Joe Apfelbaum and Frank Somma How to get clients with evyAI

my content that you wanted me to be on your podcast?

Just understanding and being able to leverage LinkedIn the way that you do is something that people aspire to. But unfortunately, and one of the things I want to talk to you about on the podcast is I get a lot of—

Spam.

Like to connect.

Yeah.

Okay, I'll connect with you. Hey, would you like to buy this, this, this, this, this?

It's called— it's called— yeah, it's called connect and pitch. And it's very annoying. And the reason why people do that is because they are not treating— and I'll tell you, you asked me about it on the podcast because we're— let's get into it. But love that.

I wrote a blog about it about 4 years ago. And I called it Show Up and Throw Up.

Ooh, nice. Well done. You don't want to be showing up and throw up. I say show up and follow up.

All right, all right. So I'm gonna read the intro and we'll dive in. I, I know you know your subjects. I'm not concerned at all. We will not run out of time things to do. We'll run out of time before that happens.

Let's go. I'm ready to rock. I'm ready to rock and roll.

Benvenuti a tutti. Welcome everyone to Selling in the Age of AI, the podcast where we respect the the tech, but place human-to-human contact squarely at the top of the sales pyramid. I'm Frank Somma, and today I am thrilled to have a huge LinkedIn expert. I have followed this guy for years. Over the past 3 years, Joe Apfelbaum has trained over 1,000 companies. I got to stop there. Over 1,000 companies in 3 years. That's unbelievable. Talk about expertise. And he's trained them on how to leverage LinkedIn and most recently how to use AI for business development and marketing. He's a digital marketing expert and the CEO of a marketing agency that's been ranked on the Inc. 5000 as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. He's the author of 5 books including including his most recent, High Energy Networking. Joe is the founder of an AI sales assistant for LinkedIn, a software he developed with his team to help LinkedIn users maximize the platform and save time using AI that learns your voice and can help craft some comments and content. When he's not on stages all over the world inspiring and educating professionals, he spends time with his 5 children, rollerblading and rapping in Hillside, New Jersey. So when I read that, I go, Joe, can you open up with a rap for us?

Yo, yo, yo, my name is Joe. I'm the B2B to B2B AI pro. If you want to grow your business, let me show you how. Step number 1, have a strategy because the right strategy will save you a decade.

My goodness. Oh my God, Joe, unexpected.

Unexpected, but fabulous.

Fabulous. 5 kids, man. Run 'em down. Sons, daughters, give me the age range.

Yeah, 9 to 19, 3 girls, 2 boys. Very proud of my kids. Um, I've always wanted to be a father. That's like the, the, the thing I've always wanted to do. My mother instilled in— I'm one of 6— my mother instilled in us that we have to have as many kids as possible. And, um, I, you know, I grew up Orthodox Jewish in Brooklyn, New York, and, you know, having a big family was very important to me always. But, you know, I watched my mother try to grow her business in the Lower East Side after not making a lot of money and eventually go out of business. So I kind of like, part of my childhood trauma is watching my mother, a female-owned business, go out of business. And so I'm very, very committed to helping people be able to do what I did, which is be able to grow my marketing agency to be one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the United States. We were on the Inc. 500 at number 178.

Wow.

And it's because, it's because of strategy. That's what I believe. Luck is great. Luck happens when you take a lot of action and you have a great strategy.

Absolutely. Strategy means everything. Planning and strategy. What kind of business was your mom in?

She had a clothing store on Orchard Street in the Lower East Side. Are you familiar with the Lower East Side of Manhattan? Because you're in Jersey.

Yeah, I grew up in New York City though. Oh. And I shopped Orchard Street. Orchard Street for clothing all the time.

On Sundays.

Booth to booth to booth.

Yeah. So maybe you even went to my mother's store at some point while you were looking for a nice couture for a coat or something.

It was, it was first, my first introduction to negotiating price.

Right. So I would stand on the street sometimes and I would bring people in. I would have a rack of clothing, $5 each. And when somebody would stop and look through it, I'd be like, why don't you come into the store? We have even better deals inside the store.

See, this is the kind— you know, it's so funny. I wrote in my book about my friend Joe and I that worked in a gift shop. And, you know, if you met Joe today, you would see him as— he's a partner in a big auto dealership, super successful general manager, just sales through and through, a Brilliant salesperson and now business owner. And people would say, oh, he's a natural. You know, he's got the sales gene. And I said, well, if you were a fly on the wall for the entirety of Joe's life, you would understand that he was in a learning lab for over a year in a gift shop where he and I used to challenge each other. Hey, I bet you can't get that guy to buy 2 things up front. Hey, I bet you can't get that woman to double her flower. Hey, I bet you can't go out in the mall and drag somebody in and sell them a gift. You know, like we did these sales challenges. So what you're saying is reminiscent of that. You cut your teeth on meeting people, introducing yourself, and then asking a closing question, getting them to come in and buy something. I mean, think about what that did in your formative years. So people would meet you today and say, boy, this This guy's a natural. But they don't understand that, you know, all of this stuff happened in your lifetime that led you to be the expert you are today.

But I, but I still did not even know for the next 20 years that I was afraid of public speaking. I was afraid of doing podcasts. I was afraid of putting myself out there. I didn't want my photo online. I was like, I don't want anyone to see me. You know, I put a picture of an apple instead of putting my picture online, or I put a picture of a cheetah. I didn't know then that my spirit animal's a cheetah, but now I know that my spirit animal's a cheetah. And, but at the end of the day, for me, it's about connecting with people, building relationships. That was always something that was important to me, like getting to know people. And so, yeah, I mean, what I tell people is if you want more sales from LinkedIn, it's about having conversations, not connecting and pitching, or as you say, showing up and throwing up. I say you gotta show up, show up consistently, and then you gotta follow up and follow up with value. Value first. Like you said, date me first, buy me flowers first. How do you buy flowers on LinkedIn to people is you can compliment them. You could provide them with invitations to things. So for example, leaving a comment on a post. I saw that you posted a day ago about the most important decision in your life.

Right.

And I left you a thoughtful comment. I said, Frank, your reminder touches the core of true meaning of success. Giving 100% isn't just effort. but heart. Connecting authentically in a time where AI can help us serve with a genuine presence. Truly inspiring to see this kind of intentional approach. So that's what I said under your post of your video.

Yeah.

I was the only one that commented on the post because there are some strategies I'm gonna give you to get more comments on the post. But at the end of the day, it's like, now I have equity with you. Now I, I'd added value to you. So maybe I'll also DM you on LinkedIn. I'll be like, hey Frank, I noticed that you posted this incredible post and it really inspired me. Thanks for posting it.

Right.

Or maybe what I'll do is I'll take your post and I'll run it through a post review tool. I created one called postreviewtool.com, which will actually analyze your full post and it'll score the post based on the content on the post, telling you if you have a good hook, if you have too many hashtags, if you don't have enough content or whatever, and it'll give it a score out of 100. where you're holding and what— and it tells you all the different things you can improve on the post. So, I used AI to build that out. So, what I'm doing is I'm constantly using AI to improve what I do, but also to help my clients be better and do better.

So, there's a lot to unpack there. But what's super interesting to me and the reason that we started this podcast is because I had a lot of sales professionals that came to me in fear of losing their jobs because, you know, AI was all over the place and everybody's going to be replaced by AI. And what you're saying is that you're using the tool, and this is what we want to get across to professional salespeople. Listen, if you're commoditized, if you're in a business and I can replace you with point-and-click technology, you're out. I'm going to replace you. However, the real sales profession, the folks that understand human connection, like you said, follow up, providing interesting commentary, shepherding people through the process of buying. Those are the folks that need to learn to leverage AI, Joe, in a similar way to what you're just describing to us, and their jobs will be enhanced and not in jeopardy. Is that—

100%. I mean, I'll give you a very clear example. If you're a sales rep, you probably are good at sales, right? You're not terrible at sales. The problem is, is that you're not good at getting people's contact information. So for example, if I try to connect with Frank, this guy named Frank Soma, that's my connection. I could email him. I can call him. Now he does put his email on his LinkedIn, but he doesn't have his phone number on his LinkedIn. 732-822-5990. Where can I find his phone number? So I have a technology called AI Research, and when I click on, for example, Grok, Grok will go and look you up on Amazon. It'll look you up on franksoma.com. It'll look you up on dozens of different websites and it'll compile whatever it can. It'll find you on Twitter, /fsoma. It'll find you on Instagram, /franksoma. It'll find you on Facebook, /somafrank. It'll find you on LinkedIn and it'll compile everything and put it for me front and center.

Yeah.

And me as a sales professional, I now have one button that I push and AI does the work for me. And now I can pick up the phone and build a real relationship with you because I'm already good at sales. Here's the other thing is if you're not good at sales, you don't understand that you need to deal with rebuttals. So you wouldn't be able to, even if you tried to do sales with AI, it wouldn't work because you go to AI and say, be better at sales. So it's going to say, speak to more people or whatever. It's not going to— But if you're a sales rep, you're going to be like, I have this specific list of rebuttals that I'm getting from this client. And I'm not sure what to say. Can you gimme suggestions? Now AI's giving you suggestions to your rebuttals, but if you weren't in sales and you didn't, and you, you were not using AI, you wouldn't be able to even tell it what to know. That's why I'm writing a book called High Energy Prompting, because if you get really good at prompting, you can use the skills you already have to get better at your own job so that you become not replaceable. As a matter of fact, all the people that are not using AI are gonna be left behind because AI is like a tool. It's an amplifier. Imagine you're a carpenter and AI was a hammer. Now you can give a hammer to a child, it's just going to break windows, right? But if you give a hammer to a carpenter, what are you going to do with it? You know, like what are you going to do with it? You're going to do some incredible things, like open up a can of beer. You're going to do some incredible things with the hammer. If you give it to a white a white-collar person, they're going to use it as a paperweight. They're going to use it as a piece of art. They're going to sell it, whatever they're going to do to it. But a carpenter with a hammer, you know, what are they going to do with the hammer? That's insane. You give them a chisel and a hammer. So using AI, you're giving you a whole toolset for you to use your already known expertise and take it to a whole nother level. It'll help you market yourself. It'll help you ideate. It'll help you brainstorm, all that stuff. So it's essential That you become friends with the AI instead of getting scared of it and use it as a tool to help you take your life to the next level. Like even for example, even, even, even, you know, me being on this podcast, I asked AI to gimme suggestions for the interview for the Selling in the Age of AI podcast. And it told me, talk about my journey and the origin of Evvy AI. Talk about how Evvy AI transforms sales in the AI era. Talk about real-world examples of success stories. Talk about the challenges of AI and sales and how to overcome them. Talk about the future of selling on AI. Talk about personal insights and motivation. And it breaks down exactly what to say and how to say it. Now, if I was reading, you guys would be able to tell that I'm reading. I'm clearly not reading. Instead, what I'm doing is I'm being guided by an AI that looked at 20 sources and downloaded all your podcasts to inform me how to best say this. speak to your audience. So when you have this level of research, and I did tons of research on you, but, and I just clicked a button. I know that you authored highly rated books, including B2B Is Really P2P. I already did my research on you, but I did it in a lightning speed with the ability for me to connect with you deeply. I don't know if that makes any sense to you.

It makes a ton of sense. And I have to wade back through Some of what you just said. And the first thing is, you mentioned that you have a tool to find information. So all the sales professionals right now just lean forward into their chairs, and they put their ears out because they're like, wait, what tool is this that I can get contact information? And how do I get that tool? So let's start there.

Okay, so, so let me tell you something very interesting. AI can find you anything you want that's already online. You don't have to Google things anymore. There's a new concept called AEO, answer engine optimization. Whereas you used to go into Google and type in a keyword, now you go to ChatGPT or Claude or Grok or Perplexity and you ask it a question and it goes, does Google searches for you, finds you everything and organizes it and gives you the answer properly based on all the different sources that it did research on. That is called AEO, okay? The answer engine optimization in order to get into those results. But you as a sales professional, You need to be able to do research on people. So if I researched you from your Instagram, I wouldn't be able to find much information because it's instagram.com/whatever. I, you know, a lot of times it's BigBetty75. It doesn't help me. It doesn't tell me anything. But if I research you based on LinkedIn, Frank, I know your first name. I know your last name. I know every book you wrote. I know every company you worked at. I know who your mutual connections are. I know your location. I know you're in Jersey just like me. I know everything that's going on and I know all your posts. I have everything about you and that I feed to the AI and then I start researching. So I built a technology because I trained over 1,000 companies. I know what the problem is. You know, like they say in Brooklyn, yo, what's your problem, huh? What's your problem, huh? So the problem that people have on LinkedIn is that they don't have the creative ability to write posts. Even the posts that you've written need work.

Right.

They don't have the ability to organize their connections. Thousands of connections, they're not organized properly, they're not segmented, and they're not researched. You don't have the contact data of all your connections. Even you, you put your phone number on your website, but you don't put it on your LinkedIn. So if I want to call you and I want to hire you, or if I want to call you and I want to offer you some of my services by building a relationship first and seeing if there's a pain, what I need to do is I need to start doing research. But I built a tool that combines all the problems that a sales professional might have and puts it on the side of your browser as an extension. And it complies fully with LinkedIn's terms and conditions because we're called a human-in-the-loop automation, which means we don't actually automate anything. We just allow you to do things faster. So if I want to message you something, I have templates ready to go for every possible thing that you need. For example, I did something called the Influencer Summit, and I wrote detailed notes of everything that was said in the Influencer Summit last week. There were 8 top influencers, 1,000 people came. It was amazing. And so I wrote all the notes for each of the 8 influencers and all the things they shared over 4 hours, and I have the notes available. So you might say, Joe, I would love to get the notes. I just push one button inside Evvy AI and the notes go into a DM in LinkedIn and it gets sent to you just like that. So I, I, I realize, you know what people need? People need content. They need images that look like them organized nicely. People also need to have their connections organized into lists and research to be able to done on all their connections, including contact info.

Mm-hmm.

and including everything about you, including if I need to introduce you to somebody, I wanna push a button and an intro gets written. I don't wanna have to think about it and start prompting and dealing with all that. I wanna push a button and it gets done. And then the third part is I want templates. I want my templates organized so I know what to say and I don't have to rely on AI. In the age of AI, when you could be more specific and not rely on AI, it's better for you not to use AI. 'Cause I know what I wanna send you. I don't wanna have AI have to write it and now I have to tweak it. I just, I know what I wanna say. I have it as a template and I want it ready to go. So if you do content generation with AI support, if you do, uh, profile and connection organization and research and you have your templates, that's what Evvy AI does and it does it really well. The problem is that people buy tools and they don't end up using them. So what we did was we added a whole nother layer. We have a $10,000 coaching program that we added. to the technology, say if you pay for the technology for the year, we'll throw in as a bonus our $10,000 training program. So you don't pay for the training because, you know, information's information. People don't— are not so comfortable paying for information like they used to pay. People still buy my 99 LinkedIn Hacks course if they go to 99hacks.club. People still pay $1,000 for the course. But if you want our Evergreen Networking training system that includes frameworks, checklists, cheat sheets, scripts, It includes tons of resources and everything available for you instantly with a 9-module course, with strategy sessions that happen every month, with weekly sessions from our clients that sit down and organize events for people to get recommendations to each other, for people to do posting parties, and tech support that happens every day, twice a day to teach you how to use LinkedIn. If you want that system called the Evergreen Networking System, we include it in the software. So now you buy the software. But you get the training, you get a community of 1,600 engaged LinkedIn users that want to engage with your content. I was telling you, I was going to tell you the secret of engagement. The secret of engagement, Frank, and I know you want to hear this, the secret of engagement is to find people that are engagers. Not everybody on LinkedIn is capable of engaging because of their personal development hasn't reached the level of where they don't care about other people's opinions. So if you're the type of person that cares deeply about the opinions of other people, the chances of you commenting on a post is very low because you don't want to get judged by the comment that you leave. But we found people that vibe really high, that are willing to overcome their identity of trying to be special, and instead they're willing to add value by leaving comments. And we have 1,600 of those people inside a community, and then we give you access to that instead of charging you $12,000 for our community, which if you want to buy it separately, you can pay. We— you buy the software and you get the trifecta. Because I was looking at how do you create a moat for a business? You know what a moat is? No, tell me. A moat is, um, if you have a castle and you don't want people to— Oh yeah, I know what a moat is. Yeah, yeah.

I thought it was going to be an acronym for something, but yeah, I know what it is.

I, I should make it an acronym, but if you want to moat for a SaaS business, the most important thing that you can do if you want to moat for a SaaS business is to figure out How can somebody not replicate what you have? Very easily. So first of all, building the software is a very hard thing, and making it scalable so a million people could use it is a hard thing to do. You could build the software right now for one person to use, but if you want to get 1,000 active customers, like we have 23,000 users in 40 countries around the world, and you want to be scalable, that's something that's a very difficult thing to do, and it takes years to build it. It doesn't take 5 minutes to build. You need architecture, you need many people, you need a lot of money, investment, whatever. It's a very hard barrier to get in. I know this because I built it over the past several years. That's number one. Number one, it's a high barrier of entry. Number 2, the second moat. The second moat is having a community, which means having people that know you, like you, and trust you that you can keep offering your products and services to and keep referring business to. That takes years to build. So if somebody wants to buy a business that has a built-in community, the value of the business is much higher because How are you gonna go build a community overnight? It takes years to build a community. Imagine a guy I've been teaching for 5 years and he's in my community, knows me, likes me, and trusts me. You think if you teach LinkedIn better than me, he's just gonna go to you? He— we have a relationship. I know about his kids, I know about his family, I know everything he is. He's in my software, he's been paying me, he loves it, he buys everything I offer, every new product I have he buys. And if you have 1,000 of those people, you're making millions of dollars in revenue You can't just replicate that. The other moat is the data. I have a tremendous amount of data and information and access to data that people don't have. The other one is called a process. I have processes. I have the plan, the people, the process. I have the stories, the profile, the automations. I have a bunch of systems, processes, templates, cheat sheets, scripts. I have a bunch of IP that you can't just replicate. So all those are moats. So the more moats you can add to your business, The more strong you have, the more the wall around your castle becomes strong and you have a business that could last 10, 15, 20, 30 years, but it all begins with strategy, Frank.

That's fantastic. And, you know, the idea of having access to something like that. So who are the clients? Let's say sales organizations or is it solopreneurs? Who's the best clients for your business?

Who's looking There are 5 segments. There are 5 segments: coaches, consultants, entrepreneurs, sales professionals, and authors and speakers. Those are the 5 segments of people that are most likely to benefit. So for example, if you're a sales rep, a B2B sales rep, you need to get on conversations with people. This tool will help you get on 5 conversations a day, every day, guaranteed.

Wow.

If you're a consultant, whether you're a recruiter, or whether you're an outsourced CFO or an EOS implementer, if you're a lawyer, if you're a consultant, you need to network. Your best clients come from relationships, not spraying and praying or waking and baking or showing up for 15 minutes and faking and trying to go viral. That's not how you're going to get clients. You're going to get clients by building relationships and investing 15 minutes a day on getting exposure, getting credibility, and having conversations. Those are the 3 things you need. So this is almost like, this is almost like a masterclass that I'm teaching. I have hundreds of hours of content and you can't get all the content in a 30-minute episode or a 45-minute episode. But if you dig into what I'm giving, the value, the community, the knowledge, the systems, the IP, the technology, all that stuff combined, I help people be able to put it all together and actually implement. That's the keyword here. Because if I told you to write a post, and it would take you an hour to write the post, I promise you, you wouldn't do it. Right? You wouldn't do it.

Implementation has to be easy. There can't be a moat between me and using your system.

So, so the implementation has to be easy. But what if I told you click one button, we already have trained on your data, we know who you are, click one button, and the post will be written in your voice with a hook, main points, call to action, all the best practices of LinkedIn. Then click another button and an image will be generated that looks exactly like you with your B2B is Really P2P logo and everything with your book, everything organized nicely. And you'll have an image that matches the graphic perfectly. And then you just push it into LinkedIn with one click of a button and it just appears. And it all, oh, that entire process took you under 2 minutes. Would, would that, would that save you time and give you the ability to now be able to Promote yourself to the 2,300 people that are already following you on LinkedIn.

Oh, huge.

That's the key. The key is you have 2,334 people that are following you on LinkedIn and every single one of them want to be in touch with you. The problem is that you're not posting every day. You're posting once a week. So if you're posting once a week, you're missing out because a post expires usually after 24 hours. It stops showing up on the feed. And so if your post expires after 24 hours, sometimes it'll show longer, If you posted once a day, you would get so much more exposure than if you post once a week, once a month, or once a year. And here's, here's the other thing is we'll tell you who the most engaged people are on LinkedIn so that you can connect with them. And now you have, even if you only have 5,000 followers, you're getting 20, 30 likes and comments on every post, which is super valuable because instead of your post getting 20 views, it'll get 2,000 views. It'll get 1,000 views. It'll get 800 views. And our clients consistently see that, but with the tech, it saves a lot of time. So in 15 minutes, I can get done 4 hours worth of work.

That's huge. So let's think about— a lot of folks that listen to the podcast are sales professionals working for a big pharma company or an office automation company. So how does an individual salesperson benefit from engaging you, or do they bring you to their company to look For the larger scale or both?

I would say it depends if the company has a technology budget. If they have a technology budget or if they have a training budget. Some clients, some companies don't have a technology budget. Some companies have a technology budget. They don't have a training budget. So it depends. If your company doesn't have a budget and you're like fend for yourself, then you pay us money. We'll get you in the door and it's very inexpensive. It starts at like peanuts. It's a couple of cents to get started with it. It's like The price of AI has gone down so much that we charge very, very little. But if you want your company to pay for it, you might get reimbursed. And we can frame it however you want. We can frame it as training. We could frame it as content. We can frame it as data. So whichever way you want to pay for it, at the end of the day, you could put it into whatever bucket you want. That's why we've created all these buckets because certain companies are like, we don't pay for tech, buy your own tech, we'll pay for training. So we'll say, okay, buy the training and we'll let you use the tech for free for now just to kind of see how it works. Or you might say, we don't pay for training, we'll pay for tech. Okay, buy the tech and then we'll give you training for free for now. And if the training is good and you like it, then pay for it later on if you could afford it. So one way or the other, we get you in the door. So if you are an individual sales rep, the first thing I would tell you to do is come to our free webinars. That would be the first thing. Go to evviai.com/webinar, attend our next webinar, and start learning how this tech works. I would say if I was a sales rep, I would just pay for it myself because it's not, it's not crazy expensive. And if I can, if you're commission only, or if you're highly incentivized on commission, getting on 5 conversations a day and using this tool that you own yourself will change the game for you. And if you're not, if the company's not investing in you, maybe find a company that will invest in you. If you're a good sales rep, you can sell yourself. You should be able to sell yourself to another organization that will actually train you.

Absolutely. But I think about what you're saying. If I'm an individual, See, this is what separates the, you know, this is why the Pareto rule exists, the 80/20, right? It's what separates great players. So if you're going to be a professional salesperson and you're selling MRI machines, for argument's sake, you know, one deal is maybe making you $10,000 in commission. So why wouldn't you invest in 5 deals? 25 conversations a day? Are you kidding me? If you're— if you stink, you should be closing several pieces of business off of those 25 conversations a week. If you're mediocre.

Yeah. And but most people— but most— yeah. And most people are just not doing it. They're not doing it. They're not doing it correctly. They're not even using the platform. They're not even doing my 4— the 4 steps I teach people to do, which is connect, post, engage, message, optimize. Those are the 5 things I teach people how to do. They don't know how to use Sales Navigator. We have something called The Bundle Plus, and it's available at thebundleplus.com. If somebody goes to thebundleplus.com, there's a 20-minute video. We explain what it is, and we throw in $52,000 worth of value for less than $2,000 a year. So somebody can go there and they could get the training, the community, the support, Sales Navigator training. Basically, we throw in a massive, massive bundle. It's available for a limited time only. We're going to charge $5K for it soon, but we give you the opportunity to be able to jump in. So if you're a sales rep and you're earning $200,000 a year, or you're earning $100,000 a year, or you'd like to be earning $100,000 a year, investing $2,000 a year or $5,000 a year in your own personal development is key. It's a key thing. It's a key thing. I spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on my own personal development. And even when I was a sales rep, and I just worked for a company, I would still spend money on courses. I would still spend money on books. Think, you know how many books I have in my house about, from Zig Ziglar, from Brian Tracy. If you're not going to Tony Robbins and learning how Tony Robbins does it, if you're not invested in Napoleon Hill or Dale Carnegie and that type of stuff, you are majorly missing out. So if you're a sales rep and you're not investing in your own personal development, you are not being valued as more. The more you invest in yourself, the more value you will have. We have, uh, something called the AI Business Development Circle. We charge $3,000 a year for that, uh, mastermind. We meet 3 hours a month and we teach you everything there is to know about AI. We have dozens and dozens and dozens of salespeople that are part of it and they love it, but they pay for it themselves for their own personal development. And they pay monthly for it, but they pay for their own personal development. They show up year after year. Because they're learning how to maximize AI to be more effective at writing proposals, at creating applications, web applications that save them time, lead magnets, email automations, books, podcasts. I mean, this whole podcast will be edited with AI and be published before the end of the day. Like before the end of the day, you're gonna see this podcast, even before you publish it, it's gonna be published by AI. And you're going to Google your own name, Frank Somon. It's going to come up on Twitter. It's going to come up on Facebook. It's going to come up on LinkedIn. It's going to come up on YouTube. If you have a Google alert set for your name, Frank, and I hope you do, you're going to get notified that this thing is online all over the place. And you're going to be like, damn, son, this guy Joe's on top of his game. But it's not even me. It's AI doing it. It's not even me. Learning how to use AI is a major competitive advantage. So If you want to get a new job in the age of AI, if you want to get paid more, learn how to use AI. By the way, the second the phone starts ringing and I have a prospect that I'm about to get on the phone with, I already know more about the prospect than most people that that person spoke to in the past year. Huge.

You know, Joe, there's so much wisdom in what you're saying. And I want to go back to something that, you know, is as old as me, and that is investing. Investing in yourself. And I think that people miss this part of it, and that's why, you know, there's a smaller percentage of the sales population that outranks everybody else. And the best people I've ever seen are people that have no problem investing in themselves. And like you said, all the greats— the old stuff is important. You've got to read Napoleon Hill. You've got to read Dale Carnegie. You know, these are— Frank Betker, for Pete's sake. I read the first chapter of Frank Betker's book. I've read Frank Betker's book, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, at least 100 times. Just chapter 1.

Unbelievable.

It's an absolute lesson on humility and hustle. And there's a lot of wisdom in some of this old stuff. And then going forward and thinking about how you've got groups of salespeople that will subscribe monthly to become a part of something. And think about the offshoots of that. Not just the knowledge. Look at the knowledge they're getting in AI, the way they're facilitating the work, the way they're going to sound better when they talk to their customers, the experience they're going to bring to the table when they speak to their customers. And on top of that, they're meeting all of these other professionals. They're part of that network. Who you hang around with will determine where you're going to go.

You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Jim Rohn, who I'm a big, big fan of, he was Tony Robbins's coach. I mean, he said things that when I used to listen to them in the beginning, I thought were the most simple, stupid things. But when I thought they were stupid, I was actually stupid because it's the simple things. It's tying your shoes that really matter. It's like literally the most simple things that you can do are the things that will have the biggest impact. And when you start doing the simple things, that's when you— so like, you know, don't ask yourself, oh, I know this already. Or don't say, I know this already. Say, how well am I doing this?

Right. I mean, the biggest impediment to improvement is not a lack of knowledge. It's the belief that one has the knowledge.

Yeah, beliefs are everything. Beliefs are everything. I mean, as a, as a sales professional, if you don't have optimized beliefs, you're never going to be successful.

Absolutely true. It's, and you know, it's all of these things, right? So think about the resources to learn. Jim Rohn, I, you know, I listened to Jim Rohn in my car on cassette tapes back in the day, and still to this day I quote all my favorite Jim Rohn. You know, I had talked to some salespeople and my favorite— I actually got to use this once. I had my pencil and my paper and I'm asking, the guy's name is Dennis, I'll never forget this, and I said, Dennis, what's the forecast for this month? And he said, well, You know, I had to go and visit my mom. I said, then I don't want a story, just a number. See, the reason I made the boxes so small is so a story won't fit in them.

Oh.

That was Jim Rohn. That was a Jim Rohn line.

And I—

when I used it, I laughed out loud. I said, Dennis, I've been waiting my whole career to use that.

Wow. Do you—

it was amazing.

The reason the box is so small is so a story And most people don't even realize that networking is a game of personal development. Sales is a game of personal development. Professional speaking, being on podcasts is a game of personal development. I mean, I remember the first networking event that I went to. I was, I was so scared of going to that event. I was so scared of the people. I was afraid of what people thought about me. I was so afraid. Now I walk into a room and everybody loves me and I love everybody and I get to know everyone. And I'm the one that connects everybody with each other. I'm kind of like the glue in the room. But I used to be so scared. And I know that you hosted an event, a Connect and Elevate networking and seminar event at the American Hotel back in Freehold, New Jersey. Right. And that was in September of 2024 at 5:30 to 9:30. Are you still hosting those types of events?

You know, I did that because there's a guy that I met. His name is Matt. And a friend of mine said, you've got to meet Matt. He's your kind of kid.

Yeah.

You know, so when I met Matt, Matt wants to do more speaking. He's 35 years younger than me or so, and Matt's blind.

Wow.

His story, how he overcame his vision loss, which happened to him when he was 21 years old. Now he owns a business, he owns a gym, he's a personal trainer, and he is the most inspirational person I've ever met. So I wanted to create this event because I can and bring Matt in. So that he could get up in front of a group, tell his story, leverage himself as a speaker, get that experience. So that's why we ran that event. And no, I haven't done another one with him. It doesn't fit into, you know, what I'm doing with my life these days. But he was phenomenal, Joe. I wish you could have seen him.

Yeah, no, I, I can't even imagine how good the guy was, you know, like that sound— it sounds unbelievable. So do you do events regularly, or are you not doing events anymore?

I get hired to speak at events.

Okay.

But I haven't run my own in quite some time. Don't really have a desire to do that. Mostly my life now is consulting and coaching for teams inside of companies. I'm not even getting up on stage that much anymore.

Amazing. Amazing. What's an example of a company that I could refer you to? So this is, this is the conversation I like to have people on LinkedIn. What's the conver— what's What's the type of company that I can refer you to? Who's somebody that needs to hire you either to speak or to train?

I do very well in insurance companies. I do very well with real estate companies, and I do very well with anybody selling hardware, be it copiers, computers, VoIP systems, MRI machines, whatever. If you have a sales team that goes out and makes commission, By selling the eye doctor the equipment he uses to examine your eyes, I'm the guy you want in front of your sales team.

Do you remember when we first connected? Do you remember the time that we first connected back in 2016 when we first connected on LinkedIn? I can't say that. It was a long time ago. Yeah, no worries. I mean, you invited me. You called me Joel, J-O-E-L. My name is Joe, by the way. But it was funny because a lot of people call me Joel. And you said, in January I'm doing a cool event in Monmouth County. It features a nice buffet dinner, an hour of networking, followed by my life management and goal setting seminar. Do you remember doing those types of things?

I did that event because I was launching my career as a speaker and I had no video content. So, no one will hire you without video content and you can't get video content on stage unless someone hires you. So my coach said to me, do your own event and create the video content. So I hired a 2-camera shoot for that event. And that was the first video content I was able to put on my site.

Do you still have that out there? Do you still put it out there? Or did you create new content since then?

Oh, there's, there's plenty more, you know, like now it's changed over the years. But that content is still mixed in here.

I love that. I love that. Really, really powerful. Okay, well, I love that you work with copier companies. That gets me what to think about. They say the copiers are going out, but they're not really. People still need to copy pieces of paper. People still need to print things. People still need office automation and things like that. I love that you're working with real estate. I love that you're working with financial services and insurance. It's really powerful stuff.

Insurance became the biggest thing for me, Joe, because back when I first started working with insurance companies, I didn't understand their business. I didn't know the model. I got hired to speak at a convention, you know, 6, 8 years ago, whatever it was. And I started meeting insurance professionals. And one of the companies that I met there hired me, and I did extensive work with them out in Michigan. And what I learned is that insurance melds perfectly with the way that I teach selling. Selling to me is fiercely personal. Like, you hear these things about, oh, rejection, don't take it personally. Yes, I take it personally. I am what I'm selling.

Yeah.

Anyone can sell anything, but getting Frank Soma is the differentiator, whether I'm selling a microphone or I'm selling insurance. And in the insurance business, more than any other business that I've encountered, the individual you're dealing with needs to have that credibility and integrity. I mean, who are you going to call on your worst day? Your house burns down, you want to call an 800 number and get somebody in another country?

Yeah.

You want to call Joe, your insurance agent. Hey Joe, this just happened.

Yeah.

I'll be right over, I got you.

Yeah.

They're selling.

Yeah.

It just fits in my model of sales so well. I love working with insurance. Real estate is similar in that I find that real estate professionals, by and large, when I go out to talk to them, are very much one-hit wonder because somebody buys a house and they They usually stay in it, you know, for 20 years or whatever. And the best that I've seen— there's a guy named Scott Einbinder.

Okay. Nope, don't know him.

He trains real estate companies, and he is— I shared a stage with him, and it was intimidating. He's the most dynamic, high-energy guy you ever want to see. I say hello, Scott. He's been on the podcast. But anyway, what I found the best real estate folks do is they Understand what you and I understand about selling, networking, follow-up, and continuous content with their customer base, and that's how they elevate.

Amazing. I love that. I'm looking at Frank from 8 months ago. You posted his video, Scott Einbinder. I saw you posted his video.

He's fantastic.

Yeah, I'm gonna leave a comment on the post so you're gonna see, so I can look at it later. You know, but yeah, but I love connecting with people and seeing, you know, I see he's in New Jersey as well. So I would wonder if you would possibly be open to doing some type of event in the near future where we bring together the top minds in B2B sales and we do a small event. It doesn't have to be a massive event. It could be 30, 30, you know, VPs of sales getting together in a room. And then we have 3 or 4 of us, we each invite a couple of VPs of sales, and then we have a conversation with them and build relationships with them. Would that be something that you would want to do in the near future?

100%. That would be awesome.

In New Jersey. It doesn't have to be far from your house. It could be near— it could be near Englishtown, near where Scott is, or wherever. You know, we'll find a place. But we should definitely talk about that. I think that there would be an opportunity there, especially because you're so well known in the industry and you're speaking to so many people, and so is Scott. And so we bring people that have— what would you speak on? You would speak on B2B is really P2P? Is that— would be your thing?

I think so. My expertise— so I'm an NLP Okay, yep. My education in LP, and that's, you know, understanding how to communicate better with people and making— I've always said when I talk to companies and I train these so-called soft skills, yeah, it's making better people makes better employees and salespeople. You know, more than— I don't want to teach you the old Xerox selling model and money, authority, need. And okay, what I want to teach What I teach you is that people do business with people they like, people do business with people they trust, and people do business with people who do business with them. And if you bring that forward and you authentically connect with people and you're willing to say, I can't help you with this, you know, you've got to be confident and real. And if you're that kind of a person, you know, you'll be wildly successful in selling along with some other 100%.

Love that. And what do you think Scott would teach?

Scott's a real estate expert. His mom and dad owned a real estate company. He grew up in real estate. He teaches real estate companies all over the tri-state area. The guy is super busy and he just understands that game. If you're a real estate agent, Scott's a guy you want in front of you. He knows that game better than anybody.

Oh my God, he would really benefit from learning how to leverage LinkedIn. I'm going to send him a connection request on LinkedIn and see if he, he can benefit. But do you see what I'm doing here? I'm trying to find ways that we could work together. I'm trying to find ways that I could add value to you. I'm trying to find ways that people listening to this, if you're listening to this right now and you see the conversation we're having, it's so real. It's so organic. It's so Joe. Instead of just taking the spotlight and trying to take, take, take and talk about my business, I'm sitting here giving Frank one leg up after another leg up after another leg up to talk about what he does, how he helps people, the industries that he's working on. You probably learned more about Frank in this episode than maybe in the 20 past interviews that he's done from other people, because Frank is so busy giving to other people, but people are not necessarily giving to him. So I want to be the type of connector that's a conduit of blessing to other people. You might— this might be the episode that you want to promote the most from all the other episodes and get the most people to listen to, because this is the episode that you talk about yourself more than every other episode you've ever done combined. Because I'm curious of ways to help you. And now people are listening to this and they're like, holy crap, we want to help Frank. And it's a super interesting interview where Joe starts off rapping and ends off giving like this motivational speech about podcasting. You know what I mean?

Oh my God. I got to tell you, it really is awesome. And I will watch this episode over a couple of times just because I've enjoyed so much of what you've said. And there was so many things, like my brain was trying to hold onto some of the things that you said to circle back to. And we did on a few and I had you explain them more and more. But there's just, you have so much knowledge and you shared so much in such a short time that, you know, I feel like we should come back and do it again.

Amazing. Let's, yeah, let's do it again. And by the way, I like running something called otter.ai and I have it typing up everything we're saying in real time. So if I wanna go back to anything that was said, I can read it or see it in real time. I can highlight things and take notes in real time. Whereas Fireflies is great, but I don't think it does real-time typing up what you say. That's the thing I like about otter.ai versus Fireflies. Okay, Fireflies is great, but if you need a real-time version of what's being said in a room, that's a very powerful thing that allows me to be able to take things to a whole new level. So it's something, it's, it's just something to think about.

No, it's a great tool. When I was writing my book, I used otter.ai when I was interviewing people.

Yeah.

Because I wanted be in the interview. Yeah. And focused on them and not taking notes.

Exactly.

I could go back and examine and reexamine. And I interviewed a bunch of people. I wound up selecting 4 of them for the book.

Amazing.

And that was a great tool for me. It really was. So thanks for mentioning it.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. And by the way, if you need help with learning how to leverage LinkedIn yourself and you're enjoying this type of style, not everybody likes the rapid New Jersey style, the Brooklyn style. Not everyone enjoys that. But if you're the type of guy that actually gets value from this and you want to be part of a community of people that will actually like and comment on your content, then we might wanna talk about the Bundle Plus at some point in the future. But it's really up to whether or not you're ready to really leverage LinkedIn. You only have 2,000 followers. I'm gonna give you another tip. I think this is gonna blow your mind. If you, if you have a TikTok account Mm-hmm. and you follow someone on TikTok, for example, I'm LinkedIn Daddy on TikTok. So if you go to tiktok.com/@linktondaddy, you're gonna find me there, @linkton.daddy, whatever. But if you go to TikTok, I don't even have my name on TikTok. And if I follow you on TikTok, you don't automatically follow me back. I follow 100 people, only 60 people follow me. But on LinkedIn, if I connect with you, Frank, you automatically follow me. That is a hack that most people don't even realize. And you can send 20, 30 connection requests every single day. So if I just send out 20 connection requests every day to people that are posting on LinkedIn, to people that are active on the platform, I'm gonna start getting a tremendous amount of people that are accepting my connection requests and they all become my followers. So you, can quickly go from 2,000 to 3,000 followers every 90 days. That means by the end of the year, you'll have over 5,000 followers. And by the end of next year, you might have up to 10,000 followers, which is insane that you could become a micro-influencer and get paid just to be an influencer. When you have 10,000 followers, it takes you to a whole nother level. But on LinkedIn, you can get to 10,000 followers methodically and quickly Versus on other platforms because every connection becomes a follower. And guess how many connections you can have, Frank? You can have up to 30,000 connections. That means that you can add 30,000 connections and they all become your followers. I'm not saying get to 30,000, but add another 1,000 every quarter. Why not? Add another 1,000 CROs every quarter. Add another 1,000 VPs of sales every quarter in financial services, in real estate, in hardware, in copiers. I mean, you pick those industries, you go after them. They don't only have to be in New Jersey, but even if you focused on New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, you would find 1,000 in the next 90 days you can connect with. And 30, 60% of them would say yes to connect with you because you're such a dynamic guy and you have all this stuff going on, but you're not doing it. You're not doing it because it's not easy and because you don't have the strategy. And we make it easy so that we can save you time, make you more money. And by the way, if somebody pays you $5K to go train their team, Let's say whatever you charge. Let's just say it's $5K to go train their team. And you get one person, one person a year because you connected with them and because you started a conversation because you used my greeting, feeding, and meeting method. You know, I tell people never connect and pitch. Instead, use greeting, feeding, then meeting. What does greeting, feeding, and meeting mean? Greeting is first you greet them. You're like, hey Frank, so good to see you. Loved your podcast. Amazing. Good job. I didn't ask you for anything. I didn't ask you a question. I just dropped value. and greeted you. When you greet someone, don't ask them how they are. That's annoying. It's the last thing I want to tell you is how I am right now. Instead, I want you to tell me how good-looking I am. I want you to tell me how smart I am. I want you to tell me how amazing my energy is, and I want you to walk away and leave me alone so that I want more of you. You get it? If I walked over to you at a conference, I'd be like, dude, that red shirt, whoo, whoo, if I was a bull, you know the things I would do to you? And we'd both laugh and I'd walk away. The next time you see me, you'll be like, dude, thanks for that compliment. You know, I was feeling a a little self-conscious about my red shirt, and you really made me feel so much better. Thank God you're not a bull. And then we laugh again. And then I'm like, by the way, can I ask you a question? What is it that you specialize in? What's your number one skill? 'Cause you seem like you'd be really good at XYZ observation. And then we— and I asked you a question. Maybe it was one of my 5 I's that I teach in feeding. And now all of a sudden we're in a conversation. You're like, you wanna get some coffee? You wanna sit down there? They're giving free coffee at the corner over there. You're more of like a matcha guy, right?

Yeah.

And he's like, yeah, I'm a matcha guy. Let's go get some matcha. And we sit down, we have matcha, now we're friends. Before you know it, we're doing business. I'm referring business to you, referring business to me. But that's the natural approach that I take on LinkedIn with greeting, feeding, and meeting. I basically told you how it would work on a live conference. It's the same thing. But bottom line is I have 9 modules I walk people through: the plan, the people, the promise, the stories, the profile, the automation and technology. And then I teach you how to get awareness, credibility, and then book meetings. And that's kind of— each one of those has 3 or 6 within them. And that's kind of like how I break up the whole framework. Everybody has a framework. The problem is most people haven't thought about it for 10 years and trained over 1,000 companies in it. So now I could just keep going and going and going, but my point is I want everyone to know that there's a process to profit. And if you can figure out the process and have the plan, the people, the promise, if you can have the right strategy, it'll save you a decade.

Joe, I mean this in the highest compliment possible.

I need a nap after talking to you.

Too much in my brain, you know? So many things to think about, so many things to do. But really, it's been fabulous to have you on. I'm blown away by the amount of content that you were able to pack into such a short segment. And I do appreciate that you asked me about me, and I did get to talk about myself, which is unusual on the podcast. Usually I'm asking other folks about themselves and focusing on that. So thanks very much, and absolutely We should get together and talk about doing some sort of a live event and bringing people together. That would be fun for both of us, I think.

Yeah. And they say that live is the new technology. We got to get back to the 1950s, you know, like, because everyone's online, everyone's AI. We Zoom kind of COVID kind of, or whatever it's called, the pandemic kind of just made everyone comfortable with Zoom and everybody went 100% on Zoom. It's like bringing the podcast back. You know what I mean?

You remember the idea everything old is new again? You know, I still, I would say the most, yeah, the most feedback I get on anything I do is a handwritten note.

Yeah.

And I still do it a lot.

Yeah.

It's just amazing. It's not always appropriate for everything. Of course, we can't leverage the content to thousands of people and all the things we're talking about using the tech, but you got to mix it A little bit of everything. And live is the new technology. I agree 100%. So thanks very much, Joe.

My pleasure.

You know what it is? It's— you're right. Joel is kind of like, flows off the tongue. And most Jewish guys are Joel, not Joe.

Yeah.

So that's probably why I went that way. I probably looked at, oh, this is a guy I know, the last name is probably Joel.

Well, I appreciate you very much. Thank you for having me on the show. And I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Fabulous. Thanks so much. All right, everybody. Get