Jeanne Omlor Interviews Joe Apfelbaum CEO of evyAI

Hello and welcome to another Business Wealth Impact. Today we have Joe Apfelbaum as a guest. Joe is a digital marketing CEO, Inc. 5000 leader, bestselling author, and AI LinkedIn expert helping businesses grow through high-energy networking. Welcome, Joe.

Thank you so much for having me here. I'm so excited to be here today.

Yeah, me too. Because, you know, let's face it, as you know, we're both LinkedIn aficionados, and, and we both help people with LinkedIn. So I always love somebody else that's all in on LinkedIn because I'm passionate about LinkedIn as one of really the best platforms to use. So why don't you share with people why we're all in on LinkedIn? Why LinkedIn?

Well, for me, LinkedIn has been transformational in my businesses. Because it's the professional social network. When you compare LinkedIn to TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok, Twitter, and all those other platforms, you get a handle. I don't know who the person is. But on LinkedIn, I get your first name, your last name, your company name, where you work, where you worked before, and everything about you. It's a professional social network. If I message you on LinkedIn, it's not weird. No. If I message you on Instagram, it might come across as sliding in the DM, which is what they call it. But on LinkedIn, there's no slipping and sliding, and LinkedIn is connecting, building relationships, and getting to know people in a professional sense. And so I like the whole professional world. I love networking and building relationships and making connections, and LinkedIn is the best place to do that. It also has more data than any place else. So I use AI a lot, artificial intelligence. And so LinkedIn gives me a good base on how to be able to research people online with all the details about them that then I can use AIs to go out there and look at your profile on 500 different websites in 30 seconds. And that helps me out cuz LinkedIn is a great foundation. It also tells me who our mutual connections are so that this way I can get introduced to other people in the network.

Hmm. Okay. So. Now, I love what you said about it being the only professional network. Some people aren't getting that. However, a lot of people who don't know any better say, oh, you know, I don't like LinkedIn because just, you know, it's, it's so businessy and you're not allowed to post what you want. And, and that's not true. You can post whatever you want on LinkedIn. And I've seen people literally posting stuff from their Instagram on LinkedIn and nobody's judging them. So What is this mindset people still have that you can't do certain things on LinkedIn and etc.? Can you address that as well?

I think it's because people need to be real on LinkedIn. So people are definitely more hesitant to share things that they would normally share on Facebook because you're representing your company, your brand. You can get fired for posting something on LinkedIn. But if you post something anonymously on Instagram or Twitter, nobody cares. But on LinkedIn, you're being represented. You also can't hide your activity on LinkedIn. So if I comment on your post, everyone in the world can see that I comment on your post. There's no way to hide that I commented on your post. There's no way to hide what you liked. So you can actually see what everybody liked, what everybody commented, what everybody did. There's a level of transparency that makes people have to show up as real, and people often are afraid of their real self being seen. being seen because they don't like some of the ugliness that they have in their personality. What they don't realize is that's what makes them beautiful.

Okay. So how can people get past this thing of being authentic?

Part of it is personal development, like knowing who you are, figuring out what your values are, figuring out what your goals are, figuring out what are the parts of yourself that you don't really like and why you don't like them and how to optimize it. Sometimes people are like, I never say the right thing. Well, it's because you haven't been focusing on what the right thing means to you. And you haven't been practicing on being great at speaking or writing. I used to be afraid of public speaking. I used to be afraid of writing. I used to be afraid of— and I didn't like my personal brand. And I was looking for a personal brand outside of myself.

Mm-hmm.

The truth is your personal brand is already there. You just have to discover it. Identify your stories, identify what you're passionate about. People that are interesting, it's usually because they're interested in growing and learning about themselves and sharing things that are personal. Most people are not willing to share personal stories. I'm not saying share private things. I'm saying share things that are more personal stories. They say features tell, stories sell. sell. A woman recently came up to me and she said, Joe, no one's liking and commenting on my content. You know what I told her? I said, your content is basically like a marketplace. You're sitting and telling everyone, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. Nobody's interested. We're at a barbecue here. We're at a social event. We're at a social club. We're enjoying our life. It's a professional social event. It's a professional barbecue. But if you go to a professional barbecue and you start selling everything like you're in a chicken market, everyone's going to ignore you. You're going to be a pariah. Instead, what you want to do is you want to build relationships, be the giver, ask good questions, and share information that people would find interesting.

Okay, cool. So what are the 3 steps to being successful on LinkedIn?

The 3 steps to being successful on LinkedIn is number one is have a strategy. What is a strategy? A strategy is make sure you understand your plan. Make sure you understand you have the right people and make sure you have the right promise. The plan, there's a business plan, a marketing plan, and a LinkedIn plan. The people are who are the right ICPs, the ideal client profiles, and who are the right COIs, the centers of influence, and who are the people that are likely to engage on your content. The promise is usually the pains, the goals, the dreams, the fears of your ideal clients and the questions they typically ask.

Yeah.

So if you have a good strategy, the plan, the people, and the promise, That's a powerful thing. The second thing you need to do is you need to have the right assets. A story is an asset that could be shared. A profile is an asset that could be optimized. And systems are usually assets. So for example, you need to have your Dream 100 list. That's part of your system. You need to have the right stages of how you take people from point A to point B to point C. So understanding how to build out your system is important. So those are all assets that you need to have.

Mm-hmm.

The technologies that you have are assets. And then the third component is making sure you're taking the right actions. Certain actions will give you exposure. Certain actions will give you credibility, the trustability, and certain actions will actually get you conversations. The rubber hits the road with the conversation. So if you're not getting success from LinkedIn, it's possibly because you're not getting enough conversations. So if you follow those 3 steps, which is strategy, assets, and actions, The likelihood of you actually generating $100,000 in profit to $1 million in additional revenue in your business, that's a very high likelihood because you're following a 9-step approach within a 3-step process that will actually create traction in your business.

Okay. So, how did you get to LinkedIn? What were you doing before you were all in on LinkedIn?

I heard this famous saying that I read a while ago called, if you build it, they will come. I built, I started building websites for people hoping that I would build it and they would come. I built it, nobody came. I built hundreds of websites and nobody came. And I had to figure out, how do I get people to come and show up? And what I learned was, is that you need to do something called marketing. Marketing will help you be able to bring people in. And so for example, I became an expert at search engine optimization, where Google will rank you number 1 and you'll be able to be number 1.

Yes.

Now, the problem with SEO is that often the quality of the traffic that you're going to get is really low. So those types of customers, I can charge $500 to $1,000 a month. But the customers that I was getting through referrals and relationships, I was able to charge sometimes $50,000 a month. And so I had a completely different mind shift in terms of like, yes, SEO is important, but what's more important is building relationships. Now I was doing a lot of offline relationship building, but that was taxing me a lot. It was very difficult. And when I discovered that Microsoft paid $26.2 billion for LinkedIn, I knew that there was going to be a major shift. So I went all in on LinkedIn and I started using it as a platform. to build relationships. Now I have over 50,000 followers on LinkedIn. And the beauty is, is I'm not trying to go viral. I'm taking a strategic approach to building real relationships, getting to know people and staying top of mind. And that's how I've been able to get results. And that's why I love LinkedIn so much for me and for my clients and for my friends and for my network, because LinkedIn Is about relationship building. So I went from a person who build it and they will come to doing transactional SEO to learning about relationships and learning how to network. But by the way, I used to be afraid of networking because I was afraid of public speaking because I didn't want my authentic self to be shown to the world.

Now let's talk about the build it. Now this is one of my pet peeves: the build it and they will come. One movie. Has created a disaster because a movie about baseball is not life. Um, so I agree with you, that has been the problem. If people go and build a bunch of stuff, hope that people are going to buy it, but they aren't doing the marketing. So what they should be doing is building it while they're selling it, and they're getting insight from their clients, from their customers, and it's helping them to build something great. Would you agree with this?

I agree. I think that people need to be more intentional, and that's why I'm a huge fan of strategy. The right strategy will save you a decade. That's something I always tell my clients. If you can have the right strategy, if you can build the right relationships with people and really get to know them and learn about them, that's what's really going to make you stand out with people. Most people aren't taking the time to actually go ahead and do the due diligence and build the relationships because they're doing something I call spraying and praying, or they're doing worse, they're posting and ghosting. I actually get into the comments and I actually see who commented. And often what I'll do is I will actually call the people who commented on my post to actually build a relationship with them and actually get to know them. People actually want to hear your voice. People want to build an emotional connection with you so that they can actually trust you And if you get that know, like, and trust factor in your business, that is a major competitive advantage that most people don't even recognize is that is how powerful it is because they're so busy trying to be transactional.

Okay. So are there any other common problems or steps that people need to do to be successful?

I think that strategy is number one. So the right strategy will save you a decade. Also, part of it is mindset. If you're always afraid about, oh, I'm not getting enough, I'm not getting enough, I'm not getting enough, I don't want to give before I get, you're going to get stuck in a world where you're busy taking. There's a guy named Adam Grant. He wrote a book called Give and Take. He said there are 3 types of people when you're networking and building relationships. There are the people that are takers. Mm-hmm. There are the people that are matchers. And then there are the people that are givers. I believe that the secret to living is giving, and you're very big into mindset. And so for example, having a giving mindset where you believe that givers gain and really be the giver first and not focus on the pitching, the connect and pitch. People are always constantly pitching. You don't want to be pitching. The riches are not in the pitches. Pitches actually get stitches. Instead, what you want to do is you want to build actual relationships with human beings and get to know them and figure out how can you add value. If you can add enough value to other people, you can get anything you want in life as long as you help enough people get what they want in life. And so for me, I'm on a mission, almost like a hunt, a hunt for figuring out how I can add value to other people's life. Here's a big problem that people have is they're not posting on a regular basis on LinkedIn because they're afraid they might be too much. They don't realize that when you post on LinkedIn, it's only showing up on the feed. And the feed is a place where people come to get fed. And so if you're trying to feed people your promotional advertising, your pitches, because you're afraid you're not getting enough, then you're missing the whole point of LinkedIn. So I'm always posting things that are valuable. I recommend posting once a day because a post expires after a day. And I tell people, post once a day, show up authentically, build an actual community around your profile. That means have a dozen, 2 dozen, 3 dozen people that know you, like you, trust you, and comment on all your content, and you comment on their content. It's not an engagement pod. It's a group of people that you actually like, that you actually meet on Zoom every single week and build a relationship with them. And if you do that correctly, you're not gonna be suffering from a lack of engagement, which a lot of people suffer from. A lack of content, a lack of exposure, a lack of conversations, because you're going to have your network that you're building relationships with.

Hmm. Very important. Now people are afraid of the engagement pods because they think they're going to get shadowbanned. What do you have to say about that?

I think that engagement pods where you have 5 people that are always commenting and liking on the same posts over and over and over will get you shadowbanned. But if you have a group of, let's say, 1,000 people, and they're all people that are active on LinkedIn, and you say that I'm going to engage with 100 to 200 of those people over the course of the week, and the likelihood of them engaging in my content is very, very high, you're in a pool of 1,000 people, you're not going to get shadowbanned. You're actually going to get tons of promotion. Some of my posts get tens of thousands of views just by having a dozen or two dozen likes and comments. Because I'm doing it through a pool of people that are engaged rather than being in a formal engagement pod. And LinkedIn could see that these people actually know me because I'm DMing them as well. Did you know that when you DM someone on LinkedIn, the likelihood of them seeing your content later is much, much higher? And so I'm constantly DMing people all the time.

Oh yeah.

I tell people, connect with 20 new people every single day, post once a day, leave at least 5 comments a day, and send out at least 10 DMs every day. And watch the way that your performance on LinkedIn will completely change.

Okay. So question, with the group of people, how did you find this group of people of 1,000 people? Did you create that yourself?

I created it myself. I pay for groups as well. So I find groups that I can pay for, associations, memberships, and so on. And then what I do is I host my own events. I call them parties. And I host these events and then people come together in these parties and they get to know each other. They build relationships. And the beauty of these posting parties that I'm constantly hosting is that it is an amplifier for other people. So I have an amazing school community and in the school community, we're hosting posting parties on a regular basis. But the beauty is that people also share their stuff in those parties. So for example, Barbara, she hosts an event in my community every Friday at 11:00 AM and Friday at 11:00 AM, which is basically happening right now. She'll post a link. You know, everybody that's attending that event, not, it won't always have the same people, but everyone that's attending that event will go ahead and post all their links in there. And the reason why it's not an engagement pod is because there's always somebody else posting something in the event. There's always somebody new coming to the event and they're inviting friends as well. And so those people are actually building those relationships, getting to know each other. And my goal is to go through all those posts that people are posting. I'm actually on a Zoom meeting with them. And then we all kind of share our information with each other. We share our, the relationships that we have with each other and get to know each other. And that's, that's really been a game changer when you actually attend a Zoom with other people that are engaged on LinkedIn and everybody comes and brings a friend to those Zoom meetings, that's transformational because it's not just like, oh, we're in a WhatsApp group together and everybody posts and everybody comments on each other's posts. No, I'm actually on Zoom talking to Barbara. I'm actually on Zoom building a relationship with Lotha and with Yves and with Thomas and with Nathan and B. Randall and Keish. And I know who they are because I've been seeing them on a regular basis. And every Friday at 11 AM, we get together on Zoom and we just share what, what's new in our life. And we also happen to share our posts. And so we all like and comment on each other's content, support each other. That's, that's a game changer because those are, those are the pools of people that are actually building relationships. That's the key right there.

Okay, so can you give the viewers some idea of a big pod they could join where it's thousands of people and there's no Dangerous shadow banning.

Yeah, let's say for example, let's say for example, school. School has a community. There's an AI for LinkedIn community. So where you go there and you find other engaged LinkedIn users, there's 1,800 members in that school community. You can go in there and it's totally free to join. And you can go in there and start seeing the posting parties that are happening in those events and just building relationships with those people. And you'll see all the people that are in there. There are literally over 1,000 people in there. And different members host their own events on a regular basis. And so if you go there and you'll see all the members that are there, and then you'll see all the people that are engaging on their posts, you'll be able to attend some of those Zoom meetings and actually build relationships with those people. Again, I want to emphasize that it's about actual relationship building, not about promoting anything or selling your wares or anything like that. This is literally where people come to build real meaningful relationships. Now, often what will end up happening is in addition to building those relationships, people will also possibly do business with each other. But the goal is not for you to go and do business with people that you're networking with. The goal is for you to actually build a relationship first and get to know the person. So if you join a community like that, you'll be able to see who the other members are and you'll be able to see who their friends are as well. And when you can find other people and their friends and build those relationships, the likelihood of you being successful at networking and relationship building is much, much higher.

Yes. Awesome. So some good stuff in there. So, um, Joe, what's one mindset or philosophy that you live by that you'd like to leave us with before we finish up here?

I believe that the secret to living is giving. Be a giver. Be the person who leans into every relationship. Be the connector. Some people are waiting for people to reach out to them. Don't wait. Be the one that reaches out. Be the one that wishes happy birthday. Be the one that leaves the comments. So many people are stingy when it comes to leaving comments. Don't be stingy. Be a giver. Every comment you leave is an investment in the relationship. So leave more comments, build more relationships, make more introductions, and your life will get better. Because if you— anything you want in life, you can get as long as you help enough people get what they want.

True. Now, was that Zig Ziglar that said that?

It was so many people. I heard Tony Robbins say it, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn. Everyone says that in different ways. Dale Carnegie says that. I highly recommend being a giver.

Right. I do too. Well, thank you so much, Joe, for turning up. And thank you for turning up. Hope you enjoyed this show. And we'll see you on the next one.