Larry King, a good friend of mine, passed away recently. I have a lot of memories from working with Larry, but one of my favorites is that Larry was a great listener. He would regularly say: “Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.” Larry’s longtime producer, Wendy Walker, echoed a similar sentiment when she was asked about what Larry’s impact on her. “He really listened to his guests. . . He never made it about himself.”

In my book, “Up Your Game,” I share how Larry helped me in business. As Executive Chairman of HireVue, a digital interviewing/hiring platform, I invited Larry King to be a board member. He gladly accepted. It was a natural fit, as Larry is known as one of the greatest interviewers of all time.

This, and other stories, can be found in the chapter of the book entitled “Scale-up.” One of the conclusions I draw in that chapter is that: “[c]onnections lead to more connections, and building an awesome advisory board allows you to grow your greatest resource pool.” Having a great resource pool helps one to “scale-up.” One builds that resource pool by listening, just like Larry King did. (Larry conducted more than 30,000 interviews, including interviews with sitting presidents like Gerald Ford and Barack Obama; that’s quite a resource pool!)

To learn more about Larry King, and some of the reasons he was a great interviewer, check out this short interview of Larry: https://youtu.be/I0ycZlXDfQg