Through her podcast “All the Social Ladies,” Carrie Kerpen has spoken with almost 200 women holding leadership positions in fields ranging from banking to entertainment. As a result, she accumulated a good amount of advice for women looking to advance their careers. She decided to write it down in a book.
“I started about a year and a half ago when I was conducting the podcast,” she said. “I started hearing all these stories from these women and I thought they needed to be told in a broader context.”
The result, “Work It: Secrets for Success from the Boldest Women in Business” was published earlier this month by Penguin Books. Kerpen celebrated the release with an event at Dolphin Bookshop last week. It was Kerpen’s first book.
“It was so wonderful, having it,” she said of holding the physical book for the first time. “There’s something so great about having the book in your hands and that experience is something different and wonderful.”
In addition to the women she interviewed for her podcast, the book includes additional tips and stories from women like Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook.
“The hope is you’ll find one or two women who provide you with good advice rather than just my perspective,” she said.
Kerpen, though, is certainly qualified to give career advice herself. The Port Washington resident is the CEO of Likeable Media, a social media marketing company that she founded with her husband, Dave. In addition to her weekly podcast, she is a columnist for Inc. magazine and Forbes and has appeared on ABC News and CNBC.
She said the biggest change from when she was first starting her career to now is how unnecessary climbing the corporate ladder has become.
“Climbing the corporate ladder, that was how you became successful,” she said. “But the idea of setting a five-year or 10-year plan is really dated. With the changes in technology happening so quickly, the job that you may be in may not even be invented yet.”
Kerpen said she found the advice useful for herself. Cara Friedman, the director of communications for ClassPass, advised letting the other person do the talking.
“When negotiating for a raise, you need to… [put] yourself on mute,” Kerpen recalled. “Let the awkwardness go to the other person. Learning to constructively mute yourself can help.”
The book is available in paperback, on Kindle, and as an audiobook. It has been praised by talk show host Meredith Viera and “Shark Tank” star Barbara Cochran.
Kerpen does have some of her own advice to offer. She said she hears a lot from women about maintaining a work/life balance, one she understands as an entrepreneur and a mother.
“If you’re building a family and life, you can have it all, but you can’t always have it all, all the time,” she said. “Focus on different areas at the times you can, it’s a very freeing thought … and focus on a job that gives you what you want, like flexibility. That’s why I wanted to be an entrepreneur.”
