035: Joe Apfelbaum - Keeping the Passion Alive in Your Business

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Thank you very much, Bill. It's a pleasure to be here.

Awesome. So some things you guys ought to know about. Joe's the CEO and he's the co founder of a marketing firm, digital marketing agency called Ajax Union in Brooklyn. Joe's also a public speaker. He's a Google trainer. He hosts a podcast of his own called CEO Mojo. He produces a grow time TV segment and Joe's just like endless selfies and live streams and things like that with this like unreserved, uninhibited passion. Just full on out there. So welcome to the show, Joe.

Thank you so much. I'm excited to share the mojo with everyone listening.

I first met Joe at a EO regional conference called, well, it wasn't our alchemy, it was the Thrive Nerv. Nerve. Nerve Thrive. We have so many around different regions around the world. So we're at Nerve. And he came up and took a selfie with me right away. And then I've seen him at our leadership conferences in Athens and Bangkok and so on. So excited to finally have a good reason to. So we're going to talk today about keeping the fire alive, right? And we all have different ways that we do that, but this is a particular thing of interest to me. So the passion, the fire, and even the overall perspective, the why of your business, the purpose behind your work, the values, what you're up to in the largest sense, how do we keep that alive over time? How do we keep that alive against the face of everything? So I'm going to share with you7 sort of secret practices that have been hidden in plain sight for, well, forever, and that I discovered in the process of writing this book that I think you'll love. As we get into the middle, let's talk a little bit first about you and your world. Joe. I know I've seen you with the morning smoothie talk. So tell me, where do you set your goals and intentions? How do you keep them alive? What inspires you through the day? What's your routine?

So over the past three years, I've been on a personal development journey. I started Ajax Union about seven years ago, and I really just wanted to make money, to just be financially free. And that was really the amount of purpose that I had in my life. And when I started to look at myself and I started to create a little more awareness in myself. And when I joined EO, I was 265 pounds and I lost 80 pounds over the past three years. And I've achieved a lot of things in my life that all came from this sudden awareness. I was the type of person that would try to get up as late as possible, stay up as late as possible, try to fight the night and try to get as much work done, very, very reactive. And when I started to discover that there's a better way, that there's a better way to live my life, that I started to discover what my strengths are. I started to discover what my values are, I started to discover my why. And I started realizing that there's a reason for everything. And not like we're taught in yeshiva, because I'm an Orthodox Jew and I grew up going to yeshiva and I went to learn to be a rabbi, not to be an entrepreneur. And we're always taught that everything is for a reason, everything is For a reason. What I discovered is that everything is for a reason. But I get to choose the reason. I get to create my own purpose in this world. And when it's aligned with my values, then I'm on fire. When I'm on a mission that's aligned with my values and that's aligned with my strengths. And I realize that I'm on this path that I created with my freedom, and I'm out there with intent, living my life and making this world a better place for my employees, for my family, for my community, for my fellow entrepreneurs. I get motivated, I get fired up, I get passionate, I jump out of bed. My wake up motivational level goes through the roof when I start having this purpose that I think about before I go to sleep. So a lot of people think it's like, oh, what do you do first thing in the morning? It's not about what you do first thing in the morning. It's about the intention that you set before you sleep and what you're actually thinking about while you're sleeping the entire night. So when you get up, when I get up, I'm pretty fired up about what I'm going to be doing that day because I was planning while I was sleeping. They say make money while you sleep. I say plan while you sleep.

So in our notes for doing annual and quarterly planning and in our actual work with private clients, people see often will say that in the evening before, after you've had your celebratory dinner or the opening session or whatever, ask yourself, what are the most important things that we need to accomplish in the quarter, the year ahead and, and just go to bed thinking about that and allow your subconscious mind to work on that. And you will naturally deal with that, no effort required. Tomorrow morning you'll wake up ready to do something brilliant in the day that just by having a little focus and intention.

One of the things that fires me up, that gets me excited, is when I set a goal, an intentional goal, a smart goal, a goal that is inspired because it's aligned with my purpose, it's aligned with my values, it's aligned with my strengths, it's aligned with what I really enjoy, what I appreciate. It's something that gets me excited. And then I go out and I accomplish that goal. Especially when it's a big, hairy, audacious goal. When it's a goal that's like, wow, you're gonna do that? And I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna do that. You know, one of the even a small little goal like, in 2015, I set a goal to do 1,000 selfies with 1,000 entrepreneurs. Thankfully, you were one of them. And just the fact that we did a selfie built this little relationship, this little connection that me and you have. And then in 2016, another selfie, another thousand selfies with a thousand entrepreneurs. And in 2017, my goal is not a thousand. My goal is to do 365 intentional selfies. And people are like, what's the difference in a regular selfie and an intentional selfie? It's a regular selfie. I happen to see you. We happen to do a selfie. That's nice. An intentional selfie is I make a list of 365 people and I go out and I seek them out. I know where I'm going to see them, when I'm going to see them, and then I ask them, can we do an intentional selfie together? I've been planning for this moment because I admire you, because I'm grateful that you're in my life, because I want to remember this moment, because I value our relationship, and I want to intentionally go deeper.

Awesome. So that's one of the many ways. Tell us about your morning routine.

So it all starts the night before. My goal is to be able to turn off all electronics an hour before I go to sleep. My goal is to go to sleep by 10, turn off electronics by 9, have some apple cider vinegar before I go to sleep to clean out my liver, start getting myself with a little chamomile tea, read a little bit, relax, and then go to sleep by 10 o', clock, and then wake up by 4 o' clock in the morning. So I get a good six hours. Recently, somebody told me that if I want to take my body to the next level, I need at least seven and a half hours. So I'm doing some research into the power of sleep to kind of take my muscles and my body to the next level. So I may change my routine a little bit, maybe go to sleep a little earlier, wake up a little later. But right now, I've been going to sleep at 10, waking up at 4. I get a good six hours. I have my little Fitbit here that kind of, like, vibrates without making any noise and waking up my wife or my kids, and I'm ready to rock. I jump out of bed, I'm like, yes, it's 4 o'. Clock. I get on the scale, I weigh myself. I have, like, this whole very specific checklist of things that I do. I take an eye drop because I recently got Lasik, so I got to put in a drop in each eye. I have an apple cider vinegar, two teaspoons of water. I sit down, I start journaling. I write my weight, I write the date when I went to sleep. It's like a bunch of KPIs that.

I have time out. Do you ever wake up and you don't feel awesome? You don't want to respond to that wrist? Do you ever want to not feel?

Absolutely. Absolutely. There are some days where I'm just not with it, where I just don't want to do it. I just don't want to do it. And in order for me to have that motivation, I need to create that motivation in my life. In order for me to to be able to exercise in the morning and break a sweat, I need to do things that are brainless. For example, when I get up in the morning, right away I get into exercise gear and put on my sneakers right away. If I don't do it right away, I'm not going to want to do it. And there are times that I just didn't do it. And I learned that if it's not just a habit and I don't have the clothes prepared the night before and I don't just slide right into it, I'm not going to have the motivation to do it. It's just not automatic. I have to set certain things up for success. I have to have the apple cider vinegar out, I have to make it easy. I have to have the right type of cup, and I have to have the checklist, because I won't remember if I'm not going off a checklist. I will not remember if I don't have a process. So, yes, if I don't have the motivational level, there are things that I do to be able to look at that. And I know that if I don't do these things, if I don't journal, if I don't pray, if I don't meditate, if I don't take the time to exercise, if I don't take the time to do something creative, whether it's play guitar or write an article or edit a video and publish it or do something creative, I'm not gonna have the same day. My best days are the days where I follow my proven routine that works for me, that makes me feel successful. That makes me feel like by the time I take my kids to school, by the time I send them off and I'm ready to go, I live the whole life, people Are like, Joe, you lived a whole life before you sent your kids out. You live this entire. And I feel like, oh my gosh. And people are just waking up, taking the crust out of their eye and. And I already did all these things where I feel like I already did what I had to do. I'm at inbox zero. I'm starting my day with intention. I know my top three priorities for the day. I know my number one thing that I need to do, and I'm good to go. That's all. If I did that one thing, if I did those top three things, I'm done. I could just go to sleep. I could just go on vacation.

So now you go into your whole day, right? And you've got your day. But you begun the day with the intention, with the top priorities, with the number one thing. With all this focus and all this practice presence and health and vitality and all of that, you come into your office, how does it show up? How do you keep it alive in the office? How do you keep it alive with the team?

Every agenda says drink water. Every agenda that we have says drink water.

Not coffee.

Not coffee. Coffee dehydrates you. Where do you get energy from? People think you get energy from food, you get energy from other people. You get energy from the ether. No, you get energy from water. Water, which has oxygen in it. Breathing and water gives you energy. If you're dehydrated, a 5% drop in hydration is a 30% drop in energy. Most people walk around completely dehydrated and they think that they need this caffeinated boost in order to get energy. You ever heard of a water high? Get a water high. Drink 12 ounces of water per hour. Don't drink too much water, but drink 12 ounces of water per hour and I promise you, you'll be going to the bathroom more often. I promise you that you are going to have more energy a because you're gonna be walking to the bathroom more often. But more importantly, by the way, your bladder can hold 16 ounces. So you're not gonna go to the bathroom every five minutes. And it takesit takes at least an hour to even sometimes two hours to fill up your bladder. So just know that you're gonna be going every hour to two hours to the bathroom. That means you're gonna get a couple minute walk. So you're, you're gonna be getting up.

You'Re, you're full of healthy, good routines. Are there any things that you do with your team?

Some of the things that we do with our team to get energized is we do some icebreakers at meetings that when people talk about themselves and it's not just about the business, but they're able to talk about themselves and share a little bit about themselves, it's powerful. We do intentional rounds of applause. People do walking meetings. We have scooters that people can scoot around in. We encourage people to eat healthy by going to Costco. We have a Costco card. Once a week somebody goes and everyone, everyone has, everyone can say what they want. We have peanut butter, we have peanuts. We have all types of healthy things in the office. Hummus and guacamole and green vegetables and lemons and all types of teas.

What about, what about these goals and intentions that you set clearly and you keep focused for yourself? Do you do practices like that at a team level for the company?

Not everybody's into personal development.

No, I mean for the team development, for the. Whatever you're doing. For the.

Absolutely. We, we have a weekly huddle. We have a daily. So every Single morning at 9:30 we have something called the daily training. So you guys call it a huddle. At scaling up, we call it the daily training where everybody gets on the phone, we do a quick icebreaker where everybody gets to answer a question and learn and all this gets recorded. So if somebody misses it, they can listen to it later. And then one person presents some industry news. Because in marketing, digital marketing and B2B lead generation that we specialize in, it's always constantly changing. What worked yesterday is not going to work today. What works today is not going to work tomorrow. So we have some industry news. What's going on? So everybody's on the know. And when we're busy working on clients, we don't have time for that. We don't always have time for training. And that person gives a 5 to 10 minute presentation on something that they prepared. So there's always that going on. That's like the little heartbeat. And people say that that's the best part of their day. The 9:30, then we do on Slack, everybody gets to share what they're grateful for, what they're looking forward to, their successes and a roadblock that they're having and maybe an idea that they have to share for the company. Everybody gets excited about sharing that on Slack. I don't know if you guys use Slack. It's a communication tool. Internally we use that to communicate and it avoids us just sending a tremendous amount of emails and people are on the same page very Very quickly. In addition to doing that, we have an all company meeting on Mondays at 12 o', clock, at 10 to 12, for 10 minutes. And then we have a strategy session every Monday from 4 to 5 where we talk about some core issues. We talk about our vision for 2017. Our vision is amazing clients, amazing employees, amazing synergy. We discuss our core focus to make sure everyone knows what our focus is. We're focused on B2B digital marketing and lead generation. We have three specific values which we updated this year. We did the Rockefeller Habits and then we changed it to the Scaling up one from back in the day when Scaling up came out. So now we have something called aov. Amazing communication, ownership, mindset and versatility. So those are our values. And we mention it at every meeting. Everybody says our vision and our values. Everyone's really on the same page. Everyone's really fired up. Here's one thing that we do with our employees that's very unique. There's a concept called Strength Finder. A lot of entrepreneurs haven't heard of it.

We use strengths finders extensively.

Yeah, Strength Finders by the Gallup Center. And they've interviewed thousands and thousands, millions of people to figure out what their strengths are. They profiled many people and they came out with 34 major strengths. It's called Strength Finder 2.0. They have a book about it. And every human being has one of 34 major strengths. And this, you can take a test and you can find out what your top five strengths are. And if you have one strength, obviously that strength can also be a weakness sometimes. So we make sure that every single employee takes a strength finder test, and then they know what their strengths are, which ultimately they know what their weaknesses are. And we try to put everybody in the right seat so that they can play their strengths. It's so important. When you have an employee that's frustrated, that's angry, that's upset, it's because. And it's not passionate. It's because they're not playing their strengths. When you're playing your strengths, you're passionate. When you're good at something, you love doing that because you're good at it.

All right, so I teased you and our audience before that I had come across something very old. Didn't invent it myself, but I realized it. It applies to our businesses, and it's part of what led me to invite you to be on this particular show. So, look, you've been speaking to this. At the core of our companies is purpose and values. And then we have things like bhag, and if you add in then core customer and brand promises, those five things really define so much of strategy. And from there, we break down three year goals and the next year's goals and a quarterly theme. And, you know, we set priorities for the year and for the day and so on. So all of that. But then how do you keep it alive over time? And so that's what I've been looking at and writing about. And a lot of my work when I first began was on a. On a pretty personal level, was about helping people to keep that fire alive within themselves over time. And, you know, it erodes, it disappears, Or sometimes it's displaced by a crisis or something else. And so you have to regenerate some inspiration, all those moments. And that's all what's going to be in this book on keeping the fire alive is dealing with and bringing forth inspiration in any moment at every time. And so I'm in the shower, which is where I have lots of ideas, right? So my top five are ideation, strategic communicator, activator, and command.

Wow. We have three that are the same, right?

So I wake up all the time with ideas. In some places, I have a lot of ideas running while driving and in the shower once. So I'm thinking the shower, keeping the fire alive. And then I thought of NER Tamid. Now, with a name like Bill Gallagher, most people don't know that I'm Jewish, that my family's Jewish, that my little brother's born in Israel, that I speak a little Hebrew and all of that. And I thought, what are the practices that. That let a Jewish people stay Jewish, that keep the culture, the religion alive over thousands of years? Is there a set of core practices? And in fact, as you'll know, there are seven. There are seven core that is in the ultimate Jewish prayer and is affixed to all of our doorposts. The Shema, hero, Israel, Lord our God. And I'm not here to make everybody a Jew, but I'm here to say what is the interesting business lesson that we can discern from this that applies to every last one of our businesses about keeping the passion, the values, the mission alive. So the first one is teach them to your people. So you have to take the purpose, the values, and teach them to your people. The second thing is that you want to talk about them both inside and outside of the company, right? And then you want to recite them at the beginning and the end of your day. You want to wear them proudly Like a uniform or a badge, you have to keep them in front of your eyes and, and you want to post them at the entry, like having them where the visitors come to your business. And you want to create incentives and penalties for conforming to the values and keeping the purpose and the value. Write seven things. And they're part of something that's helped a people and a culture and a tradition and a religion, a belief system alive for thousands of years against geographic dispersal, against many challenges, against holocaust, against everything. And it's funny, it's like it's all right there. And in the book Scaling up and we talk about actions to bring values to life and we do exercises with people to figure out how you. But when you look at these kinds.

Of things, that defines culture, doesn't definitely defines culture. And it's definitely one of the things that I had to go into business in order to appreciate Judaism. It was so funny because when I grew up in this. So I, I'm like, what's all this process for? What's the point of all this? There's so much process, there's so many, so much purpose, there's so many rituals. Like every step from when I open my eyes, what I need to be saying, how I need to be saying it, how I need to wash my hands. Not just that you have to wash your hands. How you fill up a cup, you hold it with your right hand, you pull it on your right hand, you put it the other hand, you do it three times in each hand. It's like so specific in what blessings and what gratitude you're supposed to show and how you're supposed to do it and what you're supposed to think about and when you're supposed to think about what you're supposed to say, every second of your day is accounted for. And we don't do this in our business. And I never really valued that as an entrepreneur. I'm like, oh, better way, better way, better way. And then when I got into business and saw the chaos, the chaos that you can have when you don't have a sense of purpose, the chaos that you can have when you don't have processes, the chaos that you can have when you just leave up to the winds and you're not precise with an employee handbook and a way of being and not having values and just hiring random people and shoving them into a room and wishing for the best, we had 75 full time employees and servicing thousands of customers and shit hit the fan. We couldn't figure out how to, how to have cash, how to have profitability, how to grow. And we were stuck. And it's because we didn't have that purpose. It's because we didn't set those values. We didn't discover who we really are and intentionally say where we want to go. So we really had to take many steps back in order for us to have the most profitable year we've ever had, in order for us to have very high net promoter score. Whereas before, people were just unhappy with it. They were with us because we had great service, but they weren't ecstatic like they are now. And they weren't referring business like they are now. And you know what? Getting into business allowed me to appreciate my heritage, my culture, my family, and just live a much better life, a life that has much more integrity than ever before.

So I think there's two things to point out. The first one is that for me, many people, especially our creatives, many of our visionary entrepreneurs, they will find the discussion of some of these routines to be constraining, confining the thought of having some of these regular ones. Now, I'm an ideation guy. I lead with ideas and things like that, and I am continually generating stuff and I don't like. Here's the thing, though. There are certain routines that actually set you free, that give you room to innovate and create, that let you not think about anything else. I'm also a pilot, right? And one of the things that you really have to do and ingrain deeply are some regular habits so that in moments of stress, you will do the right thing. You know how to restart the plane, you know what to check and where to go in case of certain emergencies you have before landing, when the attention is high and the demands and the focus needs to be crystal clear, you know, about silencing things and you know, to follow through routines that you've memorized and ingrained deeply. So there are moments where these routines are good. And for those of you who are hearing the idea of having a lot of routines and traditions and habits as being a little confining, I want you to know that there are places and times for them where they can actually set the rest of you free. Some people just love the idea of it, right?

There's a really great book called Predictable Success. You probably read it, it's by Les McCowan, and he writes that a lot of entrepreneurs want to stay in that fun stage where there is no systems and processes and you just do whatever you want. And it's great, but that's only going to get you to a certain place. Same thing with your life. It's only gonna get you to a certain place. If you just want to be free and shoot from the hip and do whatever you want, you're never gonna be able to get to that ultimate level of intimacy until you learn to be able to integrate the right processes. Now if you have too many processes and you're too rigid, then you're gonna have something called treadmill and you're gonna fall off the deep end and you're not gonna be successful. And that's how big companies fail, is when they set too many processes and they're not too flexible. So you gotta have the right yin and the yang, the right balance between understanding what you need as habits, what checklist you need your plane and to be able to fly upside down and just have a wild time, while at the same time, when you're taking off, when you're landing, you got to pull out that checklist. I went flying with another EO member, Brandon Webb, exactly a year ago and I was so impressed, I was so impressed by the level of, of complexity and how he had to have a checklist when he was taking off and when he was landing, he literally had to check one thing after another. And if you miss one little thing there, you will die. You have to check every little.

Or you could, once you're flying, you.

Could, but you know, but if you're, once you're flying, you just fly around. You can do whatever you want, you don't need a checklist. But if you're taking off or you're landing, you need to look at that checklist. And for me, that was a huge lesson in entrepreneurship. In life, there are certain things, if you want to be fired up every single day, you need to have an intentional morning routine. You need to set yourself up for success. You need to have those rituals that you said, not habits that you got from your mother, not habits that you got from your father, from your family, from your society, from your community. You need to create what's going to fire you up based on your personal values, based on your personal experiences, based on your strengths. And if you can do that well, then you will get mojivated.

All right, so let's do a little recap. We talked a lot about the routines and, and the habits that you need and then I shared with you this several thousand year old set of instructions. Now you can look into your own culture, but if you come from the Judeo Christian culture, you'll find this in Deuteronomy or Dvarim and it's mostly chapter six and it talks about after the heroes of the Lord our God. So let's recap them in a business context, right? Not a religious, but I think if you look in in all cultures you will find regular habits and routines and you can draw from them and create a business culture that really works. So what's the lesson? The first one is teach them to your people. So when you onboard people, when you hire new people, you've got to teach them the values and the mission and the bhag and the critical parts that define who you are, why you exist and the way that you do things. The second thing is that you've got to talk about them regularly. Put them on your website, talk about them in your meetings, right? Adding them as a recitation at the beginning and the end of your day, at least at the beginning of your day you could put them into your daily huddle or that kind of thing that will ingrain them and have people start to think about them and use them to apply to the challenges that they face each day. I may hear one value or another from day to day, but over time the whole team will have them memorized, right? And then look thinking about wearing them proudly, right? Do you have a uniform or a badge or are you public facing in some way? So we have one of our client companies, they are in a retail operation, they have them on their uniforms. So find ways to wear them in some fashion, keep them in front of your eyes. So I have, every time we do our we update our theme, I change all of the screen backgrounds and the screen savers in our office so that our theme is front and center. The theme, this one is Firestarter for us this quarter. So keep them and then can you put them at your doorways and entries? So what do you have at your doors and entries so that people right on coming and going from your business will see them. And then finally, do you have incentives for them? Do you reward people for them? Do you acknowledge them? And are there costs? Are there penalties? Are you tracking them if do people lose bonuses if you're not adhering to values? Those seven things can go a massive way to keeping and creating a rich culture. And as we know, culture trumps all kinds of things in causing a successful business to fulfill on the vision and purpose over time.

I heard Jack Daly say that culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Yes.

In his own high energy, passionate way.

Jack Daly down in Southern California and all over the world on a regular basis. Jack Dailey's a sales trainer in our world and we should have him on the podcast real soon. So we'll put links to all of your stuff in your stuff, Joe Apfelbaum's stuff in the show, notes for this CEO, MoJo, Growtime TV, Ajax Union and like that. So it's just been a real pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for doing it with me today.

My pleasure. Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure. And if you want to stay motivated and you want to watch me do T25 or smoothie talks or do my street talks where I walk down the street for one to three minutes a day and I talk to you about how you can stay motivated, check me out on Facebook, facebook.com Joapfeldom Great.

We'll put links to that and everything else. So scalingupbusiness.com is the website and subscribe to us on itunes. Scaling Up Business this podcast will be both on itunes and on our YouTube channel. YouTube Bill Gallagher and we've got free Growth Guide. We've got all this stuff. The book will come out soon. Subscribe for chapters and editions as we go on keeping the fire alive and we'll see you next time on Scaling Up Business. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align. It's the official software for Scaling Up With Scoreboard. You'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app. You can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software. It's what I actually use to manage growth in our Scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.