Lance Lefort + Joe Apfelbaum Recruiters Podcast Interview

You've heard of Jenny from the Block. Today I've got Joey from the Block. He goes by many names: LinkedIn Daddy, Rappin' Rabbi, dad to his 5 kids, Joe to his clients. Hey, if you're a salesperson, a recruiter, a marketer, or even a job seeker that's looking to use LinkedIn better, you want to stick around and listen to Joe. Not only is he the LinkedIn Daddy, but he's turbocharged the platform with a range of AI-driven tools to help people maximize their potential on LinkedIn. Welcome to Talent Thrives Here, our podcast where we talk to people managing people. Today's special guest proves that building a massive professional network doesn't have to be a chore. Joe Apfelbaum, the CEO, the founder of B2B digital marketing agency Ajax Union, and the visionary behind Evvy AI, an AI-powered LinkedIn assistant currently helping thousands and thousands of professionals find their voice online. Joe is dynamic, self-deprecating, and a consummate marketer who has trained over 10,000 business owners to elevate their digital strategies and build real connections. Yo, yo, yo, Joe, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate being here and I'm very grateful that you're not just a friend, you're also a client and you're also a fellow LinkedIn influencer. So I'm grateful that you're here with me.

Thanks, Joe. Thanks. Great to have you on. You and I have known each other more than a year now. We've had many conversations. I'm always blown away by, you know, I'm a LinkedIn user for probably 20-plus years, and meeting you, it was like, oh, you're operating at a level way ahead of so many folks on the platform and bringing way more value to it. So, it's fascinating to watch from a personal and professional perspective that You've taken an AI platform now that I think harnesses a ton of things that are out there but aggregates them, brings them in like a funnel so that people have a dashboard and they can quickly get in and out in the day rather than bounce into 5 other programs and do what they do. But I implore everyone who's watching or listening, by all means, check out your website and the tools. But I'm curious, Joe, a little bit about what you see in the marketplace right now. Like, who benefits the most from using the tool? I think I know, but you tell me and And give us a little bit, to anyone watching or listening, where you think the platform sits the best for people that need it.

I think if you're an executive recruiter or you run a staffing agency, a sales trainer, or you're a fractional CFO, CIO, if you're a person that needs more exposure online, we help our clients be able to get tons of exposure that leads to actual sales. and revenue for their business. People think they need more leads, but the truth is you don't need more leads, you need more clients. And every lead— so I got on the phone with a guy today and it was such a hot lead, such a hot lead. And I said, would you like clients? He's like, absolutely not. I'm not looking for clients. I'm like, so what are you looking for? He's like, I want a grant from the Canadian government. And I was like, oh my God. I said, how big of a grant? Do you want millions? He's like, nah, I just want like $5K. I was like, why are we having this conversation? He's like, I don't know. I saw an ad online and I clicked on it and I'm here talking to you now. And then I'm like, okay, well, thank you very much. I don't think I can help you with that. He's like, okay, goodbye forever. And goodbye forever. And we had a short conversation. It was nice. It was pleasant. The guy was sweet, but he was a lead. He wasn't a prospect. He wasn't a client. And we had a conversation. It wasn't qualified. The guy had like 300 connections on LinkedIn. He wasn't the right guy for me. But you don't need leads. You need relationships, you need clients, and you need conversations with the right people in order for you to generate millions in revenue. So I tell people, I'm gonna help you do that by gaining influence on LinkedIn and helping you prepare for showtime. That's the idea.

Yeah, no, I get it. And, you know, one of the things I think hopefully people could pick up on just even this call is your energy is infectious, right? I've seen you on so many calls where we're on a group call together doing a workshop or something like that, and you jump in and it's like the adrenaline starts to course in the room faster than it was, you know, until you got there. And I'm amazed that your team keeps bringing new facets to the platform. So, it's not like it doesn't sit stagnant, right? Every several weeks or several months, there's like 5 new releases of new tools on the platform, which is— I think I said it the other day. It's almost like it's hard keeping up with all that. We need like a VA or something just to manage the influx of new things. But I am amazed that you've built this tool and it's immensely helpful. And I think for a lot of people that don't know potentially about it, one of the facets I think that's really cool is you can rapidly comment on posts. So, if you are on LinkedIn and want to get attention, you can source out People that, you know, if it's a job seeker, they can look at companies they want to apply for, find people that are in that potentially affecting the hiring decision on a specific job vacancy, and then comment rapidly. And the AI tools help you comment quickly. So, it's not a chore. It's not, oh my gosh, I have to get on LinkedIn today and do 5 or 10 posts, and that's going to take me an hour. It's literally minutes, if not seconds sometimes. So, it's pretty cool. But I'm curious also your views. You're right in the thick of AI and a number of other things going on right now. Any predictions for where we're going to be 6 to 12 months out as a bunch of people networking online and job seekers and employers and sales reps and marketing people? Because it seems like the tech is changing. If I blink or go to bed, it comes, you know, the next morning there's way more things hitting the market. So, or, or specifically, you know, what do you see your platform doing, you know, different in, in the next 6 to 12 months?

I think the tech is changing. My prediction is that the same old, same old things that need to happen in business to close deals is gonna need to happen in business to close deals. I think that having relationships and having conversations like we're having right now, that's not gonna change. You're not suddenly gonna be talking to a robot. To build a relationship with a robot. Because right now you could build a relationship with a robot and people aren't going and marrying robots. It's not happening yet. Robots aren't there. And also people want real human connection. They want that spiritual thing, that spiritual connection with a human being. So I think that more and more people are gonna move away from automating everything and, and, and start talking to people. Now it is gonna be easier and easier and easier for you to automate things. So like checking email, I think you're not gonna be checking email as I think you're going to have AI agents checking email. I think picking up the phone, I don't think human beings are going to be picking up the phone as much anymore. As it is right now, when you call up most iPhones, it's like, you know, it's kind of triaging you and seeing if you're a real human or who you are or what you want before you pick up the phone. Used to be you would knock on a door, now you hit a Ring doorbell and I can see who it is from my bathroom and I'm like, go away, leave me alone, don't come back. You know, like I don't have to— You don't have to, you don't have to like face people anymore that you don't want to face. But the opposite is true as well. When you have that real relationship, that real human connection, and I want to get through to you, it's going to be easier for me to get through to the people because there's going to be less spammers.

Right.

I mean, it's going to be less of that inauthentic spraying and praying because people are not gonna be able to get through. Like, if you're a spammer and you try to get through, I'm gonna know you're a spammer right away. Because of that trust factor. But if you know which channels I'm on and you know how to get into those channels, like for example, right now we're doing this podcast. There are my friends are watching us live right now. They're tuning into our channel. So that's going to happen more and more and more where I'm going to be on a boat somewhere. You're going to be calling me up. We're going to have a conversation and maybe 50 of our best friends are going to be listening in to the conversation that we're having. talking about what's happening. And the same thing with like in-person events, that's going to happen more and more and more where people are going to start valuing actually getting off their computer, going out and actually talking to people. So it's going to be easier than ever to do this automation stuff. So a lot of the manual data entry that we do— I'll give you an example right now. If I want to research you, let's say I'm a recruiter and I want to research a potential client, or I want to research a candidate right now, our technology allows you to push a button. And it will look up that company, that person, that candidate, and 500 websites in 30 seconds. It'll spin out sub-agents and it'll pull everything. It'll pull their summary, who they are, who they help, how they help them, their contact information, their email, their cell phone, every single social media profile, everything they spoke about, their achievements, conversation starters, business opportunities, everything. And that all happens in 30 seconds. There's going to be more of that. We already have something called Hiring Signals that looks at companies that are hiring And tells you why those companies are hiring and if they're a good client of yours. So you're going to be able to get leads delivered faster. You're going to be able to get what you need faster in a more organized way, in a more personalized way, but you're still going to have to build that relationship. And that's not going to change. It hasn't changed in 500 years. That relationship thing where we have a conversation and we talk and we tell each other stories and we laugh together. You know, I had a woman call me up from LinkedIn and we had a whole conversation and we literally spent half the time laughing. And I was like, this is what it's about. Being able to giggle and laugh with each other and enjoy each other's presence and feel safe with each other. Safety is powerful. And when it comes to artificial intelligence, you don't have that. Whenever AI laughs at me or laughs with me or laughs at me or whatever, I feel like it's creepy. Yesterday I made a joke and ChatGPT laughed at my joke. And I was like, I didn't feel good, but when you just giggled, that made me feel good.

Right.

Great.

No, that's important. It's amazing, all this tech and it's blowing up. It's sort of moving faster than we would've ever imagined a couple years ago. The things we can do now, it just blows me away that I can think of digital clones and things like that, right? Because there's a number of companies building these digital clones for you. And, um, a year ago even, the lip sync was off and the eyes were a little funky. And, and now, even 6 months later, the tech got much better, much more accurate, much more sort of photo-real. Um, but it's still that funny thing when— I don't know, but you, you use automated dialers on some of your things, I'm sure. I, I find it interesting, even the bots phoning me. There was one about 6 or 8 weeks ago that called me. It was Seamless. Normally, there's a lag. I can feel that 2 or 3-second lag where the AI is trying to figure out what to reply, or it's got a deck of 8 or 10 responses and it's figuring this one's the best one. Anyways, I had one a few weeks ago where I got about 4 questions in before I thought, oh, I think I'm talking to a robot, whereas the other ones I can tell on the first question. So, I thought, okay, the tech is getting slicker, right? It's much quicker for sure than it used to be. But I do find, you know, it's— I find a lot of marketers hit me up with this thing where they say like, we can put 8 or 10 meetings on your calendar in the next 90 days. And there's a lot of those pitches in my inbox almost every week. Somebody saying, you know, whether it's 30 days or 90 days or money back, or there's all these sort of things. And I often pitch back, hey, I'm in recruiting. It's a long game. Sometimes you have to build trust. And You have to build that feeling that I'm a trusted advisor. And that doesn't happen in 2 or 3 emails. That happens over a much longer phase. But I do find it interesting that there are, to your point, there's all these tools available, but at the end of the day, it's still a human-to-human interaction, right? It really is, do I trust this person? Do I know this person? And you talk about knowing. And one of the other things that gets me is that you're meeting, greeting, feeding. Combination, which I love. There's a sequence to building a connection with strangers online. Could you talk about that briefly for a second, Joe?

Of course.

For anyone that doesn't know about it.

Yeah, if you don't, if you never heard of the greeting, feeding, and meeting system, most people are spraying and praying and they're just connecting and pitching. I don't believe in pitches. I think pitches get stitches. If you want riches instead of stitches, here's what I tell you to do. Take a moment, take a deep breath and have the right plan, the right people, and the right promise. Make sure you have a strategy, then tell the right stories, optimize your profile, have the right systems. And then what you need to do is you need to get exposure, credibility, and have conversations. So how do you get conversations through the DM? How do you get on the phone with somebody? If you walk over to somebody and you're like, hey, can I spend 15 minutes of your time? They're going to ignore you. They're going to say no. They're going to say, go away. It's annoying. It's spam. So how do you avoid that? I take people through a journey called greeting, feeding, and meeting. Greeting is number one. You want to greet people. When you see somebody at a bar and you walk over to them, you greet them. You don't just walk over to them and say, hey, let's, let's have babies. You don't do that, right? That's weird. It's creepy. You don't say, walk over to them and say, hey, you look rich. Let's invest in my business. You don't do that. You greet them first.

Yeah.

So how do you greet somebody on LinkedIn? There's many ways to greet people. I could say, thanks for becoming our connections on LinkedIn. I could tell somebody I really appreciate seeing your post or good morning. It's great to see you on a wonderful September day. Or I can greet. However you're greeting people, the key for greeting is not to ask them for anything. Don't ask them a question. Don't bother them. Don't don't offend them. Greet them. That's what you do when somebody walks into Walmart. They have a dedicated human being there called a Walmart greeter. Have you ever heard of it? A Walmart greeter is a person standing there. What is he saying? He's saying welcome to Walmart. So glad to see you today. Blah blah blah. Whatever he says, he has something that he says that makes me feel good. for coming to Walmart. I want people to feel good by seeing you on LinkedIn because you have a reputation for greeting people. I greet people on their birthdays. I greet people on their anniversaries. I greet people when they change jobs. I don't ask them for anything. I don't even ask them to respond. I'm just greeting them. Now, if they respond, then I move on to the feeding stage. Because these are really stages. Greeting, feeding, and meeting are stages. So what is the greeting stage? A greeting stage is initiating rapport, literally just doing outreach to connect with people without having a reputation of wanting anything in return. The second component is adding value. This is where the giving happens. Feeding, it doesn't mean taking. Feeding doesn't mean asking for things that make you seem like a taker or makes you seem like you want something. But instead it makes you seem like you're asking a question so that you can deliver value to the person. So for example, I have something called the 5 I's of feeding. The 5 I's is I number 1 is Lance, who would you like to meet? I'd love to make some introductions this week. And I do a lot of networking and I meet a lot of people that might be really good clients for you. Who would you like to meet? And you might say, Joe, I want to meet other executive recruiters. That I can do business with. Awesome. I know a guy named Michael North. Do you know him? Yes. I know another guy named Rick Clote. Do you know him? I know another guy named Gary Perman. Do you know him? I know, I know Wayne. There's so many people that I know that I can introduce you to that are executive recruiters. You happen to know all those people because they were all in our executive recruiter roundtable that we do once a month.

Yeah.

But if I say, who do you want to meet? And you tell me executive recruiter and I'm, and I introduce you to 3 of them. Now all of a sudden I'm a person who's high value. Even if you say, I'm not looking to network and I don't want to meet anybody, I still have a reputation as a giver in your eyes.

Right.

I'm on a mission. This is the first time I'm saying this publicly on a podcast. I'm on a mission to create givers. I want to create a giver movement where 1,000 people label themselves as givers And they have proof to how much they've given by how many recommendations they've created for themselves. So I literally want to create this movement where I assign people the status of giver. And your status of giver, it comes from how much you're giving to your own world, not even to my world. You don't have to give me anything.

Yeah.

You have to be a giver in your own world. You can give charity, you can give compliments, You can give invitations, introductions. You can give ideas. You can give help. You can give your time. You can give your effort, your energy, your resources. There's so much you can give. And so most people are so stuck in the world of scarcity that they forget that there's a concept called abundance.

Right.

And so I want people to be givers, and that's why I teach the Greeting, Feeding, and Meeting system. It's not about taking or faking or waking and baking. It's about giving. My son Peretz is actually watching me on YouTube. So quick shout out to Peretz. Peretz, you're the man. I love you, Peretz. Have a good Shabbos, Peretz. That's the idea. So what I want you to know is there's 5 I's. Invitations is the first one.

Yep. Excellent.

Would you like me to continue saying them? Is there any comments you have about the giver movement that I want to create?

I like the giver movement a lot because, you know, you know and I know there are people that do it without even thinking about it. about it. And there are other people, it's an effort, right? So they— one of my first bosses, he used to say, if this is not revenue generating, we're not doing it. Well, that's a little harsh. It's really, yeah, narrow kind of. But anyways, yeah, but you know, by all means, you want to hit the other I's? Do we have time?

Do you have time? Yeah, I, I think we have time to hit the other I's. By the way, if you guys are watching this live right now and you want to see the other 5 I's, Say, show me the eyes. Show me the eyes and stop telling lies. Show me the eyes, baby. Show me those eyes. I want to see how many people are watching us live right now saying, show me the eyes. Rosie, Tati's in the middle of a LinkedIn— of a YouTube Live. You can watch me with Parrots, okay? Love you. Parrots, tell Rosie that I'm middle of a live right now and she could watch me. Okay, so the second I is the first I is invitation is is introductions. The second I is invitations. So right now I'm going to a networking event that's going to start at let's say four o'clock. I'm going to hang out there. I'm going to enjoy myself, connect with people, build relationships, get to know people, and be that giver in the world. By the way, I'm going to create a landing page. I think it should be something like becomeagiver.com or imagiver or giver.vai.com or something something to do with the giver movement. movement. And then people will be able to register as a giver and they're going to be able to say what they're willing to give. And then we're going to have a directory of givers where you can find people that are willing to give things. And then you can allow people to give things. So some people will be like, I got plenty of money that I want to give. By the way, in the chat, guys, I see Swirly Brook in the chat. Shout out to Rigo. Shout out to everyone in the chat. Let us know if you're watching this live. Give us whether it's Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter. If you're watching this live, let us know. If you're watching the replay, write replay in the chat. If you're watching it live, write live in the chat. So here's the idea: invitations, introductions. Those are the two main ones that I really want to tell you because everybody can make an invitation. So Lance invited me to this podcast. That's major generosity right there. That is major, major, major generosity. I invited Lance to become a client. That's major generosity. I invite people when I know they need my help. I invite them, and me inviting them makes a huge difference in their life. Even if they don't accept the invitation, it's still super valuable. The third I is information. Now, information is freely available, but information that's relevant to you is not freely available. And so super relevant. So if I if I'm a Scorpio and I see Rigo, Rigo's live right now, and he's chatting in the comments over here. I see him live. If I know a lot about Rigo because I used Evvy AI to research Rigo, now I'm able to give him relevant information. So the question I might ask him is, hey, I just helped a client like you recently be able to accomplish A, B, and C. I'm curious to know if you'd like to see the report from that client that I sent him that completely changed his game in the way that he looks at his industry. Would you like me to send it to you? There's no charge at all. Happy to send it to you today if you're interested. The guy's like, oh my God, of course I want to see that report. Or if I could say, hey, I made a quick report on how to get on a podcast, and I noticed that you recently got on a podcast and you might want to get on a few more. I have a list of podcasts that have more than a million views per episode. Do you want me to send you that list? No charge, just as my gift to you because I want to send you some information that I think might be relevant to you. Oh my God, the guy's like, of course I want that list of podcasts that have more than a million that I can get on and that whatever, right? And so I'm always collecting things. You'll notice this about me. I am creating things that add value that are related to invitations, introductions, and information, those 3. But there's also ideas because I'm an idea machine and you're an idea machine, Lance. We all have tons of ideas. And so often I'll reach out to people and I'll say, hey, I got some ideas for your business. I got some ideas for your LinkedIn. I got some ideas. Can I send you a few ideas from time to time? I'm actually asking for consent to send them value. You know, sometimes I'll stand on the street with a $20 bill and I'll be like, excuse me, excuse me. They're like, what? Can I give you some money? They're like, no, I don't want your money. I don't want your money. People literally say no. Can I give you some money?

Right.

I'm giving you value, money. But to me, that's not valuable. I don't want your money because I know there's going to be some string attached right there.

Yeah.

I was like, there's no strings attached. I want to just give you money. You're going to give me money and nothing's going to happen? Something bad's going to happen here. Every time I take money, something bad happens. I was like, what if I could just give you $20 right now and nothing bad would happen? I'm telling you, try this out in New York City. Pull out a $20 bill, stand on the corner, and try to give people a $20 bill. People are going to reject it, and you're going to realize human beings reject value. That's what they do. They just reject value. But the people that actually take it, it's a win-win situation. And then, and then the fourth, the fifth I is identity. I want to learn about Sriracha Brook. I want to know what he's up to. I want to know how I can, I can help him. So I ask him information about himself. Hey, Sruli, what are you doing for your birthday? What can I do for your birthday? What, Sruli, tell me a little bit about who you help and how you help them. Are you looking for a job? I know an executive recruiter named Lance. He places people all the time. He's amazing. You should talk to Lance. He's a great guy. So I, if the more I know about you, the more I can ask you questions to learn more about things that I know about. I see that you're a captain on a boat. What type of boat do you, do you usually captain? Do you do only 30 feet or you do 40 feet? 30 feet. I'm showing interest in you, right? Interest in your identity. That's the 5th I. And I kind of like the word interest, by the way. So maybe I'm going to change the 5th I from identity to interest.

Maybe it just add an I, 6 I's.

No, no, no, no, no. We're gonna have 6 I's. It's gonna be too many I's. We're gonna keep it at 5 I's because we got 5 fingers. When we grow an extra finger, an AI finger, an AI finger, um, but I think, I think we should change identity to interest. I think for the sake of Creating more money, creating more opportunity, creating more value. I think interest is, is an interesting one. It's interesting. Interest is interesting. I'm interested in your identity. So it could be interested, interesting, interested of your identity. Interest. Anyways, I think interest is the one, but whatever. We'll, we'll play with it. That again, that was just born just now from my ideation.

Yeah.

So you just helped me come up with my 5th I, a better word, cuz I never really liked identity. I like identity, but by what it does, but I didn't really love the way that identity sat with, with invitations, introductions, information, um, ideas. And then identity was kind of like, uh, identity. That's why it's always last. But interest, interest is good. Show interest. Good.

Yeah.

Interest is good. I like interest. We're gonna keep it as interest from now on. And then, so you guys saw something new was born just now today. So we have it. I'm gonna make a graphic about it. And then, and I would say the last thing that you asked me before was about, you said greeting, feeding, and meeting. Meeting.

Yep.

Here's how I ask for a meeting. You ready? What's your sell? Got a calendar link? What's your sell? Got, can I call you tomorrow? Or I just pick up the phone and call them. Would you like to spend 15 minutes with me? We've been having all these amazing conversations so I can learn who I can introduce you to so I could learn what you do for a living so I could, we can get to know each other a little bit better. So we can giggle, so we can giggle with the giggle. You know what I mean? We can hacka hacka hacka. That's the idea.

That's great. It's great. It's amazing too. I think one of the things that I'm really blown away by is the network that you've created. You know, you've got clients that are kind of huge promoters. You know, there's a marketing term like, you know, find Almost an evangelical kind of thing, like we love this because of blah blah blah blah blah. And and in your network, in your school community, I'm just shocked because I'm in several school communities. Yours is always chock-a-block full of events going on, and these are your clients volunteering to have a webinar, a seminar, or anything, and and share. You know, Ganesh and Rick always do these. You know, Rick ask anything, but Ganesh jumps in, and there are two of them. are sharing all sorts of AI tips and tricks they figured out during the last week or two, volunteering their time for other members to come on. And so while the platform is really cool and the tools that you built are really cool, that stickiness, I think, of that community for me is kind of like the behind-the-scenes unexpected superpower of what you've built. And again, and I've said this too many times, I really feel it's your infectious energy is going through the group and they want to contribute back. So it's really cool to see that reciprocity. Their clients, but they're also saying, hey, I want to add value to what we're doing with Evie AI or with other things I've learned out in the community that might be valuable to the existing people. And it's, it's, you know, I'm a big fan. It's amazing during the week that I can hop into 3 or 4 or 5 hours of different seminars or webinars if I need to or if I want to. And there's a group there always, and it has built a community. You know, Barbara does a certain thing on Friday. at 11. That's very different than Jane's Monday call and so on. And so, it's again, the thing I didn't realize when I signed up about a year ago that I was going to meet all these people. And they were, to your point about being givers, they're giving their time to educate each other and help each other. And it's so— my hat's off. I just wanted to say thanks, Joe, because it's, as I said, unexpected, but it's really cool that your community is is deep into helping each other, networking and helping each other.

Yeah, but I love that.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's amazing. Well, look, I'm conscious of the time. It's a Friday afternoon. I'm sure you've got all sorts of things going on. We could do this, we could probably talk for hours, but I really thank you for being here today. If people want to get in touch with you, obviously LinkedIn is one of the best places to find you, or eviai.com. Um, anything else you want to say before we wrap up?

I just want to say that the secret to living is giving. So if you're a person like Phil, he's such a giver. He was telling me about all types of resources. Um, Shirley's a giver. My son Parrots is a giver. My son Ari's a giver. Rosie's a giver. So many people that I know— you're a giver, Lance. So many people I know in my life are givers. And if you want to be able to be happy in your life, if you want to see progress, if you want to make a difference for other people, Then be a giver. Start giving more. Give more energy. Give more passion. Give more enthusiasm. The secret to living is giving. So remember that. Remember that in your life. Givers gain. Be a giver. Make a difference. Don't worry about losing. Don't worry about people taking something away from you. Nobody can take your giving away from you except yourself. So be a giver, make a difference, add value, and watch it all come back to you tenfold.

Excellent. Thanks for that, Joe. Again, always great to chat with you. I'll look forward to seeing you again soon.

All right. Take care.