Multiverse Leadership Podcast with Joe Apfelbaum

Throw up here. All right, cool. Let's go. Hello, my fellow humans, and welcome to the Multiverse Leadership Podcast. What's one way you think artificial intelligence can help you build stronger business relationships or grow your professional network? Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Joe, a dynamic entrepreneur, speaker, and AI business development expert. Joe is the CEO of Ajax Union, a leading B2B digital marketing agency, and the founder of Evvy AI, an AI-powered LinkedIn assistant helping thousands of professionals boost their network and business growth. Joe, welcome to our podcast.

Thank you so much for having me here. I'm actually really excited to be here, and I'd love to share insights about how to use AI and how to use LinkedIn because most people have absolutely no idea how to use it.

You know, I feel that I was one of those people before I met you and actually been using your AI program. So I know it's powerful and profoundly amazing.

Yeah. Evvy AI is helping 20,000 users in 37 countries around the world, and we help people be able to create post ideas, write the posts, leave comments, create the messages. We help you save profiles into lists. And we help you be able to have a strategy that will actually get you clients. And one of the things that our clients tell us is it saves them so much time when they're using platforms like LinkedIn. Now we also work on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, uh, X, and everywhere else as well. So it's a, it's a very powerful way for people to get their first 100 clients. And a, a lot of micro businesses, they, they set up a website, but they don't know what to do next. And for us, we know exactly what to do to get our first 100 clients. So we'll show you, walk you through, and give you all the tools to make it fast.

That is amazing. I would love to know what has your journey been like to get here and thought, let me build an AI tool to help other humans get clients and do better. Like, what was that journey like?

Well, I've been always passionate about helping small business owners be able to get clients. Like, I, that's why I started my marketing agency 17 years ago because people were like, Joe, You have a web design company and you service 100 people a year as a freelancer doing web design for people. How do you get your clients? What's the method that you use? And I was like, well, I do search engine optimization and I use social media and I use platforms. And people were like, can you do that for me? And I was like, sure, I can do that for you for a monthly fee. And before you know it, I was servicing 1,100 clients. And then people were like, how are you getting big clients? And I said, big clients come from networking and trust and building relationships. And then they said, can you teach us how to get big clients? Can you teach us how to use tools like LinkedIn? So I started teaching LinkedIn over 10 years ago. And the problem was, is that people weren't executing on the things that I was teaching them. You know, they say that knowledge is power, but that's a myth. Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is actually not power. You know what power is? Power is action. Power is applying the knowledge that you learn. So if you can apply knowledge, you can learn it and then apply it. It's key. So how do you apply it if you don't have enough time? Small business owners don't really have the time to leave comments or messages. So for me, the number one way that I show people how to do it is by going on LinkedIn Live, is by going on podcasts, is by doing— I'm like, I told you, we're going to have a webinar in like 50 minutes. If people go to evviai.com/webinar, I'm going to have a webinar coming up and I'm going to be teaching people. And that's, that's what I enjoy doing the most is kind of like walking you through here. Let me share my screen. Let me show you how it works and let me teach you how to make it happen. But let me also give you the tool. Let me also give you the technology that sounds like you and that could help you do all the activities together with you as your assistant. So we call it a sales assistant because we help you generate more sales.

I love that. And that is a truly profound product. I've been using it myself. And it really does sound like me. I know sometimes we use AI to go research and do stuff. We try and type in to try and make it sound like us. It doesn't sound like us. It's not fine-tuned. We're not prompting it correctly. But with your product, I've seen it prompts it in our voice. So it seems more human and less AI-y. That makes sense.

That makes total sense because a lot of the times people don't set up personas to properly prompt the AI or to properly train the AI. And then the AI by default is set to sound like a machine because that's what it is. It doesn't know what you sound like, so it's gonna sound like it sounds, and it sounds like a machine often. And so what I tell people is, let's create a persona for you so the AI can roleplay and sound exactly like you. And we have many different personas, so you can You sound a certain way on LinkedIn, you sound a certain way on Facebook, you sound a certain way on Twitter, you sound a certain way on school, you sound a certain way on email, you sound a certain way when you're talking to a certain segment of the population. And so we can create as many personas as we want, and then whenever we're creating content, whether it's a comment or a message or a post, we will then have the AI sound exactly like you need to sound in that platform, in that role.

I absolutely love that because that is definitely a time saver. I know myself, I've sat here frustrated trying to talk to people or leave comments like, oh, I liked your post, cool, thumbs up. That doesn't really get engagement. Yeah, that doesn't move the needle forward. It just makes you sound like everyone else out there and all the noise.

Yeah, building those relationships and actually getting to know people and actually showing them that you care People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Ooh, I love that. So true. They don't care how much you know, but only how much you care. You know, I love how you said that because in this world now, people want more connection. They want to feel more connected now than ever. And being able to use a tool such as Evie, even though it's not human, To actually help you be more human through it. It's truly profound.

Yeah. And look, at the, at the end of the day, it's about human connection. That's what it's really about. It's not just about being on LinkedIn, but being present on LinkedIn. It's not just about hoping for the best, but having a strategy to really connect deeply and really get to know people in a meaningful way and reading their posts and acknowledging them properly. And most people, they're just kind of like, Lurking. You know what lurking means? Where you're just kind of like, just on the sidelines, just like watching things and not really leaning into the conversation. But if you—

I'm hoping for the best.

Yeah. Hope is a great thing. It's just not a great strategy. So I always tell people, actually lean into the conversation. Like take a moment to actually get to know people and build those relationships. And if you can actually get to know people and build those relationships using tools like Evvy AI, That can really have a massive impact on your business. So I recommend that people take the time to learn how to use these technologies, to learn how to use these tools, and it will save you a tremendous amount of time and it'll help you to be able to be more authentic when you're building those relationships. Like for example, if I'm doing research on you, right? I want to have a conversation with you. I do research on you. I just search your name on LinkedIn or on Google or whatever. And I pull up your profile, what am I gonna find about you? Well, if I'm, if I'm just Googling you, I might find one or two things, right? But if I have AI do the research about you, what do you think will happen then?

No bounds. We'll find everything, even things I didn't know about myself.

Yeah. So like, for example, Evvy AI does that research. So for example, if I wanna pull up your profile, I can tag you as a podcast host. Right? Because I can tag you. And then I can pull, click on, let's say Copilot or Perplexity or whatever it is. And then it starts gathering detailed professional information to create a comprehensive summary and identity with all the information related to you. So it says that you're the founder and CEO of ITCMD. You're a host of the Multiverse Leadership Podcast. You're a speaker. You're a healthcare tech behavioral change advocate. You're a cybersecurity and HIPAA specialist. And it tells me your target market, that you work with healthcare. executives, that you work with medical practices and clinics, and you're growth-minded entrepreneurs, and you do IT compliance for professionals in healthcare, and that it breaks down every single thing about you. It shows me that you're active on X, and that shows me your podcast website and your company website. It tells me that you're in Newport Beach, California. And then it tells me, if you're gonna be talking to this guy, Justin, check this out. It tells me, ask him about his personal journey that shaped his leadership philosophy. and the approach to cybersecurity in healthcare. And then it asked me to ask you, like, what inspired you to launch the Multiverse Leadership Podcast? And what's been the most memorable guest besides Joe Apfelbaum on your show?

Thank you for that.

And then, and then like, how do you integrate behavioral psychology into IT and compliance solutions for healthcare organizations? And it tells me all the notable achievements. It tells me how you overcame significant personal adversity, including addiction and near-death It tells me that you hold a dual concentration bachelor's in IT and computer forensics, and a master's in information assurance and security, and a post-biancal in behavioral psychology. It tells me that you founded your first tech at age of 16, and you've been A+ certified since 2003. It tells me that you lead the IT operations for 38 clinical locations to ensure secure and compliant healthcare delivery, and it also tells me—

Oh, wow.

That you're an advocate for employee-owned business models and a culture for shaping leadership. So it's like, wow.

Woo. Wow.

And you're active in the MSP community and you regularly share behavior changes and compliance. And by the way, that's one of the biggest problems in cybersecurity is social engineering. So it kind of tells me how to have that conversation with you and how to navigate that. And that's just the beginning. I can find out your personality. I can look up every podcast you've been interviewed on. I could look up every article you've written and see seconds, it'll pull everything up for me, show me this map of who you are, and now I can start being a human being.

I need to see the map of who I am. Wait a second. So, wow, that takes all the guesswork out of everything because all that research would take so much time. If you approached me that way and talked to me that way, I'd be like, oh my gosh, let me give you my full attention. Let's talk.

Yeah, like, who are you versus me trying to sell you some random crap. If I had your YouTube, your Facebook, your Instagram, your LinkedIn, your website, your discovery call link, if I had everything at my fingertips, now I become a total rock star to you. Now you're paying attention and people that pay, pay attention.

Ooh, that is so powerful. I actually didn't even know it did a lot of that stuff. You know, I've been, I've been using it all wrong. I've only—

Well, we do have office hours every day. I recommend you come to our office hours every day. We even added a keyboard shortcut called Alt+G. But I just click the Alt+G button and it writes a comment under your post with a keyboard shortcut. So now all of a sudden I just hit comment, boom, and the comment gets generated under your post with a keyboard shortcut.

Oh, you're killing me, man. You're bringing more— me more value than I even thought that happened today.

Yeah.

I spent a lot of time with AI and trying to figure things out and research stuff, and I'm pretty much doing it all wrong. I'm wasting too much time putting into the wrong—

Yeah. And that's why, and that's why we offer people the bundle. If people go to evviai.com/bundle, B-U-N-D-L-E, B-U-N-D-L-E. They can actually get $10,000 worth of training for just $984 a year right now. It's for a limited time only. If you're in your car and listening, or if you're not by a computer, you can just send the word bundle to 973-841-8868, 973-841-8868, and our AI will reply with the link to the bundle. Which, you know, like one of the things that people don't realize is AI's here to really assist you, not to take you over. You know, it's here to, Kind of support you, just like any assistant is here to support you and not to take you over. That's really the key. The key is learning how to use it in a meaningful way so that you can actually build those relationships, get to know people, and then get on the phone with them and, and be a human being.

God, I love that. So powerful. I've actually been in some of your trainings before and your webinars, and they've actually showed me that you're kind of one of the only ones really out there advocating for AI as a tool. And showing people how to really use it in such a powerful way to not just type in there and get a response back, but really use it to dig into people's lives and who they are and really truly connect with them. I don't see anyone else out there doing this.

Yeah. Yeah. And because people are trying to say, oh, let's automate everything with AI, but automation isn't what human beings need. What we need more is connection.

Oh, I love how you said that because I've actually had those conversations with people. There's certain things you automate and there's certain things you need to be on the front lines connecting with your clients, the customer, whoever you're trying to get in touch with and be that human being.

Yeah. And so many times people don't realize how simple it can be to just pay attention. They say that people that pay, pay attention, but really paying attention and understanding who it is that you're actually talking to and understanding what it is that you're actually doing is the difference between just kind of plowing forward and actually building a meaningful relationship with someone. And that's why I love LinkedIn so much, by the way. The reason I love LinkedIn so much is because on LinkedIn, I can see everything about somebody. You know, it's not, it's not like hidden, like on Instagram. Like, I don't know who I'm talking to on Instagram, but on LinkedIn, I can actually pull up somebody's information and really get to know them in a meaningful way. Like I can, I can literally know everything about somebody and then I can see if they commented or whatever they did. I can then stay top of mind with them by leaving a comment on their post or by checking out what comments they commented on and seeing the recommendations they have. I don't know if you have any recommendations on your profile, but most people don't have any. But if I take a look at—

Mine.

If I take a look at mine, if I take a look at mine, I have 520 written recommendations, profile recommendations on my profile. You have zero on yours.

That's the problem.

We need to, we need to, we need to immediately change that because you're such a popular guy. Plus the only person commenting on your posts right now is me. Oh, so we need to get you, we need to get you in our— no, that's amazing. We need to get you in our community. Did you know that we have 1,000 engaged LinkedIn users in our community? 1,000?

No, I did not. That's amazing.

There's 1.2 billion people on LinkedIn right now. 1.2 billion people on LinkedIn. We have 1,000 of the most engaged LinkedIn users that are in our community supporting each other, building relationships with each other, getting to know each other. And my goal is just to have 1,000 people that love each other and support each other. And if 1,000 people can each reach 1,000 people themselves, we just reached 1 million people.

Ooh.

Because 1,000 times 1,000 is 1 million.

That is powerful. I love that, building that community. I'm actually trying to figure that one out myself, how to build community. But I think most important, I need to be part of another— someone else's community to learn and understand how that works first.

Exactly. Learning how community works by joining other communities and by finding other people that, that are your tribe and really going deep with them and getting to know them. And then you also being the one that engages. I mean, On LinkedIn, I can see how many times you commented on my post. I could see how many times you commented on other people's posts. I can see if you're actually, uh, giving, if you're actually, you know, taking the right actions.

I think mine's up and down a little bit. Sometimes, not sometimes. It's not as much as it needs to be.

That consistency is probably the most important thing for building community, cuz it's so easy to start a community and then forget that the community exists and then leave it. Yeah, that's, that's the easy part. It's like we get ADD, we get excited about the community, but we don't realize it's hard work to like always be there and always be present and always be replying to people and always like actually showing up for people. That is, that is something that most people don't talk about, the hard work of building a community.

Oh, I'm glad you brought that up because I've been trying to figure that out and learning that, that more work goes into it than I even understood. So I'm like, I'm gonna build a community, but then nourishing it is the other part.

Yeah, it's kind of like you planted a tomato plant, but you didn't give it any water. What do you expect will happen? The tomato plant will die.

Eventually, yeah.

It needs water, doesn't it? Doesn't it need sun and water and sunshine and love and connection? Doesn't it need that stuff? I personally think it does.

I believe that too. Yeah, you just kind of had a lightbulb moment in my head right now about community and building that. I'm asking to check yours out more now. I'm gonna go in there and see how I can learn more about building AI and all this into my life as well. Yeah, it's hard because you said earlier, it's hard to stay consistent. Because business owners, we have so many things we're trying to achieve, we're trying to go after, we're trying to do. And it's just consistency and all of them doesn't work. Now we're always being pulled in different directions. What are some tips and tools you could help us to kind of really focus on maybe a few things consistently?

Yeah, so if, if you want to be able to do things consistently, the most important thing that you have to realize is that you need to have a strategy. If you're not— if you don't have this plan, you know, strategy is a big word, so let's just say plan. If you don't have the right plan, the right people, the right promise, if you don't have that, you're not going to get to profitability. And if you're not making money, you're not going to pay attention to it long term. Because you pay attention to where the money is. That's really the idea. You're literally paying attention to where the money is. Where is the money? If the money— if you're not making money off something because you're not being strategic, you're not going to pay attention to it. So that's, that's an actual huge problem that people have where they, they stop paying attention to it because they're not really seeing results from it. And they're not seeing results from it because they're not really sure how to measure the results. That's a big, big component. So number one is you have to have the right strategy. Number 2 is you need to surround yourself with the right people. So if you don't actually have a community of people that you're surrounding yourself with, that's also a huge, huge, huge problem. So that's also not going to give you consistency. So if you don't have the right strategy and you don't have the right community, it's not going to work either. And then you need the right technology to make things go faster. So if you're using technology and it becomes fun instead of it being a chore, People love to have fun. They hate when it's a chore. And so understanding the right way of doing things, making sure that you're having the right technology, the right community, and the right strategy, that's the way that you have consistency, in my opinion.

Damn, I like that very much. That really resonates with me. I'm curious from what you said about measuring the results, that kind of stuck with me. I'm sure other people out there are still trying to figure out how do I measure the results? How does, how does one go about doing that?

Well, in your strat— so when we teach people, if you get the bundle, if you go to evviai.com/bundle and you get the bundle, we give you $10,000 worth of training as part of the bundle. And during the training, we teach you how to come up with your key performance indicators. What are the measurements for success? We teach you measurements for your business plan, measurements for your marketing plan, and measurements for your LinkedIn plan. And in each one, you need to have measurements to understand, okay, you know, when you're driving your car, how much gas do you have? You know, how fast are you going? You know, you have measurements, you have tools that you can measure with. So for each part of your business, your marketing, and your LinkedIn, you need to have measurements that you can look at and understand what are the most important indicators that you need to watch, because people are looking at the wrong indicators. Impressions is the wrong indicator. You know, like you can get a lot of impressions on a post and no clients. So how do you know that you're actually being successful? And that's kind of like what we teach. And we walk—

Okay.

And it's very custom to your business. So in every business, it'll be different. In managed IT, specifically in healthcare, you're going to have different key performance indicators than if you're a dancer. Okay? Just FYI. You know, like if you're professional services or if you're a coach or if maybe you're selling a product or a widget or something, it's going to be very different if you're manufacturing, Or if you're a lawyer. And so we'll custom help you with AI. We'll help custom create your exact key performance indicators for your business. And then we'll give you the method of how to be able to find the right people that will help you move the needle for you. And then once you find the right people, you connect with them and you get them on the phone, which we'll teach you how to do. Then it's about following up, using technology, telling stories, and then converting those people into actual paying customers. And we'll walk you through the entire line and how we did, how we're doing it right now for ourselves and how many of our clients are doing it as well. And that's kind of like what we teach as part of the bundle with the Evergreen Networking System.

Wow. I actually never knew that. And I'm sure the audience is like, oh my goodness, I need to hop on this now. A true, a true profound system that helps you use AI and teaches you how to get clients that really connect.

A lot of people, a lot of—

Who can say no to that?

Justin, a lot of people are teaching people how to use AI, but they're not teaching them how to get clients with AI. There's a difference.

Yes.

There's a difference. Like you can, you could use AI and have fun with it. Like for example, I could open up ChatGPT and make a picture of me and you as a Muppet.

Wait, can we do that?

Yeah, that's, that's really easy. That's really, really easy to do. I just take a screenshot of us. We both look at the camera like this. I take a screenshot just like that. Oh my God, you made such a funny face there. Okay, so I just took a screenshot of you. I press copy. Um, and then what I do is I just go into ChatGPT and then I say, turn us into a Muppet, uh, style character and make it realistic. And then I just paste in the image of us and I press go.

This is real fun and cool, but like you said, it's not getting clients.

That's not turning into clients for you.

Yeah.

And the reason that's not turning into clients is because You're simply, you're not, you're not like thinking about your strategy. You're not like, okay, how, how does me turning an image of me and this guy into a Muppet gonna help me be successful? And the chances is it's usually not gonna help you be successful unless you already know how to like build relationships with him and do AI research on LinkedIn and use that to get on the phone and then use that to send proper emails and set up segments and make sure that you have email automations and you have your funnel correctly and learn how to get. recommendations on LinkedIn and have social proof and all the different things that we teach inside the Evergreen Networking System. Like, if you're not doing those things, you know, you could be getting people on your podcast all day and all night, but if you're not actually moving the needle and getting people into your funnel— top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel— and you don't understand the concept of the funnel, then you're, you're never going to be able to get to that $100,000 a year mark. And, you know, you're probably way past it right now with your 39 clinics that you're doing stuff for. But a lot of people haven't made $100K in profit, you know, like a lot of people haven't made that. You figured it out, which is powerful, but a lot of people have not figured it out. And that's—

I'm still figuring some of it out myself still.

Yeah.

So yeah, I don't have a lot of it figured out, but this whole podcast and talking to people like yourself is kind of my journey, like putting it out there and just helping other people learn as I'm learning as well. I don't know everything. I want to. But I can't. Everything else, AI is there for me.

100%. 100%.

This is actually really amazing. I can't wait to see that picture too, if you actually processed it.

Yeah, it's still, it's still kind of loading. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do another version later.

Yeah, they can see that as well. So I'm curious, within your program that you have, what have been some common things you've noticed with people who come into the program, but they're struggling with? What things they need to overcome in order to get to the next level?

I would say the mo— the most important thing is the fear that they have to like express themselves and share themselves online. You know, a lot of people are afraid of judgment. It's, it's the reality that we live in. You know, people are afraid of judgment. And if you're afraid of judgment, the chances of you being successful is going to be lower than if you're not afraid of judgment, you know. Like, if you're actually not afraid of judgment, you're going to take more action. And if you take more action, you're going to get more results. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I highly recommend taking, taking a moment and asking yourself, are you taking the appropriate amount of action on a daily basis? And if the answer is no, chances are there are some beliefs, some fears, some insecurities that you have that are stopping you from taking those actions. That's, that's the reality of it. And it's not, it's not a bad thing. It just is what it is. It's like where, where you're at in life. Some people are not at the level of personal development that they need to be on. And let me tell you this, you can only grow your business as much as you grow yourself.

Oh, I've heard that so much. That is so true. I love it. Can you repeat that one more time?

You can only grow your business As much as you grow yourself, because the more you grow yourself, the less fear you have, the more you lean into the universe, and the more powerful you become, and the more impact you can have on many more people. Because initially, if you're just a freelancer and you're afraid of the world and you're kind of just sticking to one product and you're doing one thing, you're very limited on what you can do as a freelancer. And so maybe you'll make $50K. Maybe you'll make $100K, maybe you'll make $120K, whatever, if you're really successful at it. But then you become, you become like a business owner. And now all of a sudden you're like, you grew a lot and now you could hire 10 employees and now you're making $100K for each employee that you have. So they're all a bunch of freelancers working for you. You're making a million now because you have 10 employees and on average you're making about $100K per employee. So you're making a, you're doing a million in revenue now. Now you grew, but $1 million in revenue doesn't mean $1 million in profit. Sometimes it doesn't even mean $100K in profit. So now you're trying to figure out, okay, how do I get to the next level? And you, you want to get to $10 million. What got you to $100K or what got you to $1 million is not going to get you to $10 million. Now you're at $10 million and you're like, okay, you're not doing the work anymore. You have everyone else doing the work. You have management team. You're doing really well. You have 100 employees. You're doing $10 million in revenue. Now you want to get to $100 million. You're gonna have to be a very different leader to go from $1 million to $10 million, from $10 million to $100 million. And so like, now you have to start growing in each stage. You got to grow yourself and figure out, okay, who do I need to become to get employees that are able to either— instead of having 1,000 employees at $100 million in revenue, maybe what you can do is you can figure out how to get more revenue per employee. That means you get people that are much better than you. And now you're like, okay, can I get to $100 million with 10 employees instead of with 100? And like, wow. And now you have to completely change your paradigm of what's possible. And most people are simply just not able to do that at all. And so that's, that's the idea. I want you to like think really out of the box and like, okay, if you had no limits in the world, what would you want to create? And most people are not even going after the $100 million. They're not even going after the billion dollars or the trillion dollars.

They don't even know what they want to create in the first Yeah, they don't have that vision at all.

100%. I sent you the Muppet— I sent you 2 versions of the Muppets on LinkedIn DM so that you can check it out when you get a chance.

Okay, thank you very much. I really resonate with what you just said. I was actually there myself. I was limited on my growth. And before I had my accident and my thing with death and my overdose, I didn't know what the hell I was doing or what I wanted to do. I was just going through life, not understanding, not figuring things out. I really had to Take action, make change, and really work on myself to get me where I am now. I was scared to go on camera. I was scared to do this podcast. Sometimes I'm still a little weird, like, oh my God, I gotta talk to someone. But by the time I'm doing it, and I'm doing it more consistently, like I've been doing, it's amazing. It's built that consistent habit in my life. But it's not easy. It's a long journey. It's frustrating. It sucks sometimes. Sometimes you don't want to talk to anyone. You don't want to— you just want to lay on the couch, but you can't. You have to realize it's not just about you. What is your why you're doing everything?

Yeah.

Why are you doing it?

Why are you doing what you're doing?

Yeah. And I know a lot of people can't even answer that question. They're just like, oh, well, I don't know.

Or to make money. Yeah, exactly.

I'm like, well, what kind of money? For what purpose are you going to be serving to do this? Because most people just want to make money, but there's no purpose attached to it. Yeah, there's no— they're just not building their vision out to where you see clearly of what they want to get to.

Yeah.

And I, I just built my vision. I have more of an understanding where I want to go. Yeah. So yeah, some powerful stuff there. Very powerful. And then we're coming up on the time for your webinar here. So I'm going to be cautious of that.

Yeah.

I want to thank you for coming on here, Joe. It's been amazing talking with you. You have some amazing knowledge. And I even want to get enrolled in your program now as well. So I know even more about it. Thanks to this conversation. Because no one out there is actually doing— there's a lot of AI companies. And there's a lot of people, but they're not putting those things together to create what you have in this industry right now. Yeah, we need a lot more of that.

Yeah. Yeah. And what's powerful is if you can really tap into a real community, A real community of people, then wow. Then wow, what can happen if you had a community? Like, what could happen?

It'll take you to the next level and the next level and the next level. You can't do it by yourself.

Yeah.

That's what I'm learning.

Yeah.

For me, it's hard to find communities sometimes. Hard to understand how to fit in with other people.

But also community that actually engages on LinkedIn.

Ooh, not a lot of them are doing that. No.

I mean, we've, we've been trying to build community. I mean, this whole thing is brand new. It's just about a year and a half old or so, the community. But I've been, I've been working on for 10 years. I'm building my LinkedIn presence. 10 years. It didn't just begin today. 10 years I've been working on my LinkedIn presence. And so like overnight success is 10 years in the making, not 15 minutes of faking. Or waking and baking.

I always wonder why people have that. They see what you've been doing, not understanding it's taken you so long to get there. Yeah, there's all of a sudden they're like, oh, look, it happened overnight. I don't get that mentality. I mean, I used to be there too, but I've been like doing this for a year now. And I feel like I have a long way to go, but I just have to keep building and keep going. Can't— don't stop like most people do.

Yeah.

People stop before they get— they're almost there and they just kind of stop and like, oh well, it was too much work, I tried. Yeah, but they're not looking at— you've been doing this for 10 years. That's a long time to do something. A lot of effort, hard work, and consistency to put into something.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's definitely not overnight. Maybe one day we'll all see that and see how that actually works out on the journey that we're all on ourselves.

100%. And I don't know if you know this, but you can have 30,000 connections on LinkedIn. Did you know that?

I did know that. I thought I saw someone the other day with over 260,000 something. I don't know how. I thought it was only like 30.

That's followers. So there's a difference between followers and connections.

I have to— I don't remember which one I was looking at.

If you click on My Network, if you go to your profile and you click on My Network, on the left side it'll say Connections and it'll say Followers. Connections, you can only have max 30,000. Followers, you can have 1.2 billion. You know, you can have all the, all the users of LinkedIn. You can't have more than the users of LinkedIn, but you can have up to the users of LinkedIn, which is 1.2 billion right now. And it's growing at a rate of 3 new members every second.

I know LinkedIn has gotten pretty powerful. It's a huge force now in the social media market.

Yeah.

I have one question for you. I know I've, I've had, I've been on this journey myself with LinkedIn Sales Navigator versus using Evy AI. I know they do different things. Um, from what I've seen, Evy AI pretty much does what that one does, but better. What are your thoughts on both of them or using one or the other?

I mean, Evy AI works as an assistant within Sales Navigator as well. So if you see somebody on Sales Navigator and you wanna leave a comment on their post, Evy AI will draft a comment within Sales Navigator. Same thing with saving profiles or sending connection notes. or doing AI research, we'll research people in Sales Navigator in a way that Sales Navigator can't research it. So it's kind of like an extension to Sales Navigator versus a competition. We actually give it a lot more functionality. Um, also, you know, like one of the key features of Sales Navigator is saving people to lists. Evvy AI allows you to save LinkedIn users to a list.

Yeah.

So that you could later engage with them, but it's different purposes. Sales Navigator is more of kind of like putting people to lists so you can prospect them. Heavy AI is putting people to list so that you can network and build relationships with them. So like it really depends on what your goal is, but they all have different functions. Sales Navigator allows you to do searching. Heavy AI doesn't let you search through LinkedIn, you know, things like that. So it's still worth getting Sales Navigator if you need to be prospecting, but Heavy AI is a great companion for it.

Okay. I love how you put that. Really clarified that. Thank you. Before we go today, is there anything you'd like to leave our audience with? Any kind of last words of wisdom, how they can help them get to where they need to and where they can reach out to you as well?

Well, it's really easy to find me. Um, I have a domain, joelinkedin.com, J-O-E linkedin.com. It makes it really, really easy for people, um, to be able to reach out to me. Did you buy a domain and forward it to your LinkedIn yet?

I bought a domain, but it's not forwarded to my LinkedIn. They're all forwarded to my website. Where do you, um, where do you buy your domains from? That's a good question.

Uh, as an IT guy, GoDaddy.

I was going to GoDaddy, but I'm actually going to probably be buying through Cloudflare now because I have all my DNS connections through Cloudflare.

Oh, you know that GoDaddy has DNS and ProDNS as well now? They just came out with a new DNS thing.

I did not. I got so loved. I love Cloudflare because it's so easy to manipulate.

Yeah, Cloudflare is really cool as well. I'm just check out the new GoDaddy DNS thing. They have premium DNS now. Um, might be worth it for you to look at it. It's very simple, easy to use. One of the things I love about GoDaddy is that the ability to forward domains. So like if I set up a domain like joelinkton.com, I could forward it to my LinkedIn profile. So whenever I'm like, um, at a party and someone's like, how do I connect with you? I just say, go to joelinkton.com and they'll remember. You can go to justinlinkton.com and forward it on GoDaddy. It's really easy. The other thing you can do is if you go to posts.joelinkton.com, You could also forward subdomains, as many as you want. So if you go to articles.jolinkton.com, recommendations.jolinkton.com. So if you want to leave me a recommendation, you can go to, or read my recommendations, you can go to recommendations.jolinkton.com, or you go to skills.jolinkton.com or comments.jolinkton.com. It'll take you straight to that part of my profile and it'll make it really easy for you to kind of see everything about me in a meaningful way. So it just, You know, they have those features that Cloudflare doesn't have. Cloudflare does have some benefits, but for people that are just wanting to keep things simple, I recommend GoDaddy for sure. I've been a client for 20 years. Yeah. You're an IT guy. So for you, like you, you, you geek out. Yeah.

You can do it in there too, but it's not as simple. You have to know a little bit of what you're doing. Yeah.

You can do forwarding inside Cloudflare, you're saying?

Yes, that's correct. It is a little different, a little harder, I would say.

You can't, you can't just add a domain and hit forward.

No, it's not that simple. You have to do a little bit of setting up.

Like a routing table or something.

Yeah, it's a little bit of setting up to do, but not just like— I know, I'm gonna check that out on GoDaddy.

Test it out and see if you like it. If you like it, tell your clients about it.

Hell yeah. Now I'm gonna forward my stuff to my LinkedIn. Actually, I don't know why I never thought of doing that. That is a brilliant idea. Thank you so much.

I also do it for like my podcasts and for like my book. If you want to buy my book, it's highenergymarketing.com. I forward it to Amazon. You know, highenergynetworking.com, highenergypurpose.com, whatever. So if somebody wants my networking book, they go to highenergynetworking.com and they go straight to the book and they buy it on Amazon. If somebody wants to, for example, they want to go to my last webinar, they go to businessnetworkingworkshop.com. They want to buy my bootcamp for Sales Navigator, they go to salesnavbootcamp.com. So I bought all these domains forwarded to the different things, and this way I remember all of them. And instead of me saying, go to evergreen.com, spelled with a Y, /sales-navigator/bootcamp-.html.ps—

Yeah, then no one's ever going to go there.

No way. But if I'm on a podcast and I say, go to joelinkedin.com, you can't forget that.

No, I have to remember that.

And you could spell it so quick. The other thing is you can tell people to text a word. You can use automation technology. We have a domain unlimited. Digitalmarketing.com. And you can buy Unlimited Digital Marketing, which is a marketing platform that we sell for— that has 20 different features including texting. So if somebody wants to check it out, they could send the word demo to 973-841-8868 and they'll get a demo. That's 973-841-8868 and they'll get a demo by texting the word demo to that number. And that's another way, like if I'm sitting with somebody in a sauna and we're talking and they have their phone, I'd be like, And they're, and we're talking about my AI and they're like, oh, can I see a demo of it? And I'll be like, yeah, sure. Text the word demo to 973-841-8868. And they instantly on their phone, they get a demo or they text the word bundle to 973-841-8868 and they can buy the bundle right there.

You've really fine-tuned this down to a T.

Just making it simple. Just about making it simple.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I've, I've been frustrated trying to remember websites to, to send people to and stuff. But simpler, the more action people will take.

100%.

For me, it's hard sometimes because I'm so technical. I have to remember, okay, for me, I remember this, why don't you? But most people are gonna be like, okay, this is too hard, not gonna do it. And they'll never reach out. And after, it's hard to remember that sometimes. It's how my mind works. I have to like, come on, Justin, remember, bring it down a little bit. Not everyone thinks as crazy as you do.

Well, we do have something called the 99 Hacks where we teach people 99 LinkedIn hacks, and this is one of the hacks. We have many other hacks. Um, so if anybody's interested in the 99 Hacks, just send me a DM on LinkedIn with the word 99 Hacks, and I'll forward you the, the link to, to preorder the 99 Hacks. And just mention Justin's podcast and I'll give you 90% off. So instead of you paying $1,000 for it, you'll pay a dollar a hack. You know, we'll do it for under $100. So that's a special deal for your listeners, the 99 Hacks.

Hell yeah, guys, gotta take advantage of this. It's free, great, amazing information and tools to help change your life, your business, and get off your ass and really profoundly do and create and make something of yourselves, your lives, and helping other people out there. How can you say no to this?

Wow, appreciate that. Thank you very much.

Yes, Joe, thank you so much for coming on here. It's been a really great time getting to listen to you. I can't be on the other side of this instead of just watching you on the webinar and do your thing. It's nice to kind of get in your mind a little bit, bring out some information.

Yeah, 100%. I have a question for you, Justin.

I have a question for you.

What was your— what was your favorite part of this interview now that it's fresh on your mind? What did you love most about this interview?

Learning more about You as a person and then learning more about what you said to me about how a lot of people sell you AI tools, but they're not helping you how to actually build a business around them. And you pretty much sell that bundle to help people do that. So I really enjoy learning about that and more. And also, like I said, seeing the more human side of you and not just seeing you on the webinar as someone like, oh, that's a guy on the internet.

Cool. And what did you think about my energy? The energy that I brought to this podcast?

That is a good question. I felt like it was high, but it could be higher. So I don't know, maybe if you've been doing too many in a row or something, maybe you're having—

Or I'm just chilling like a villain. I'm chilling like a villain, getting ready for the webinar.

You seem calm and relaxed, but I'm not used to seeing you like that.

I also meditated for 45 minutes. This morning.

It felt so nice. I'm not used to that Joe.

I'm used to the Joe's like, yeah guys, come on, come on, come on baby, come on. And here's another question. What would you tell others about me if you had to like describe me for their podcast?

I would tell them that before you start doing any AI tools or anything, you need to check out this guy Joe, who's an amazing human being. trying to help other human beings connect to other humans and build community, not just make money, not just sell things to people. And it'll show and give you the right tools and ability to do that. You just invest your time. So stop trying to reach out to all of these tools you're trying to download and buy. Just have a conversation with Joe. See how it goes. What's the worst that could happen?

I love that. I absolutely love that you said that. Would you, would you mind Leaving me a LinkedIn recommendation with those comments, would that be something that you would be opposed to doing?

Oh yeah, I used the word opposed. I see that language there. I know this. Come on, man. I would not be opposed. I had to say the no there. I would not be opposed to doing that. Cool.

So I sent you a LinkedIn connection request so this way we can get connected on LinkedIn because you cannot leave a recommendation for somebody unless you're connected to them.

Okay.

And as soon as you hit that connect button, go to my profile, click the more button and click recommend, and then write whatever you said, you know, about the energy, about what, what, you know, the value that I added and all that jazz. And then what I'll do for you is I will leave you your first recommendation because I thought—

Powerful. Yeah.

And I thought, and I thought you were a great podcast host. You brought the energy, weren't boring. You kept it going and you're just a good dude. And I like your attitude. I like your humility, even though you're very successful. So I would, I would love to leave you a recommendation as well.

I appreciate you.

And it'll be my honor to do that, but we have to be connected in order for that to happen. So you have to go to LinkedIn and hit that connect button.

Uh, give me a couple of days. I'll hit connect.

Go to joelinkedin.com. It'll say accept. Front and center, it'll say accept, and then you can choose. You can decide, should I accept it, the blue pill, or should I reject it, the red pill? Pick one, and then you'll decide which route you will take in the Matrix.

It's not about the purple pill. Take both.

Well, you're, you're wearing a blue shirt, so it's got to be the blue pill.

I had that one coming today, didn't I? All right, I will accept. I love that I did do joelinkedin.com.

I went there, right?

Yeah.

It makes it so easy. So easy.

Easy peasy. Yeah. Here's my LinkedIn.

Exactly.

Phenomenal.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

I'm going to have to start listening to what you are telling me more, not just passively, but actually implementing.

Yeah. Like you're taking action. When you leave a recommendation for somebody, you have to click the more button on their profile and then select the relationship. So for example, Um, I, I'll choose that you were a client of mine, that my position at the time, your position was the IT CMD. And then in the recommendation box, I'm actually gonna use Evy AI to help me write the recommendation. So I'm actually gonna choose, um, my persona, which is a Joe Apfelbaum persona, so it knows who I am. My goal is gonna be talking about your communication skills on your podcast, and then I'm gonna click the microphone in Evy AI and I'm gonna say the following. Justin just interviewed me for his podcast. He's a great communicator and a great podcast host. He also is an expert at, in information technology and helping people be able to use psychology together with technology to be able to help people in the healthcare industry. I really recommend that you have a conversation with him about taking your cybersecurity and your technology to the next level. He's a great guy, and I also recommend listening to his podcast because of his humility and his way that he knows how to keep the conversation interesting. Now I'm gonna hit generate. Oh, geez, you're not crying or anything. I'm going to hit generate and then I'm going to insert that recommendation onto LinkedIn. And it wrote up a beautiful recommendation for you. You can click into the message box of your DMs. So besides the Muppet that you'll see in the DM, you'll also see it says accept recommendation. When you accept it, you have to hit accept. When you accept it, it'll show up on your profile. under the section called recommendations. You have to accept it. Once you accept it, it'll show up, and then you can screenshot the recommendation and then use that as an idea for a post. And you can look at my post because a lot of people are not going to go to your profile to notice the recommendation. For them to notice it, you can then post it. And that's one of the tips that I share with people, one of my 99 LinkedIn hacks on how to be able to do that. Um, but Definitely, um, accepting it could be really helpful for you because it'll show up on your profile.

You just gave so many amazing nuggets of things I didn't even know was possible at LinkedIn. Like I said, I've only been just a year in. You've been 10 years in.

Yeah, exactly. And only a year and you have 1,400. Could you imagine how much more you'll have when you get the bundle? When you go to evviai.com/bundle and you get that bundle, All of a sudden you're like, damn, son, I thought I knew LinkedIn. Now I'm the king of LinkedIn because I'm the LinkedIn daddy. The king learns from the daddy because I have 5 kids. Like, I'm the LinkedIn daddy because I have 5 kids and I'm obsessed with LinkedIn.

My LinkedIn daddy.

It's my actual pronoun.

Hell yeah. I'm definitely gonna do this, go through this episode, put this in here. Yes. Thank you so much. I think I should start doing this for more people as well.

Yeah, yeah. Leaving them recommendations, a nice thing to do.

Yeah, I didn't know. I know you could, um, when people post their skills, you could be like thumbs up. Like, yeah, this is recommended. But you can actually write recommendations, right?

This is a whole nother level. This is a whole nother level. Yeah.

This is more interactive, more human, taking your time. to put into it, not just doing surface level.

Get into it. Yeah.

Damn, son. All right. You just schooled me.

Yo, I schooled— I kept it cool while I schooled.

Ain't nothing but a G thing.

Ain't nothing but a G thing. All right, I'm gonna hop on my webinar now. Great chatting with you, Justin, and we'll talk again soon.

Yes, thank you very much. Have a good, wonderful day.

You too.

Bye.