Sometimes, there will be a person who becomes known because of a certain thing. Often that would involve them getting a nickname that’s based on that thing. Imagine if you had a friend who wore a hoodie every single day, a lot of people would probably call him “hoodie guy.” Once something sticks, it’s really hard to get unstuck. You either use that notoriety for your benefit. Or you just let it haunt your life forever. It’s very hard to do the former because there is such a small success rate for it. But there are people who have managed to do it.
NEXT: Here’s How You Can Be Rich Like Dave Kerpen
I hadn’t really heard of Dave Kerpen prior to this. Even looking through his Wikipedia page, I still have no idea who he is. He seems notorious enough to have his own Wikipedia page. But not in a way that when you say his name, people would go “Oh yeah, it’s that guy.” Judging from the timeline of certain parts of his life that gained him notoriety, there is definitely know way I would have known about it. For the most part, the stuff he was famous for happened in the early 2000s. And social media wasn’t really a huge thing by then.
The first thing that’s listed under “Career” is a period in the late 1990s and early 2000s where he was referred to as the “Crunch n’ Munch guy.” During his college years, Dave Kerpen worked a job as a vendor at Fenway Park and Boston Garden. He was assigned to sell a popcorn snack called Crunch n’ Munch to the spectators who were feeling a bit peckish during the game. He managed to sell a few boxes during his first day at work, just enough to earn minimum wage.
After his first day, he thought of how he could get people’s attention while he was selling concessions up and down the bleachers. His idea was to get attention by singing and dancing. He just did whatever he can to get people to notice him. And it paid off. He managed to sell three times as much as he did in his first. It seems that Dave found his hook. As he kept on doing it, his sales slowly increased. That’s how he became known in Boston as the Crunch n’ Munch guy. One of coaches had him ejected from Boston Garden during one of the games because he was sort of distracting. Honestly? Fair.
In 2003, he became a contestant for a reality show called Paradise Hotel. The premise of it that a bunch of single people are sent off to stay at a luxury hotel. They must pair up and stay in a room together. Judging from the premise, I don’t know how this became a show. But I guess there’s the competition that makes it seem worth it. Somehow, Dave made it to the finale of the first season but he didn’t win a cash prize. The person he paired up with at the finale chose not to share the cash prize with him.
I’m not really sure when he met his now wife Carrie. But it’s probably around the time they finished filming the season of Paradise Hotel he was in. It’s definitely weird if he auditioned for the reality show while being in a relationship. At some point they got engaged. And it was 2006, that they were planning on what the wedding should be like. Somehow an idea to get married after a baseball game where thousands of unexpecting people people were in attendance.
But in order for them to do it, they had to ask for sponsors. They managed to do it for the price of finding creative ways to promote their businesses at the venue. And it worked. He managed to get millions worth in media coverage from that entire thing. It shouldn’t be a surprise since he and Carrie are both marketing experts.
Around the same time, Dave and Carrie started a marketing firm called Likeable. It’s a marketing firm, I don’t really know what else to tell you. They managed the firm up until it was acquired by 10Pearls. At that point, he earned himself a net worth of $3,000,000. In the years between that, wrote a few of those self-help books, one of which became a New York Times bestseller. There was an instance where he wanted to run for office in their borough. He managed to be elected to a seat at the school board in 2017.
TRENDING: Forget About Social Media Marketing, This Is The Best Way To Start Earning Money
