been waiting for this unknown call for the last day and a half. You’re attracted to this person. You want this person to call you, in fact you can’t wait for this person to call you. Then when they finally do call, you don’t pick it up because it is an unknown number.

What is going on here? Are we all scared of bill collectors, or is there just an overall paranoia?

Have you neglected to make your car payment the last couple months? Is there something awful you’re anticipating hearing about on the phone? Are you waiting for news from the lab on that blood work you just had?

I mean, what is it about these unknown numbers that strikes such fear into us? What is it really?

You know what’s really funny about these unknown number calls when it is the person from whom you were waiting to hear, is that they seem to never leave a message. I love that. They don’t leave a message, and just try calling two or three more times to see if they can get you in person.

Then if they don’t get that person on the phone, they will think “Ah, this person must not want to hang out with me.” What?! It was you who didn’t leave a message! You didn’t even give that person a chance to call you back.

So if you are the unknown caller in this scenario, you need to be sure to leave a message. It’s crazy if you don’t. Please leave messages so people can call you back when we don’t have your unknown number or know that your number belongs to you.

I love how some people will get a call from an unknown number, and then will call that number back and say “Who is this? You just called me.”

I also love when I accidentally dial the wrong number and I get that call. I dialed the wrong number. There was really nothing more sinister to it than that.

When I get that call informing me that I just called that wrong number, I want to say, “Yeah, I know I just called you. It was a wrong number. I decided not to call you back and tell you that so that I wouldn’t bother you twice, and I really didn’t want to waste any more time on a wrong number by leaving you a voicemail and explaining this. You’re clearly paranoid, and I’m so sorry that me dialing the wrong number made you even more paranoid.”

There are some lessons to be learned from all this. Smart people when they meet break out the cell phones when it’s time to exchange numbers, and put names and numbers directly in each other’s phones. That way when that call you’re waiting for does come in, you’ll know it because it will say their name.

Of course, there is always the option of just answering the phone when it rings regardless of whether you know who’s calling. I remember the good old days when I used to answer the phone without ever knowing who was calling.

There was no Caller ID. There was no Call Waiting. Every call was unknown. It was so cool. It was so much fun. So really when it comes to knowing who’s calling me, I don’t want to know!

The phone is ringing, and all of a sudden you hear “Hi. This is Jane. Please leave a message . . .” Your heart starts beating really fast.

The next thing you know, you start blabbering. “Oh, hey Jane. It’s Mike. Okay, that’s . . . yeah, it was great meeting you the other day. Give me a call, if you really want to. I know you don’t know me, but if you want call me. Yeah, call me. Here’s my number. It’s, um, 310-iamuputight.”

That might as well be your number since it could not be more clear how uptight you are. What you want to do instead when you leave a voicemail message, is to set the stage to start the relationship.

Think about how exciting it is when you get a good voicemail message. Compare the above voicemail message to something like this: “Hey Jane. It’s Mike. How are you doing? It was great meeting you the other day at Whole Foods. I checked out your YouTube videos that you were telling me about. They were hilarious! Call me. I have to share something with you about that.”

Do you see how the person receiving that message would feel very differently after hearing it than the feeling they would have after getting the first message? This second message was upbeat. It was exciting.

The second message makes the person want to call you back. You’ve established the relationship. You’re actually the guy who they want to call back, as opposed to the “ah” and “um” guy who stumbles through the message or hangs up without leaving any message at all.

Virtually everyone has Caller ID nowadays. Don’t ever hang up. They will see that you called. Leaving no message will make them not want to call you back just as much as leaving a bad voicemail message.

Click here to hear me talk more about how to know exactly what to say to a woman when you’re leaving a voicemail message and in any situation.