Mastering the Digital World: How Joe Apfelbaum Blends AI with Traditional Marketing for Success

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

Today we're going to be talking about the why of Better Way. So if this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator and you are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a better way. You desire to share your improvements with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like, what if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better? You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto I'm often pleased but never satisfied. You are excellent at associating, which means that you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or discipline and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something. And so today I have a great guest for you. I had him on the podcast three, four years ago and there have been so many changes and exciting new things in his life, I thought I'd bring him back on. So his name is Joe Applebomb. He is the CEO of Ajax Union, a digital marketing agency. Joe is a business strategist, marketing expert, AI consultant, and certified Google trainer. Joe enjoys speaking and writing about marketing, business networking, and personal development in his seminars or webinars and articles. Joe is the guest expert of the popular podcast High Energy Marketing. Joe is the author of five books, including High Energy Marketing. As a LinkedIn trainer and strategist, Joe trains over 600 businesses and sales professionals on how to leverage LinkedIn each year in his online course and coaching sessions with Evergreen Networking. Joe is an active member of the Executive association of New York City, a premier business networking organization. His network includes members of Vistage, EO, YPO, YEC, and the Inc 500 Inc 5000 community. Joe is a selfie master. He takes a thousand selfies a year with entrepreneurs and makes hundreds of introductions to business professionals in his network. Joe is proud of all of his accomplishments, but most of all, he is proud of his purpose, being the best possible single dad to his five beautiful, amazing children's. Joe, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me here, Gary. I'm really excited about being here. This is an exciting time to be talking about finding a better way.

Well, lots has changed. You know, I followed you from afar these last few years and periodically I get updates and I hear, wow, that's, that's interesting. Joe's on a. On a cool path right now. So take us from four years ago. Well, let's go back in your life real quickly for the ones that didn't hear the first interview that we did. Where were you born? What were you like in high school? Take us on a quick journey of your life so far.

I was born in Brooklyn. I've been living in Brooklyn for the past, you know, my whole life. And growing up as a teenager, I watched my mother try to build her business in the Lower east side. And after 10 years of trying to build her business, eventually she went out of business. And that kind of like, put a little bug in me to try to figure out how to be successful in business, how to be an entrepreneur. And for many years, I just, you know, believed my mom, you know, like, you gotta be lucky, make it happen. I became a web designer, I became a developer, I became an IT guy. I started learning a lot of skills and I was building a lot of websites for companies. You know the famous saying, if you build it, they will come. Well, I built it. Nobody came. I had to figure out marketing and how SEO works. And I became really good, particularly good at reverse engineering Google's algorithm. And people started hiring me to do their digital marketing. And it turned into a business called Ajax Union. And we built the business. And for me, it was about having a strategy, not trying to get lucky. I always say the right strategy will save you a decade. So fortunately, I was able to build a business to be one of the fastest growing companies in America. We were on the Inc. 500. We doubled our business revenue for many years in a row, and we've serviced over 1100 companies in the past 15 years. You know, throughout that journey, I learned a lot about being an entrepreneur, being a business person, being the having a rhythm with work and life. And, you know, I've been through a lot of changes in the Business, different models, trying to figure out what's going to fulfill me deep down inside. You know, I tried many different things. One of the things that I, I tried was professional speaking. I didn't know that I was afraid of public speaking at a certain time. Google reached out to me. This is about A little over 10 years ago, Google reached out and they said, would you like to start training business owners on behalf of Google? And I said, you're going to put me in front of business owners. That's a great opportunity to get clients. Let's go. What I didn't realize is when I got in front of a crowd of people, that I wasn't petrified. I was scared, I was shaking. And so I had to overcome that fear. And I realized after overcoming that fear is that it's something that I find a lot of enjoyment at doing, teaching and training. And so I started a training business. When the pandemic hit, we lost about 75% of our revenue in our business. And I started a training business. And we've trained over a thousand companies on how to use LinkedIn and now how to use artificial intelligence. And what I realize is a lot of business owners, they're hungry, they want to be able to be more successful, but they don't necessarily have the strategies and the tactics to be able to be successful. LinkedIn has almost a billion people on it right now, and it's a very powerful platform, and a lot of people don't understand how to use it, how to leverage it. And so I was fortunate enough to be able to recover from the hit that the pandemic hit us really hard. I was able to recover by using LinkedIn as a strategy to get new business. And so I taught people my strategy and it actually worked for many of our clients and very excitingly. And now with ChatGPT, I don't know if you, you're like, up with the trends of what's going on with AI. AI is like the new printing press. So in the past year, I've been studying AI and teaching AI. I've trained over a thousand companies in how to use artificial intelligence just in the past year alone. And I discovered that there's like a little niche in the market where people that want to use LinkedIn, but they don't have the time to sit there and leave comments and write posts and send messages, or they have don't have the mental capacity to be able to do it. They have something called writer's block. And so I combined artificial intelligence together with LinkedIn and I figured out a way to be able to really connect with people and help them be able to always have the right thing to say. So, so we created an artificial intelligence tool called evai.com which enables people to be able to teach to AI about their Persona, about who they are and who their target market is, and so on. And then if you want to leave a comment, there's a Chrome extension you could install. And the Chrome extension will draft the comment for you on LinkedIn. It'll draft the post for you. It's not automation, so it's not against LinkedIn's terms and conditions.

You.

There are many automation tools that LinkedIn doesn't like. This is a safe extension that allows you just simply to draft a comment. So if you see a center of influence or potential client that posts something on LinkedIn, a great way to stay top of mind with them is to leave a comment on their post. Like I leave many comments on your post and other members of our mastermind group. And so leaving comments on people's posts is essential in order to get credibility. And this AI that we built allows you to leave customized personalized comments, but it also generates posts. You can write posts. Now only about a million people are posting on LinkedIn. And with AI, the challenge is having something quality that's relevant. And so this takes into account all the things I've been teaching people how to do on LinkedIn. To have the right hook, to have the right main points, to use call to action, to use the right hashtag. And it allows people to properly be able to leverage the platform without having to spend a lot of time. And so that's a new business that we launched this year, and I'm very excited about that. We have thousands of people that are using it, and we want to really impact a lot of people. You know, now that LinkedIn is having a billion users, the. The opportunity is growing exponentially on LinkedIn. And I'm always trying to find a better way to do things where you can save time, where you can make more money, where you could use less effort. And so using artificial intelligence can really help people a lot. I've trained so many companies on how to use tools like chatbots, tools that generate images, generate videos, clone their voice, use AI avatars. So I'm very into that. I mean, now that I'm single, I'm no longer married. After being married for 20 years, I have a lot of time on my hands to be able to have fun. Some. Some people would even say that I got remarried to chatgpt.

You probably. When are you going to invent that?

Well, that already exists, but I'm, you know, for, for me, it's one thing at a time. I just want to support people that are on a journey to get more clients, to get more exposure, that want more influence on LinkedIn and using artificial intelligence. With EV AI and LinkedIn, you can really benefit. And you don't even need to pay for the LinkedIn Premium. You could just use the free LinkedIn account and together with AI as your assistant, it can help you draft the perfect comments, the perfect posts, and the perfect messages to help you get results from LinkedIn.

That sounds very interesting and we're going to have to talk some more about that because that is a challenge for me as well. You know, what do you post, how do you post, when do you have time to post? And, and I don't want to just post anything. I want it to be valuable. I don't want to be somebody who's throwing a bunch of junk up there if it's not relevant and valuable. I don't want to do it. You know, it's got to be better.

For me to 100%. Our tool, it not only helps you be able to create extremely valuable content, but also it allows you to have content that's relevant to your brand and your target market. So it's valuable, but specifically to the people that are most important to your business. So in your business, you're targeting CEOs, and they have very specific challenges and very specific dreams and goals. And the AI knows what those challenges are for those specific entrepreneurs and CEOs, and so it can craft content that's related to your brand. It also understands the why methodology. And it has lots of books and scientific studies and access to 1.7 trillion parameters of information. And it does it in natural language. It takes into account your voice and your tone and your style and your history and everything. And it can really help you be able to produce a tremendous amount of great content.

How did you learn so much about AI? Because it's so new. Well, it seems new to most of us. And then there are people that are now experts at AI. How do you become an expert at AI?

You take a course, you take classes, and then you practice. You know, knowledge is not power. Applied knowledge is power. And so I took a course, many courses, has read many books, learn from many mentors, watched other people do it. I'm also a reverse engineer type of person because I reverse engineers Google's algorithm to be able to really Good at SEO. So I kind of like reverse engineer and prompt engineer and try to figure out, okay, what's the best way to get to my goal. I take my 30 years of marketing experience and I put it into together with the AI and I have the AI teach me how to be better at AI. And so I'm learning together with the AI. I'm taking the right courses. I actually had the AI helped me create this course available@newaicourse.com we have actually an example free thing there that people can watch and if they want more, they could invest a small amount in order to get educated on AI. And I asked the AI, what should I call the course? They just said call it new AI course because you're always adding new information to it. And so newaicourse.com that's how it was born. And so we have tutorials. You know, Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook, just came out with a mid journey alternative. And so we're creating a tutorial on how to use that tool. Imagine.meta.com and so we're helping people to be able to leverage AI for business development, for marketing, for sales, for growth. And so that's kind of like what we're doing. And we're also building software. So I'm very excited. So the way that I learned it is by doing it, by taking other people's courses, by practicing, and by using AI to learn. You know, spending over a thousand hours just learning the tools and applying it and then teaching it is what really helped me tremendously.

Take us out three years. What do you see for AI?

I see that more and more people are going to either learn it, use it, or fall behind. People say that AI is going to take over all jobs. I think people that know how to use AI will take over the jobs of the people that don't know how to use AI. Because using AI, you know, we're already using it in everything that we do. But understanding how to communicate with it, leverage it, I think it's going to be more integrated into our everyday apparatuses. I already see refrigerators that have AI. I see like everyday household items, your thermostat, your cameras, your doorbells, your cars. Eventually your clothing is going to have artificial intelligence embedded in it, tell you how you're doing physically. So there's a, you know, it's very, very powerful how it can really help us and make a difference in our lives every day.

So do you see AI as a good thing, bad thing, just a thing?

Do I see money As a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing. Money's a tool and you can use it for good. You could use it for bad. You can, you can use it a lot and you could use it a little. It's Access, AI's technology. You could use it for good, you could use it for bad, just like anything. Are guns good or bad? No, people are good or bad. Guns are just guns. And so if you think about it from that perspective, you realize that we have tools at our disposal. And we can use those tools to protect, to serve, to grow, to make a difference, or we can use those tools to destroy. And you know, like, I had certain protection mechanisms that. But, you know, people will find ways to use it to hurt other people. But it's not the tool that hurts other people. It's the people that are using those tools to hurt other people. So, you know, if you give somebody a lot of money, they're going to just either do good with it or do bad with it. The money is not good or bad.

Do you see.

You know, I. Do you see it being, over time a good thing or over time a challenge? You know, not such a good thing that, you know, a lot of people worry about what, Let me put it this way. Do you worry about AI, or do you. Are you just more excited about.

I, I'm more excited about. I am not worried about it because I know that if I know how to control it, then I'm the one that's superior. At the end of the day, people don't understand how beneficial this is for their business. And they're so afraid, they're not willing to learn it. If you start learning it, you'll realize, oh my gosh, this isn't this dangerous machine. This is something we can leverage. There are going to be robots out there that, that are using artificial intelligence to do things that are going to, we're not going to be happy with in the future. But that shouldn't stop you from learning how to use tools that are going to grow your business. You know, ultimately we need to be able to learn how to communicate with these tools in a way that they can really work for us instead of having our competitors use them and put us out of business.

And it's also good personally. Right. For your health, for your memory, for. There's so many other areas besides business that AI is going to be valuable for us. Right?

Yeah. For example, I went, took my kids to Universal Studios and I wanted to figure out the best rides to take to be able to skip the lines and like, it basically told me what to do and how to do it. I wanted to tell my kids stories. It wrote a whole storybook, a custom storybook for my kids. I wanted to buy a house. It helped me negotiate the house. Like, it helps so much and it's so beneficial if you just learn how to use it.

Do you consider AI kind of like your personal assistant?

I, I believe that AI is my personal assistant. And it not only my personal assistant, it helps my assistant also with assistance. So anytime I need anything, I basically just chat with the AI and it does the work for me. It does data entry for me. I took a, I took a, a website that had 1700 records, just a blob of records, and it organized it all into a spreadsheet, into columns, and it organized and retyped and, and, and fixed everything for me. I have AI type up all my meetings for me and then summarize them and send me summaries and action items. Like, there's so much that you can do with AI. It's very, very powerful.

Well, you've convinced me. I got to start becoming my own expert and I. Is that probably your message? Right? Just become your own personal expert on AI. Take your course and other courses and learn about it and just start doing it, because if you don't, you're going to fall behind.

I think that you should learn what tools you need to have at your disposal. Learn how to transcribe audio, learn how to use it to create content, images, edit video, learn how to use it to clone your voice, learn how to use to create AI avatars. There are certain things that you need to learn how to do, and once you know how to do it, you'll save a lot of time, effort, energy in your marketing and business development effort. It's not about mastering it. So many of us try to master things. Maybe that's your why you want to master it. But for me, it's about leveraging it in the way that can solve your everyday issues, whether it's personal issues or business issues. For me, a personal issue is how do I communicate with my ex. Well, AI can communicate with me in a very nice way. You know, think about it from that perspective. There's a lot of really great things that you can do with artificial intelligence, both personally and professionally, and learning how to leverage it, whether it's creating presentations, whether it's creating graphics, whether it's, you know, anything that you need, help with homework. You can really leverage AI to support you and help you Be able to build the life that you want.

Wow.

All right, let's switch gears a little bit. Let's talk about LinkedIn, because I know that's a huge passion of yours. I know a lot of people have tried, you know, some of the things that I hear. Oh, Yeah, I tried LinkedIn. It was a lot of work, and I didn't get much results from it. I know that's been your focus for so long. What's the key to Getting results with LinkedIn?

The key to getting results with LinkedIn is to have a strategy. I said earlier, the right strategy will save you a decade. You cannot get results if you don't have a strategy. So take a step back and ask yourself, what is your plan? Where the people you need to target, and what is the messaging you need to give those people? Once you have a solid foundation and a solid strategy, then you need to build assets. What are your stories? What is your presence like on LinkedIn? Do you have an optimized presence? What automation technologies and AI technologies are you using to save you time and money? And then finally, what are the actions you need to be taking to get results? Results doesn't just come from having sitting around and having an account. If you build it, they will not come. You need to take the right actions. Actions that will get you exposure, actions that will build you credibility, and actions that will help you be able to get meetings at the end of the day. An hour away for LinkedIn, for me, is booking meetings with the right people. So for you, booking meetings is valuable. Then put a value to it and then you could be successful.

And you can. You can pretty much get to almost anybody through LinkedIn. Don't you think?

I think you can get to anybody on LinkedIn. I think, you know, with LinkedIn, it's not so much about getting to anybody, it's about getting to the right people. And the right people know the right people. So if you connect with one connector, that connector has thousands of connections. You can tell a person exactly who you need. They'll connect you with that person. So even though not everybody in the world is on LinkedIn, the people that are the connectors, the strategists, the innovators, those people are on LinkedIn. The CEOs, the brand builders, they're on LinkedIn. So if you want to succeed, you need to learn how to connect with those people. I wrote a book called High Energy Networking, and in that book I talk about the art of networking. LinkedIn is not a selling platform. It's a networking Platform. I was recently talking to my housekeeper and she told me she's not really doing so well financially. And I asked her, do you use LinkedIn? She's like, what's LinkedIn? I was like, you don't know what LinkedIn is? It's a professional social media platform specifically for business networking. She's like, what's networking? I don't even know what networking is. I had to explain to her the concept of networking where people help each other. And she's like, why would anybody want to help me? I said, with that mindset, nobody will want to help you. You got to shift the mindset of people are givers. Because the secret to living is giving, not faking and taking or waking and baking. The key is for you to be a giver and if you want to live a good happy life, learn how you can make a difference for other people. And I'll link that. It's really easy to give other people, give introductions, give information, give invitations to events and connect with people. And if you do that correctly, you'll be very successful. You know the. One of the ways to be able to get anything you want in life is by giving people what they want.

Yeah, I love it. Who would have guessed 15 years ago that you'd be doing what you're doing now? Would you have guessed that? Anything indicating that?

I don't think there would be any indicator that I would be a professional speaker, that I would be an AI expert, that I would have any skills for that matter. I didn't really go to college, I went to go learn to be a rabbi. And so that's, that's where I kind of like went to go do that. But I did. I just cared about business mainly. I wanted to find a way to have financial freedom and be able to pay my bills. And I find that through technology I can do that through LinkedIn, through AI, through marketing, through networking, through building relationships. I'm able to not just do that, do that in abundance and also be able to help other people be in a state of abundance as well. So I love educating all the things that I learned self taught. I like training and teaching other people. We have an AI mastermind group where we meet once a month and I talk about how to use AI for business development. In addition to our course, we have lots of people that are part of it and they absolutely love learning all the innovations that are happening right now. To be able to quickly create videos, to be able to take a YouTube video and turn it into, into shorts, into Instagram reels into TikToks with a click of a button, with captions all edited perfectly. With AI, I mean, there's so much you can do with AI, and learning how to do it will save you time and help you make money.

So networking has been kind of your life, right, for the last 15 years. Here you are in so many different circles. Online, offline, you know, live events, virtual events. What's the key to being successful at networking? How have you done so well in the networking that you've been doing?

About 12 years ago, I realized I was afraid of networking. I was afraid of connecting with strangers. You know, I was. I wasn't really good at, you know, building those relationships. I didn't really understand how to network. And so I went to a networking event to try to get good at it. And I. I realized, oh, my God, I have such a fear of it. Really scared of it. Like, I'm afraid of walking over to a stranger and having a conversation with them. Networking is a form of public speaking, and if you're afraid of public speaking, chances are you're also afraid of networking. And so 90% of people are afraid of networking. And so learning how to network, learning how to build rapport, learning these key skills is essential. Becoming good at networking. If, like I said before, like, if you want to get anything else in life, you got to find a way to give enough people what they want. And networking is about giving. Givers gain. The secret to living is giving. So figuring out how you can give your talents, your skills and your information to help people be able to take their life to the next level is key.

So you just started, you know, take us through your first networking event.

I walked into it, if you can remember. Yeah, of course. I remember it vividly. I mean, I. I wrote about it in my book, High Energy Networking. I walked into a networking event in the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce on 32nd street in New York City, and I go up the elevator and I walk out the door, and Suddenly I see 100 people in the room. And I'm like, no, I gotta get out of here. So I tried to leave and the elevator wouldn't come. And the host told me to go get a drink, and she gave me a free drink. So I said, I went to the bar to get the drink, and there was a life insurance guy standing there, and he's like, is this your first event? I was like, it's my first event ever. And he says, oh, why don't you just take out your business cards, just hand them Out. You'll be fine. So I said, oh, that sound sounds like a job. I can do that. So I pulled out my business cards and I walked up to every person in the room, handed them out like a scalper, and then left. And on my way home, I felt terrible. I felt like I did something wrong. And after reading some books, I went to Barnes and Nobles, got some books. I realized what I did wrong. You know, I did not build relationships. I didn't sit there and genuinely connect with people. And that's what networking is about. It's about really building those relationships, connecting with people, networking with them. And that's how you're much more likely to be successful.

Nah, I love it. Well, Joe, I know you're kind of on a time crunch, and you're sitting in a Chuck E. Cheese right now, so.

I'm with my kid.

Yet you're with your kids. And so if you. If people are listening and I'm sure they want to follow you and learn more about what you're doing and see what courses you've got available, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

The best way to get in touch with me is through LinkedIn. You can go to j o e LinkedIn.com joelinkedin.com and when you connect with me, send me a note. Let me know that you heard me on Gary's show. And this way I'll know why you're connecting with me, and I'll be able to actually hit that connect button I have. I'm almost at my limit with connections, but I'd love to. I'd love for you guys to message me, connect with me, and, you know, tell me about your goals. Tell me what you're looking to achieve. You know, for me, it's about giving. I make three introductions every single day, which is a thousand a year. I like to connect people, and I like to make a difference for people. So let me know what you're trying to do. And if you need help with LinkedIn or AI, I'm happy to help. And yeah, thank you so much for listening.

And lastly, what's the name of your AI? Do you have an AI course?

I have an AI course. Newaicourse.com n e w aicourse.com it's called Evergreen AI. And my AI software is evai AI e v y a I.com.

Heavy AI. Okay, awesome. Well, Joe, thank you so much for being here today, spending a half an hour with us, and we took you away from your kids. I'm sorry, but it's great to catch up and can't wait to catch up again and see where you're at next time we talk. So thanks for being here today.

All right, thank you so much for having me and looking forward to seeing you again soon.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.