Silvana Pimentel Interviews Joe Apfelbaum

special guest. This gentleman with me is somebody who I admire, who is super powerful, a trailblazer, a super connector, and a person that you are going to learn to love if you haven't met him yet. His name is Mr. Joe Apfelbaum. Welcome to the show, Mr. Joe.

Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm so excited to be here. It's lovely to connect with you and looking forward to Having a great conversation with you today.

Oh my God, thank you. I'm very excited for real. You and I have met a couple of months ago, maybe I think even last year at an event, at an AI event in Orlando.

Yes.

So it was so cool to meet you. And when I met you, you definitely made an impression not only on me, but everybody who who you spoke with because you are really good at connecting people. And I would love to talk about that. Let's talk about your story and especially about that powerful superpower you have about connecting and helping others with connections.

Growing up, my father wanted me to become a rabbi. So he sent me to school to learn to become a rabbi. Once I became one, I realized that's not what I wanted to do with my life. I didn't feel fulfilled doing that. Instead, what I realized I wanted to do was I wanted to become an entrepreneur, a businessman, someone who could make a difference for people. And so I started building websites and I got really good at building the websites. And you say, you know, the famous saying, if you build it, they will come. I built it. Nobody came.

Oh no.

So I had to, I had to learn how to market those websites. And so I got really good at search engine optimization and I built one of the fastest growing companies in America. But being good at SEO and getting a lot of traffic to websites for customers and getting paid a lot of money and making millions of dollars, that doesn't necessarily bring you fulfillment in life.

Mm-hmm.

Just because you make a lot of money, it doesn't mean that your heart is filled. So I had to figure out what's gonna fill up my heart, what's gonna make me excited, what's gonna gimme a purpose. Money alone doesn't give you a purpose. And what I realized for me, that I want to be something called a conduit of blessing. That means I want to be the person who connects you with the person that creates a significant amount of benefit in your life. Sometimes it's in your personal relationships. Sometimes it's in the business. Sometimes it's me giving you a health tip and it changes the way that you look at electrolytes or drinking water or losing weight or getting fit. So I love helping people, making a difference for people, giving them ideas, giving them invitations, giving them introductions, giving them all the different things that they need, everything from the information they need to the people to help them be able to take their life to the next level. I love training and inspiring and coaching and guiding. But what I love most is when I see my clients actually be successful from the things that I teach. Right now, I'm on a mission to be able to help 1,000 of my clients generate $100,000 in profit. Together, we'll create $100 million in profit.

That's super powerful, Joe, and that you do amazingly. I've seen you in action, and I would like to back up a little bit and introduce you properly about, uh, all the that you have accomplished. You are the CEO of Ajax Union, the creator of Evy AI, and the author of High Energy Networking. You have helped thousands of entrepreneurs stop chasing leads and start attracting real revenue, especially on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, you have over 65,000 connections, and that is super, super powerful. You're super active on LinkedIn and different social media. But what I love the most about you is that you blend cutting-edge AI and automation with deeply human values, and that's, I think, what makes you different because you really care. You really go the extra mile about that. So I love your story. Let's talk about your brand. Your brand is built around high energy. Was there ever a time you didn't feel that How did you reclaim that momentum?

I mean, there are plenty of times in my life where I didn't feel the spark. Like, you know, when I was having some challenges early in my relationship around having children at a very difficult time. And the way that I was able to reclaim the energy was to go and get a job, believe it or not. That's what I did. I went and got a job and helped people out and made a difference there. So it's not always about being an entrepreneur. You know, at that point I was like, I can't, I don't have the energy to do that. And when I went and I got a job, I just felt re-energized to be able to restart my businesses and to be able to do things again. For me, when I think about myself and my own needs, I don't feel good energy. But when I start thinking about other people, that's when I start feeling alive. So I realized that the secret to living is giving. Anytime that I feel down or I feel upset or I feel lonely or I feel sad, I start thinking about how can I help Silvana? How can I help Sarah? How can I help David, Michael, John? How can I help people in my life and make a difference for them? And the way that I do that often is by reaching out and having a conversation. Most people are living in isolation because they're not willing to be vulnerable enough. To reach out and have a conversation because they're afraid of rejection. So I tell people, get unafraid of rejection. Remember that rejection is just a story in your head. Let go of those stories, start connecting, and you'll be able to have a better life.

Wow, very powerful for sure. And I've seen you are the rejection. I think a lot of people can be very afraid of of it, and you are not one of them for sure because I've seen you in. Action, calling, making cold calls to some people who contacted you. And just basically, I think what makes it different is that because you're coming from a— with good intention, with something bringing a lot of value to the other person, there is like most likely not going to be a rejection. Even if there was a rejection, then the no you already had, so it's worth trying to get a yes anyways.

I agree. I think that, I think that people are just so caught up in being afraid of not being accepted because people have a fear that they're not good enough. They have a fear that they're not going to be loved. So they're not willing to try and put themselves out there. So I'm, I'm on a mission to help people realize that other people's opinions are none of your business. And you're here to add value to other people's lives. So stop worrying about the rejection and start worried about the impression that you could leave in someone's life when you make a difference for them and go out and add value to other people's lives. Figure out who you want to target. What do you want to do? How do you want to build a relationship? When I was doing SEO, I was getting random clients from the internet and getting random clients from the internet. It's not the same as getting a referral. When I get a referral from someone, that's a powerful thing because I'm getting somebody else's trust. I'm building trust off somebody else's trust. That makes it so much easier for me to have that connection. Only 3% of cold calls turn into a meeting, but 80% of referrals turn into a meeting. So I would rather get referrals. And when I realized that the value of a client that comes from a trusted referral, Wow. is much, much higher. I started joining networking groups. I started joining associations. I started paying tens of thousands of dollars to be part of memberships where other people are also paying tens of thousands of dollars. So you have that trust automatically. When I walk into a room and it cost me $15,000 to walk into the room and everybody in the room paid $15,000 to walk into a room, the energy in the room is very different. It's an energy of abundance.

True.

Whether you get what I'm saying, unless you— but if you go to a chamber of commerce that costs $50 to come in or $20 to come in, The energy is very different. And so what I tell people is invest in yourself, invest in communities, invest in training, invest in courses, invest in trade shows, invest in programs, get in with the right people. They will lead you to success.

I would 100% agree with that, Joe. And the power— let's dive in a little deeper on the power of communities. You are so good at it, not only developing great communities, but I mean, not only participating in great communities, but you have developed amazing communities. And you also are very— have a super powerful presence in different social media outlets, including, or probably the most important one being LinkedIn. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about Um, the, what's the biggest mistake people make on when, when expressing themselves in social media, especially on LinkedIn today, and how can AI fix it?

The biggest mistake people make right now is that they're not using it. That's the biggest mistake. Most people are not even on the platform and they're not properly using it. If I look up most people, if I Google most people, or if I look up people on LinkedIn, I'll realize that they haven't even posted recently. Only 3% of people are ever posting. Some people are reposting. You know, I can see if you reposted other people's stuff, but they haven't actually posted themselves. And when they do post, they're just promoting things. Nobody wants to see your promotions. Nobody wants to see all, all about you, about you, about you. So learning how to do it properly, for example, creating a hook, main points, call to action, You don't need to put in 20 hashtags on a post. That's not really going to be what gets it out there. What you want to do instead is you want to build out a post that tells a story and then build relationships with your audience. That's the key. If you're constantly just talking at your audience instead of talking with your audience, if you're not telling stories, people are not going to care. My best posts, the ones that got tens of thousands of views, are the ones where I connect with the audience by telling them a story. By being vulnerable, by having a hook, by having main points, by having a call to action, by properly connecting with the audience, and then by rewarding the people that comment on my posts. So if somebody comments on my post, I want them to comment again. So I reach out to them and I thank them for commenting on my post. I reply to their comment. I build a relationship. And then I also leave comments on their posts as well. So when you have a community like that, we have 1,800 people in our community. They're liking and commenting on each other's content, supporting each other, building relationships, doing elevator pitches. That's pretty powerful. And most people are not doing that. They're not taking action. They're not sharing. They're not building relationships. For me, it's about really building that relationship, really getting to know people. And when you get to know people, then all of a sudden they're like, wow, this is a real person. This is not like a fake person. This is a soul. Behind every LinkedIn profile, there's a soul. And if you can connect with the soul, that's when you can generate more revenue, you can make a bigger impact, and you can have a real relationship and feel fulfilled.

And yes, that's big. That's a big differentiator, Joe, because not only we're talking about making a connection, a LinkedIn connection, just accepted and just be connections, but no real relationships in between both. But I suppose that's what you do is really you care about the other person and you communicate with the others. I've seen you, some of your webinars that you have provided where you talk about, you know, writing messages to the people. doing everything that you just explained, and you offer a lot of value for them. So, definitely makes a difference and truly provides a real connection because people are looking for real connections. We are in a world where everybody's— a lot of people feel alone. So, that is a real thing. When you provide a space for people to feel seen and to see the others, definitely super powerful. Let's talk about your community and let's talk about your solution. You created and you founded this amazing company, Evvii AI, which does amazing things for connecting people, especially on LinkedIn. Let's talk about that. I would love for you to either tell us or even show us if you would like about it.

Yeah, I'm happy to tell you and I'm happy to show you. I started teaching LinkedIn about, I would say, let's just say 10 years ago or so. And when I started teaching people how to use LinkedIn, the biggest problem people have is they didn't have a strategy. Most people don't have a strategy. That's a huge problem. And so I created a very specific strategy where I walk people through step by step the process of using LinkedIn. Um, I'll show you my— this— the, the step-by-step strategy that I walk people through. I'm gonna go ahead and just share my screen so you can see what I'm seeing. Let me see if I can do that. I'm actually gonna press share, and then I'm gonna press window, and I'm gonna share this window. Tell me if you can see my screen. Can you see it?

Oh, perfect. Yes, actually, this is the first time I, I ever do this on a podcast, so yes, we can see your screen.

So most people, they go straight to try to have conversations with people, but then they get a lot of rejection because they're trying to sell people things. And the reason it's coming off is because they don't have credibility. They don't have exposure. They don't have proper systems. Their profile isn't set up correctly. They're trying to sell instead of tell stories. They don't have the right promise because they don't know who they're targeting and they don't have a plan. And so I start from the bottom. If you're a lurker and you want to get to an influencer, there's a 9-step process I teach. First is the plan, then is the people, then is the promise. The plan is your business plan, your marketing plan, and your LinkedIn plan. The people are who is your ideal client profile and who are your centers of influence and who's going to engage with your content. And then your promise are the pains, the goals, the dreams, the fears of your ideal clients. And what are the questions related to those 4 things that people are asking? Once you have a strong foundation, I call that a strategy, then you move on to building your assets. You build stories related to their pains, goals, dreams, and fears, speaking to the specific ICPs and COIs. that really focus on your plan. If you can tell those types of stories and you have them all written down, then you move on to creating the right profile with the right identity, the right summary, the right history, and the right recommendations so people can trust you and build relationships with you. Once you have your profile in order, then you start building out your systems. You need your templates, you need your lists. You know, a lot of people don't have a Dream 100 list. I did a video today on LinkedIn Talking about the Dream 100 list and how to build out your Dream 100 list. Then you need to make sure that you have exposure by posting. You need to have content pillars. You need to have the right topics, the right hooks. Then you need credibility by having people that will comment on your content and you being able to comment on other people's content. And then finally, you need to have conversations, but don't take a regular conversational approach. I have something called a system called the greeting, feeding, and meeting system. So I've been teaching this system for 10 years and consistently my clients have been generating $100,000 in profit as a result of taking this system because they go from a lurker to an influencer in 15 minutes a day. But what people don't realize is that this takes a lot of time to do, sending out DMs, posting, engaging. So what I did was I built a piece of technology that does this pretty quickly. So for example, if I go into Evvy AI, I'm going to go ahead and go to LinkedIn real quick. I'm going to open up LinkedIn. Do you see LinkedIn on my screen right now?

Yeah, we do. I do.

So if I go into LinkedIn, you'll see that we're live right now, by the way, just FYI.

We are. Hello.

But I'm gonna, I'm gonna go into, um, I'm gonna go into the LinkedIn homepage just to show you something. So right now I'm at the LinkedIn homepage. Bobby, it was one of my, uh, referral client and one of my clients. He just posted. So I wanna leave a comment on his post. So instead of me leaving the comment, what I do is I open up Evvy AI. Evvy AI reads the post. and puts in a comment for Bobby. You see that?

Mm-hmm.

I don't have to write the comment myself. Evie AI could simply write the comment and in seconds be able to write it up and I'll be able to post it. If I wanna send Bobby a message, I can go to Bobby's profile. I can click message over here. It'll open up the little message box and I can have Evie AI write the message. Bobby, I hope you have a really great Memorial Day weekend. And then I could push the up arrow and then Evie AI will insert this message right into here. You see?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And so I could speak into it. I can have the AI generate the message or whatever I want. If I want to research Bobby, I can pull up all his information right here and I can deploy a series of agents that will research him all over the internet. And these agents do a variety of different things, but most importantly is it tells me everything about the guy. It tells me where he works, his target audience. It tells me key services that he provides. It helps me really understand who he is, where he works, who he helps, how he helps them. It gives me his cell phone number, his email address. It tells me everything about him and it tells me what to talk to him about. It tells me his achievements, conversation starters, potential business opportunities. I could take all that information that we scoured from all over the internet, add it as a note here so that I have it later. I can find the information that every single one of these agents find, and each one gives me a different piece of information. This one's giving me a 347 number. The other one gave me a 1-800 number. The other one didn't give me this email. This one gave me that email. And so I take all the information that I find and I compile it as notes inside Evie AI. And once I have all these notes organized, like for example, this one thought for 16 seconds and it looked at 35 different websites and it put everything together right here. It gave me both his 800 number and his cell phone number. And so once I take all this information and I put it in here, then what I can do is I can go in here and I can say, go through the notes, collect his information, organize everything, and then create insights for me. Insights are his introduction, his summary, his company and role, his target market, connection tips, content style, achievements, conversation starters, an email draft, and so much more. And so this is, this is powerful. You know, I saw you were a fellow hockey nut. What is your take on the latest session? How do you think competitive blah, blah, blah? So I can basically know everything to talk to him and how to be able to collaborate with him and how to build a relationship with him. And that's one of the powers of Evie AI. I now have email drafts, conversation starters, achievements, content style, how to connect with him, exactly what to do, where to find him, what exactly what to do with him. And that is so powerful. Yeah.

And then one of the things I love the most, I'm sorry, it was that piece of software that can collect information from the social media, phone numbers, everything you might need, because that's very important and it's so difficult to get typically. But with Aviai, just a couple of clicks and you get it all. That was amazing.

We also have something called a directory of prospects where you can search any company. Like I searched bp.com and I found the 34,000 people that work at the company. It gives me a full overview of the company, including their financials, how much revenue they drive and everything. And then it shows me every person that works there. And I could use all the different agents to search every person, or I can just grab their email and cell phone number right within HeavyAI. We have 280 million emails and phone numbers in the system. So I can look up anybody's phone number here. So for example, if I pull up a phone number, um, I just press enter, we'll look through all of our records to try to find if we have that number. And if we have that number, we'll go ahead and list the number right over here and whose number it is. If we don't have that number, we have additional websites that will research this person all over the internet. And we have agents that will find out where the number was found on the internet if we don't have it on our database. So over here it says this number belongs to Tammy and it's showing on her website, on the Nevergreen, and on the Forbes Council website. And it shows me the links of where we found the number. So if she ever is like, oh, where'd you get my phone number from? Oh, I found it on this website, that website, the other website, or I found it inside the directory. And we have multiple listings with her information. We also provide you with niche directories. Like for example, we have all the chiropractors that posted on LinkedIn recently. We have all the HVACs in Florida. We have the Inc. 5000 list and we're getting more and more and more lists. And then we have a beautiful community with over 1,800 people that are very active on LinkedIn. And they're all in here supporting each other and building relationships with each other. So you can see all the people here that are posting content, and then everybody's supporting each other's content on LinkedIn.

It's perfect for anybody who wants to make a real difference on LinkedIn, make connections, get more customers. So definitely it's for everybody, even for the introverted. Or for the one who has not much time, because your promise is just 15 minutes a day. I think we can make a space of 15 minutes to do something so powerful as this.

I agree.

Awesome. Wow, this is very impressive, Joe. And you have much more. Like, the little bit that you showed us is, I think, so powerful, but I know you even have much more. So For the people listening, I really encourage you to go give it a try because it can make a big difference. And the community, let's talk a little bit about the community because as you say, LinkedIn is a community and the community you have built for AVAI is also very powerful where they are super active and they are typically, you have events where they comment in the different posts. Like, it's like a— how you call it? It's a posting party or something like that?

Yeah, we call it a posting party. So in order for you to want to get people to comment on your content, they have to know who you are, right? A lot of people, they build connections on social media and nobody knows who you are. What if I could invite you to a party that has 50 to 100 people there, and then we do it every week, And they all come in and they all get to know each other. Now you have a bunch of friends that are commenting on your content because they know you, they know who you are, and you're building a relationship with them. So that becomes a very, very powerful environment where you're building relationships with people, getting to know each other, and you have real people that are helping you be able to take your life and your business to a whole new level.

Absolutely. So do we want to give the audience a gift, like for they to try it out? Is that possible, Joe?

Yeah, if you want to try it out, you can go to evyai.com and you can sign up for free. There's no charge to sign up. Try it out. Try it out as long as you want. The trial goes on for as long as you want. And then if you want additional resources, training, support, community, strategy, just contact me. Or if you want to see a demo, you can send the word demo to 973-841-8868. So you send demo, demo to 973-841-8868. 841-8868, and you can watch a demo. It will send you a demo link so you can watch the demo, or you can go to businessnetworkingworkshop.com. That's businessnetworkingworkshop.com. You can watch a 1.5-hour video where I walk you through everything that I explained here, plus more.

Wonderful, wonderful. So, oh my God, uh, Joe, you are amazing, and I, I love, um, participating and learning from you. I see you very active on the different social media outlets, and one of the things I love about those is that they're very authentic. Like, I have a blast when you start singing. Like, you're very famous for your Zuno songs, and you create songs for the different events that you attend to. And also that makes you very memorable, let me tell you, because not only when you— because you're a networker or a so powerful networker, right? And this translates even to the events in person, because when you go to in-person events, one thing you do is you take selfies, right? With everybody, as many people as you can. And then at the end of the event, you go ahead and post it and you tag everyone. So it's a really powerful way to connect and to stay connected after the fact as well. So I love that.

I agree. I think connecting with people and building relationships and getting to know each other is very powerful. And most people are too afraid to post anything or even to share. But me being the person who believes that he's a conduit of blessing, I love spreading the love. I love connecting and building relationships and getting to know people. So thank you for allowing me to do this today. Really appreciate it. And I'm looking forward to continuing our conversation online.

Absolutely looking forward to it. For the ones who don't know Joe yet and have not connected, please go ahead and follow him. I know your LinkedIn is joe.linkedin.com, right?

Is that It's just joelinkedin.com.

joelinkedin.com. And that's another trick that I learned from you. So just go, it's very easy, joelinkedin.com. If you want to go ahead and follow him because he is full of amazing value and knowledge that you don't want to miss out. And if you haven't tried it, please go ahead and give it a try to this amazing tool, ABAI. It was a pleasure, Joe, again. Really, really a pleasure being part of your network. And I consider you a friend and I am so blessed to have you here today on my podcast. And thank you for being a guest on Sabrina's podcast, my daughter also.

It was very nice. She's a great interviewer.

Ah, thank you. Thank you. I love the stories and how you You you do a storytelling really well as well. So another one of your talents, yes.

And and my one more. And my youngest daughter joined the podcast too. I don't know if you heard that, but my youngest daughter tuned into the podcast.

Yeah yeah yeah I heard it I heard it. That was so sweet. That was really like talk about good timing when when she asked you about the legacy part and and your daughter calls. That was so yeah that was that was so cool. That was so cool. Thank you. So much, Joe, again. And just make sure to connect with Joe. And if you think this— somebody, you know, somebody who can benefit from this episode, please go ahead and share it with them. And I'll see you next time in Happiness by Habit. Thank you, thank you.