How to get clients on 2025 with LinkedIn - 188 LinkedIn Live - Joe Apfelbaum

spend a ton of money.

Right. So I wouldn't suggest spending a ton of money. What my goal with you is literally just to educate you around giving the opportunity for your people to have an assistant for their technology that will help them, even if it helps them once or twice a week to be able to get another 100 or 200 people to notice that they exist. It's worth Doing. And if they learn one little nakuda per month that they can take back and apply, it can change their entire year. If one client, if one person signed up one, one major executive or one major sales executive as a client, how much revenue would the company generate with one guy closing one deal as a result of one action that they learned?

I mean, minimum of $30,000.

So if you invest $5,000 for the year for your entire team to have unlimited access to education, to training, to software, to unlimited, it sounds like a smart idea to me from an ROI standpoint to invest the $5K for the entire year. And then at the end, you can go back and look and say, okay, you know, 6 months down the line, you'd be like, listen, you know, invest another $5K or whatever it is. But at the end of the day, it's like, did I get a return on investment as a result? Did I get one client for the year for my entire team?

Yeah.

That is really the way that you have to look at it. And yes, there's a risk that it's not going to work. Just like with any marketing, there's a risk that it's not going to work. But the risk is much greater if you don't give them the tech, if you don't give them the education and you don't give them the process that it's not going to work because they're currently not doing it. And doing the same thing, expecting different results. What is that called? Doing the same thing over and over without— and expecting different results. Um, is that insanity? Maybe not.

Exactly how I'm thinking about it. Um, I actually think this year the world economy's coming back. It's going to be a lot greater, but People aren't just gonna call us. We have to let them know that we exist, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So, um, that's my message to everybody. Everyone has to chip in a little bit. And I think, I think, I think every person will, will get one client.

That would be fantastic if you had, if you had 11 people and each person got a client, that would be $300,000 and what, $390,000 in new revenue, new revenue besides what you're going to get anyway.

Yeah, that's what I'm— that's what I'm trying to get. I'm trying to get everyone to get at least one new client.

That would be amazing.

That's what I'm—

yeah. And look, I think, I think it was Woody Allen, he said something, 95% of getting the job is showing up. Most people are just not even showing up. And so if you're not posting at least one time, post at least one time, comment at least 5 times, send at least 10 messages. You do that once a day It really changes the game. And when they start seeing results, Tony Robbins said that there's, there's a matrix of how to get people to get results. And it's often people think it starts with belief, but really it starts with action because action creates new results. New results create new beliefs and new beliefs create new action. So it's a, and if you don't take action, you get worse beliefs, which we get worse action, which we get worse results. And that's kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy either way. So the key that we're gonna start with is with the action. That's the key.

You with me?

Yeah, what I am thinking of doing, and I think I told this to you already, but is to assign people who are not, whose job is not to do sales, they're like admins, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

To really learn the tool, because internally people wanna have someone they can go and ask, oh, how do I do this, how do I do that, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And, and Ashley's there and Michelle's there and they're like, do this, do this, do that. So they're there to learn. They're there to check up on people and they become our subject matter experts.

So yeah, that's a great idea.

It's a great idea. And I think that's how other companies will succeed, in my opinion. But again, for my team, like we already spoke to Michelle, who's like our research person, and we said to her, your job is to learn become, you know, an AI tool expert. We're starting with Heavy AI and, uh, and, you know, we'll obviously learn ChatGPT, you know, all these other tools that we have in our— and Ashley is like our database person, so she understands, you know, Karen and stuff like that. And then we have, we have someone, um, external who's, who's just, who sort of like will say, oversee everyone, just making sure that gets done.

That's a great idea. And I think everyone should have a person internally that's kind of like their sales enablement person that knows where everything is and how to do everything and kind of is able to kind of check in with people. I think that's a really smart idea. Um, and I think that when people take that approach, they're going to start getting more results because more people internally are going to be experts. Um, and then, and then finding the people that are, that are going to win. Finding the winners internally, that's really the key because when somebody shows results internally and you find a winner, you're like, look what I just did as a result of this. They're all gonna wanna jump in. Are they getting paid by commission as well? Or is it only commission?

No, everyone gets paid. Everyone's on a salary and commission.

Okay, great. So if they get commission, like what the heck, you know, that it's a no-brainer for them to wanna use these tools. But you know—

Well, they also make double the money when they bring in their own clients, so.

Oh, wow.

Um, so they're, they're very motivated. They should be motivated to do it. They're just all nervous about it because they all think they can't. Like, one woman's like, I don't really like— I don't really post, you know?

Yeah.

Okay. So I told her that's the whole idea, is it does it for you as long as, you know, it gets to know your voice.

Yeah. Yeah. And look, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, it's not something that people are going to get used to right away. There's going to be a learning curve. for them to see how it works. Just like, just like when you go to a networking event, there's a learning curve to how networking works. You're thinking, you know, going there to close deals, it just doesn't, it doesn't really make sense to do that. That's not, that's not how it works. But eventually over time you learn how networking works and you're there just to kind of give and be a relationship builder and you start contributing and you become part of the board and it kind of changes the game a lot. So I totally agree with it. You know, there's, there's definitely a learning curve there. And, um, that's why you need the education. That's why with the holiday special, we're offering a year's worth of education, which is a no-brainer for any organization that's looking to train their team, making sure their team gets the training that they need. So to get started, do you have an Evie— you have an Evie AI account right now, correct? You have a basic account, like a free account?

Yeah.

When you log in— so I'll tell you how to buy it when you're ready to buy it. On the left side it says subscription. When you log in, you click log in. On the left side you'll see a button that says subscription. When you click on the subscription button, you're going to see 3 options. You're going to see the option you're on right now, you're going to see a premium option, you can see a pro option. You'll go to the pro option. And you'll just click plus, plus, plus how many, um, how many additional people you want. And then you press add to cart or just, you know, buy. And then it'll take you to Stripe. You'll make sure the price is okay, make sure everything makes sense, and then you just buy it. And then I'll have my team make the necessary changes in the background to do the deal that we spoke about.

Okay, so We agreed to spend $5,000.

Exactly. So you'll buy 5 licenses and then I'll give you whatever you need.

Okay. So I'll get— I want 7 users and 3 admins if possible.

Okay. It's not a problem.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it now. And then—

And then I'll give you— and then I'll train— what I'll do is I'll train the, the people who are supposed to be admins on the other— we're gonna give you access to another piece of software where I'll make the 3 admins the admins on the software, and then they'll go and connect everybody's account to it because you want everyone— them to be posting on behalf of people, correct?

Yeah, well, just to confirm they can do that, how does that work? I guess I don't need to know how it works, but—

I'll do a training on it. I'll do a training on how they can access the system and how they can see everything and what the admins can do.

In other words, I can have anyone— I can have one of these admins post for me, correct?

Correct. Well, there's gonna be a setup process, but after the setup process is set up, we're gonna— after we set up everyone's account, then the admins are gonna be able to go in and be able to post on anyone's behalf using our, our, our, uh—

Yeah, right here.

Yeah, we call that unlimited digital marketing.

Are we able to see when someone is a, like, a second-degree connection, then they become a first-degree connection? At first, I, I Like a CRM or some sort of pipeline process.

We're going to give you access to a pipeline software as well. So as part of the, part of this, we're going to set up your pipeline, give you access to pipeline, um, and help you be able to, we could even import all everyone's LinkedIn connections into that place. We're going to make a dashboard for every, for every one of your employees. And then we can import everybody's dashboard into the system and then assign and tag their connections to a special tag so you're gonna be able to see everyone's connections, every, you know, like we'll set everything up for you properly in a way that you'll look at it. I wanna turn you into a really good example so this way I show people how it works. You'll be the first client that has multi-users on Pro. So I'm, you know, we literally just came out with this like a week ago, so I'm excited about this.

That's amazing.

That's why we're offering a special deal, the holiday deal, and for you, I'm giving you an extra special deal because you're an extra special friend of mine and I wanna see you succeed. I wanna see you create 300 new clients $90,000 minimum of new revenue from all your different employees and really strengthen them and make them more successful in the year to come. So go ahead and try to make it—

And vice versa, vice versa. I hope it's a win-win. I really, really want to see you kick ass on this. I love your focus.

Thank you.

You completely pivoted out of the services business. When I had, um, Vinnie on the call, you were very focused. You're like, listen, it's a great idea for you to create Like HR people around this.

Yeah.

And you supported that, but like I'm staying focused on creating my product. Um, so this is my way of, I hope to some degree, supporting you doing it too.

You are, you are. Every, every, every moment that you get on the phone with me, any piece of love that you give me, any bracha, any blessing that you give me, um, is, is a way for, you know, I believe that we're here for a very short period of time. All of us, we're here for a very short period of time.

There's no question about that.

If we can bless each other while we're here and support each other, that's what matters. And I think that me and you were here before. Like, we were here in a different life supporting our own entrepreneurial endeavors in a different life.

I think so. I think so. I think this time, I really— I've talked to so many people, and there's 2 things that I think is needed. One is the technology, and 2 is the people to support it. And then 3 is just the motivation, the desire. And I think where you shine is you develop the technology and then you come in with these spot trainings with like hundreds of people on the call, you know?

Yeah.

Where you're so good at that.

Yeah.

And then people are like, oh, I got this, I got this.

Yeah.

But you got to give them the tools. You can't just say what to do anymore. You got to give them the tools. And I think, I think I can come in and provide the people. Well, that's my, my sort of what I'm trying to do is I set you on the phone and that's why I want Benny to, to be involved on this. I told him to like dump all his products. I basically told him straight off, I go, I'm going with Heavy AI and you can join me in learning and then we could build a conser— an HR services business around that. So he's actually into it.

Amazing. I, I wanna let you know that somebody walked over to me at a holiday party. Um, I think it was, 2 weeks ago, 'cause last week I was in Pittsburgh for the Chassidah. Um, but like, like, uh, somebody walked over to me at a holiday party like 2 weeks ago and they said, Joe, I wanna do, I wanna do business with Ajax Union. We wanna hire you guys to be our agency of record. And I said, what made you think of me? He's like, what do you mean? You're the only one that comments on my company page every single time.

Yeah.

I love it. The CEO noticed it and they're like, there's this one company you're gonna go, you're gonna go with the guy who's paying attention to our brand. No one else pays attention. They don't know that I have Evvy AI saved. And that I'm literally just clicking on buttons. They think that I'm manually just looking at their company page and just waiting for them to post so I could leave a comment.

Was that— was the Shabbat Shalom WhatsApp automatic?

The Shabbat Shalom WhatsApp was not automatic. It wasn't. I don't have automation on WhatsApp yet. I will have automation on WhatsApp. I want to add, um, being that we have clients—

because that was a really— that was nice, Joe. That was— that was— that Shabbat Shalom Kind of clothed me.

Ah, you're so sweet. Thank you for saying that. It means the world to me.

That was nice. Yeah.

That was nice.

Now, my assistant did— my assistant— well, you are, you are in a pipeline on, on the software.

I knew. Yeah, I knew I had to be because we didn't— but it's still nice. It was still smart.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My assistant reviewed the pipeline with me and they're like, did you get in touch with this? Did you get in touch with that? Did you get in touch with that? And I said, okay, let me send him a Shabbat Shalom right now. I said, he's in Israel now. I can't call him. He's 7 hours ahead. But if I send him a Shabbat Shalom now, He'll see it after Shabbos, and it'll still be Shabbos by me, but he'll see it, and then he'll he'll you know it'll it'll be top of mind with him.

So I believe great. Yeah, it was great.

Thank you for saying that.

It was really good.

Thank you for saying that.

That means yeah, no, you can use that in my in your. So I have this one last user who who kind of said like I don't want to do it, but I kind of wanted to do it. So it wasn't like. Can I add her if I need to?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can add anyone you want if you need to. Anyone in your organization you can add if you need to. Just let me know and we'll make— well, I'll take care of you. I'll give you bonuses.

You're amazing. Okay, I'm signing up today, baby.

Okay. Do you wanna do it right now and I'll help you do it, or do you wanna do it a little bit later?

Yeah, I have, I have, I have 8 minutes. Do I— I don't need a credit card, or do you have it on me?

You do need a credit card. You're gonna need a credit card to sign up.

Okay, so let's— give me— if you can wait, I'll go up and get it. I'll wait.

Yeah, go ahead.

I'll wait.

I'm busy leaving comments on people's posts anyway right now. So you go ahead and do it. I have no— I'm not in a rush. I'll wait on the phone.

Okay, I have it. Oh, perfect.

So glad you have the credit card.

Now enter the code. Sent to 3106.

Uh, it could be that you got— so the way Stripe works is sometimes when you, um, when you have a link thing linked to Stripe, it'll send you a code to your cell phone. Or to whatever you have connected to Stripe.

Oh yeah, I just asked it to send me an email instead.

Yeah, because Stripe allows you to buy things. The reason we chose Stripe as our credit card processor is because everyone has their credit cards connected to Stripe, so when somebody wants to buy, they just click a button and then often they just buy it, you know? They don't have to really think about it much. They could just buy it and I want people thinking about it, but like I want to make it really easy for them to buy it.

Oh, 6222106221062221.

Okay.

Oh, okay. My credit card's already there.

Yeah, that makes life so easy. See, you see how easy that is? You just sign up. Now make sure.

Yeah, that was very easy.

Yeah, make sure to just hold on.

Um, but how do I put in $5,000 versus the $6,888?

Um, you have to change how many users you're putting in. I could always have the team— you could just pay whatever it is, and then I could have the team refund you the difference. Like, if you pay whatever, pay over, you You can just say, Joe, refund me X amount of dollars and I'll go in and I'll refund you.

Okay. We'll just do that then.

Yeah.

Is that right? Okay.

So let's see if it works.

Okay, we're in.

Okay, congratulations.

Thank you.

Ah, Mazel Tov. I appreciate you being a client of Evie AI. Thank you for joining the family. We're so excited to have you here. January 8th at 10 AM is our next training session. I hope you could make it today at 10 AM. We have a posting party. So if you want to join, you're welcome to join 10 AM today posting party. You know what a posting party is?

Oh, okay. What's happening? What, what does that mean?

If you go to highenergyzoom.com today, we, what we do is we bring together a group of people. It's usually a couple dozen people. And those people, they do their elevator pitch and everybody posts together and everybody comments on each other's posts. So we have a company page, linkedin.com/company/eviai. On the left side, you click on events and you'll see today, part posting party number 008. So you go in there and you'll be able to see that, um, be able to see the posting party that we have going on. I'll send you a link to the posting party link directly on WhatsApp.

Everyone's going around just giving their pitch?

Yeah, well, depending on how many people show up, but usually we'll have a couple dozen people show up and then You know, let's say between 20 and 50 people will show up to the event, and then each person says what they do for a living for 10, 15 seconds, but I also entertain them in between. And then in the comments, people are doing things. People go to the community, they go to the school community, they drop their LinkedIn post, and each person goes through it and likes and comments on each other's posts, and they get to know each other.

Okay, I love it.

It's a great way to—

All right, I'm gonna try to join.

Yeah, it's a great way to to find engaged LinkedIn users because most of the people on LinkedIn are there, they're watching, but they're not necessarily commenting. These are all commenters, you know, like when you find the commenters, the peanut gallery, as you call it. So I, I got a conglomerate of peanut gallery people that have comments and want to share things on LinkedIn. And they're— most of them are posting as well. So if you can get a group of people If you can get a group of villagers that have what to say and you want to throw a party, make sure that you have a few dozen villagers that have a voice. And then when you say something like, hey, hey, hey, hey, you know, they make a commotion.

I love it. Okay, I'm in. I'm gonna do that. Um, I'm all in. What are they gonna say? I wanna— when, when should we just schedule that? In January we'll schedule?

Or—

Yeah, we could do it.

We could do it.

Yeah, it depends. You could do it. You could tell me when you want to do it. I could schedule a separate session for the admins just to kind of walk them through stuff, like an onboarding. Yeah, and we do have regular onboarding sessions, so look through your emails, you'll see those onboarding sessions. And you know how to find me on WhatsApp if you have a question or if you want to get on the phone. I'm always happy to talk to you. I'm always happy to do a personal overview with you of everything, um, and just kind of walk you through things if you have any technical questions. Always happy to answer your technical questions, um, and give you whatever support. We also have live chat on our website. So if you log in, you'll see on the bottom right corner there's a live chat button. So I see that on my cell, and so my team also sees it on their cell. I don't understand. Um, you know, so that live chat connects your team directly to us. If they have a question, they're not sure what to do, they can go into live chat, or they can always email hello@eveai.com. And then I have Diana. She's always watching the email, so she'll answer questions and she'll make sure to put it in front of us if she doesn't have an answer. Um, so that's, those are the things.

Oh, this is great. I love it. Um, I, Benny, who you met on the call, um, you know, I'm going to be, I pay him externally. I think he's amazing. I think we can all learn. We'll learn from each other, hopefully. And, um, I want him to get my team so good at this that we no longer need him, you know what I mean? Um, but in the beginning, he'll, he'll help us like do some of the postings for us. And then, um, and hopefully Ashley and Michelle will get really good at it. And then we'll be able to do that. That'd be awesome. Amazing.

Amazing. I'm really excited about this. I'm really excited about you being a client. of Evvy AI and you seeing what we have to offer and also you being in with me for the next year. So this is not just like, oh, you're, you know, you're just signing up now, whatever. No, no, no. Me and you are together for a year and I wanna see your organization succeed. And I know how, how, how scary it is. Business is very scary for people.

Oh my God. It's so funny you said that. I'm literally pissing in my pants right now. 'Cause I know I could, I know I have to lead by example, you know? So.

Yeah. And I'll personally help you. Maybe what we can do is I'll personally help you making sure that you're leading by example, by holding you accountable. And then you can kind of join. You could even join me on LinkedIn Live. I mean, LinkedIn Live is such a powerful, um, tool that if you haven't ever, ever used LinkedIn, have you ever, have you ever hosted a LinkedIn Live yourself?

No, no, no.

It would be interesting for you to host me on LinkedIn Live, on your own LinkedIn Live. It would be an interesting thing for you to host me, and I'm happy to walk you through the process of hosting a LinkedIn Live. And then what you could do is you could take your biggest clients or your biggest potentials and host them on a LinkedIn Live because LinkedIn Live is so easy to host. You just go to this website called restream.io for free, and then you just open up a free account and you just connect it to your LinkedIn and boom, you just go live. And then when you're on live on LinkedIn, you can have calls that like are like 4 hours long or 3 hours. You could do 30 minutes, 20 minutes, but it's the only way to get like an hour-long video into the LinkedIn feed. It's so powerful.

Hey, I'm open. Whatever. I'm open. You know, this is the year that we gotta— I gotta—

We're gonna do— we're gonna do some fancy things on LinkedIn together. We're gonna have fun. And I'm so glad that you're part of the community, that you're part— that you're my client. I'm gonna— I, I take it very seriously when somebody invests in their business. And somebody like puts their best foot forward to like be successful. So I'm just, I'm just really, really pumped. Have you ever done any video of yourself talking? Like a 1-minute video?

Well, what I have, what I did do, I have like 1 video of me interviewing someone. I wanted to start a fractional like, um, practice. So I interviewed like a COO and I, I must've done like 7, 7 takes and I had someone edit it. I finally posted it. It felt good, but it was a long process. And I went out and I bought the podcast stuff. I do want to do more of those, but I need to get like—

once the camera goes on it— Here's where I practice. Here's where I practice. I go on— have you ever heard of Instagram?

Of course.

Do you have an Instagram yourself?

It's very limited, but yeah.

Good, good.

That's good.

I want it to be very limited. There's very little pressure. If you go on Instagram and you're very limited Instagram and you just leave a story, you know what a story is? There's like, you swipe to the right and you can just leave a story.

Yeah.

It's like a 1-minute, it's like a 1-minute video. What I want you to practice doing is every day, just do a 1-minute video on your story. No one's going to see it anyway. Literally, literally no one's going to see it because your Instagram's limited. But if you post and I will see it, if you sent me, if you send me a connection request on Instagram, you send me a follow and you send me a message, I'll see it. And then I'll just coach you on it. But if every single day, excuse me, if every single day you just post a story that's 30 seconds long or 1 minute long with a thought of the day about recruiting or business development or whatever it is, and you do it, by the time the year, by the time a month goes by, you're going to become an expert at 1-minute videos, which is where the whole world is going. I mean, LinkedIn just added a new tab on the app. Did you notice on the bottom of the LinkedIn app on your phone, there's a tab called video now?

Uh, no.

Yeah, open up your— open up your mobile phone, open up the LinkedIn app. Do you see a little tiny video thing that says video now? Yeah, that's— that's new. That literally just popped up. So when you click on that, then next to the—

next to home.

Yeah, exactly. So when you click on that little thing, then you can start swiping. You can— it's called doom scrolling.

Oh wow.

Yeah, you can start doom scrolling on LinkedIn.

Only video.

Yeah. And— and I had over the past year I had somebody produce 100 professionally edited doomscroll-y videos that I'm gonna be pouring into LinkedIn. And the way that I practiced becoming good at making these videos is by doing a story every day on Instagram. I sucked. I was terrible at it. Now I'm pretty damn good at it. Um, but it used to be that I was really, really terrible at it. But my— the secret was doing stories on Instagram that nobody literally— no, my mother watched. Like literally nobody is watching. Nobody.

I don't care. All right, Joe, I'm in. I'm in. I can talk about mountain biking and my workouts.

It doesn't really matter. You literally talk about tuna fish if you want. Like literally talk about anything you want. I don't care what you talk about. The key is you do one of those 1-minute videos and you'll get better and better and better and you improve 1% every day. By the end of a month, you're going to improve 30, 40%. By the end of the year, you're going to be 365% better. And then you're going to be like, damn, I'm amazing at video. And the videos are just going to be pouring out of you and people are going to be like, how the heck? How the heck are you so good at video? And you're simply gonna say, it's because I just, I literally just did it on Instagram.

No, I, I, from your words to God's mouth, I really wanna be. Um, I have to go pick up my kids.

Okay, go.

So.

Thank you so much for the call. Appreciate you. Thank you for becoming a client, and I'll talk to you soon.

All right. When, um, when should I tell Ashley you'll do the refund? Later today?

Yeah, we'll do it today. As soon as, as soon as my billing department wakes up. It's 8 o'clock. They'll probably wake up in 2 hours, and then we'll get it done.

Okay. I'll see you at 10 o'clock, I hope.

Yeah. Looking forward. Talk to you soon.

Okay.

Bye.

See you later, dude.

Thank you.

Bye.

Wow. Did I just, did I just close a deal? Did I just close my biggest deal of December 23rd? December 23rd. Okay, LinkedIn says improve your share bit. How was your experience at LinkedIn today? Okay, I'm not interested in that. I think I just closed my biggest deal of December 23rd. 12:23. Um, I'm, I'm just— can we take a moment to celebrate this together? We sell it. Can we take a moment to celebrate this together by going to Tammy's profile and reposting This video. Oh my God, did I get logged out of Tammy's profile? Let me see. I think she may have logged me out. Oh no. Ugh, okay. I need her code. Need your code. Need your code. I need your code for LinkedIn. All right, all right, I need her code. Okay, let's see if we can celebrate by doing it through my mom's profile. Let's just see. Mama, mamma mia, mamma mia. Ooh, look at this, it's a nice family photo. Okay, and then let's just see. I'm gonna go here, I'm gonna click on this, I'm gonna give it a little heart, I'm gonna click the little repost button. I can't repost. I don't want to repost from here. Discard. I want to do like a repost without, without words, so I'm going to go into show all posts. And then I'm gonna click on repost, repost without, like repost instantly. So now there's one repost there and I'm gonna also leave a comment. Congrats on closing your biggest deal in 12/23/2025, 2024, 2024. Okay. Wow! Wow, ladies and gentlemen!

Wow!

I did it. Ah, could we just like celebrate for a moment? That's the wrong celebration thing. Nope, wrong celebration thing. Wrong celebration thing.

Nope.

Yeah! Hooray! We're celebrating. Yeah! What's this one here? Ooh, that's magic. Ah, that's the chirping. That's laughing. That's music, baby. We're on LinkedIn and we're getting started today.

Yes.

What are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing? We are growing our businesses together. LinkedIn is the way to go.

Why?

Because LinkedIn is where it's at. It has more professionals than any other social network in the world. And together with your LinkedIn AI assistant called Evvy AI, you have the opportunity to post, to engage, and to message in a positive way, and that will help you grow your business. Think about that. Let me call up Derek. Let me call up Derek now. Let's call up Derek. Let's call up Derek. Let's call up Derek and Derek and Der Derek. Let's call up Derek. Let's call up Derek. Let's call up Der Der Der Derek. Let's call up Derek. Let's call up Derek. Let's call up Derek and Derek and Derek. Let's call up Derek. Let's call up Derek. Let's call up Derek. It's 8:39 AM and we're calling Derek.

Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system.

All right. All right. It went to voicemail. This is what happens. Sometimes calls go to voicemail. Now we're gonna send him a message. Derek, good morning. Hope you are well. Do you want to chat today? Let me— I just tried you. I just tried to call you. Let's call Elliot Grossbard. He just sent me a message. Elliot Grossbard just sent me a message with this post over here. I'm gonna leave him a little comment here. And let's call him. Let's tell him about the holiday deal. But how are we gonna call him? Very simple. I'm gonna show you how we're gonna call him. We're gonna go to the profile here. Since the passing of my father, some of the life lessons, Judaism, blah blah blah. Your tribute to your father is truly inspiring. Okay, let me give him a call. Let's see if his cell phone number is on his profile. What the hell?

What?

What's your cell? Let me ask him what his cell is. Um, what is your cell? Oh, I think I have it. I think it. I think I have it. I think it's this. Hey, let's call him. Let's call Elliot Grossbard. Let's see if we can call him. Here he is. Let's call him. And let's also search his name in my CRM real quick. It's ringing, ringing, ringing.

There it is. The human world, it's a fort.

No one understands what I know.

All right, it went to voicemail. Let's call him up here through this system here. Let's see if he picks up.

This call will be—

Hi, Elliot, it's Joe Apfelbaum.

Please leave your message for 786-218-8888.

We're not gonna leave a message. We're not gonna leave a message, but we are gonna leave a little note here. We are gonna leave a little note. Okay, we're not gonna leave a little note right now. We'll leave a little note later. Okay, let's see what Matt Schwartzberg's up to. And then George Jensen, and then Jesse Berland, Anthony DiCrescenzo, Cass Kadler, Tina Larson. These are all important people on LinkedIn. I left him a comment. I commented on your post.

Oh, nice.

I love the way he says 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 followers. That's so smart. And then it goes right to his profile. That's so cute. I mean, he says proud father and grandfather. I've been blessed to have a career growth. Okay, let me save this here. Many industries helping startups, blah blah blah. I believe in mentorship. My newsletter is Growth Focus. Whether you're looking to scale your business strategy, I'm here to help. Okay, now I'm going to click on this little dropdown. I'm going to hit add to list. I'm going to hit networking. Networking, just regular networking. He's a growth consultant and advisor for startups.

That's cool.

Okay, I'm gonna close out his profile. Close out his profile. Close out my profile.

Let's see.

Okay, this guy Michael Haltman. Let's call him back. Let's call Michael Haltman back.

Um, let's see.

Let's see if he picks up the phone. Oh, let's see. Let's call him back. And then let's go to school.com/evie. Hey Michael, it's Joe Apfelbaum.

Hey Joe, how are you?

Good. I want to let you know about the posting party today at 10 AM. Are you aware that we're having a posting party?

I think I signed up for it.

Okay.

Today.

Yeah, it's today at 10 AM.

Hold on, let me just make sure.

Yeah, I'm—

I, uh, signed up.

Okay.

I'm, uh, I'm excited to see what it's all about.

Awesome, awesome. And I'm, I'm excited to have you sign up to Eviai Pro and get you in our training sessions for next year. It's gonna be fun.

Uh, you know what, I'm gonna look into that, but, uh, gonna start with the posting part.

Start with the posting party, definitely.

All right, so I'll see you at 10.

Looking forward. Talk to you soon.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

He's gonna look into it. And he's coming to the posting party. Okay, and that's him right over here in our community. So now I'm gonna write posting party today. Posting party 008, 10 AM EST. Post your links below. I'm gonna write 10/23, 10/23/2024. Today is December 23rd, 2024, and we have an amazing posting party at 10 AM EST. I hope You can make it if you join. Post, post your link in the comments. Would love to support your post. Here is what you should do. 1, view each person's post. And leave a comment if you feel like you can add some value. Supporting each other is very important. 2, when you leave a comment on the post, come back to this post On school and make sure to like the link so that they see you took action. First, like this post. Next, give each person number 3. Post your own link in the comments. Make sure to remove the UTM tags from the end of the link to have a clean link. Enjoy the Posting party. You can learn more on our company page at www.linkedin.com/company/eviai. Make sure you join the next one on Monday at 10 AM EST. All right, my cell is— I missed your call. Let's see what he said.

Was on the other line with my kid— kids who— well, one of them named after my dad and our grandson. So there's very rarely anybody that will interrupt that call. But, uh, you can call me directly on my cell or on my WhatsApp. Uh, have a great day.

All right, let me call him on his cell now. Call him back on his cell. Let me go back over here to Elliot Grossbard. Let me call him back. Close this.

This call will be recorded for quality purposes.

Hi, Elliot, it's Joe Apfelbaum.

Joe?

Yes, I wanted to invite you to the posting party we're having today at 10 AM.

What's the posting party at 10 AM?

At 10 AM, uh, this Monday. We have a posting party where a few dozen engaged LinkedIn users get together and they have a conversation about what they do for a living. And everybody posts on LinkedIn and we all support each other's posts. But more importantly, it's about networking and building relationships and finding people that are contributors to the peanut gallery on LinkedIn. People that are typically commenters, you know, like most people on LinkedIn are not commenters. Am I right?

Uh, no, I, I love going into the comments and engage. That's where the real stuff happens.

100%. 100%.

So, so yeah, first of all, when you called, it came in as spam, so I, I also didn't answer it the second time. So I'm just letting you know.

Oh, no worries. No worries. Okay, good to know.

Um, but yeah, I mean, you want to send me a link? How, how are you doing it on the phone?

Yeah, we're doing it on Zoom. The link is www.highenergies Zoom.com.

Would you be able to like, like send it to me LinkedIn messaging? We're leaving Feretz Israel tonight. Oh wow. Crazy.

You're leaving Feretz Israel tonight.

Unfortunately, I'm missing the Yurta by Mamash 2 days.

Oh no.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Today and but we're going to Hanukkah. My daughter lives there. 2 grandchildren there. My in-laws with us.

I had no idea you were a grandpa until I saw it on LinkedIn and I was like, damn, he's a grandpa.

Yeah, well, you know, you're too young to be a grandpa.

What are you like, 30?

Turned 50 in June.

50?

I'm a young guy.

You look so young.

I'm an old-school salesperson operating in a modern world, Joe. And when I would go into the corporate environment and sit there and they would say, you're how old? You've been married for how long? I'd tell them I was married young.

Yeah.

My wife was 19. I was 21. Not because I had to, because we wanted to.

Yeah, 100%.

That was a nice icebreaker. But baruch Hashem, yeah. That's so nice.

That's so nice. I love it.

Yeah. So send me the message on LinkedIn.

I sent it on LinkedIn. Yeah. I sent you the company. I sent you the event invite on LinkedIn and I sent you the link to the Zoom directly so you can jump right in at 10 AM. Okay.

Look forward to it. It'll break up my day a little bit. I don't have anything scheduled other than the—

So you're flying from JFK? You're flying from FLL?

We're flying from Miami to Italy so we can take a day to rest up. My father-in-law is in a wheelchair and then we fly LAL. It was too expensive to fly direct, plus, you know, he could use the break in between.

Italy's beautiful now.

And on the way back, we're actually stopping in Italy for 8 days for them. That's how the whole thing came about.

Wow.

Because he's not going to—

You bought a round-trip ticket from Italy to Eretz Yisrael?

Yeah. So round trip Miami to Italy and then round trip from Italy to Tel Aviv and back.

Wow.

So 2 round-trip tickets. So, you know, Italy thinks we're going to be there for 2 weeks.

We're only going to be there for a week or 8 days.

Yeah, that's very nice. So yeah, very good. Congratulations.

And, uh, look at this. Hey, next time you, uh, come down to Miami in January, which I know you will, let's have a cup of coffee. I live in North Miami Beach.

Oh wow, my sister lives there. So yeah, I'm there. Yeah, my mother lives in Hollywood. And my sister lives in North Miami. I have another sister that lives in—

Is she married?

She married. She has a bunch of kids. Yeah.

What's her married name?

Fridman.

Fridman?

Yeah. Do you dive into the main shul over there?

Oh, I bounce around. Yeah. Is her father-in-law like a rov?

Yeah.

A pleisig?

Yeah.

So wait a second. Your sister married the fridge man?

David.

David.

He lives in North Miami Beach now? He used to live in Hollywood or Boca or something.

No, no, he lives in North Miami.

Oh, he moved. He's a sweet guy.

Yeah.

I know the family well. I got to know them when they were doing the whole produce—

Yeah, exactly. They were doing the washing. Exactly. Were you involved in the contracts?

Yeah, I was very close with— Very, uh, no, not at all, but business-wise I was just like—

Oh, nice.

Consulting with him. And also, Zombie Summer, the brother-in-law, used to live right around the corner from me.

Oh, right. What, in Lakewood?

Every time too— no, no, no, Zombie Summer lives here, is married to your sister's sister-in-law.

Oh, nice, nice. Oh, okay, got it.

Oh, wow, I didn't know that.

Small world.

And you said one other person who—

your mom lives in Hollywood, and your sister-in-law lives in— And I have another sister that lives in Aventura.

Ah, married also?

Married, yeah. Married. The name of the family is Chein. C-H-E-I-N. Chein.

Sonny, you know family Chein in Aventura? Okay, then we're gonna go. Okay. Oh, it's very nice. So, you know, it's time for you to move down. I mean, I know your kids are up there.

My kids are here, so as soon as my kids get old enough to just go away, all sleep away, I'll be down there. It's happening soon. It's happening soon.

Hopefully before I'm 50. You got a couple of years, right?

What are you, mid-40s?

Yeah, 45.

Yeah, I just turned 45 in November.

Yeah. All right, well, you know, it's interesting. Maybe this is something we should discuss. Um, I first met you in person when we did a LinkedIn Local Miami, like, sort of not— it was like LinkedIn Local, you know, it wasn't, uh, just a LinkedIn meetup. And from that We started LinkedIn Local Miami. Wow. Um, and that really kept a lot of people going over the pandemic. So I made it myself an internal commitment that I'm gonna revive, uh, LinkedIn Local Miami.

Wow.

In 2025.

So maybe it's something we can do together. Yeah, that would be fun.

Yeah.

Let's schedule something together. I noticed on your profile you have a bunch of numbers under your— on top of your followers that you put in there. Was that, was that like a joke or is that— is there a strategy?

It's a joke.

Yeah.

Okay. It's, it's, uh, it's, It's it's a stock to LinkedIn.

I love it.

I love it because you click on it, it takes you right back to their profile. But many I found it because people were getting scammed by clicking instead of the link. They would they people oh that's what it is. Instead of a call to action, they would say like click this or something like that, and then it would take them to a a phishing. Uh, website and take all their information. And then from that I was like, wait a second, that's interesting. So I used to have, you know, I care for a one-on-one on intro.

Yeah.

And then I changed it and I was like, you know what?

Yeah.

And that's what I did.

I love that.

So yeah, if you look at the numbers, it's all sequential. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Oh my God. Amazing.

Yeah.

All right. I, I'll be on at 10 o'clock, hopefully.

Me too. All right, I'll see you again. All right, thanks for the call. Thank you, my pleasure. By the way, if you want to invite anybody, feel free.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, feel free to invite people. All right, talk to you soon.

Okay, bye-bye.

All the best. Um, so that's how you do it. That's how you just randomly pick up the phone and call a connection on LinkedIn. And most people will never do that. They'll never go ahead and build a real relationship with people and connect with them in that way. And, and you know what? It totally baffles me. It baffles me that people are just not willing to take the time to do them. That's why we're teaching people how to do this. In 2025, I want you to build relationships, get to know people, and grow your business. That's the idea. Building relationships and growing your business is the name of the game. So Are you committed to going ahead and doing, taking all the right actions? So let me show you how to create a post with Evvii AI. Step number 1, you click on login, you log into Evvii AI. Step number 2, you come up with an idea for a post. So in this case, I'm going to choose my goal. My goal is going to be networking. My tone, my tone is going to be informative, and my persona is going to be the Joe Apfelbaum persona. And I'm going to say, Calling LinkedIn connections to build real relationships. And I'm gonna hit generate ideas. And what it's gonna do is it's gonna generate 4 ideas for me in about 3 seconds. Pick up the phone and call a connection today. Real conversations. Okay. Build real relationships. I'm gonna hit generate post off that. You see, I hit generate post. So there's a bunch of different ideas here, but I just picked one. The first one that came up, I could have clicked on this one and clicked generate post. And now I'm going to press copy and I'm going to go into LinkedIn. How do you post on LinkedIn? You just click on start a post right here in the top center. I'm going to hit paste. Ever felt like a connection is just a name on the screen? In the world where digital interactions dominate, we often forget the power of a simple phone call. Research shows that 70% of professionals believe that personal connections lead to better collaboration. Yet, how often do we pick up the phone and nurture those connections? Let me share a quick story. A few months ago, I decided to reach out to a connection I haven't spoken to in over a year. This morning, this morning, I decided to reach out to a connection I haven't spoken to in over a year. We exchanged messages before, but this time I called. What started as a casual catch-up turned into a brainstorming session that sparked a new project. Turned into a brainstorming session, turned into A collab to do a LinkedIn networking event in Miami in 2025. We both walked away energized, refreshed with ideas, and a renewed partnership. This experience reminded me of the quote by Maya Angelou: People will forget how you said, forget what you did, but will never forget how you made them feel. A phone call can transform a relationship. It's about showing you care, listening actively, and building trust. So why not Take a moment today, pick up the phone and call a LinkedIn connection. Ask them how they're doing, share insights, and explore potential collaborations. You never know what opportunities you'll find in a genuine conversation. Let's break the digital barrier. If you had a similar experience or plan to make a phone call today, drop a comment. Let me share your thoughts. If you found this post insightful, I'm gonna say, PS, come to our Posting party today at 10 a.m. EST, where you can find a few dozen engaged LinkedIn users that would be happy to get on a call with you and build a relationship. They also happen to. Leave comments on posts so get to know them. Okay, now I'm going to click on this little add media button. I'm going to go find a picture of the last posting party. Uh, let's see, posting party right here. Networking 2024 posting party. I'm going to click on this. Click next. Okay, we all forget every simple phone call in a world where digital interactions dominate. We often forget the power of a simple phone call. Okay, and I'm gonna say, oh, um, let me share a quick story. This morning I decided to reach out to a LinkedIn connection, and I'm gonna say Elliot Grossbard. I just tagged him.

Okay.

I'm gonna press post, and now I just posted a post on LinkedIn. Boom, just like that. You see that? I just posted a post on LinkedIn. Um, and I have a 9 o'clock call that's starting now, so I'm gonna wait for the call here. Jen, you just let me know when the call shows up. In the meantime, I'll be just chatting with LinkedIn Live friends and doing, um, follow-up. So if he joins, he joins. I don't see him in the waiting room though. I am still on LinkedIn Live. Let's check if I'm still on LinkedIn Live. I'm gonna check right now. I think I'm still on LinkedIn Live, but I'm gonna wrap up LinkedIn Live now because Why not? If anybody's watching my LinkedIn Live, just say hello on the LinkedIn Live. Let's see if anybody's watching. I see 4 comments. Well, Alan, Joe, you can call me. Okay, of course I'll call you. Of course I'll call you. Let me give him a call right now. Uh, look at that, his phone number's right here.

Kopelman.

Let's call Mr. Kopelman. This is how I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go into my CRM.

Oh, look at that!

His phone number is right here. Let's give him a call. I've called him before. Oh, want to call? Oh, right. The eight forty-five.

He said call will be recorded.

Hello, hello, Alan. How are you?

I hear you, Joe.

Why don't people pick up the phone and call anymore? Could you tell me?

Why don't people pick up the phone and what, call people?

Yeah. Why are people not calling other people? What's going on? What happened? Did people forget that people have phone call— phone numbers?

Well, you know, a lot of people don't have their phone number in, uh, on LinkedIn.

Oh, come on.

Profile.

Come on. Most people have their phone number. Most people that I check have their phone number.

And then, you know, you never know. They could have their, you know, have— they have their office line and gatekeeper answers the phone, or it goes right to voicemail if you don't come up in their cell phone.

Yeah.

And then, you know, so, you know, that just depends on—

They've had a bad experience in the past. That's the idea, right?

Who?

People have had bad—

People have bad experiences.

I think that, you know, when you talk about what is the, you know, what, what kind of marketing are people doing, and I think that, you know, you have to do a mix of things in order to make, to have to do business, you know. So you need to do LinkedIn, you need to post, you need to have presence on other social media networks. You need to also, you know, blog and post blogs and become like a thought leader a little bit. Yeah, video is very big.

I mean, I was—

I've been reading for the last 2 years, you know, podcasting is a big thing. So I mean, I started a podcast called B2B Vault.

Wow.

And we've— we're about to record our 300th The 300th episode, episode 300, and it's been going for a little over 2 years. We do have more than 300 episodes because there was some other stuff we were doing along the way, but they weren't podcast episodes. We used to do a LinkedIn Live, but we didn't get a lot of people coming on to the LinkedIn Live. And we also used to do— we, you know, I do some other stuff where I write for a magazine. And then I do podcasts about the magazine articles. But, you know, podcasting is a great way to get your name out there and to, you know, and, and to be a guest. You know, if you don't want to make a podcast, you can be a guest.

Have you been— are you, are you a guest on podcasts often?

Yeah, I start my big push this year is to guest a lot more than I have in the past. And, you know, to go out, you know, to contact podcasters. The biggest problem I find with podcasting is, is that, you know, that— well, how many episodes in do you think the average person gives up on?

I think like 7 or 5 or something, right?

Yeah, like usually it's 20. Oh wow, people will get to 20, 20 or less. And they give up.

Wow.

You know, the guy who inspired me to do my podcast was the guy from AppSumo, Noah Kagan.

Oh, he's great.

Listening to it. I was listening.

I love his book.

I was listening to a video of him one day and he's like, oh, if you want to make YouTube videos and you want to make videos and you want to be— have a podcast, he goes, you got to commit to 100. 100. Yeah, because he said the first 100 are going to be horrible. Oh my God. They're going to be bad.

Have you— have you seen how many LinkedIn Lives I did this year?

You did a lot. I see you all. I see you. I pop in sometimes when I see. Yeah, I have time. But LinkedIn Live, you know, you gotta try it at different times of the day to see how many people pop in and And all that.

I do it more for the replay, to tell you the truth. I do it more for the replays. You know, like sometimes 1,000 people will watch the replay. Yeah, today I closed one of my biggest deals. Today I closed one of my biggest deals while I was on LinkedIn Live.

I was listening. No, no, but what I'm saying is, is like, especially if you pick like an evergreen subject, obviously marketing right now is a huge thing. Everybody's thinking about for 2025? What are you going to do for marketing? I mean, you're doing something right now that I do almost every day. I pick out 3 or 4 people on my list and wish them happy birthday. Yeah. If someone changed a job, I tell them congratulations. Uh, some of those have turned into conversations where I've actually gotten a deal from wishing someone a happy birthday.

Wow.

They were like, oh, I need payment processing. Forgot about you or whatever, or I'm opening a new business or whatever it is, you know, I have a need for one of your services. So, you know, staying in touch with people on LinkedIn is like super important. I'm watching you do it right now.

And I do, you know what I'm doing?

I don't do every—

right, the belated birthday thing. I was away for a week and I was completely off. Um, but the belated birthday thing is my favorite because during your birthday you probably get dozens of messages, especially if you're very popular. But after your birthday's done, it's crickets. You get a couple people just, you know, harassing you about, you know, whatever.

I usually wait till the next— if I know the person, I do it on the day. On my birthday, whoever has a birthday on my day, I usually post it. I usually make a post. I list every single person who shares my birthday. I actually have 3 friends And I make a post and, you know, usually I hear from tons of people and—

Yeah.

It's kind of, it's, it's kind of, you know, it's, it's nice, but I just, you know, I usually just say happy birthday. I mean, another thing people don't do enough of on LinkedIn is when you connect with somebody or when you connect with somebody, instead of like diving in with a message, why don't you endorse them for a couple of Yeah, or leave a recommendation for them.

I see you haven't received a recommendation since 2015.

People don't, 'cause you have to ask people to leave a recommendation.

Well, I have actual strategy I teach in my accelerator program. We have a program called the LinkedIn Accelerator Program. Have you heard of it?

Yeah, we talked about it before.

Yeah, yeah. So now we're actually giving away, it's a $3,000 program. It's 52 different LinkedIn hacks. We're actually giving it away with our Black Friday slash holiday special that's still going on. where we're giving away $20,000 worth of training for 2025. It's with EvAI Pro, with like launching EvAI Pro. We're giving away all tons and tons of stuff. So one of the things that we teach is you ask somebody like, what did you love most about my presentation? Or what did you love most about the comment that I left for you? Or what do you love most about my networking style or whatever? And they'll, they'll start complimenting you. I'll ask you the question, Alan, what do you love most about my LinkedIn Lives?

You're authentic.

Right. So you said I'm authentic. What else?

And you listen, you're on it. You know, you're trying to help people with their businesses. So, you know, I appreciate that when somebody's being helpful and not being like super pushy.

Exactly.

I appreciate that kind of—

Exactly. And so—

But I'm just saying LinkedIn kind of makes it hard for you to—

So check this out. So check this out. I'm going to go to your profile. I'm going to go to your profile now. I'm going to find you. I'm going to go to your profile right now. Okay. So I just found you on LinkedIn. I'm going to go to your profile. I'm going to check this out. So now you just gave me a compliment, right? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to click on the more button and then I'm going to do request a recommendation. You see that?

No, I don't see you.

Oh, you don't see my profile?

I see your screen, but you're still scrolling through birthdays.

Oh no, it's okay. So maybe he needs to catch up. Maybe he needs to catch up. Maybe my screen needs to catch up with you. Because let me know when you see your profile.

I see you. Yep, I see my profile.

Okay, so I'm gonna click on the more button. I'm gonna click on the more button. And then there's a special section here called request a recommendation. You see that?

Yes.

I'm gonna request it from you. And then what I'm gonna do is in the request box, I'm actually gonna encourage you to leave a recommendation for me, but I'm gonna give you the details of what you said about me to make it easy for you to know what to write about. You get it?

Yeah, I get it.

And then you'll get a direct message from LinkedIn saying, hey, Joe requested a recommendation. So what I do is I teach my— I teach people a 5-step process to getting recommendations, and as a result of it, I've gotten over 500.

Yeah, I think a lot of times, like, I'll ask people for a recommendation, and I think that—

They don't know how to leave it. They don't know how to leave it without you do— you have to do— you have to take the next technical step, which is clicking more on their profile and making the request. Go ahead, request a recommendation from me and you'll see I'll leave you one.

No, I leave, I leave recommendations. Yeah, I think if I go back on LinkedIn, I'm gonna end up back to the LinkedIn Live. No, I'm there. Yeah, I think what confuses people is when you go in the— when you go on here and you say, uh, you know, is Joe— were you a client of Joe? Is Joe a client of you? Joe taught you? Joe mentored you? Joe worked with you but at different companies? Joe worked with you in a different group. I don't think people know what to choose, and they look at all this stuff and they go, oh, how do I pick?

Right. That's why when you, when you request a recommendation, you could select the details and that all that works without them having to do any of that.

No, I understand. I'm saying I think that's what people— what confuses people when they go on there is that they don't know which one of those to choose. Or it doesn't fit their relationship with you. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes total sense.

It doesn't fit, like it doesn't fit the relationship. Like, oh, we did networking together or whatever. I think LinkedIn does that on purpose so that people look at that and they go, hey, that looks, that looks, um, you know, that looks weird or whatever. I'm not sure which one to choose.

Right.

You follow what I'm saying?

Yeah, but so my point to you is, Alan, my point to you is when I make the request, they don't have to choose. You don't have to go leave a recommendation for me right now. Go to your DMs, leave a recommendation for me. You're going to see you don't have to choose. Okay. So, so this is what I teach in my accelerator program. It's one of the 52 hacks that I teach. It's if you take the approach that I teach on LinkedIn, you won't have to. It'll make it so easy for people to leave a recommendation. It's ridiculous how easy it'll become.

So how did you get around that?

The way that I got around that is very simple. What I did was I simply just went to, uh, your profile, I clicked on More, and then I clicked on Request a Recommendation. That's what I did. I clicked on More And I clicked on request a recommendation.

Right, but then how did I— then it says recommend Joe. How does it know that it's not gonna ask me those questions like when I left you a recommendation?

Because it sends you a direct message. Because it says— because it sends you a direct message when you go through those technical steps. It sends you a direct message, and the direct message has a direct link with those things already filled out.

Oh.

You get it?

Yeah.

So there, there's little hacks that just make it easier for people to leave you recommendations, but if you don't know them, you're not gonna end up getting recommendations.

I see that.

And so you haven't received one since 2015, but I'd like to leave you one today. So if you follow the steps that I taught you, then I'll, I'll be more than happy to leave you one.

I just left you a recommendation.

Oh great, let me just— now you have to approve it. Let me show you how to approve it. You go to your profile because it doesn't just happen without approval.

Right, I'm at my profile.

And you have to scroll down to where it says, uh, let's see, where it says recommendations, and then it says show all pending. And it'll load all your pending recommendations.

It says received, given.

Okay, so now it says— now over here it says add to profile. He's a great program everyone should check out, easy to talk to. Check out his LinkedIn Live and software. I'm gonna hit add to profile and I just add it to the profile. Now I'm gonna leave you a recommendation. I haven't left you one yet, but I'm gonna show everyone how I leave you one. So this is how I'm gonna leave you. I'm gonna go to your profile. I'm going to click on the more button and then I'm going to— I'm going to say recommend. You see that? You see it says recommend?

Yeah.

I'm going to click recommend. It's going a little slow because I'm on LinkedIn Live too and I have a million LinkedIns open here. Let me close a few. Let me close a few things here. All right, let's see if it'll go faster now.

See, this is the part where people get confused.

Yeah, people get confused because they're not sure what to do here, but if you do the path that I just showed you, they're not going to be confused. Um, in this case, I'm just going to leave you one for here. Is there anything specific you want me to say?

Whatever you want.

Okay, so I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have Evie AI make a suggestion.

Tell everybody you enjoy my podcast.

Okay. I enjoy the podcast that Alan hosts, and he is a great guy that is always open to helping. Highly recommend. But I don't wanna just write that, so I'm gonna have Evie AI kind of rewrite that for me.

Okay.

Look what it's gonna write. I am honored to recommend Alan Kopelman, a true leader in the payment systems industry. As the CEO of Nationwide Payment Systems, Alan brings a wealth of knowledge in, in new business development. His podcast, B2B Vault, is a treasure trove of insights, and I always look forward to tuning in. Dude, isn't that much better than the garbage I wrote before?

Yeah.

Alan's willingness to help others is what makes him so special. He embodies a spirit of collaboration and generosity, always ready to share his expertise. If you're looking for someone who can elevate your business and provide valuable guidance, I highly recommend connecting. Dude, this is epic. I'm gonna insert it. I'm gonna hit send. And now this, once you approve this on your profile, This will land on your profile instead of having your last one in 2015. You'll have your last one in 2024. And I already endorsed you for startup consulting, but it'll show up right over here instead of Melvin's. It'll show Joe Apfelbaum front and center. Pretty cool, right?

Yeah.

Let me see who this person is over here. This person from Nigeria just tried to sign up or something.

So weird. I think I have to wait till I get off of here.

No, you refresh, it'll show up. It might even show up, um, as a DM in your DMs.

It did, but when I click on it, it's not letting me go over there.

Oh, got it. You could open it up in a new tab, or you could— are you on your phone now, or Yeah, I can go on my phone. Yeah, you can do it from your phone.

Yeah.

Well, you should come be a guest on my podcast.

I would love it. I would love it. Send details for what it takes to scheduling@ajaxunion.com, and I'd be more than happy to, to go ahead and do that. Look, I put up a poll recently. The poll was, Santa can now comment on posts for the holiday season. Want Santa to comment on your post? Yes, I've been good. Yes, but I've been naughty. Nah, Santa will annoy me. Or I'd rather, I'd rather chat with Mrs. Claus. So that was from a week ago. Because I actually created a company page called Santa Claus, LinkedIn Santa.

And you did Santa? That's funny.

And you could comment with LinkedIn Santa now. So I'm going to click in here. I'm going to click on LinkedIn Santa. I'm going to hit save. And now you can use Evie AI with the LinkedIn Santa, um, With the LinkedIn Santa profile. To comment as the LinkedIn Santa company page. Ho ho ho, persistence is the key.

Cool.

And I'm gonna tag him. And I just, I just commented as Santa Claus. You see?

You should, yeah, you should make a page, Hanukkah Harry.

Oh, that's a good one. Monica Harry's so good. So good. But yeah, but Evie AI saves me so much time. It's just a game changer. I highly recommend that you get our holiday deal while supplies last because I know that you're a Well, you tried out Evvy AI, but you haven't signed up to the holiday deal yet.

Send me the info on the holiday deal.

So the holiday, I'll tell it to you right now and I'll send it to you as well. So the holiday deal that we're running right now, um, for less than $1,000, you get $20,000 worth of training over the course of the next year on how to leverage LinkedIn. You get our monthly advanced LinkedIn strategy workshop, which is 2 hours per month. You get our accelerator training, which is 52 LinkedIn Hacks. It's a 6-hour program that's available on demand. You get our Evergreen Networking Course with frameworks, checklists, cheat sheets, and scripts. It's 9 modules, tons of great, great training. We also teach you how to use Sales Navigator. We have a 6-hour on-demand bootcamp that you can watch. You get our goal-setting masterclass. Then you get a full CRM with unlimited— it's called Unlimited Digital Marketing with email marketing, landing pages, social media automation, and pipeline management. That's worth $3,000. You get a year of that. You also get the Inc. 5,000 2024 list. You get a chat with Ava every month to help you brainstorm content ideas. And then you get pro support and you get other, other benefits like, um, our Engaged Thought Leader Community Group, which is $1,200 a year. It's $97 a month to be part of that. So we'll give you access to that as well. So you get tons and tons of bonuses, plus you get unlimited access to Evvii for an entire year. Which that itself is worth $984 a year, um, with all the pro features. So you get all that plus the training, plus the posting parties, plus, plus, plus. So I'll send you the, the link to this, but if you sign up to Evie AI Pro for $984 for the year, you get all those, all those benefits. I'll send you a text message right now with the link.

Yay.

So that you have it and you'll get access to this software as well. The software that I used to call you today.

Okay.

And you'll get training on it as well. So it's really a no-brainer to be able to get this deal. It's— I wanted to make a deal that was so good people would feel stupid saying no to it. And like I showed you how quickly I'm able to leave comments and write posts.

One thing I'm not— this is, this is my problem with the, with LinkedIn Navigator.

Okay.

And one of the most important features in LinkedIn Navigator that they took away was when you do the search, uh, you can't go in there and say who was active in the last 30 days on LinkedIn and then filter everybody out.

So let me, let me show you what you could do. Let me show you what you could do. You can see who was posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days. So if I want to see all of the second-degree connections, That recently posted on LinkedIn, you can actually see all those people who are active based on the fact that they posted.

What, in Navigator?

Yeah, I'm showing you right now. Look at my screen.

I'm looking.

Yeah, it's a new feature they added. They re-added it. Yeah, they re-added it.

Oh, they re-added it. Oh, but they changed it.

They changed it.

Not from logging in.

Yeah, because people that log in, they want, they want people that are active in terms of posting or people that change jobs or people that were mentioned in the news. That's the workflow they have now.

I don't know. I'm still seeing your recommendation thing that you did.

Oh, that's so weird.

On the screen.

Okay.

No, 'cause I, I had LinkedIn Navigator and I canceled it. Yeah.

So we teach all the latest, we teach all the latest new features in the bootcamp. I recommend you watch that. That bootcamp is worth $3,000 alone. We sell it for $3,000 right now. So if you, If you want access to it for under $1,000, you get the whole AI system that we have plus the CRM, which is another $3,000 plus the ever— we're basically throwing in over $20,000 worth of bonuses when you pay less than $1,000 for Evie AI for the year. But that's only available this week. So I highly recommend you grab it while it's available, while supplies last. Or you can pay $3,000 for the Navigator Bootcamp later, which would probably be better for me financially, to tell you the truth. Um, but yeah, I'd love to have you as a client and I'd love to support you and your goals in the coming year. I think that would be fantastic for you to be able to— like, how many more clients are you looking to onboard in the next year?

Listen, we're looking for, you know, we, we look at client, you know, we look at clients because we're very transactional. So when you think, you know, when you think about payments We need people who are transacting.

Oh, people that are doing a lot of, a lot of clients, like a dollar sale.

We're looking for, you know, like we're looking for businesses who are processing, you know, on the low side, $25,000 to $50,000 a month. I mean, there's tons of clients that we get that we move off Stripe, especially people who are doing things like what you do, coaching and stuff like that, because The people who are doing it, a lot of those businesses get their funds held by— get their funds held by Stripe. And then, you know, they're looking for, um, you know, they're look— they need a new place to process payments.

Yeah.

So a lot of times, you know, we're, you know, we're looking for those different clients who, you know, who have business. And then we also, you know, we also have our partner program. So we partner with different types of companies. So we look for people that we can partner with on LinkedIn too, not just business. We look for restaurant consultants, nightclub consultants, business consultants who know people who are, who are processing payments.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, who have no businesses. So if they know business, you know, if they know businesses, Then those are people that we're, you know, those are people we're looking to do business with.

100%. 100%.

You know, it's important to, you know, it's not, it's not just about— a lot of people think like, oh, I got to get on LinkedIn to make sales. Right. So one of the things I learned early on in my business, I'll give you some, I'll give you a nugget. Okay.

Give me that nugget.

Is I got involved. One of my friends told me, oh, you got to get involved with this thing, BNI.

Oh my God, the Business Network International. So many people get annoyed from that.

Right. So it is annoying because, but you know, as a person who was a chef and a restaurant owner, I never was a sales— I was, I was a— you have to do sales.

And this is—

so let me step back from the thing. Anytime you start a business, okay, And you go, oh, I'm going to start a business. I'm going to make mugs and paint pictures of dogs. People are going to send me a picture of their dog. I'm going to make them their own personalized dog mug, or whatever it is that you're going to do, right? I'm going to make websites. I'm gonna, I'm gonna sell merchant services. I'm gonna go sell restaurant equipment. I don't care what it is. You, you, you have— if you're gonna own a business You have to be, you have to know how to do sales. And part of sales is networking. And another thing is part of it is creating referral partners, right? So I learned from BNI, like, okay, you know, you don't need to be a father, right? We're both, you know, you don't need, you know, you got, you got, you know, their big thing is givers gain, right?

Mm-hmm.

So if you give referrals, you get referrals.

Right.

So the thing is, is, you know, if you're brand new to sales, it's a great way to— it's a, it's a great way to learn how to, how to network and be a networker. Right. And yeah. And the other thing is, is, you know, having referral partners is super important to your business because maybe you have to pay— like, we pay referral partners anywhere from 10% up to 50%. of the residual income that's produced depending on their involvement and the— and with the client. And so, you know, that, that's kind of like what we do. So it's, you know, to have to get to find more referral partners on LinkedIn is really good. You know, if you're looking to get ahold of a CEO from a company doing $10 million in credit card processing, you might not find— be able to message them on LinkedIn, but—

Right.

Yes. You know, I use it to find more like referral partners more so than to find—

Direct customers. Yeah. Yeah. People don't understand that LinkedIn is a 24/7 networking event where people come to network every single day. People don't understand that. So educating people on the fact of how networking works is a big passion of mine. I actually wrote a book called High Energy Networking. Which teaches people how to network properly and how to build relationships.

Right.

So I'm a, I'm a, I'm a big believer of what you're saying. I totally agree with you 100%. Um, I think that LinkedIn's a great place to network and build relationships and stay top of mind. And I do recommend that people go on LinkedIn, build those relationships, get to know people. And that's why I'm hosting a posting party today at 10:00 AM.

It's important to, you know, look to get out there, but I feel, you know, you have to be genuine in what you're, what you're looking to do on LinkedIn with people, you know.

Yeah.

And not that, you know, and, you know, it's like a new thing I see everybody doing on LinkedIn now. Let me ask you what you think about that. I get invited like every week by at least 2, 3, 4, 5 people. Oh, I'm having a, I'm having an executive roundtable. Yeah, like 1 hour, right? And everybody gets to— they generally start off with everybody gets to introduce themselves, right?

Yeah.

And see what they do. And I did meet somebody in there that I could possibly do business with, and one of them—

Yeah.

So I would say That was like good, but in the end the guy was like pitching a business, uh, opportunity.

Wow.

Or another one, the woman was poached. Yeah, it was, it was a pretty deep— it was a pretty interesting business opportunity because I guess a lot of people are trying to come up with stuff that's like an alternative to BNI.

Yeah.

So they were doing a thing where it was some kind of breakfast.

Oh nice.

They were talking about Other comp— other business.

So you might be wondering, what is this?

Yeah, other, other franchises, I guess, that do these breakfasts.

100%.

Yeah, I guess there's a few of these companies out there that have this like franchise where people do this like in-person or Zoom breakfast. Yeah, thing which I thought was pretty interesting. And you know, I forget what the names of them all are off the top of my head, but You know, but that— or like another one, this woman was like a coach, but the kind of the, you know, then she started pitching her coaching stuff and all of a sudden everybody bounced off of the platform.

Yeah.

Another guy was trying to pitch, uh, exercise for executives.

Oh wow.

I'm gonna teach you how to exercise over Zoom in the morning, right? Yeah, one-on-one or in a group. And I was like, Whatever.

Like, you know, it didn't, it didn't tickle your fancy. People weren't doing it right.

No, I'm just saying, I don't know what the right way is to do that. You know, like—

At a networking event?

No, like I'm saying, to invite people to an executive roundtable, right? If you said, hey, I'm inviting you to an executive roundtable. Oh, my name, you know, looking for people that are, you know, They're just randomly inviting like hundreds of people and they hope like, okay, 10 people are gonna— at least 10 people are gonna pop into this thing and then maybe they're gonna, you know, that person's gonna get business.

You know what I do? You know what I do? You have to change up the type of events that you're gonna invite people to. You have to find people that are interested, like really going deep and finding people that are actually interested in what you're offering is gonna be key. And you know, like I would, if I was targeting, let's say B2B merchant payment services companies, I would do something related to them that they would be interested in showing up to. And inviting people to events is a really smart idea. However, if you're generic, then it's spam. Whenever you're doing anything generic on LinkedIn, that becomes spam. If I send you a message and it doesn't apply to you, that's called spam. Yeah.

So let me ask you a question. Can I still use your service, the Evvy AI, and not use LinkedIn Navigator?

100%. 100%. It's a small part of Evvy AI's LinkedIn Navigator. It's a very, very small part of Evvy AI. You don't need to—

I'm not a big fan of the—

Yeah, you don't need to use it. If you decide you want to use Sales Navigator, we do have an additional feature that allows Sales Navigator to work, but most of Evvy AI is related to organic and networking, not related to Sales Navigator. I just brought it up because it's something that a lot of people enjoy using, but you know, it's mainly for prospecting.

Right. Well, you know, you can prospect through regular LinkedIn too.

You can, you can.

I think that they're, I think that they're changing the, I think that LinkedIn has fiddled around a little bit too much with the algorithm. And I think there's gonna be, I think we're gonna all get a big surprise for 2025. And it's gonna be like kind of like Facebook style for you to boost your posts.

I think that's gonna happen. I think some of that's gonna happen. I think we need to get people off LinkedIn and onto the phone like we're doing right now.

Yeah, well, it's hard to get people— like I said, it's not easy to get somebody on a phone call. Most business owners I talk to, they're shorthanded, they don't have enough help, you know, they're ripping their hair out. Um, you know, startup, you know, I talked to tons of like companies and they don't even have like their— a lot of times they don't even have their own employees. They're— they have offshore employees, they have employees that are outside of their office. Yeah, they have employees that are—

well, that's becoming very popular now.

I don't believe in, uh, offshoring for any kind of employee.

Would you rather— would you rather have people working with you internally in your office?

Yeah, that's what I have. I have 4 employees in my office. I have an administrative assistant. I have one woman that does all my She does the graphic designing so we can graphic design any PDFs. She does all the graphic design for my blog. She does the graphic design for the website.

Oh, that's great. So you have, you have like a full-on team. How long have you been doing credit card processing, by the way?

Since 2001. Wow.

So you've been in business for such a long time.

Yeah, 24 years. Then I have another person in the office that does video editing. So he's the one that edits the podcast. He makes the reels, he makes other little videos. He does all the social posts for B2B.

Amazing.

The graphic, the graphic designer.

Do you have any salespeople that work? Do you have any salespeople that work in your company with you alongside you?

Yeah.

Yeah, we have— they're independent contractors.

Okay, nice.

So they're 1099, they're 1099. Or like I said, they become— we have people that become a referral partner. So a referral partner is somebody who can put us in front of a business owner, make a warm introduction, you know, hey, this guy's opening a nightclub, or yeah, this is a guy with a law office and they need Payment processing, or, oh, this startup company is building a website and they need to— and they need to— they need e-commerce merchant services, right? And then, you know, and then they become, you know, they become a, you know, they become a referral partner for Nationwide Payment Systems, and then they, they get income every month. So, or, or, or, um, or we look, or we look for, um, you know, those kind of people, or somebody who has like a software product, uh, that they're launching and they need to integrate payments.

Right, right.

You know, we work with all different types of companies, but like the referral part Have really, like, in the last 5 years, that's really spurred a lot of growth for us because everybody's looking for kind of like a part-time job.

Yeah.

Right. Where— and they don't really have to work. So it's passive income. So, you know, like, I have one— I have one person that's really good at it. They're a business consultant, so they do a lot of things with businesses. And they're consulting them on taxes and, you know, business formation and all that. That guy's making like $5,000 a month with us. And he's not, you know, he doesn't know anything about payment processing. He's just basically a referral partner. He referred me to quite a few startup companies and some of them are doing pretty well, you know, and, and, and we consult with a lot of companies like that that are in startup mode. Because many times they, they need assistance.

They need extra assistance.

Yeah, they need assistance with compliance because a lot of times they don't understand. They're coming up with like a new business idea.

Yeah, I totally get it.

And then, and then, you know, they make this website and then, you know, and then we look at it and we go, okay, no wonder, like—

No wonder people aren't doing things.

Well, no, they, they're not getting approved for the merchant.

Got it, got it. So you gotta, you gotta make changes and for them to be able to comply with the merchant, right?

To comply with, you know, Visa, MasterCard rules and regulations. And, you know, like we had a company that came to us there, they're entering their soft launch phase. I don't want to give out the website.

Yeah, please.

To do with— it has to do with people That one, let's say you had a, you had a problem in your neighborhood and your neighbor, all the people in your community want to hire a lobbyist, right? It's very difficult to do that, to hire a lobbyist. So they're making it so they, they, we help them and we got them approved.

Wow.

They, they can, they can get like kind of like help paying the tab so the lobbyist You need 10 grand, you're able to go to all your neighbors and all your neighbors and say, hey, we need to raise 10 grand, and everybody can basically chip in for the 10— chip in to raise the $10,000.

Yeah.

You know, and then hire the lobbyist. So we had to thread the needle because, you know, there's like a con— you know, there's an agreement between the person hiring the lobbyist and the lobbyist. And how to integrate like DocuSign for that. Yeah, different things. And you have to, you know, you have to also deal with anti-money laundering stuff.

That's important. That's really important. I think TD Ameritrade, I think TD Bank or something just got like a $3 billion fine for money laundering, for like enabling money laundering.

They're having huge, huge problems at TD Bank. They're giving customers that deal with bringing in cash or picking up cash. Yeah, they're making them all opt for Treasury services where they have to get their cash delivered. Yeah, all this because they had a big— TD Bank had a big problem. There's a couple of other banks that also having issues with AML.

100%.

And, you know, you have to be— businesses have to be really careful.

They have to be very careful with this whole compliance thing and you can help them out. I have to hop to my next call, but I appreciate chatting with you. Thank you so much for your time today. I look forward to keeping the conversation going. And if you decide you want to grab the holiday deal, I'd love to have you as a client. It's a really good deal.

Yeah, it looks good. I'm gonna go— I'm gonna go read about it.

Read about it.

And also, I'd love to have you on the podcast.

I'd love that. Yeah, send me details about that.

Okay.

All right, thank you so much for your time today. It was really great having this 40-minute chat with you.

Thanks.

Bye. Time flies when you're having fun. Talk soon.

Yeah.

All right, bye. Bye, Alan.

Bye.

And that's how it's done, ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate you guys very, very much. I have to hop on my next call, but I'll see you guys on the next video. Hope you enjoyed this. And if you want to grab the deal with Evy AI, go ahead, go to evyai.com.

Boom.