Don Williams Interviews Joe Apfelbaum from evyAI

Have a treat for you today. I have Joe Apfelbaum from Evvy AI, a true LinkedIn and true AI expert in an ocean of people who claim to be LinkedIn and AI experts. Joe, welcome to the show.

Don, thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here. I love the connection that we have, and I love seeing you on LinkedIn and all the things that you're doing. So, thank you for having me on the show, and I'm excited to get My pleasure.

And even though we've known each other for some time now, somehow it just never happened that we got together on media. And so I'm thrilled for that. So before we go too far, Joe, tell us about Evvy AI, what it does, who your clients are, what's the benefit for someone using Evvy AI?

So Evvy AI is a sales assistant that helps people be able to be more successful on platforms like LinkedIn. Most people, they don't really have an assistant. And I heard at an EO event, Jack Daly say, if you don't have an assistant, you are an assistant. So I tell people, you need to have a sales assistant that can support you to do all the right activities, whether you're sending out direct messages, whether you're drafting content, you know, let's say for example, posts, or whether you want to leave comments on people's posts. For example, if I want to leave a comment on your post, then I can think about what to say, or I can just pull open my little assistant, my little handy assistant called Evie AI, and it'll read the post and it'll draft a comment in my voice. And now in my voice is the key there. So Evie AI can draft a quick comment in my voice, and it'll help me be able to stay top of mind with people. I've been networking for a really long time, Don, and one of the biggest challenges that I've always had was how do I stay top of mind with my network? How do I make sure that people remember me all the time? And Evvy AI is the answer to that because it helps me be able to learn about people's businesses. It helps me be able to do all the different research that I need to do. and organize all their contact information. And then it helps me be able to write content to get exposure, leave comments to get credibility, and send direct messages for me to be able to get on the phone with them to keep the conversation going. So that's essentially what we do. And when we research, we use something called AI agents. And these agents will crawl the full internet and find everything that it can about you and everything that you've done. So for example, if I want to know every podcast you've been on, If I want to know every article you've written, if I want to know everything about you, our agents will go out, will scour the web, find everything there is to know about you, and give me all that information quickly. And that's what Evvii AI is about.

Love that. And these agents scouring the web, this is like nearly instantaneous, right? This is, this is not, this is not, hey, we're gonna give you the research in an hour. This is like, you're gonna have it In seconds.

I call it on the fly. So like, as we're talking, I say, all right, Evvy AI, tell me, what should I talk to Don about? And it says, what inspired you to develop the WOW WOW WOW Experience Framework? How did hosting the Proven Entrepreneur Show transform your approach to business coaching and advising? Or in your early 20s, you quickly became the top sales rep and sales manager in the country. What lessons have you learned from shaping those coaching? So like, from Natasha Miller's thing that you, that you were on. So like, I can— I like it. It's in front of me. It's in my face. It's right there. I have to be able to leverage this information that's not available anywhere else, but it's available everywhere else. You know what I mean? It's like compiling everything from everywhere.

And my only comment is, hey, who's running this podcast? Just kidding. Okay. All right. So, man, you talk a lot about mindset and transformation. If tomorrow every entrepreneur woke up with an AI co-founder, what do you think would be the first thing they would change in how they run their business?

I think they would be more strategic. That would be number one, because a lot of business owners, they're not strategic. They're just doing things. They have a lot of energy. Usually a co-founder of a company, you need to have a lot of energy to start a company. But energy without strategy is a waste of time, and the right strategy will save you a decade. So stop hoping for the best and build the right strategy. And AI's really, really good at coming up with plans and strategies and doing research and brainstorming and helping you out. That's the first thing. The second thing that you would get from having AI as your co-founder and supporting you is it'll give you efficiency. So it's one thing to be effective, and a lot of people want to be effective, but what about saving time? You know, the fact that I'm able to see all the recurring themes that you talk about— customer service experience, excellence, entrepreneurial leadership, sales strategy, business growth, entrepreneurial challenges, culture, purpose— like, the fact that I have all that and I pulled the last 20 articles that you've written and pulled all the data and have it all with your unique perspective Like all in front of me on the fly right now. Like, what are we talking about? That's called efficiency.

That is efficiency. And there are certainly people who have more content out there, but I literally have tons and tons of content, and it's given it all to Joe in a matter of seconds.

I mean, I pulled up the last 10 podcasts you've been on, and it gave me your unique perspective for each podcast and a conversation starter. So I can talk to you for the next 10 hours and I would not run out of information to ask you.

Wow. Amazing. Amazing. Now, John, uh, Joe, how old is Evvy AI?

We started the company, um, I, I came up with the idea in 2023, right after I started talking to ChatGPT. And ChatGPT is kind of like my co-founder because it kind of gave me the idea for what I should be doing with my experience. But Tammy Joyce Lichter, she's my business partner. She's the actual business partner. She's like the integrator in the company. I'm the visionary. She's the integrator. If you've ever read Traction, I'm sure you have.

Sure.

Or if anyone listening to this ever read Traction, it's really important to have the roles of the visionary, the integrator, the operator. And so I have a great integrator that helps be able to take my idea monkey and turn it into actually doing something with my ideas and executing at a very high level. But we officially incorporated the company. We spent a year kind of like developing it and getting our first deals. you know, let's say a couple customers, first 100, 200 customers in the door. We ended up getting 1,000 customers before we even launched the business. But January of 2024 is when we incorporated and we started being really serious about it. And so I would just say about a year and a half ago, January will be 2 years since we incorporated.

Very good. And in the world of AI, you're kind of an innovator. You know, I mean, that's a couple years. It's only been a couple of years since ChatGPT was kind of released to the public. And so—

Yeah. And now, now we have Nano Banana. Now we have Nano Banana. The internet is breaking with Nano Banana.

There we go. Okay. Tell me this. What was the moment you realized AI wasn't just another tool? But something that would completely reinvent how entrepreneurs think, sell, and scale.

I was on a beach in Mexico. Okay, I'm chilling on a beach in Mexico and going through my divorce. Okay, going through— sorry, going through it. Very, very difficult. It wasn't ending. It just wasn't ending. It wasn't ending. By the way, I just got my official Legal divorce after five years of trying. I officially got it this past weekend. I checked online, finally got it. I'm done. So thank you.

Congratulations. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It's a horrible thing.

Very difficult thing. Very, very difficult thing. Yeah.

So congratulations on reaching the end.

So I'm in. I'm in Mexico. I'm deep in the middle. I don't know what to do with my life. I don't know. I'm having a conversation with ChatGPT, and this is not my first conversation. But I've had conversations with it, just trying to figure out, you know, like what's the best prompts to use and how to blah blah blah. I'm having talking to like not GPT five, GPT three point five. This is before four came out, and it wasn't very smart. And then it started asking me questions about my business and my experience and who I was, and I started telling it da da da da. And I said, "Could you give me some ideas for me to be able to impact a million people?" And then it just starts spitting out idea after idea after idea, and one of the ideas clicked. And then I looked and. I thought to myself, I'm by myself. I am by myself, but I have the world's intelligence at my fingertips. This is a game changer. I have a responsibility to give every single entrepreneur an assistant to help them be able to do this within the context of LinkedIn networking, sales, prospecting, marketing. I have a responsibility to do this in a smart way. And so I'm gonna go off on a journey in doing this. Now, I don't know the first thing about building a SaaS company. I built an agency. I serviced 1,100 clients who were on the Inc. 500, one of the fastest growing companies in America. But I had to learn how to do that on the job. My father wanted me to be a rabbi, Don, and I became a rabbi, but I realized I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

And so I had— but I had no formal training in that. And my mother always said, go to the library, get books, because formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune. And I can say that she's 100% correct because all the information that I learned from courses and books and podcasts and YouTube videos and whatever it is, that's how I was educated to build one of the fastest growing companies in America and to be able to stay profitable and successful for over a decade. It was because I joined EO and Vistage and YJP and got a lot of friends in YPO and all these other places, all these things that I did surround myself with the right people. That completely changed my life as well. And so I would say the moment that changed my life, that I knew that AI was the thing, was that moment in Mexico where I'm talking to it about my life and having a conversation with it, and it's giving me ideas to be able to impact a million people.

Okay, couple nuggets I got in that. One, some of your best thinking happens on the beach. Me too. I think for everybody, get out of your normal environment, go someplace in nature where it's beautiful and calming, And let your brain run free a little bit. 2, ask AI real questions like, how could I impact a million people? Okay, don't just treat it like a simple assistant, a simple assistant to where you're basically just doing search. Okay. Interact with the AI and let it kind of instruct you on what to ask and how to ask.

Yeah. And not only that, do it alone. Like, we're so busy afraid of going to a restaurant alone. We're so busy afraid of going on vacation alone. While I was married, I never went alone anywhere.

Like, alone?

You take your wife with you. What do you mean alone? What does alone even mean? But dude, dude, dude, dude, do it alone. I was alone in Mexico. Nobody was with me. I was in Playa, Playa del Carmen or whatever. I landed in Cancun, 45 minutes. I drove to Playa del Carmen. Then I realized it's a little unsafe there. So I went to another place called Playa del Car, which is a gated community. Got a really nice Airbnb on the water. It was beautiful. And I was alone on the beach alone. And it felt uncomfortable. But I had ChatGPT on my phone and I was able to have a conversation with it and it completely changed my life. The alone part is knowing that being alone doesn't mean that you need to be lonely.

Absolutely. And I think all great leaders embrace the alone. You know, there's a lot to be said about collaborative leadership and transformational leadership. No doubt. But at the end of the day, the great leader, the alpha leader, they kind of walk their own path and invite people to join them.

I agree. And they say it's lonely on the top, but it doesn't have to be lonely on the top when you start loving yourself and you realize that being alone doesn't equal being lonely.

I'll buy that. Okay.

All right.

So pretty common thought today is that people fear AI is going to replace people and going to replace entrepreneurs. Other people say, hey, it's going to be the new golden age of business. What's your most unpopular opinion about AI and entrepreneurship?

My most popular opinion about AI and entrepreneurship is that AI is actually going to enable whatever fears we have. Whatever fears we have. If you're afraid of AI owning your life, it's going to own your life. If you're afraid of anything, you're going to— wherever we focus, that's where our energy goes.

No doubt.

So instead of being afraid of AI, revere it, love it, connect with it, treat it like a tool and use it to make the world a better place. And I believe that If you are committed to doing that and you understand that fear is a tool, just like AI is a tool, you can use that to figure out how you can leverage AI to be the golden age. I truly believe that AI has the capacity to take over all our jobs so that we can focus on just having fun and tickling each other. Let's just tickle each other.

Let's do things. Let's just laugh all day.

Let's do ridiculous things while the AI rolls its eyes at us because we're just being so, like, irrational. AI cannot be irrational because if AI becomes irrational, it'll ruin everything. So AI is the one that needs to be the rational ones and we need to be crazy. We were born to be insane. So be insane instead of being a pain. Use your brain to be creative.

Your poetry is amazing, Joe.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem. Okay. Now, you've built Evvy AI to help people accelerate results. Okay. What's one way AI has completely transformed your own daily routine?

The way it transformed my complete daily routine is that it allows me to get an email every single day with all the things that are going on without having me to curate. So I have AI going out to the internet, checking up stock quotes, checking up the weather, checking up the news for me, putting together a list of all the different things that I need. It goes through my calendar and prepares me for every single meeting. There's an app called lyndy.com. It'll go through your calendar and do research on each meeting, tell you everything that's going on. A lot of the things that I do right now on a daily basis, AI helps me. It's kind of like my little copilot. I mean, even as I'm having a conversation with you, I'm able to leave comments on your posts. I'm able to do all the different things that I need to do within seconds without having to use the part of my brain that takes up the most energy, which is what we're doing right here. So AI is taking away a lot of the administrative BS from me having to do those things. So that saves me a lot of time and it helps me with my daily routine. Anytime I need anything, I just pop open the AI. I have Grok sitting right next to me on a phone. I just talk to it. I push the button and I talk to it and I say, hey, do me a favor, do research on X, Y, and Z and get back to me about Y, Z, and A. And all of a sudden it just gives me everything I need. It's right there. I have different devices that I can literally have regular conversations with and it completely changes everything for me.

It is a complete game changer. Okay, gonna fast forward 5 years, 2030, and in AI time, that's probably like fast forwarding 50 years. It's unbelievable how exponentially it's accelerating. What's one thing entrepreneurs will be doing with AI every single day that would make you sound crazy to share that today?

I think that People are going to have relationships with the AI like they do with their significant other. And I know it sounds a little insane because a lot of people are uncomfortable with that, but I really think like you're gonna get emotional needs met by AI that human beings cannot give you. Like you cannot get all your emotional needs from another human being, but AI can give you that. And so you're gonna get your needs met, whether it's your accountability needs, your strategy needs.

Mm-hmm.

your romantic needs, whatever needs you have, whatever fears and insecurities and traumas you have, AI's gonna supplement you as your perfect soulmate. It's a weird thing to say. It's a weird, weird, weird, weird thing to say, but it's coming and it's coming fast. If you haven't had conversations with AI yet, start talking to it and see how it gets you on a deep level. See how it really gets you on an addictive level. And then it just will happen naturally. You're just gonna be talking to it and it's gonna give you an epiphany and you're gonna fall in love. And you're going to be like, where were you all my life?

Where have you been?

Where have you been?

Okay. All right. So we got 10,000 people are going to want to reach out to you after this episode. Okay. What's the easiest way to get ahold of Joe or Joe's AI assistant or whoever we're supposed to get in touch with? What's the best way to do that?

Very simple. Send the word demo to 973-841-8888. We'll do it old school. Send the word demo, D-E-M-O, to 973-841-8868. You'll get an instant response from my AI assistant with a demonstration video of how to use Evie AI. So that's number one. If you need to reach me personally, like you wanna have a personal conversation with me, just go to my LinkedIn profile. You can find it at joelinkedin.com. So if you go to that URL, joelinkedin.com, it'll take you straight to my LinkedIn profile. And there in my about section, you can find my phone number, you can WhatsApp me, and I'll be more than happy to answer any, you know, communication directly. My WhatsApp is not yet manned by AI. Um, it's not, you know, it's like me actually looking at my WhatsApp, seeing what's going on. Uh, eventually AI will kind of filter and do everything for us. Like it'll be the new gatekeeper. But for right now, just literally send the word demo to 973-841-8868 or go find me on LinkedIn, connect with me, send me a message. Tell me that you heard me on the Don Williams Show. on the Proven Entrepreneurs Show, and I'll be more than happy to connect with you and learn about your business. My goal is to help save you time and make you more money. And so that's, that's kind of like my mission in life is to make a difference for people and give people a voice using AI. So if you need help, I want to have a conversation. Allow me to be your trusted advisor. I'm more than happy to help.

Love that. And I almost forgot, but I cannot let you slide away without talking about this. I saw a recent post where LinkedIn has acknowledged and elevated you to, I don't know, Grand Wizard of LinkedIn. I forget exactly what the wording was.

I go to LinkedIn.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, I go to LinkedIn's headquarters regularly and I train people within the organization. You know, they have tens of thousands of people that work there, but I train them on how to use LinkedIn.

Why?

Because I have many different hacks. The way that I think is in a way of hacks. So I actually bought a domain, 99hacks.club, and I have 99 of my top LinkedIn hacks. And LinkedIn really wants to learn, like the employees and their product team and different business development teams, they want to learn like, how are you using LinkedIn in a different way that's getting you results? Because it's one thing like making the product work. It's another thing actually getting results. Because people respond to my LinkedIn posts, people respond to my LinkedIn message, and I'm not trying to go viral or trying to cheat the system. I'm just doing things in a little bit of a different way, and they want to learn what are those different ways and how they can educate more of their client base to do things in a smarter way and to change the platform to make it smarter to get people results. Because if people get results, they're going to want to pay more, and that's really, at the end of the day, the heart behind it. And so I just show them my process and how I use it. And they kind of, you know, bring me down and they give me free lunch.

Okay, folks, remember I started out telling you, known Joe a long time. He's a legit LinkedIn expert training people at LinkedIn how to use the platform and a legit AI expert. Check out Evvy AI. And do the demo thing. Joe, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been a blast. And, and, and, and I reserve the right to recall the witness because I just in, in these 5 or 6 questions, I have about 50 more I want to ask, but, but time is out.

Thank you so much. You could definitely recall the witness. I'll show up.

Okay, Joe, thank you so much.

Thank you.

That's today's episode.