Live with Restream, December 02

Hi everyone, and welcome to The Repackaging Revolution. I'm your host, David Marinac. Today's guest is Joe Apfelbaum, the CEO and founder of Ajax Union, a B2B digital marketing agency in Brooklyn, New York. Now, Ajax Union builds highly strategic ROI-producing marketing funnels for B2B and B2C companies. It works with companies that are $5 to $500 million in annual sales that can use marketing strategy well-crafted brand assets and email automation that drive traffic via SEO, SEM, and social media. Joe's a LinkedIn expert, founder, and also CEO of Evy AI, a virtual sales assistant, which is perfect for LinkedIn users who want to optimize their profiles, increase their engagement, and network more effectively on the platform. Joe is proud of all of his accomplishments, especially his 5 children. Joe Apfelbaum, welcome to the show, brother.

Thank you for having me on the show. I'm really excited to be here, David. I know that you did a lot of prep work for the show, and you're very excited about it. So I'm excited about being here with you as well. And thank you for being a client.

And yes, sir.

Thank you for being in my life.

Yeah, you know, it's— I'm gonna, I'm gonna digress just a second. And I want to— and forgive me in advance. But one of the things that I, you know, I could go on and on about Ajax Union, and I can go obviously Evie AI, and we're going to touch base on that. But I really wanted to ask you a couple of questions. You are probably, and I don't mean to, to blow smoke at you, and I'm not, you are probably the most approachable, down-to-earth guy on the web that I have ever met. You have always been so free in giving, not just for me before, you were like this even before I became a client and got to know you. You give away information. You share knowledge. Where did that come from? And I got to tell you, it's so needed in this world today. And I'd be remiss if I didn't bring that up because you've taught me a lot.

Yeah. So I would say there's a book by Bob Burg. I don't know if you ever heard of him, but he's a big author called The Go-Giver.

Okay.

Have you heard of The Go-Giver?

I have not, but I'm going to get it.

Yeah, so Bob Burg wrote a book with a guy named John Mann, and the book is— the concept of the book is to just be a giver, be a giver in the world. And my mother was always kind of like, don't give your secrets away, don't tell anybody your ideas. And what I— my attitude was, Ma, I want to give away my ideas, I want to give away my secrets. But she's like, but how are you going to be successful if you do that?

Right.

And I was like, I don't care. It's not about my success. It's about other people's success. And when you give enough people what they want, you end up getting anything you want in life. And so that's, that's really what, what it's been about for me is being able to just give back to people and make a difference. Right. The saying is givers gain. I don't know if you ever heard of that.

I have. I have.

Yeah. So guys, if you're watching this in the comments, just write givers gain so that we know that you're watching this. But What I want, what I want you guys to realize is that the secret to living, like, if you really want to live a fulfilled and happy life, then being committed to being a giver is really important. It's important to me, but it's also important to purpose. Because if you're just always thinking about yourself, it's going to be very hard for you to, to be able to go and get that purpose in life and feel fulfilled deep down inside. It's one thing to be successful and make money.

Sure.

It's another thing to really make an impact and really feel fulfilled deep down inside. And if you could have the balance of both, if you could have the science of having success, because success is repeatable.

Sure.

And you could have the art of feeling fulfilled and deep down inside, that's power. When you do a favor for a fellow, that for me is, is a tremendous, powerful thing. So if I can do a favor for somebody, I literally just got on the phone with somebody a few minutes ago and he said, Joe, I randomly found you on LinkedIn and as soon as I started going through your content, I knew that you were the mentor that I needed in my life. Yep.

Yep.

He's like, I'm gonna buy your software. I'm gonna buy your products. I'm gonna buy your courses. I already bought your book. I'm deep in your book, High Energy Networking. I love it. I said, did you know I wrote 5 books? He's like, yes, I'm gonna buy High Energy Marketing, High Energy Purpose, High Energy Secrets. I'm gonna go through all your books. But Joe, like, you are just incredible with your story and You know, the thing about me is that I was just the average Joe. I was just a regular person afraid of myself, afraid of my own shadow.

Yep.

I was— I didn't grow up in a successful household. My parents aren't very like super classy and like all put together and everything. They argue constantly. It's just, it's just a regular, regular American immigrant home that, you know, they're trying to make a living. They're renting. They're not sure what to do. It's like driving a used car. Like, that's regular America.

100%.

Regular people. And so that's kind of like how I grew up. But I wanted my life to be different. I wanted my kids to be able to have a little bit of a better life. I don't want them to be spoiled, per se.

Yeah, right.

I want them to work hard, you know, so I don't just throw things at them for free or whatever. But I do want them to be able to not worry about tuition. I want them to not worry about having food or going to the grocery or like, you know, where these days it's so expensive.

Oh, I know.

A tomato's $2. It's like, why am I paying $2 for a tomato? It's one thing paying $5 a gallon for gas. It's another thing paying $2 for a tomato. And like, thinking to yourself, should I buy this tomato right now for $2? Or should I buy the lotto for $2?

Exactly.

Lotto used to be a dollar.

I know, I know. And then they add on all this other stuff, Joe. It's crazy.

Yeah.

Well, it was, it's so refreshing. And, and it's, it's also caught my attention as well, because I'm, as you know, I'm in the packaging world, and there's nothing glamorous or sexy in the packaging world. And I too came up with a very regular— my dad was an accountant, my mother was a schoolteacher. And, you know, the point being is that this goes against the grain, Joe. This is really against the grain for a lot of people. And, and Sadly, we live in this world of me too. Yeah, I'm going to do what everybody else is doing. But you're going the different direction. And to be able to jump on that bandwagon and swim upstream, giving and giving away, not asking for anything in return. You are the most generous without asking for anything. That to me is one of those lessons. And I just wanted you to know that I notice, I see you. I'm grateful for you. I want to get to know you more because you're really an example for guys like me that really want to make a difference.

Yeah, thank you so much for saying that, and I appreciate and I receive that blessing, and I totally get where you're coming from because I was in the same place. And when you see somebody that's special in your life, yeah, that you could pay it forward, then it's worth getting closer and getting to know them. By the way, do you do stand-up comedy?

I do not.

Okay, okay, because the stand up and stand out thing, I kind of thought, oh, maybe he does stand-up comedy.

No, I— that maybe that is something I should take a look at. I saw that in one of your profiles, and an amateur rapper Well, Joe. So, I mean, there's just, there's just so many different layers to this onion that we could uncover, my man. Crazy.

Having Funyuns with the onion.

Well, let's dig in a little bit about, from a high level, what Ajax Union does. And then we'll segue into one of the things you're really proud about and excited about, which is Evvy AI. But tell us about Ajax Union.

Ajax Union is a B2B digital marketing agency. We started the company in 2008. Uh, we were featured on the Inc. 500 3 years later as one of the fastest growing companies in the US, generating millions of dollars in revenue and helping hundreds and hundreds of clients all over the world be able to be more successful with things like search engine optimization.

Right.

Pay-per-click, email marketing, social media. Those are the things that we were doing. Now we kind of transitioned to helping people with artificial intelligence and LinkedIn. We're really focused on being a full-service digital marketing agency. We have several publicly traded companies that we're serving.

Hmm.

And we really believe on taking on a, strategic approach to marketing. So starting with a marketing funnel, creating lead magnets, email automations, landing pages, and you with the, with using artificial intelligence to support you, you can really be strategic and really, really in a very affordable way be able to build some really impressive marketing campaigns that will help you be able to elevate your brand. So a lot of people are afraid of it. A lot of people are not using it, but frankly, if you learn how to do it and you get it right with the right voice, with the right tone, you can have it do some pretty magical things. And we're kind of like at the cutting edge right now. And, you know, we have some really great technology, some really great strategies, some really great tactics and techniques. But at the end of the day, marketing is about testing. So if you haven't read my book, High Energy Marketing, then definitely read it because it does talk about my story and my philosophy on generating leads. A lot of people think that you could just go there and try to sell things. People hate being sold, but they love to buy.

Yes.

Making sure that you generate a right lead generating system where you start with the top of the funnel, then you go to the middle of the funnel, then the bottom of the funnel. You start like that. That's how you're going to be successful in today's world.

If there was any book that you would recommend from you, it would start with High Energy?

Yeah. So of course. So High Energy. If you're interested in networking, read High Energy Networking. If you're interested in marketing, read High Energy Marketing. If you're interested in figuring out who you really are, read High Energy Purpose. Which really gets into like your purpose and who you are and what it means to be on purpose. I love it. If you want to lose 100 pounds, read High Energy Secrets. I love it.

I absolutely love it, man. You mentioned something here that was, that's really interesting too, is the affordable piece of this. If there's anything I've seen over the last 20 years, now as we get into this AI world and now the affordability of working with an Ajax Union and a Joe Apfelbaum and be able to do these and use these tools where you know, historically, people would have thought, oh man, only Toyota and Ford can afford this. There's no way we can do that. But here we are at something that's truly affordable for even small to mid-sized companies that really want to look bigger, act bigger, and actually get the results to out-hustle the big guys, which is kind of really where I'm at.

Yeah, no, what I would say is that The right strategy will save you a decade. Yeah. That's something that a lot of people are just— don't— they don't realize how important strategy is. People are taking action. Activity without strategy or energy without strategy is a waste of time. So if you're just doing activity, activity, activity, activity, but you're not doing it in a strategic way, then what are you doing?

Yeah.

Right. Right. Like I went on LinkedIn Live today for the 190th 197th time this year. Wow. 197 times. But I'm very, very strategic when I go on LinkedIn Live.

Right.

I have conversations with people. I know people are watching. I know people are watching the replays.

Yeah.

People are consuming it. I do very strategic things. Like today I put, uh, I had to go take care of some things. I went on live and I put a 10-minute video for people to watch the video while I went to go do things. I went to the bathroom, I went to go take care of things in the kitchen, whatever.

Yeah.

And I came back to check on it. It's still playing. People are still watching. They're commenting on it. I reply to a few of the comments. I leave. And, and, and I could be doing something else and I'm on LinkedIn Live and it's streaming on YouTube. It's streaming on Facebook. I have my own channel.

Yeah.

I like have— you have your own channel. You have your own channel. Like, that's crazy.

And the, and the fact like you have embraced this in all different facets. The one thing that I, I found is that you, you, you kind of pivot in, you know, obviously LinkedIn, you talked about YouTube and now Instagram and all these others. You have a way of kind of getting in there and spinning those plates, if you will, Joe, on all of those. How do you keep that? Is that part of the strategy that you're referring to, that, you know, there's a, you know, you're certainly not a one-man show, but I knew a lot of this stuff you kind of get in there and, and direct it. How do you keep and manage all of that?

The way that I keep and manage everything is by making sure that I follow the Getting Things Done method.

Got it.

There's a specific method that you can follow. There's a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Yep.

And so if you follow the method of getting things done, then you're much more likely to be successful. Um, and a lot of people are not following that method. And as a result, they're not, you know, they're not following a method.

Yeah.

You gotta fill it. You gotta follow a method. I have something called the Goal Setting Masterclass where I teach people how to not just prepare and then perform, but also to do it on purpose, right? If you're missing your purpose, but you're just preparing and trying to perform, and then you're procrastinating, you're procrastinating because you prepared not based on your purpose, because we all have human needs, basic human needs. And we often overlook our values just to get our needs met.

Interesting. And I, you know what, I could totally see that. And I can see where, like you're describing, where people You know, we live in that world where it's so microwave, and we need everything right away. Gotta have it, gotta have it. And people get pulled because their phones are like these phasers almost, Joe. And, oh, wait a minute, so-and-so texted me. I have to do that now. And, oh, wait a minute, the boss is calling. I gotta go over here. And, you know, I remember, like, even in David Allen's book, I mean, yes, you have to follow the process to get stuff done. You have to get things done before you move on to the next one. You can't just sort of half-bake it on one and flip over to another and come back, because that's where you get nowhere. At the end of the day, you go like, holy crap, I'm exhausted. I don't feel like I accomplished anything, because you didn't. And here you are, just like starting tomorrow, same thing, with one arm tied behind your back.

And here's another thing that I want people to really realize, is that where focus goes, energy flows, right? That's so important. A lot of people don't realize how important focus is. If you're focused on 17 different things, I was talking to somebody recently and they were like, oh, I have 100 different businesses that I want to start. Okay, you have 100 different businesses you want to start, but only one of them is going to actually— you're going to actually be able to pay attention to.

Right.

And if you're trying to pay attention to everybody, everything at the same time, it's going to be very, very difficult for you to actually be successful if you're trying to do everything at once. And so you got to take a step back and ask yourself, what do you really want to do and what's aligned with your purpose? What are you really going to pay attention to? And if you could really focus on the thing that will have the most bang for your buck, that's how you're going to be successful. Because where focus goes, energy flows.

I like it.

That's, that's the power.

Yeah. And I totally get that. And again, even from my own life, I— it's, it's one of those lessons that keeps coming up, Joe. And it's one of those things I got to keep pulling myself back in. No, wait a minute. You're going to water yourself down by going in a million different directions. Stay here, you know, where energy goes.

Where focus goes, energy flows.

Exactly. And that to me is just, it's so well put. I love it. I love it. So do companies come to you now with it, before we pivot to the Evvie AI, but do companies come to Ajax Union and then they, is it something where you've got a company that almost like an à la carte menu, so to speak, Joe, where they'll say, hey, I need this or I need part of that, or is it—

It's very customized. It's very cool. We do have some things that are prepackaged, but for the most part, it's very customized. So we'll learn about your business, figure out what you need based on your budget, based on your goals, based on the ROI that you can get. ROI is a really important word when it comes to marketing. You got to figure out the return on investment. Guys, write ROI in the chat if you agree that ROI is important. I'm curious to know who else believes that ROI is actually an important thing. And also hit that repost button while you're at it because—

Thank you.

If you hit the repost button, more people are actually going to see it. So I'm gonna hit the repost button myself on your profile, just FYI.

Thank you.

I do see that we already have 2 reposts.

Yep.

Uh, but if we can get a 3rd repost, that would be wonderful. So who wants to— who wants to be the one that will be the 3rd repost? It'll be really, really nice.

And if you do that, I'll get you Joe's book too, any of your choice. Of your choice.

There you go. That's so nice. Whoever does a repost, you're gonna get a book out of this. That's right.

And I'm gonna— I'm gonna give 5 books out today, Joe. 5 of them. I'm gonna make sure that everybody gets one of those, and even those that, uh, may not be able to see this live, they can still DM me and I will get them the book of Joe's of their choice. So how's that?

Oh, wow. That's really, really nice. 5 in honor of my 5 kids.

There you go. And by the way, I loved your holiday photo. I digress. Your kids looked about as excited as mine were at the holiday photo as well. It's like, oh, come on, another one of these? Another one? That's crazy. Well, let me, let me kind of— one thing I wanted to ask you, because you posted something, I believe it was last week, and I wanted to touch on this before we kind of go into heavy AI. One of the things you had mentioned was the power of an old art, if you will, an old art form, old type of marketing, I call it, which is the press release.

Oh, the press release.

Yeah, exactly. The phone call too. But the press release that you had mentioned, I think you were featured on Forbes or Fortune or something like that. But you had said it's, you know, a lot of people overlook or aren't doing your traditional press release. Could you tell us a little bit more? Is it something that Even me with a small B2B company can jump on, or do we have to go through the—

Okay, 100%. So like if you join our business development circle, we have something called the Evy AI Business Development Circle. If you go to evergreen.com, E-V-Y-R-G-R-E-N.com/AI-Circle, you can learn how to be able to develop your own press releases and issue them. And then you can use websites, and there are a variety of different websites where you can either publish your press release for say $400 and it'll guarantee to get into some major publications, or you can just do it for free and just publish it online, or you can post it as a LinkedIn article or whatever. But when you publish a press release, you end up showing up in Google News.

Yeah.

So if you search, um, if you search Evvy AI in Google News, you're actually going to find us in fortune.com. You're gonna find us in PR Newswire. You're gonna find us Um, in places that you would not be able to be found if you didn't invest into a press release. Um, whether it's paid or free.

Yeah.

Bottom line is the easy way to do it is just to pay the couple hundred dollars and get in.

Yeah.

But literally anybody can write a press release using artificial intelligence. It used to be that you'd have to pay hundreds of dollars to get someone to write you a press release. But now with AI, we just write press releases all the time and then issue press releases. And a press release could be, hey, I'm launching a new product, or hey, Here's a new idea, or welcoming the new year, or the holidays are coming and we're getting ready to launch a deal. So you can literally have press releases about anything in today's day and age. Press releases don't have to be about anything glamorous, like you're opening up a new location or whatever. Press release could be about anything. So yeah, anybody, any Joe Schmo, even without a company, can do a press release.

Yeah, absolutely. Anytime I hear some of these older, I guess you could say technologies, if you will, kind of injected with this new AI type of life. Trust me, I will be part of this, this AI group going forward, number one. But number two, I really think that there is something profound in that press release world that I think would totally get, get people to notice.

And just another point, David. Yeah, there are many reasons to leave a press release. So for you specifically in your business, you could announce a major company milestone like winning an award. You can launch new services or programs like providing media potential Uh, clients' detailed information. You could share research findings, uh, on industry data. You can highlight strategic partnerships. You can announce company expansions. You can, uh, say share client success stories like a case study or something.

Sure.

You could announce a speaking engagement that you're doing. You could report significant company achievements like revenue milestones or client growth. You could introduce innovative methodologies or frameworks. You could announce free resources like tools. Like I could say, Evvy AI has a worksheet or something. You can share industry recognition or media appearances. Like, I can do a press release about the fact that we were together on LinkedIn Live.

Right.

You could share, launch charitable initiatives. You could announce digital platform launches like apps or online programs. You can share rebranding initiatives or announce special events or workshops. You're doing a webinar, you can do a press release about it or whatever. So there's an endless amount of reasons to do a press release. And if you, if you do them regularly, you're going to start seeing value.

And regularly, once a day, once a week, any, any limit in that?

If you've never done a press release before, start with once a year.

Okay.

And then move into once a quarter. And then if you could afford it, do it once a month and so on.

Let me ask you a quick question before we jump into Evvy AI. Here's my little world that I'm in. As, as you're aware, I'm in the, I'm in the packaging sales world. And the one niche that I— and packaging, of course, is a very broad industry. I focus on the really specialized, unique, hard-to-find, kind of hard-to-source products. There's this whole world out here in the US alone of these big, massive packaging resellers. They're the guys that'll sell you toilet paper and banding, and— but they don't really understand. I really think there's a very big void out there for the true packaging resellers that want to get into higher margin sales. But they don't know that world that I'm in. So I often thought, and I figured I'd just throw this out to you before we pivot, but I often thought of if I could become, or we could become, somebody's outsourced specialized packaging department, you know, something they could literally bolt on since they're already selling the Cleveland Clinic, to be able to go in there and sell the Cleveland Clinic more, but at higher margin specialized stuff. And part of, you know, the Evvy AI and part of my LinkedIn strategy is to try to connect with those business leaders from the packaging resellers to be able to kind of say, hey guys, you don't have to learn this from scratch. I've got 30 years experience, already vetted suppliers. Any take on that world and strategy? I figured I might as well ask while I have you.

Yeah, when it comes to, when it comes to using Evvy AI, The best clients that you're gonna get in your life is gonna be specifically related to, uh, relationships that you're building. Yeah. Those are gonna be the best clients that you get in your life. And so if you're getting, if you're using Evvy AI to stay top of mind with your most ideal referral partners and your most ideal clients, you're gonna be able to get more of those clients. So my recommendation to you is what we teach in our course.

Yep.

And we actually have, If you become an Evvii Pro member for the holidays, we actually have a deal where we're including our evergreen networking course and our 2 hours per month of training on how to leverage LinkedIn properly with strategy. So what we teach is there are 3 Ps in the foundation of branding. There is the plan, there's the people, and there's the promise. In the plan, it means having a business plan, a marketing plan and a LinkedIn plan and having those documented. We have frameworks for that in our course that we can happily give you and help you fill out. The second part is where I'm talking about is the people. The people is figuring out who you're targeting.

Right.

So David, if you don't have a very clear target market and a very clear center of influence, the likelihood of you being successful in any initiative is going to be very slim because you can't create messaging for everybody. You got to create messaging for a specific target market, right? And so who would you say is your number one target market right now?

Packaging resellers.

So when you say packaging resellers, what does that even mean?

Well, companies like— yeah, well, Veritiv, Crown Packaging, Piedmont Packaging— these are, these are the kind of companies that are half a billion to a billion dollars a year in sales. They've got multiple offices.

Excellent. So let's say, for example, let's take into Crown Packaging into, into like thing. Crown Packaging is your client. Who within Crown Packaging? Because you're not selling to a company, you're selling to a person. So who within Crown Packaging are you selling to?

Well, I would love— my target would be either ownership or senior leadership level, because it's got to come from the top down, Joe, versus that proverbial sales guy. Top down is somebody that will realize, holy crap, we're, we're living on 5% profit margins. But if we can get to 25%, 30% profit margins, We could— it's a game changer.

Yeah, so if you go to linkedin.com and you look up Crown Packaging, because they don't link from their website to LinkedIn, so you have to look it up. You search Crown Packaging on LinkedIn. So this is the first thing I would do is I'd make a list of companies called— this is called ABM, or account-based marketing. So Ajax Union does this for companies. So I would search for the company Crown Packaging, and then I would follow that company. They have 13,000 followers. I'm gonna go ahead and follow them. Then when I open up their page, I notice that they have 200 to 500 employees on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

So I go through their employees and right away I see their CMO. So I would connect with their Chief Marketing Officer. If I were you, I would connect with their CMO because the CMO, his name is Aaron Volt, and Aaron Volt is in Greater St. Louis, and I would send him a connection request. He has 2,000 followers on LinkedIn. He's commenting, a month ago was the last time he commented. He's not really posting much. But I would literally get his cell phone number, get his contact information from LinkedIn, which I can easily find his cell phone number. I could send him a, a connection request right now, which I'm sending him as we speak. And then I can go into his, his information, access his email address. I see it's avault@crownpackaging. I see his email address right over here. Then I can pull up his cell phone number. I have his cell phone number right here as 314-603-9674, like right there. That's his That's his cell phone number.

Incredible.

And then I just literally just push a button, and I'm not gonna do this now, but I would push a button and I would just call him up and I'd be like, hey Aaron, I'm looking at your profile right now. I noticed some things that you can improve on, and if you want me to give you 2 or 3 tips, I'm happy to give it to you. In your case, you might say something else. That's what I would do.

Yep.

Um, and he'll be like, no thank you, I don't really want any tips. And I'll be like, I'm just curious to know. I know that you don't want tips, and I knew that you wouldn't want tips. Do you want me to tell you how I knew that you wouldn't want tips? And he'll be like, holy crap, how did you know? And then we start having a conversation. I totally frame him and say, by the way, other CMOs end up getting board seats in other companies because of what I'm about to tell you. So are you even interested in a board seat? You don't look like the type of guy that would even benefit from being in a board— a paid board seat that pays $50,000 a year to be in a board seat of a major corporation. He's like, I would love that.

Wow.

I was like, OK, then do you have 5 minutes to speak to me? And then I just tell him whatever I need to tell him in order for me to set up a 20, 30-minute meeting. And now I have a 20, 30-minute meeting with a pretty major company that I'm targeting, whatever that company is. According to Apollo, they have 720 employees and they do about half a billion dollars a year in revenue.

Right.

So that's, you know, and they're in Missouri.

Yep.

So I might say, hey, I plan on coming to Missouri next week. If you're around, I'd love to take you out to coffee. And he'll be like, I'm around. Then I go on Google Flights and see if there's any flights to Missouri.

Everybody, this is the true master. And if anyone has had the opportunity to sit with Joe like we're doing right now, this is exactly what he does when we're together in one of his meetings. Joe, this is just so cool, man. I can't— I cannot wait to go back and repurpose this on my own. Oh my goodness, this is great. Thank you for that little lesson.

It's really exciting. So when you do— when we do ABM for our clients at Ajax Union, account-based marketing, we literally will make the list of the companies and we'll create a mini marketing plan for each company that we're targeting.

Wow.

So I want you to think about that from that perspective. Yeah. If I look in Sales Navigator and I take a look at who are the executives of Crown Packaging Corp. Yeah. I can easily find out who all the executives are. I mean, it's just a couple clicks of a button. Then the question is getting their cell phone numbers and their email addresses and all their information. And then once you have, you have a little hierarchy and you see like, okay, here's a little sitemap, a little mind map of who the company is. Now you see, okay, here's the CEO.

Yeah.

Here's the CMO. Here's the director of sales. Here's the logistics analyst. Here's the packaging specialist. Here's the person in charge, the director of business development that I'm gonna need to have a relationship with anyway. And here are the people that could walk me in the door. Like for example, you might find Tom, his name is Zip. He's a pickleball player and he's in sales. He's one of the sales people at Crown, and I know that he's been working there for exactly 29 years. Wow. So this guy's a pretty senior guy at a half a billion dollar company. He's the type of guy that I want to get in with. Well, guess what he did 2 hours ago? Guess.

Pickleball.

2 hours ago, he wrote a post about a book, about a book he read related to Elon Musk.

I'll be damned.

Okay. Okay, so he just shared a post related to Elon Musk. So obviously Tom is a big fan of Elon Musk. I have his cell phone number right over here. I'm going to call him up and I'll be like, hey Tom, you've been working at this company for 29 years. He's like, who's this? My name is Joe. You've been, you've been working at your company for 29 years. This is crazy. I cannot believe that you just posted about Elon Musk's reading list. He's like, dude, who are you? I was like, I literally just left you a comment on your post, Zip. And he's like, no one calls me Zip. How'd you know my name? My nickname was Zip. I was like, you wrote it on LinkedIn. Your nickname is Zip, isn't it? Now the guy's listening. He's listening.

100%.

How many cold callers have called you and literally called you by your nickname, told you the last post that you posted on LinkedIn?

Exactly.

And that you haven't posted in months, but 2 hours ago you posted and suddenly you get a call.

Man, this is— I'll tell you one thing. I'm going to put this out for the record, Joe, and I am going to do this and I'm going to capture this on my own LinkedIn Live. I'm going to begin, and I, first of all, I'm going to, I'm going to reach out after this is over, connect, become that client, and start learning how you guys do this at Ajax. And I'm going to document this. I'm going to document this on how we've done it on our end. The beauty of what you described is exactly what— the nice thing is, is I'm not looking for volume; I'm looking for quality. I want that connection.

If you had a few good customers, it would change your life.

100%. And that really is the beauty of this because all too often people look at these things and they think they need to get 30,000 followers to actually be relevant. And you've always talked about quality, quality, quality, quality. Make those connections and that's the game changer.

Yeah, yeah. So if you find the GM of the companies that you're targeting and you get to know who they are and you build a relationship with them, I mean, you build a real relationship. This is not— I'm not talking about like trying to, to take advantage of somebody, right? But building a real relationship. That's where, that's where most people are just, they just don't know how to do that. And they're not willing to spend the time because there is a certain time investment that you have to make to do it right, to do it correctly.

Yeah.

Figuring out who the owner is, for example, Dave Anderson, Mark Roberts, You know, you find out who the co-CEO is, the joint CEO, the director of business development is, you find out the co-founders, you find all the right people to walk you in the door of the organizations that you want to walk in the door to.

Yep.

Then you never have to do anything again. It's just like, wow.

Yeah. And the message, just like you even described too, because going from that top level down and being able to be walked in somewhere like you're describing, because I have a very specific message. That message would not get translated or even passed through if it wasn't from a top-level person down. So what you described is spot on with what we need to do.

Yeah, 100%.

Thank you for that. Thank you for that.

I'm looking forward to having you in our class on January 8th at 10 AM. All our Evvii Pro members— so when you prepay for the year for Evvii Pro, it's $984 a year right now— when you prepay for the year, you get access to $20,000 worth of bonuses now at the end of the year. We're offering that, and that, that ends in 2 days. And so I'm excited to be able to give that to people on me.

And you know what, and I'm obviously a paid member, and the thing I find is everything that Joe has been describing is legit. The training, the information, he's on these calls, he's got it. This is not some sort of a you know, third-party kind of push-through. This is Joe really and truly teaching what he knows. And that's why I just was so geeked to have him on this, on this podcast with me.

Yeah, thank you very much, David.

Tell us a little bit before we wrap up, Joe, and land this plane, the Evi AI, what kind of brought it to pass? And obviously, without— you don't have to go down that rabbit hole. But the point I'm getting at is, it is such a powerful tool for anybody trying to really maximize— it's that sales assistant, that virtual sales assistant for LinkedIn. Tell us more about that because I really want people to understand the power of it.

Yeah, what people don't realize is that LinkedIn has a billion members. I don't know if you knew this, but LinkedIn has a billion members right now. And so, if you think about the power of having access in your fingertips to a billion people, that's powerful and that's very overwhelming. So, one of the things that I teach people is have the right 1,000 people.

Right.

Forget about the billions. Billions are great, but billions, you're not going to be able to access billions. It's not fathomable to think about a billion. So instead of a billion, think about who are the right people? Who are the right 1,000 people? And it's really easy to connect with 1,000 people on LinkedIn. You can connect with up to 30,000 people relatively quickly. And so if you figure out who the right 1,000 people are, then all of a sudden you're like, okay, these are the 1,000 people that I need to connect with. And you go ahead and over the course of, let's say, a couple of months, Go ahead and connect with all those people and build relationships with them. What you end up happening— what you end up seeing very, very quickly is that you're now connected to the right people.

Yeah.

And when you're connected to the right people, it's a game changer. The thing is, a lot of people don't have the time to do all the things that you need to do. And that's where our software comes in. We built Evvy AI to save our clients time, and we have 15,000 users in 37 different countries around the world. All came from LinkedIn, all came from relationships, igniting the passion, as you say, reigniting the passion.

Thank you.

Building those relationships. And so I'm very passionate about making a difference for people. Like I said earlier, I really, really love connecting with people and building relationships and getting to know them and being authentic and being real. There's a limited amount of people that you can actually get to know and be real with and build relationships with. And so what I tell people is, um, use the software that will actually save you time. And in your case, you know, you're an Evie AI Pro user and you know how much time you're gonna save by using Evie AI. And that's why you kind of upgraded right away.

Yep.

Um, and you became a, a client and I'm looking forward to training you. But what I wanna say is that like the background for Evie AI is people didn't have the time.

Yep.

People didn't have the strategy. People didn't have the workflow. If you go into the Learning Center, something we just added this week, so you go to app.ebai.com, you click on Learning Center on the left side.

Yep.

And then you're gonna see quick links. In the quick links, we now have a workflow, a LinkedIn workflow that walks you through step by step all the activities that you need to do every single day on LinkedIn in just 15 minutes a day. You follow that workflow and then all of a sudden, You're able to start strategically taking action. If you want exposure, you gotta post.

Yeah.

So how long does it take to post? Um, with Evie AI, it takes 5 seconds to write a post. Hook, main points, call to action, hashtags, all organized in the most proper format.

Yep.

If you want credibility, you want people to know that you're real, leave a comment. That guy Zip that I wanna reach in Crown Packaging, he knows that I'm real because I'm the only one that commented on his post. And guess what? I'm the only one that will ever I never comment on his posts, and probably you'll also comment on his posts.

Exactly.

I'm the only one that will ever comment on his posts for the most part because he did one of the cardinal sins on LinkedIn and he did something in a way that will guarantee that his posts won't get showed on the feed. And we're not going to get into the cardinal sin right now, but if you guys want to learn the cardinal sin, come on January 8th. You'll learn all the sins that people make.

Oh boy, I love it. I love it.

And then the third thing is if you want to be able to get meetings, which I think that you— it's nice to get exposure. It's nice to get credibility, but if you want meetings, if you want to get clients, if you want to have conversations, then you need to start sending messages.

Yeah.

I personally, myself, and I do this on LinkedIn Live so you can watch me, I send out 100 messages every single day, personally sending out messages. I open up the DM and I start sending messages to people and I really enjoy it. It's a cathartic process for me to go through to send messages. Some people are like, I'm not, I'm too big. I'm too important to send messages to people. But that means that you're too important to network and have conversations.

Right.

Because when I send a message to somebody, I read our correspondence from before and I continue the conversation. So if I'm sending out 100 messages a day, how many messages am I sending out over the course of a month? That's 3,000 messages a month.

Exactly.

And over the course of the year, I'm sending out 30,000 messages. So if you're sending out 30,000 messages, a percentage of those people are going to reply to you. Now you'd be like, oh, Joe, but people get annoyed from the messages. Not the message I send. The messages that I send, I follow our 3-step process of greeting, feeding, and meeting.

Wow.

So what I'm going through is I'm strategically, depending on where you are in our conversation, I'm going to send you a different type of message. And I'm using templates that are stored inside Evvy AI that help me be able to further the conversation and drive you further down to the funnel to get you in a conversation with me, which is the ultimate goal for every connection that I have is to at least have a conversation with them and get to know What problem I can solve for them. And sometimes the problem is my services, and sometimes the problem is David's services.

Yeah, right.

Sometimes the problem is Sally's services, or Mike's services, or Lisa's services. And I want to make 1,000 introductions per year. That's my goal. If you read my book, High Energy Networking, you'll know I make 3 introductions every single day. So what does it mean to make 1,000 introductions a year? That means having at least 5 conversations, identifying opportunities for who you want to meet, asking all the right questions, And then making those intros. And so that's the whole story behind Evvii AI. I had a dream to make a difference for a million people, but I can't make a difference for a million people if I can't make a difference for 1,000. So I will have 1,000 people help 1,000 people, and that's how I reach a million people.

And I love the fact, because I've seen you do this and it's so seamless, when you're, when you're on the platform Evvii AI and these templates that you have set aside, you have those templates based upon different levels, like you said, of the conversation you're having with these people. So you can kind of pop in and respond to Joey and, and use a template that responds to him based upon a previous conversation and keep moving down the road. I mean, I've seen you do it, and you can do this for like 1,000 people, it seems like, in 5 minutes. It's crazy. You pop in and out.

Yeah, so it's not 1,000 people in 5 minutes, but, but it, it, it's a lot of people over the course of time. I would say in 5 minutes, I could probably send out If I'm doing it systematically, I would say, you know, 50 messages or so. But to send out 100 messages is an investment if you're reading all the messages and you're kind of touching base. But if you do a systematic approach, I always tell people, if you haven't sent messages in the past, start with sending 10 messages today.

Yeah.

Here's an example of a message that you could send out. Happy birthday. If you go into Evy AI and you click on the learning center on the left and you click on quick links, You're gonna notice inside the quick links, you can see all that your connections' birthdays. In Evvii AI, you can see connections' birthdays. You can be like, what are you talking about, Joe? Literally log into Evvii AI, click on the learning hub, click on quick links, and you're gonna see the birthdays of your connections. When you click on that, they'll all load there and you're gonna see, and, and you're gonna see the people that you missed their birthdays and you're gonna see the people that are having birthdays today. And especially for the people that you missed their birthdays, you send them, hey, happy belated birthday.

Yeah.

And then you add a little bit more juice at the end of it and you say, did you do anything special? I love doing this. Did you do anything special? That's a greeting.

Big time.

But that's a greeting with a call to action for them to actually want to share with you something personal. So this woman just told me, I just got back from Puerto Rico. Thank you so much for asking. I had a really great birthday. What about you? And then I moved them to feeding and then I moved them to meeting.

And now I'm having a relationship with someone who could potentially spend $250,000 a year with Yeah, and you know what, and the way you described that too, for a guy like me, and to be able to kind of really, really use the platform versus the platform using me, because it gets very easy to get overwhelmed by this massive LinkedIn thing. But the, just the way you've described it and walked people through it really dumbs this down into as little as 3 connection requests a day, Joe. And, and really, you multiply that up, and that's where this thing really starts to get lit with gas. Because it's just, it doesn't mean you have to sit here for 7 hours. You said this at the very beginning in one of your last, one of our last trainings was, you start the day for half an hour or an hour and just kind of go through this. It is your kind of quiet time. This is how you kind of spin those plates. And then you're, you're out and about through your day. It's fascinating to watch.

Yeah. And if you don't have a habit, then it's not gonna happen. You gotta almost program it as a habit. That's really, that's really the key. Like, what are your habits? And if your habits are not around networking and building relationships, then your habits are around watching TV or your habits are around consuming things on the feed. I mean, it's nice to consume things on the feed. Trust me, I'll go on the feed, but only after I'll do my must-do activities.

Yeah.

And that's really the key there. It's like, You, you can start your day, but if you didn't exercise before your day, if you didn't do your 10 squats, then you're not gonna do your 10 squats. You're done. If you don't do 10 squats, like, come on, can you do 10 squats? David, do you do 10 squats a day?

I do.

Most people don't. Most people just go straight to work. They roll out of bed, they're limping into work. Instead of limping into work to eat that donut, do 10 squats as soon as you get up and see what happens. Do a good morning stretch. Get out there, lift heavy, run, do the hard work, do— but do it as a habit. Like, when I get out of bed, I'm gonna do 10 squats as a habit. The same thing with LinkedIn. Do it as a habit.

Yeah. And especially— and again, I just love that because that's something you started today's conversation with and something you're— we're ending the conversation with, Joe, is that habit, is that, is that discipline. There's a discipline to everything that from Ajax Union all the way down through your own personal life, getting out of bed and doing your squats? Because I know that now health and, and taking care of yourself is also a very big deal as well. That too. I do the squats because I've got a bad knee, and they say motion is lotion. So the more I can do the squats, I get that lotion to my knee, and the longer I can prevent having to get a knee replacement. So it's very top of mind.

Yeah, and also a lot of it has to do with the muscles around our So sometimes we think, oh, my knee is gone and I can't use my knee, but how— how well did we massage and lubricate the muscles around the knee so that the muscles aren't tight and squeezing the knee together?

Yup.

And so doing all the right moves and all the right bends and all the right stuff and then getting the right level of hydration and the right level of— of nutrition and the right— right level of salt, the right types of salts with the right minerals. Your bones need minerals to grow.

Yeah.

And your cartilage. So, so you have to understand how your body works, and if you start understanding it and giving it what it needs, your body can regenerate and heal itself.

Joe, I could go on forever. I, I've been given strict instructions. You've got a hard stop, so I'm going to do a hard stop. But you can— I'm gonna— if, if, uh, first of all, I want to thank you personally. This has been a real thrill for me. I want you to know that. And I'm going to wrap up the stream. But again, anybody, Joe, would it be Ajax Union? Should they go to— give me an idea of the best way.

The best way to reach me is to go to evyai.com, sign up for Evy AI, and then send me a message letting me know, hey, I'm a new client of Evy AI. That's what I would love for everybody to do. If you need to find me, you could find me online. Just search my name, Joe Apfelbaum. You could find my email address on my LinkedIn. LinkedIn profile. My cell phone number's on there. You can send me a WhatsApp message. If you wanna see a demo of Evy AI, just send the word demo to 973-841-8868. That's 973-841-8868. Just send a regular text message with the word demo, and then my CRM will reply with a demonstration video that's on my LinkedIn profile. Just like that. Boom.

It, it, boom. Exactly. And that's one of his famous lines too. I love it. And Joe, I'm going, I'm, I'm serious. I am going to document this because I really believe there are people and companies that can really benefit from what I go through and seeing our success using your programs and doing this as a paid client, mind you. But I want them to see the results that I have. Yes, it's easy for somebody to go, oh, look at that, they're Toyota. But for some packaging guy in Cleveland, Ohio, of all places, that's going to light this thing on fire in 2025. I'm all in, 100%.

Thank you, and thank you for being in my life. Thank you for interviewing me, and looking forward to watching the replay again.