How to gain followers on LinkedIn - 142 LinkedIn Live 2024 with Joe Apfelbaum

I am L'Chaim. It's a new year, and in this new year, I want you to add 49,000 followers. What do you say? Okay, okay, okay, okay. 1,000 followers. Some of you might be freaking out, like, how am I gonna add more followers? Okay, so this tool here is called Evie AI. It's a LinkedIn AI assistant. I don't know if you know this, but on LinkedIn, you'll see I have 49,000 followers here on LinkedIn. You can add followers relatively quickly. There's a lot of ways to add followers on LinkedIn. Let's take a look at some of my followers just to kind of see who is following me on LinkedIn. So the most recent follower is a guy named Michan Andre. Michan Andre is the number one resource for Cabo luxury services. He is Cabo Platinum. He has 49,000 followers on LinkedIn. We're connected over here on LinkedIn. I'm going to send him a message. Let's see. Looks like, looks like we're connected on LinkedIn. If you click on contact info, you can see when the person connected. He connected on October 12th. Okay, so he connected on October 12th. Let's see what the context says. Misha, your expertise in luxury is impressive. I'd love to connect and learn more about how to collaborate in the marketing space. Are you open to connecting? I'm going to say, thank you for connecting on LinkedIn. You almost have 20K followers. Impressive. Impressive. Okay, so you almost have 20K followers. Impressive. I'm starting a conversation with the guy. So he's a follower of mine, but he's also a connection. And the reason he became a follower Is because he was added as a connection. When somebody is added as a connection, they also become a follower. But look at this, check this out. In his background over here, he has a WhatsApp. So I can go ahead and hit +52 1624 688 5622 and send him a WhatsApp message. He's in Mexico, it looks like, in Los Cabos, Mexico. But that's, that's really cool that you can just WhatsApp people just like that on LinkedIn. This is what I love about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a platform where every follower on LinkedIn is worth 10 times the amount that it is on other platforms because on LinkedIn you see the person's first name, last name, company name, where they work, where they worked before, and all that other information. As a matter of fact, I'm on LinkedIn Live. I'm also on YouTube Live and I'm also on Facebook Live, but I'm on LinkedIn Live primarily because even if I get one person to watch this video, and typically when I do my LinkedIn Lives, I get more than one person watching the videos. But even if I only get one person to watch this video on LinkedIn, that person is probably a high-value person. If you like this over here like Gracie did, Gracie's a high-value person. So if you're watching this right now, just write, I want to meet high-value people in the chat so that I know that you're up for meeting high-value people. Now it is 10 PM Eastern on a Saturday night, Motzei Yom Kippur. And so if you want to add more followers, what you need to do is you need to make sure that you're commenting on the posts of your connections. And I use Evy AI to leave a comment. Let me show you how many comments I left, and everyone can do this. If you go to evyai.com and you press login, okay, so we're going to press login. Evyai.com. I just logged in. On the left side, there's something called the Learning Hub. You click on the Learning Hub and then you click on Quick Links, and then you're going to see a thing that says LinkedIn Dashboard. LinkedIn Dashboard is in LinkedIn, tells you exactly How many comments you left in any given week? My goal is to leave a thousand comments a month. If I will have a thousand comments a month, and I got five weeks or four weeks, I got to make sure that I get to my goal. So this is going to reset tomorrow. I don't need to leave any more comments. I'm still going to leave comments. I don't need to leave any more comments because I got to my goal. If I wasn't at my goal, I would go on a comment commenting rampage, but I don't have to. I did twenty posts in the past week. That helps me get to my 1,000 posts a year. So if I wanna do 1,000 posts a year, 1,000 comments per month, and I wanna do at least one contribution every day, that is powerful. So let's do our contribution for the day. We're gonna click on add contribution. We're gonna go to a specific contribution that I wanna add. So where am I gonna add the contribution? I'm going to show you something cool. If you go into LinkedIn, I'm going to go into LinkedIn. I'm going to go to, I'm going to press Ctrl+0 so I can see more. And then I'm going to go, first of all, if I see someone that I know and that I like and that I trust, I'm going to right away leave a comment on their post. I mean, that is the number one thing you have to do is just drop a comment, put your 2 cents into the post. I'm using Evvy AI just to speed up the process of commenting, but if you see a client. If you see someone that paid you money, if you see a referral partner, someone that referred business to you, if you see someone who's a center of influence in your life that is in the position to refer business to you, it is your responsibility to make sure that you're top of mind with them. And the best way to be top of mind is by leaving a comment on their post, especially if you are the only comment. Think about that. I'm the only comment. I have 100% of his attention and of his audience's attention when they visit this post. Why are you not leaving more comments? It's because you're shy. It's because you don't know how. It's because you're not using Evie AI properly. Start using Evie AI properly and you'll start leaving more comments. I'm gonna like this myself right over here. Then I'm gonna have Evie AI go ahead and like it as well. Evie AI is gonna give it a heart, and then Evie AI is gonna repost it. So now this is gonna be reposted on the Evie AI company page. That is cool. That is actually really, really cool. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into a different profile because I have access to other people's profiles. And the reason I have access to their profiles is so that I can support them and I can support myself and I can help people. So right here, Tammy just loaded in the thing. Okay. I'm going to say, love this. Looking forward to learning how to add more followers on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, @JoeApplebaum, and comment. So Tammy just left a comment on the video. I'm going to go back over here and you're going to see when you refresh this page here, recent activities on Joe Applebaum, that Tammy left a comment on the video. Okay, so it says one comment here. You can see Tammy left a comment. I'm going to say thanks, ready to share insights. Okay, so I got a comment from Tammy. I've replied to the comment from Tammy, and that's automatically going to show more exposure here, which is going to capture a bigger audience and ultimately allow me to be even more successful on LinkedIn. So how do you get followers? Well, the number one thing you want to do to get followers is leave comments. Whenever I leave a comment, I get a follower from somebody that finds my comment interesting. So where do you leave comments? You leave comments on the feed. Like I just did just now, right? I just left a comment on the feed. Um, you leave comments on your own posts. Believe it or not, commenting on your own posts will make your posts get out there more and will allow you to be able to get seen by more people. Make sure to comment on collaborative articles, especially if the collaborative articles have no expert sharing their perspective. So you see there's no expert sharing their perspective here because there's no share perspective button. That's fine. I'm going to go, even though I hit add my perspective, it's not letting me. But do you see Evvy AI allows me to be able to share my perspective? And over here it wants 20 words. I'm going to change it from 20 words to just be a little bit longer to give a little more perspective over here. Balancing nurturing. Okay. In sales, effectively balancing collaborative. Okay. So that's a little bit longer. I'm going to press add. And now you can see I just left this collaborative article because my goal is to do one. Per day. Okay. Just one. I'm only going to do one and that's it. And if you go to the dashboard, instead of it saying 11 on the dashboard, it's going to say 12 on the dashboard. Now you see 12 collaborative articles, 283 comments. I'll probably end up leaving another 20 comments today as I'm just doing what I'm doing. So I'm probably going to get to 300 comments and that will be my record, you know, leaving 300 comments in one week. That's a record. That's a lot of comments. That's a lot of work. Um, but maybe, maybe one day I'll be able to leave 301. You know, like right now I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to set a record. I may as well set a record and get to 300 in one week. Um, and then we can have a contest to see who leaves the most comments. And then we can pay people if they get the highest one at the end of the month. We give them $100. Oh my God, that's such a good idea. That is such a good idea. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Wow, that's such a good idea. All right, what did Ray Dalio say? Oh, this is interesting. He said the ability to make money, save it, and put it in capital is an effective motivator of people and an allocator of resources that raises people's living standards. Okay, okay, Ray. You raise an important point about capitalism. Blah blah blah blah blah. Now people will see me. Okay, that's the key. I left a comment. This guy Victor Vogel—I have no idea who Victor Vogel is—but he is in the United States. He's in Oklahoma. He has 872 followers. He went to the University of Oklahoma. He is actively using LinkedIn. He posted 18 hours ago, and guess what? I'm gonna go ahead and leave a comment. On his post, and he will notice me because I commented on Ray Dalio's post that he commented on as well, and I commented on over here. Now, anyone that's engaged on LinkedIn is likely to follow you. I want you to realize that LinkedIn is a powerful platform, that if you want more exposure, if you want more speaking engagements— let's talk to ChatGPT for a minute over here about speaking engagements. My friend asked me me for, for 10 strategies to get more speaking engagements? Can you help me come up with 10 ideas for a CEO and entrepreneur that wants to talk to more CEOs and entrepreneurs and wants to get paid more? Paid to speak. What are the 10 strategies? All right, now let's see what it's going to come up with. We're also going to use Claude and we're going to, uh, do this. And then we're also going to use meta.ai because why not? Let's just ask Facebook what it thinks the 10 are. And then let's ask Grok because if we're not going to ask Grok, then we suck. And then let's ask Perplexity. Perplexity, Perplexity, Perplexity, Perplexity. Here we go. All right, so we have ChatGPT in the running. ChatGPT, leverage thought leadership on LinkedIn. Woo! Yes, yes, ladies and gentlemen, yes, you get speaking engagements by sharing your thoughts on LinkedIn. But how? We're going to give you 10 tips on this one here. Join speaking bureaus and agencies. Go where the speakers are. Go where the speakers are. Hire people to get you speaking engagements, okay? Hire a, a speakers bureau. Hire— go to Toastmasters, all that. Create a speaker reel. People need to see you speaking, so you got to create some speaker reel or go on LinkedIn Live and start speaking and adding value. And then what's going to happen is people are going to see it. You want to make sure that people know your style, they know your energy. Like, if If you have terrible energy, like, I don't know that I want certain people speaking if they have really bad energy, right? They're not like putting out the type of energy that's infectious, that people want to hear, that they want to lean into. They're not putting passion into what they're saying. They don't even sound authoritative. That's the crazy thing is like, if you don't sound authoritative, why would anyone want to hire you as a speaker? Maybe they want a non-authoritative speaker. Maybe that's Maybe that's the, the, the audience. The audience need to have the non-authoritative speaker. Some people don't need authority. Some people want someone who's calm and slow and puts them to sleep, or is not even professional and just speaks from the heart, but has no passion because they're so— pitch to industry conferences. That's a good one. Industry conferences. Leverage existing networks. Oh my God. Obvious. Obvious. Host webinars, write and publish a book or ebook, collaborate with influencers and podcast hosts, develop a signature talk. Okay, now it's going off the deep end. Develop a signature talk. I mean, I guess develop a signature talk, your topic that matters. Okay. And then offer free workshops to gain momentum. Okay, that's good. These are all, these are all good. What are we gonna do? We're gonna take this and we'll put it in Gamma. But before we put it in Gamma, we need someone, someone named Gemini. Gemini to also tell us, tell us, give us some tips. We forgot to ask Gemini for the tips. All right, here we go. Build a strong personal brand. Okay, it's the same thing but on LinkedIn, it said. Um, create professional speaking website, leverage existing networks, offer to speak at industry conferences, utilize speaker bureaus and agencies, create value-share content, engage in specific partnerships, and optimize your LinkedIn profile. Okay. Meta says define your niche, develop a strong speaker profile, leverage your network, research and target conferences, uh, build your online presence, craft a compelling— no one said set a goal. Like, literally nobody's saying follow up and be proactive. Nobody said set a goal. That's crazy. Grok: identify your target conferences, build a strong online presence, develop a unique selling proposition, network and leverage Connections, create valuable content, join speaking bureaus, pitch to event organizers, offer customized speaking packages, leverage your existing network, and track and follow up. Okay, moving on. Perplexity, develop unique speaking brand and message, focus on distinctive approach that sets you apart from other speakers, create high-quality content, leverage your network, optimize your online presence, engage with event organizers, offer value-packed presentations, develop multiple speaking topics. Seek testimonials and referrals. Partner with speaking bureaus. Utilize social proof. Okay, this is really good. That— this is good. All right, Gemini, here we go. Leverage your networks. Build an online presence. Develop compelling speaking topics. Create high-quality content. Seek out speaking opportunities. Offer value-based services. Optimize your online presence. And then offer flexible rates. Continue and learn and grow. Okay. So which ones would I say? Well, let's, let's, let's go to Drive and let's start a document. And this is what I would say. I would go to Tools here and I would click on Voice Typing and I would click on the AI to type my voice. The thing that I would say are the most important things when it comes to being successful at doing speaking engagements is that if you want a speaking engagement, you first need a strategy. So a strategy includes what are your goals? Who's your target market? What are you going to be speaking about? How many speaking engagements are you going to have? Who are the people in the position to get you speaking? Like, what are the organizations and what are the titles of the people in those organizations? Like your centers of influence, people that are most likely to refer you to get speaking engagements. And if you get those 5 things in order as your foundation, as your strategy, then you can be successful because any of the following things that I'm going to tell you will fall back to this strategy. Like the strategy will allow you to, for example, here's, here's one way to get speaking engagements. Tell your network what you're looking to speak about and to who, and who you're looking to meet. Simple as that. I mean, it might sound obvious telling your network that you're a speaker and the topics that you speak and who you speak for and who's in the position to place you there. Like, telling your strategy to your network is key. That is key. If you are not telling your network that you're looking for speaking engagements They don't know, they can't help you. The easiest way to get a speaking engagement is for someone in your network to invite you because they heard you say that you want a speaking engagement. Simple as that. 90% of people don't say that. 90% of people are afraid of public speaking. So that one thing will get you more speaking engagements, but it has to be specific. You can't just say, I'm looking for speaking engagements. You gotta tell them your entire strategy. Hey, I'm doing 2 talks this year about how to do AI on LinkedIn. I speak to entrepreneurs. If you know somebody in EO, in Vistage, in YPO, that's a learning chair, or you know anyone that has an association and they think their members would benefit from learning AI or LinkedIn or a combination of the 2 or anything related to marketing or personal development, like if you hear of anyone looking for a dynamic speaker that's engaging and and that can really deliver a tremendous amount of value, then I'd love for you to throw my name into the hat. What do you say? Can I send you my speaker kit? Are you prepared? Do you have a speaker kit? So that's number 2, make sure you have a speaker kit. Make sure you have a reel. Make sure you have photos of you speaking. Make sure your topic is on your website or it's on your LinkedIn profile or somewhere where people can see what your topics are. Make sure you have a deck that's ready to go. I mean, you need assets. So number one is you need your strategy. Number 2 is you need your network. Number 3 is you need your assets because you got to send people assets. You got to send people email templates. I can keep going on and on. You need great headshots of yourself. Go get a photo shoot. You know, like these are the things that are going to help you. Get more exposure. Do videos, videos like this video, even the video of me talking right now. That's boom, boom, boom powerful to get speaking engagements by doing that. I really want you to think about those 3 things as the, the pillars for everything else that I'm going to tell you. Isn't it crazy that we're like, we're like stacking it here? We're stacking it. I'm loving this. The next thing that you need to do Is you need practice. Simple as that. You got to practice. What does practice mean? Practice means do webinars. Practice means do seminars. Practice means host your own webinars, host your own networking events. Just get up and speak. Tell 5 people you're going to be speaking and that they would love— you would love to speak to them and you would love them to hear you speak. I invite people to trainings all the time. I'm doing a training right now. Someone sees me doing this training. They're like, hey, can you do this training for my audience? Boom. This happens, but I gotta practice. I gotta do it. So you gotta be on LinkedIn Live. You gotta be producing videos. You gotta be sharing Instagram stories. You gotta put yourself out there and let the world know that A, you exist, and B, show them your style. Practice. Just do it. Just start doing it. Like if you want a speaking engagement, don't wait for a speaking engagement to happen. Make the speaking engagement, book it. Call a friend and say, hey, I'd like to talk about dogs or whatever you talk about. I'd like to talk about HR. I'd like to talk about sales prospecting and do a webinar. Pick a location in New York City. Could be a WeWork. You get a conference room and you say, hey, I'm doing a presentation on X, Y, and Z. Do you want to come? Yes, I would love to come hear you speak. Your closest people, your 5, 10, 15, 20 people would love to come hear you speak. Think about it. If your friend was doing a talk about his expertise, wouldn't you want to go hear what he has to say? If he prepared to do a talk that is inspiring, that is funny, that is with the program, wouldn't you want to go see what he has to share? I book speaking engagements on my own and people come. I don't have to get a large group of people. You don't need 100 people, 500 people. Don't be such an egomaniac. Get 3 people to come. Get 5 people to come. Get 7 people to come. Let me see you do seminars. You want to do seminars? Go ahead, do seminars. When you start doing seminars regularly, when you practice, people notice you, you get better, and you get more engagements. All right? Number 4 is practice. So go back to number 1 is strategy. Number 2 is network. Number 3 is assets. Number 4 is practice. Number 5, you need to promote. You need to promote yourself. You need to send people emails. You need to post on social media. You need to text people. You need to promote. Most speakers are waiting for speaking engagements to come, but they're not promoting. They're not asking proactively people and putting themselves out there. They don't have a list. Of people that they ask, hey, are you— do you know anyone looking for the speaker? Or who do you know that's looking for the speaker? They don't have a social media outlet to DM people and promote. If you're not promoting, then how do you expect people to know that you exist? You got to remind people. It's— promoting is staying top of mind. There are many different ways to promote. LinkedIn posts, you can promote that way. You can do ads. I personally like promoting organically on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. That's where I promote. And I let people know, hey, I'm a speaker. If you're looking for a speaker, let me know. These are the topics that I speak on. Put yourself out there. Let the world know that you are a professional speaker. And also, when you're promoting, you're promoting the assets. Remember, you have assets. You're promoting your practice, which you're going to be doing. You're doing a speaking engagement. Come listen. No, no, that's promoting. You're promoting the practice. You're promoting the assets. You're promoting based on the strategy. And you're promoting to your network. We're tying it all together, baby. Oh, it's so delicious. So delicious. The next is you want to be in the right circles. You need to be in the right circles. You need to join the National Speakers Association if you want to be a professional speaker. I mean, just go be part of it. Like, if you really want to be a professional speaker, join some association. I'm part of the Executives Association. I'm part of the NSA. If you have a Toastmasters, join the Toastmasters. If you have time for that, go do that. Join, join EO, join YPO, join Vistage, join, join organizations. You join organizations, you join groups, you go to paid groups like the Joint Venture Mastermind group that I'm part of, you get speaking engagements. I just did a speaking engagement to a summit 2 days ago. It came from the Joint Venture Mastermind group. It's a paid group. I pay $1,000 or whatever, $2,000 a year. I'm part of it. I'm happy. I'm a member. I can— today I can go speak to 50 people right now and they'll pick up the phone and talk to me because I'm part of this organization. There's so many organizations that you can be part of that you might not be in the right circles. Like, are you surrounding yourselves with other speakers? Are you meeting event planners? Are you meeting learning chairs or whatever? You know, like, are you meeting the presidents at the side for the summits or whatever? Whoever your target market is, are you meeting dietitians if that's who your target market is? So you need to be in the right circle. What else can I say? If you're in the right circle, and you're practicing in those circles to your network with your assets, and you're promoting in the right circles with having the right strategy, that's, that's an epic thing. That's an epic thing. You know, as number 7, I would probably say do podcasts. That would be number 7. Just, just get on podcasts. Um, I've gotten such great speaking engagements for people just hearing me on a podcast. You know, it's really easy to get on podcasts. You go to podcastguest.com, use the word Mojo to get 20% off. And if you get a featured, uh, directory listing on podcastguest.com, you're gonna get on 20, 30 podcasts. That means you're gonna be on YouTube and you're gonna be all over the place. Getting other people to interview you is a powerful way. And sometimes, sometimes when you collaborate with those influencers and podcast hosts, that's, that's extremely a powerful way for you to be able to get in the door. I would definitely say that as number 7. Um, yeah, what else, what else would I say? I mean, I, I really covered a lot. Um, yeah, I did cover a lot. I'm, I'm glad this is recorded because— are you even typing anything anymore? Did you finish typing? Oh my God, he stopped. Did you stop typing? Yeah, you did. Okay, whatever. I'll have to re— worthless. This whole thing was worthless. Okay, I'll type it up after. I mean, I'm not gonna type it up. I'll throw it into Otter. Okay, moving on. Um, anyway, the point is I can take this. We're so meta right now. I can take this, pop it into Evy AI, and it'll make a post for LinkedIn. Let's just see what that looks like. We're gonna go to Evy AI, log in. We're gonna click on Post Writer. We're gonna paste it here. We're gonna make this an informational post. That's inspirational related to Joe Apfelbaum. And let's see what it does in about 3 seconds. A hook. Are you looking to elevate your speaking engagements to truly connect with your audience? Define your strategy, leverage your network, create your assets, practice, practice, practice, use video content, take action. Wow. Don't wait for opportunities to come. Take action. Um, okay. I said other things. By focusing on these pillars, you'll not only enhance your speaking engagements, but you'll also build a human foundation for your personal brand. I think I said circle somewhere, whatever. Anyway, it probably didn't catch all that. Let's see what else Meta said. Develop a strong speaker's profile, research and target conferences, build it. That's not necessarily the thing. I don't know. I was never really successful at speaking at conferences. That's not— I mean, I did close a $300,000 deal from it. So I guess, I guess I may— I, I guess it worked. Okay. Yes, conferences work if it's the right conference. Even if it's not the right conference, I did it at some random other conference unrelated to what I was— to my business. Um, part of your strategy is creating a signature talk. So that's all part of your strategy. Join associations. I mentioned your circle. Pitch to event organizers. I said promote. Offer customized speaking packages. That would be part of assets. Leverage existing network. That would be network. Track and follow up. Um, I definitely think getting organized about what you're doing, having some type of CRM. So I would say organize. You got to organize yourself. That's number 8. Maybe no, or 9 or something. Either 8 or 9. Organize, dude. You got to get organized. You got to have a CRM. You got to have a list of organizations that you're targeting, you know, that you'd like to be part of. Um, like, where are the lists? You know, do you have lists? You have lists of event organizers? You have lists of people in charge of speaking? You have a list of chapters that you want to target? List of Vistage chairs you want to target, whatever, you know, like, who do you want to target? Like, where's your list? Um, create quality content. Are you posting on LinkedIn every day? I mean, that's part of promote, so I'm not gonna— develop multiple speaking topics, seek testimonials. I would say, I would call that social proof. Yeah. Get people to say nice things about you. If you look at my LinkedIn, I have over 500 recommendations. Like people look at that. You gotta get a couple recommendations, testimonials, recommendations. I call that social proof. You know, like you, you say, listen, don't even take my word for it. See what this person had to say. And then you share those online. Um, yeah, I would say that that would be that one. Social proof. That's a big one. Um, Yeah, practice, baby. If you practice, you'll get there. Anything else that I would say? Offer flexible rates, continuously learn and grow, seek out speaking opportunities, create high-quality content. We covered everything. I think we covered them all. We covered all the ways to get speaking engagements. Yeah. Anywho, that was fun. I had a good time. I'm sure you had a good time too. I'm sure you really enjoyed it, right? I enjoyed it if you enjoyed it. Lots of good content in this podcast, Joe. Glad it's recorded. Oh my God, I'm so glad it's recorded too because I'm going to turn that into a proper presentation. That's what I'm going to do anyway. I, uh, I recently had someone reach out to me on Instagram and she said, Joe, I've been watching you on YouTube and damn, damn, son, you got to come teach my audience. That literally happened like yesterday. Um, I'm just fascinated by what this is turning into, you know, like, it's just crazy. It's crazy that me just going on LinkedIn Live every day Is action. You know, it's it's it's action. I'm taking massive action. That's that's what I'm doing. I'm like, I used to like overthink this. You know, like overthink just getting on live. I used to like I would never want to. Like wow, someone's gonna be looking at me. It's so funny. Like even the thought. Oh, someone's gonna look at me. Someone's gonna see me. Of course they're gonna see you. You're on live, you idiot. Think about that. But like people like have that hangup. Like, oh, are you gonna see me? Who's gonna see me? What are they gonna think when they see me? Yeah. Like what if you really didn't care? Like how free would you be? How free would you be if you really, in your depth of hearts, don't care about other people's opinions? Like, it doesn't matter. Like, oh, someone doesn't like me, someone likes me, whatever. Like, all that doesn't matter really. I'm just here to share value, to make a difference, to express myself, to connect with those that want to be connected to. There's like this, there's like this pretty deep thing that I read. That I heard on an Instagram reel, and then it just triggered me in such a deep way. Um, and I'm gonna be sharing this on LinkedIn maybe tomorrow. This is what it is. When I text you and you text me back, there's a level of reliability, acceptance, connection that you provide that builds confidence, trust, and connection. Like, simple as that. When I text you and you text me back, there's a level of reliability, acceptance, and connections that you provide that builds confidence, trust, and connection. Wow. Everyone should have 3 to 5 people they communicate with every day, or at least a few times a week, and that are outside their family or immediate circle that have similar interests and gets them at a deeper level. Like, do you know someone that gets you? Gets you on a deeper level. Could you imagine if you can have a list inside Evie AI? You know I was going to go there, right? You have a list inside Evie AI with specific people that you want to be top of mind with. Like wow, that's so smart. It's such a smart thing to do. You know, like I have a list of EAMYC members. I want to be top of mind with these people. So what am I going to do? I'm going to just. Click on see recent activity and it's going to open up their recent activity. And when I see that they posted something, guess what? I'm going to leave a comment. I already did this 6 days ago. I'm going to leave a comment. The second I see a post by any of these people, I'm going to leave a comment. That is powerful. You see, this guy hasn't posted in a year. I gotta speak to these people. They gotta start posting. They're not posting, man. You know, it's like a shanda. It's a shanda. They're not posting. What's going on? Anyway, um, it looks like Derek posted. He did great. And he showed— he told me he was gonna go on golf. He told me, Joe, I'm gonna go— I'm gonna go play golf. So now I could talk to him about his golf. I can call him up and talk to him about his golf. And what happened there? Look at that. He had such a good time over there. I'm going to go ahead and stay top of mind and leave a comment. And this, my friends, is how you get speaking engagements. This, my friends, is how you grow your business. How you take your business to the next level, how you get more followers. You know, like having followers matters in today's day and age. People like introduce me to an audience and he's like, Joe Apfelbaum, CEO of Ajax Union. Multi-million dollar business, been around for 15 years, successful entrepreneur, and then 49,000 followers on LinkedIn. Or even if it was like 5,000 or 10,000, you could say thousands of people are following you. Like most people, the average person on LinkedIn, the average account has 440 connections. That means they have very little followers. So if you even have 5,000 or 10,000 followers, that's a significant followership, especially considering that when you post something, 1,000 people see it. That's powerful. So say powerful in the chat if you agree. Andrew said, hello Joe, I appreciate all you do. And he said, yes, thank you. And Carl said, lots of good content on this podcast, Joe. Glad it's recorded. Then he said, "It wasn't me. It wasn't me." I love that. It wasn't me. Isn't it cool that we like? It's almost like we're having a conversation here. You know, like you're talking to me in the comments. I'm replying to you. We're talking to each other. That's what's great about live. Like you, we're actually live together. We're like you're in your living room, sipping your tequila, whatever you're sipping. I don't know. Tell me what you're drinking below. Maybe your Kool-Aid, your lemonade. And I'm here just doing my thing, doing my thing. Yeah. Anyway, but yeah, we're having a conversation. That's great. What was I saying? I forgot what I was saying. I don't know what I was saying. Carl said powerful. Love that. All right, so let's, let's dig deeper. Let's dig deeper into this, into this thing. I'm, you know what, I want to, I'm going to end this live in a few minutes. But I just want you to know that if you, if you actually take the time to build your lists, to promote, to do all the things that you know you need to be doing, if you do those things, you are going to— you're really going to blow up. You're going to get to your goals. Everything that you want is going to be there for you. That's really key. Like, you know, actually getting to a place of stability, getting to a place of connection, you know, like where you're really connected to the people. You're not just, you know, you, you're, you have a connection. You built a connection. You left the comment. Like, you know, like you made, you made the phone call, you know. It's like interesting. Like you made the call. Somebody came to me and had a conversation with me. He said, Joe, I have a big problem. He's like, I'm not making money. I said, 95% of getting the job is showing up. 95% of getting the job is showing up. Wow. Show up. So he's like, what do you mean show up? I said, go where your customers are. My customers are on LinkedIn. That's where I am. They're on Facebook. They're on Instagram. Where are your customers? Where are they hanging out? Are you there? How often are you there? Are you showing up? I said, for this guy, his customers were in Lowe's and Home Depot. I said, you have 3, 4, 5 hours a day? Go to Lowe's and Home Depot to the section where, let's say you sell kitchens, just stand in the kitchen. People are coming in all day. They're asking for kitchens. And the people, there's no one to talk to there. There's no staff. The staff, it doesn't work. You go there, you walk around, there's no one helping you. There's no one helping you in Lowe's. There's no one helping you at Home Depot. No one's helping you. They're like, try to figure out your own kitchen. Leave us alone. Get us out of it. And you sell kitchens and you're literally standing there. Your customers are walking in the door looking for a kitchen. They're literally walking in the door looking for a kitchen and you're standing there. And what are you going to do? You're going to say, can I help you? And they'll be like, yeah, I'm looking for a kitchen. And be like, I'm happy to guide you. Why don't I come to your house, measure for you? And now you have the job. You just got the job. Tell me your budget. Let me help you. Let me, let me give you some advice. You probably— no one's giving you advice. You don't know what to do. How many times do people do kitchens in their lifetime? Once, twice? Your whole life? You don't know what you're doing. So you have an advisor, go there and support them. Be where your customer is. Crazy. I don't even know why I went through a whole rabbit hole over there, but, um, that's the idea. Wow, look at all these comments. Lime seltzer, Andrew said. Lime seltzer, that's what you're drinking. Um, yeah, so how to gain followers on LinkedIn? It's very simple. Send connection requests. Like actually connect with people. How many connections do you have? Put that in the chat. Curious to know how many connections you have. When you actually take the time to connect with people, when you actually take the time to build relationships and really get to know people, it's a game changer. Like I'll go to my network and I'll check how many people I'm connected to. I'm connected to 29,000, 29,989 people. Wow. These are real humans. These are real humans. And what I'm doing is, is I'm building a relationship, getting to know them, asking them questions. You see that? Every person that connects with me, I ask a question. Tell me more about yourself. You see that? Tell me more about yourself, Ron. I want to learn more about you. Amy, I appreciate you. I'm going to try to get on the phone with Amy. It's nice to meet you at the show for an event. I'm gonna say, hey Jordan, it's great connecting with you. How was Yom Kippur? Okay, I like that. We had a connection. He said, absolutely, Joe. I said, perfect. Do you want to have a one-on-one? You see all this, all this not too long ago, 40 minutes ago, you know, like same, like just a few minutes ago. Like, I, I'm working really hard over here to continue to build those relationships. And my question to you is, do you really care about your relationships? Like, ask yourself that. Or do you just want to get some money out of them or whatever? Like, think about that for yourself. Do you actually care about them with your heart? And if you do, then start adding value to them. Find people, make referrals, help people out, put yourself out there, make introductions for other people, and you're going to be more successful.