Joe Apfelbaum Talks to Eric Thorsen 184 LinkedIn Live - Joe Apfelbaum

are here with me today, whether you're following me on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or anywhere else that we go live. I'm excited to have you here. I have one of my favorite LinkedIn connections and clients, Eric Thorson. Eric, welcome to the program. So glad that you made it here.

Thanks, Joe. Thanks for having me.

So Eric, can you tell everybody who you are, what you do, who you help, how you help them? I want to make sure that all of my LinkedIn connections know who you are and what you're up to.

Sure. Thanks, Joe. Um, So I've been in technology for about 3 decades. I used to earn my living as a musician, as you can see in the back. And throughout my career, I've always enjoyed teaching and mentoring. Back in the beginning when I was a musician, a solopreneur, I had 100+ students. And then I got into software engineering and I taught down at NYU for about 3 and a half years, C++ programming. And started my own firm about 23 years ago. Pretty much anything that you've seen for the past couple of decades on US election media coverage has come from a data analytics platform that my company builds, and for the largest consortium of news networks in the US. And about 5 years ago, I got into doing executive coaching and helping entrepreneurs and business owners really grow and have work-life balance. And more recently, I've been focused on really helping organizations and individuals apply generative AI to their businesses and to their lives to really enhance what they're doing.

That's amazing. So you're helping people with artificial intelligence, you're helping them in their business. For 23 years, you had a successful software, software engineering company in the election space. That's cool. I just took a look at your LinkedIn profile and it looks like you have a solid recommendation that you got from this awesome guy. Wow. That's, that's a very impressive recommendation there. Could you tell us more about your relationship with Joe Apfelbaum that he left you such a beautiful recommendation on your profile?

So look, you know, this is our, uh, our, our second run at, at a, at a LinkedIn Live, and I've been really enjoying this. And I started watching you, Joe, um, I, I think it must be almost 10 years ago when you very first started to dip your toes into the pool of social media. And, uh, and I really admired how vulnerable and, and honest you were willing to be on those, um, posts. And, you know, you and I had a conversation years back, um, even about, uh, you helping me with some of the coaching that you were doing at the time. And it— I found it very inspiring, uh, and so, uh, I've been following you for years. And then we— you and I reconnected about a year ago on some of the micro-communities that you were building there. And of course, I got involved with EVAI. And, uh, so I, I feel very connected to you. Even though we've connected more in the past year, I've felt very connected to you over the past decade.

Wow. Thank you for saying that. And it's interesting how we connect with people over the course of a decade, and then we don't often get to know their goals and their passions and their hobbies and what they're looking to do and their challenges. I always tell people, when you're networking and building relationships, I wrote a book called High Energy Networking, And I'm a very big fan. You said you read it?

I did.

I did. Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Such a, such a great way. And one of the things that I tell people in the book is get to know people's goals and then allow them to share their goals on your platform. Like literally get to know their goals and then get behind their goals. So my question to you is, Eric, what is your goal for 2025? What do you— and I want it, I want all of my connections to know your goals, but I also, when you repost this on your profile, The second LinkedIn Live, because people can actually hear you now. Um, can you, can you just let people know what your goal is in 2025? How can people help you with what you're doing?

Well, so, so thanks for that, Joe. So I, you know, I would say one of the things, uh, being a bit, you know, seasoned with a few gray hairs that I, that I would say has, I've gotten to appreciate the people in my life that have helped me immensely along this journey. and I'm not talking about clients or customers, people in my network, people have done things that were really just out of being of service to me that have had tremendous impact on my life, right? And, and I know that, that you have, uh, I read your book, so I know you have similar beliefs, uh, about this. And, uh, and so a big part of, you know, where I'm at in, in my life right now is about giving back, uh, utilizing some of the, you know, 3+ decades in tech and 20 4 years in running a business, giving back to people and really helping them navigate both being an entrepreneur and a business owner, but also being an entrepreneur and a business owner in a technology disruptive phase that, that we're all going through. It's an exciting time, but it's an intimidating time as well. And so my goal is to really help as many people as I can navigate this, you know, bring what I can bring to the table. I think it's fair to say that, you know, this is a group effort. And part of what, you know, you and I were talking about earlier today is I do believe in shared learning is a very powerful way of doing it, like finding communities that you trust. You know, we're going to be launching a community early next year to really help business owners both navigate this technology tsunami that's coming here and also help their their people, like, well, to help their people become more productive.

Who would you say is your most ideal client?

My most ideal client are business owners that are, you know, somewhere between the $2 million to $50 million area that are either struggling with growth, struggling with how to integrate this technology into their business, that, that just needs some guidance and help along the way. I mean, you know, we've talked about this individually. I'm a big believer in, like, you know, even Michael Jordan needed a coach, right? So, like, I've I've been using executive coaches for 15+ years. I have 2 of them right now. It works. It just helps you get there faster. And so just anybody who's looking for trying to get there faster with some outside guidance and perspective.

So if you guys are looking for an executive coach, Eric is the man. Do you want to share some challenges that you've been having this year that you want to overcome? I always love learning about people's challenges so I can support them. Is there one particular challenge that you are comfortable sharing? Sometimes people don't feel comfortable, but I know that you Are totally vulnerable and you are, you know, vulnerability is power. So you wanna share something?

Look, look, you know, I always love that expression that, you know, life is what happens while you're making other plans, right? Like what, you know, if you think about this whole thing about like, you know, what's your 3-year goal? What's your BHAG? What's your 1-year? What's your quarter? And then, you know, your best friend gets diagnosed with one of the most difficult treated cancers there is, right? And, or something happens with your, you know, when some other health issues go on and Now all of a sudden those plans get interrupted, right? And so what I would say is like, you know, I talk a lot about work-life balance and that's been a challenge for me this year, right? Because there's all of this new tech that's coming out that's impacting my business, impacting my customers, impacting the people I'm coaching. And then life is happening around you, right? Things happen. And, and so I feel really blessed about all the things that are going great in my life. I have a lot of gratitude, but like life gets in the way. And so sometimes it's been challenging this year to figure out, you know, maintaining that balance. And I would also say I've been really excited about learning a lot of new things. And I don't know, you know, if this happens to you, but you, you can really get sucked into it, right? And so—

I was up till 3 AM last night learning new things. I built, I built this new application where you take an image and it automatically looks at the image and writes tweets out of the image. Yes.

Like, I, I, I, you might know a little bit of what I'm talking about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get lost into it. I get lost into it for hours and hours.

Yeah.

It was 5 hours of me just tweaking and messing and improving. Yeah. Um, and those hours pass quickly when you're having fun. Time flies when you're having fun, as they say. Yeah. So work-life balance, I love that. In terms of your passions and hobbies, what do you want to do more of in 2025?

You know, I, I, I think, um, I used to be a guy who, um, You know, as a, as a software developer, as a musician, I used to write, you know, music with computers. Like I was very comfortable kind of being on my own, right? Yeah. Yeah. And doing stuff. And like, as a business leader, like I did that and, and I love that and I still enjoy doing that. But I would say I grew into networking. I grew into relationships, um, almost like begrudgingly, but, but now I love it. Like I've kind of learned to really enjoy that.

Yeah.

And so I wanna continue to do that, really continue to network, continue to help as many people as possible and probably write more music than I am now.

Write more music than you're writing right now. Maybe let's write a song together. Have you used, have you used Suno yet?

You know, I, uh, no, because I, I, I still kind of like doing my own thing.

And, uh, it would be interesting. It would be interesting to get inspiration from AI and, you know, maybe we could write a song together. I could show you how I write a song in Suno and then, um, and then you can just kind of, you know what? I can ask Claude right now because I already scraped your last 60 posts to write a po— write a song. Write a song about Eric's coaching. Let's just see what it does. Write a song. I wrote write a son by accident, but let me just see what it does if it actually writes a song or it just tries to figure out, okay, based on Eric's post, I'll craft a song while maintaining his authenticity. It says, 5 years ago, it was a classic buried in my business story, working nights and weekends, missing precious moments with my son, watching TV. Okay, so, um, write a song about his life. Let's see what he does. Let's see what it does. Uh, based on Eric's post, here's a folk song. In a music store one faithful day, a stranger showed him a Codes display. 20 years of building dreams, he's now helping others react to their peaks. From software lines to freedom signs. Time to make a change. And the chorus is, from buried deep to breaking free, from coding nights to strategy, found his way through coaching light. Now he's helping others see that freedom's not just a dream, it's waiting to be claimed.

Okay.

Obviously you need to optimize that. Election nights as data flows, built a company that grows and grows, missed some moments with his son, learned that victory's never won. When life just passes by, time to make a change. Then there's a bridge, verse 3, final chorus, and outro. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Um, so yeah, so definitely getting inspiration from artificial intelligence is key. And, um, yeah, it was really a pleasure connecting with you and chatting with you and learning about you and connecting with you. And I'm looking forward to learning more in 2025 about you and about what you're up to. And if there's anything I can do for you, feel free to kind of hit me up and let me know. I'd love checking out your posts. Do you see me commenting on your posts almost every day?

I do, I do. Thank you very much. I do the same.

I appreciate supporting you. I appreciate, uh, connecting with you. And, um, let's, let's go on this journey in 2025 and network more. So you want some introductions to CEOs that are $2 million to $20 million in revenue. Just so you know, as part of our holiday deal, we're offering Evvy AI Pro. We're throwing in as a bonus access to the Inc. 5000 list this year or the year before, the year before that, which has all your ideal clients on it. They're all over $2 million in revenue. So if you want information about Pro, you can go to evviai.com/holidaydeal. This is for you and anyone listening. Um, where you'll get access to $20,000 worth of training on how to leverage LinkedIn, how to network, how to build relationships. We have our accelerator program, our, we basically have all of our courses there available on demand. Um, and, uh, and yeah, that's, that's the situation. So I appreciate you. Thank you for being here and I'll talk to you again very soon.

Sounds great. You have a happy holiday if I don't talk to you.

All right.

All the best.

Take care. Bye. And there you have it. There you have it. We had a great conversation with Eric Sarthas.