In this presentation Joe Apfelbaum argues that hope alone is not a business strategy; a solid plan, the right people, and a clear promise (the "3 Ps") are essential to generate profit. He introduces three growth levers—networking, prospecting, and marketing—explaining why they must be applied in sequence. He shares concrete LinkedIn tactics (removing tracking codes, using company pages, a three‑step DM process of greeting‑feeding‑meeting) and demonstrates how to analyze viral posts with a scorecard. Apfelbaum promotes a Prospecting Bootcamp and an AI‑driven daily prospecting system that automatically finds and emails leads, teaching tools such as Sales Navigator, cold‑email scripts, phone‑calling techniques, and the BANT qualification framework. He stresses that storytelling sells better than feature lists and that marketing (branding, assets, funnels) only works when backed by networking and prospecting. Throughout, he encourages adding value to connections, building a top‑10 list of engaged LinkedIn creators, and using his AI sidekick, Evvy AI, to accelerate relationship building. The talk ends with a call‑to‑action to try Evvy AI and to apply for the bootcamp.
Chapters
I believe that the right strategy will save you a decade. Most people are spraying and praying. And if you're hoping for the best, hope is a great thing. It's just not a strategy. A strategy means you have the right plan. My name is Joe Apfelbaum. I'm so excited that you guys are here. And the reason why we come together is because we want to build relationships with each other and get to know each other. And the fewer people we have here, the deeper we can go. But the more people we have, the wider we can go. The invitation itself has value. And I was like, holy shit, the invitation itself has value. So if you want to add value to people's life and you have 1,000 connections, Think about inviting them. Think about inviting them to things. It's one of the 5 I's that I teach in the feeding. When you're DMing people, there's greeting, feeding, and then meeting. People try to go straight to meeting. They try to go straight to making babies. First greeting, feeding, and then meeting. Now, why are we removing tracking codes? Because this tracking code tells LinkedIn exactly who shared this link and where it was shared from. We want to not let LinkedIn know how this link was shared, because then they know what page it is and who shared it. And B. Randall did the same thing. You want to make sure that you're sharing a solid link that has no tracking. I think this could be really helpful for you guys to do a deep forensic analysis on other people's posts, to really understand why those posts went viral and what you can learn from those posts. And possibly get additional hooks and additional information on those posts. So what this actually does is it gives a scorecard to every part of the post. It tells you the power move, the hook analysis, the CTA analysis, the voice, the engagement potential, the rhythm and readability of the post. I believe that the right strategy will save you a decade. Most people are spraying and praying. And if you're hoping for the best, hope is a great thing. It's just not a strategy. A strategy means you have the right plan, you know who the right people are, and you know what to say that's the right promise. The plan, the people, and the promise. Those are the 3 Ps that will help you be able to get profit in your business. Then once you have the plan, the people, and the promise, then what you need is you need to tell stories because stories sell. Features tell, but stories sell. Lever number 1 is networking. You don't have to spend any money to do networking. That's the easiest lever to get in the door. If I introduce Joe Mitchell to a lawyer, that costs Joe Mitchell nothing. And he had a conversation, it cost him nothing, and he has the ultimate trust because I introduced him to the lawyer. That's an ultimate lever. That's lever number 1. But that lever can only get you so far. Why? Because that lever— It's a one-time thing. Is based on how many relationships you can have. And if you're limited to just 100, 200, 300, 1,000 relationships, you can't grow your business to millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars doing that. How do I know? It's because I had to use the 3 levers of both networking, prospecting, and marketing to be able to do all 3. Now, the second, the reason I choose lever number 2, prospecting before marketing, Is because if you don't know how to close deals, if you don't know how to qualify people, you can do all the marketing in the world, get all the people on the phone in the world. But if you don't know how to prospect properly, if you don't know how to turn a prospect into a qualified client, into a closed deal, then you can do all the marketing you want in the world. You're not going to close deals. So learning prospecting is extremely important. Understanding how to qualify people once you get them on the phone. Is a need that my clients have. And that's why for the first time we're offering the Prospecting Bootcamp and it's happening in March. It's 4 90-minute sessions. It's sold out completely. But if you go to evviai.com/prospecting, you can fill out a form over there and then apply. And if it makes sense and we happen to have room, we'll let you in and we'll give you a discount on it. It's 4 90-minute classes. We teach you how to do things like Sales Navigator. We teach you how to do all types of interesting things like cold email. I have a system that I built that automatically finds prospects with AI every single day and emails them every day. So every day I get prospects being found and emailed by itself on autopilot. Are people automatically responding to those emails? No, not all the time, but sometimes yes. But why not set a system that automatically emails people and finds the people too? Do you get what I'm saying? It's part of what we're going to be teaching. We're going to teach you how to find phone numbers. We're going to teach you how to call people and not be weird. How to use a script, how to get on the phone with weirdos without you being weird and them being the weirdo. And how to be able to have the beliefs that you need in order to properly qualify. Have you guys heard of BANT? B-A-N-T? We're going to teach you the concept of budget, authority, Need, timeframe. We're going to teach you how to ask the right questions to identify if there's an opportunity without sounding like you're selling anything. How to get the person to really want to buy from you without you having to offer them anything. If I go over to somebody on LinkedIn and I say, hey, are you having trouble leaving comments? Because I noticed you haven't really been leaving comments. They're like, oh my God, it's so hard to leave a comment. I'd love to show you how I leave comments. Would you be open to seeing how I leave 100 comments a day sometimes? What? 100 comments? How's that even possible? Well, I'll show you how you can leave 10 comments in under 10 minutes. And then you can tell me if it's easy or not and it won't cost you a dime. And they're like, oh my God, I can't wait. And they get on the phone with me because they're interested in leaving comments. They just don't have the time to do it. If I find somebody that hasn't posted and I send them a message and say, oh my God, you You have so many followers. I noticed that you haven't been posting. Is it because you don't have time or you don't want to post? I don't have time to post. What if I wrote your next year's worth of posts in a quick 15-minute call? Would you be open to that? What? That's ridiculous. Of course I'd be open to that. Do you get what I'm saying? That's powerful prospecting because I'm not selling anything. I'm qualifying. And once I qualify, I could identify, are they willing to pay $29? Are they willing to pay $29,000? Are they willing to pay $290,000? Like, what are they capable of? How much can I add value to them? And then the third lever is marketing. Marketing is about creating awareness. I do marketing. If you want to get to a $10 million business, if you want to break the million-dollar mark, chances are you're going to need some marketing. You're going to need good branding. You're gonna need good assets. You're gonna need a good website. You're gonna need a good funnel. That's what marketing is. I wrote a book called High Energy Marketing, teaching you how to build a funnel. The problem is people with no money start marketing and then they fail and they feel like they got burnt because they never did networking and they never did prospecting. And they went straight to marketing because marketing just feels good. I want inbound marketing. I want inbound marketing. Do you get what I'm saying? Inbound marketing without networking and prospecting Is going to get you low-quality clients. Who are your top 10 networkers? By the way, if you have 10, say I have 10. If you need 10, say I need 10 in the chat. Who are your top 10 engaged LinkedIn creators? And do you have a list inside Evvy AI called top 10? And every month, do you look at that list and message those top 10? And comment on their posts. The other thing I want to encourage you guys to do is to create a company page on LinkedIn. Company pages are great because company pages allow you to like and comment on your own posts from the company page. So if you want 10 likes on your post and branding makes a difference, when you see a post that has 10 likes, it makes a difference than if it has no likes. If you are not adding value to people's lives, Start doing it today. And the more conversations you have, the more opportunity you have to add more value. The more conversations you have with people. And when I do these events and we have dozens of people here, I'm actually having a conversation with each one of you at the same time. Want to make networking easier and more effective? Try Evvy AI, your AI-powered sidekick that helps you connect, engage, and grow your network faster, than ever. Click the link and start building smarter relationships today.
