The Linkedin Influencer Summit 2026 Recap Notes

Influencer Summit 2026, and it was actually amazing. It was Esty Star and Joe Apfelbaum as the hosts. We had Troy, John, Joshua, Rhonda, Nat, and Sam present, and it was just an amazing event. Yeah, let me tell you about it. Meet the influencers.

They've been turning up the feed. Joe Applebaum, plan a post, watch it grow from a seed. SD on the side, cut through sharp like shears. Been interviewing kings and queens week after week, year after year. Front rows, webcams, thousand faces in the grid. Mics hot, ring lights bright, look what the crew just did. From side hustle scribbles to CEO scenes, they turn tiny profile pics to living, breathing dreams. LinkedIn Daddy run a summit. Drop that value, yeah, we love it. Zoom room booming, numbers jumping. If you got a mission, better come with something. SD Star, keep the questions tight. Spotlight shining on your story tonight. From the green dot glow to the worldwide map, it's the LinkedIn Summit. Better screenshot that. Joshua Lee in the call, double mean deal on deck. Talking that E-O-W energy, respect. Not just clicks, he Fix the way your message hit, make your name feel good in they nervous system quick. Then Rhonda sure came through, had the chat like, whoa, read her whole life story from your headshot. Say your face on the page is a front door key, better match that smile to the words they reading. LinkedIn daddy run a summit, drop that value, yeah, we love it. Zoom room booming, numbers jumping. If you got a mission, better come with something. SC Star, keep the flow on track.

Track.

Pulling all the gold from the stories they pack. From the green dot glow to the worldwide map. Just a LinkedIn summit, better screenshot that. Hey! John Kiel slid in with the secret sauce. Showed them how to find contacts like a boss. Little bit of search, little pattern in the flow. Turn a cold who's this to a warm let's go. Sam broke down, snapped that compass. Said laser target who you wanna run with. Filter so clean, let the right ones through. Turn a lonely little profile to a full power crew. LinkedIn daddy, run a summit. Drop that value, yeah, we love it. Zoom room booming, numbers jumping. If you got a mission, better come with something. Keep the vibe so bright. Hey, 8 years strong, still cooking every night. From the green dot glow to the worldwide map, it's the LinkedIn Summit. Better screenshot that.

Now that was an amazing song. So these are the bios of the people that attended that were the actual influencers of the LinkedIn Summit. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to create a recap. I created a recap on, um, an amazing, amazing recap, and I want to create another one. I want to create another amazing recap to kind of give you like a little bit of an FAQ, like a frequently asked questions, um, so that you fully understand what we kind of like went through, what we spoke about. And also just like to be in line with, with, with what Joshua spoke about. Joshua spoke about doing AEO. And so I'm going to show you how I kind of do, um, I do this. Like, so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to select Josh's name like that, and I'm going to press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K. When I press Alt+Shift+K on any website, if I have Evie AI installed— this is the sales assistant, just install the Chrome extension— and then anywhere you are on the web, if you press Alt+Shift+K, K, automatically you'll search the person's name. That's a benefit of having the extension installed. Okay. Now I have Joshua B. Lee right over here. He's the Dopamine Dealer, 47,000 followers. He showed up amazing, amazing, amazing. He started off the summit very, very strong. So grateful. And if you analyze his about section over here, his about section is All about AEO. How do I leverage AI without losing credibility? Like he's literally asking questions and answering them. How do I trust? How do I scale trust without ads? He's literally like giving the, um, the answer engine optimization. So I'm going to go here. How do I scale without trust? Answer buyers' questions consistently. I'm literally going to copy this, Ctrl+C. I'm going to go and quote that in a Google search. Nothing comes up on Google for that specific— let me see, I'm going to delete that. Crazy, Google hasn't even picked it up. You see that? Um, oh my goodness, Google has not even picked up his answer. Maybe because he just changed it or whatever. But if you quote words into Google, you can see if Google picked it up. Um, let me see. The game has changed. Search has changed. I'm going to copy that. I'm going to quote that. And just to see, look at that. The game has changed. Search has changed. Do you see the way it was able to pick up the first couple of sentences from his thing? The game has changed. Search has changed. I'm going to click on these 3 dots over here. Let's see. I clicked on those 3 dots and he has like a little Visit, about this page. AI overviews are experiential. Joshua's an American author. Let's see, remove result, feedback, save, share, visit. How search works. I'm trying to see more about this page. I'm gonna click more about this page. Source: linkedin.com. Look at the way it kind of breaks. Have you guys ever done that before? Where you kind of analyze somebody? Joshua B. Lee. This is like, this is like his panel. This is like his LinkedIn panel. Oh, and it's telling you about plus. Oh my God. That's cool. Oh my God. Let me try about plus http://www.evyai.com. Uh, that's cool. About eviai.com. Eviai is a great tool to help you produce your LinkedIn strategy. Read more. Okay. Oh, it takes you right here. Ooh, love that. Okay. That's kind of like where it takes you. About LinkedIn.com/in/joeapfelbaum. Let's see what it does there. Okay, I'm going to click on these three dots. Ooh, updated about Joe Applebaum. In his own word, in their own words, updated AI automation vibe coder prompt engineer marketing strategist. Don't be shy. Oh my god, I love this. So I searched his thing. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to do how do I scale trust without ads? I'm going to click in here. I'm going to quote this. How do I scale trust without ads? And look at this, LinkedIn just produces this guy here. So I'm going to click on people and he's the only guy on LinkedIn. When you click, how do I scale trust without ads? He's literally the only one on LinkedIn that comes up for that question. So you're going to see more and more people asking LinkedIn questions and you want LinkedIn to pick you up for the questions. And that's kind of like what he said. That was what he was talking about. He was talking about making sure that you're asking questions and that you're putting those answers, those questions and answers directly inside, inside there. But do you see the way I'm kind of like checking Google and Google's not picking up everything? It's picking up only the first part of his thing. But if you're searching on LinkedIn, that's where it's at. Sam said, just landed on my flight. Josh session was epic. Sam said, thanks for having me in the great summit. So let's Google something. Let's Google something else. Let's type in LinkedIn Influencer Summit 2026, just to Google it, just to see what comes up. So I Google this. Oh my God, I'm on the first page of Google and I have my LinkedIn Live here on the first page of Google. Joe, Joe Mitchell shows up over here. Look at that. He's featured. My post is featured here. LinkedIn Influencer Summit 2026. My notes from 8 hours ago on Substack and 16 hours ago on YouTube are here. So let's click on these notes. Oh my goodness. Now I'm going to add these notes as a, um, as a template. So inside Evie AI, I could add the notes as a template. I'm going to say notes-influencer-summit-2026. So I'm going to say, here are my notes from the Influencer Summit 2026. Please let me know if you found them valuable. Okay, I'm gonna go in here, I'm gonna put this as Influencer Summit. Okay, so that's, that's a little thing. And I'm gonna say here are my notes from the Influencer Summit 2026. I'm gonna press save. Okay, so now I have these notes here. So if I want to go to LinkedIn, say for example I want to go to LinkedIn And I want to promote these notes under a post. So I can go to, let's say for example, Josh's post over here, like this one here, or this one here, or this one here. I'm going to go to show all posts. I'm going to go back to his post that he did about the summit. Let me go down, see if I could find a post about the summit. Dopamine Dose. Here it is. Here's his post about the summit. I'm going to click on this here. And then I'm going to insert the notes here. I'm going to tag him and I'm going to press comment. Now he posted many times after this. So he posted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. He posted 15 times after that post. I still went back, grabbed that post. And I still was able to leave a comment on that post. Very powerful. Um, uh, well, look, um, okay, let me see, let me see. Yeah, that's really, really powerful. So I have a question for you guys. Do you know that we have a community? Did you know that we have a community of people that want to support each other? So if I go into the homepage of Evie AI and I click on join community in the extension, just like that, you see, I just went to join the community. Did you guys know I had a community? I'm going to go in here and click on community, and then I'm going to go down and I'm going to see who posts in the community. Okay, it looks like, um, Sam posted in the community here. So I want to post the notes in the community. I'm going to click on templates. And I'm gonna push the up arrow and then I'm gonna push submit. Do you see the, how easy that was for me to kind of send that template into the community like that? I could also send it, I could also send it into, into the LinkedIn Live here as a comment inside the LinkedIn Live. But you see how easy it is for me and Sam's over here. So if I wanna look up Sam on LinkedIn, I could select her name, right-click on her name, go to Evvy AI. I could also press Alt+Shift+K and it would do this thing for me and it'll just find Sam. So let's look at Sam's profile real quick, just like that. Um, okay, so this is Sam's profile. She has 37,000 followers right now. 37,000 followers. Right now on LinkedIn. Think about that. How many followers do you have on LinkedIn? Let me know in the comments of this LinkedIn Live or YouTube Live or Facebook Live or wherever you are. How many, how many, um, how many comments do you have right now? How many, how many people do you have? Let's look at her recent post. She said leads are human. So I'm going to click on leads are human. Leads are human, not numbers, not quotas. Real people with families, with causes they care about. So I'm going to click here and I'm going to agree with her. I'm going to agree with her. Sam, once I once connected with a hesitant CEO on LinkedIn, not as a lead, but asking about his open water diving passion. We dove into real talk, built trust, and became a client of our AI social media tools. I'm going to put Evie AI. Evie AI. Okay. People are craving human spark. Let's keep giving it. Thanks for your amazing presentation at the summit.

Okay.

Now I'm going to press comment. So what Evie AI does is it writes 80% of the comment. I'm an open water diver. It knows I'm an open water diver. So it writes 80% of the comment. And I add 20% of my human creativity. That's, that's how I do it. That's the idea. Not everyone can do that. Not everyone can, can take it to that level. You see that? But that's how I do it. I take it to the level of humanity and build a relationship and connect. That's what we're doing. So if I go over here and I go down to Sam's other post, you see I'm on her other post. She said 24 hours to go, I'll be delivering a keynote on Sales Navigator. Amazing. So I'm going to go in here and I'm going to drop my notes. You see, it made it really, really easy to drop my notes. And by the way, even with the free version of Evvy AI, you can do that. But we have something called the Bundle Plus that maybe you didn't hear of. The Bundle Plus allows you to be able to get tons and tons of training on how to leverage LinkedIn. And it includes a $10,000 course. And unlimited access to Evie AI's Pro version and the Influencer Summit recordings for just $1,968 for an entire year. So if you want to get started, you just go to thebundleplus.com, you press on Get Started. That's the best deal we have that combines our $10,000 training program and our software, our $3,600 software, and you get 2 licenses for it. So that's powerful for you to have access to All right, so should we read the notes or should we create more notes? Um, okay, so the 8th Annual LinkedIn Influencer Summit brought together over 1,000 attendees, a power-packed virtual event dedicated to helping entrepreneurs, coaches, sales professionals, and B2B business owners Maximize LinkedIn in 2026, hosted by Joe Apfelbaum, CEO of Evvii, and Esti Starr, founder of Strand Consulting. The summit featured 7 world-class LinkedIn experts, each presenting a distinct proven system for growing visibility, building relationships, and converting connections into clients. So my question to you is, Did you watch it? Were you there? Let me know in the comments. I'm actually watching the comments right here. I'm gonna call some people out. We have Scott Scales in the comments. Good to see you, Scott. I'm gonna open up Scott's profile over here just to kind of show you guys what's going on. If I go to Scott, Scott Scales has 9,319 followers. You see that? Paying for leads but still chasing your own team. Now I might not know Scott's, all of Scott's information right now. So if I push this little button over here, it starts giving me tons of detail. Scott is an AI chatbot and lead reactivation specialist who helps businesses unlock extra revenue for dormant leads using performance-based AI system with no upfront fees. Scott is the founder of Simple Acceleration Systems, positioned himself as an AI marketing consultant focused on lead reactivation and sales optimization. He also leads a SaaS marketing tools, a marketing tools agency that provides scalable lead generation and outreach for entrepreneurs. His target market is small business owners looking to grow revenue. So I understand his key services. I understand all his information that's here. This is an LLM that has him integrated. Here's why you're still a closer even though your team has paid for the leads. Leads are coming in, but calls get missed. Okay, I love that. So over here, he posted the last time 3 days ago. He reposted something from 3 days ago, and he posted something a day ago. So I'm gonna go to the post he posted a day ago. I'm gonna go in here, I'm gonna press like. I'm also gonna go into our community because Yves asked me something about what he posted in our community. I don't know what he posted. Oh, he posted this Thursday posting forum. I'm gonna say Thank you so much, Yves, for posting this in the community. Um, here is my link for the day. I'm gonna drop my link for the day in there. I'm gonna press comment. All right, so I'm gonna click on Yves' post over here. I'm gonna go here, give it a like. I'm gonna go ahead and drop a comment, tag him. And he told me to let the community know about this. So the way that I'm gonna let the community know about this is I'm gonna copy this post over here, and then I'm gonna go into a different community. I'm gonna I'm going to go into the Engaged Thought Leaders community. I'm going to click on start a post and I'm going to say, did you know that we now have 1,600 members? I'm going to say, Yves did something amazing today. He posted in the community an engagement post.

That's awesome.

He took initiative. Please drop your comments under his posts and take a lead from him and Rick to be more active in that community. So that you can leverage the 1,600 people that are there. Here is the engagement post. Okay, I'm going to post that there. Do you want to be more active in the community? Let's share ideas in the Comments. Okay, I'm gonna go here, I'm gonna click on Inspiration. I'm gonna go here, I'm gonna say send an email to all members. Gonna say send them an email to the 222 members. I'm gonna press confirm, and now they received an email, and, and Eve's is gonna get a bunch of comments on that. Um, Rick, Rick, Rick. Okay, so let's see what else is going on. I'm gonna refresh this page over here just to kind of see what else is cooking. Okay, it looks like we have 10 people watching live right now, which is amazing. We have Rick, Anshuma, Scott, Tina, Sam. We have so many amazing people watching live. Um, let me tell you how I can see who's watching live. So if I go over here, If I go to this page here— by the way, tell me what city you're dialing in from in the chat. Watch this go— watch this happen right now. I'm going to say, I am dialing in from NJ. So you guys, if you're watching this live, say, I am dialing in from, and then put in where you're dialing in from. And watch this. If we have 10 people and all of us do it, watch this go from 21 comments to 30 comments. I'm going to refresh the page and let's see if it went up to 30.

31.

I'm dialing in from— let's do this together. Unless you're watching from the car, you're driving. So I'm gonna refresh. It's 21 comments. Let's see how long it takes for you to do that, ladies and gentlemen, 'cause it takes time for my voice to go from my mouth to your ears. I'm gonna press comment, and then I'm gonna press, instead of most relevant, I'm gonna press most recent. And I'm gonna press refresh, see what happens.

Okay.

I don't know, maybe no one's listening. Or maybe it takes more time. Okay, let's see what happened over here. He said, Jacqueline said, hey Josh, thanks for the kind introduction. Nice to meet you, Joe. I have a video chat. I'd love to have a video chat to get to know you better. Book a few months in advance. If you can't find a date, email there, you'll find a spot. I'm gonna say thanks. So I'm gonna take Jackie. I'm gonna copy this. I'm gonna pop this into Uh, $5K is out of my budget. Um, let's see. I'm looking for Jen. Here we go. Okay, let's just see what's going on over here. Don commented on the post. Liza commented on the post. Okay, let's see if anybody wrote where they're dialing in from. Okay, Scott says adding 20% to humanity is key. Anshuma says I couldn't join yesterday but glad I'm here for the recap. Okay. Thank you, Anshuma. All right. So let's, let's keep going through the recap. So, um, the host was Joe Apfelbaum, CEO of Ajax Union, SD Starr, founder of Strand Consulting. By the way, inside our community, we have an event happening and I hope you guys could join the recap on Monday. So if you click on see calendar on the right side over here, you'll see I added an event called the LinkedIn Influencer Summit 2026 Recap. I say, come meet us and discuss what we learned in the Influencer Summit. You see that? Incredible, right?

Unbelievable.

I'm going to go here. I'm going to press like, like, like, like. Um, let's see. Somebody said, Joe, where are you on LinkedIn? Live. Uh, I'm just on LinkedIn Live. I'm gonna click over here, copy the post of my LinkedIn Live, and send it to him. All right, so let's go back to the host. Okay, so the host is Joe Apfelbaum and SC Star. So here are the detailed, uh, the detailed speaker recaps. So the first speaker was Josh Lee, the Dopamine Dealer, AEO Visibility Specialist. And by the way, if I search If I search anything within here, um, let's say for example, SEO pages rank, AEO ranks people. I'm gonna just Google that, see what comes up. Do you see that my Substack comes up just like that? How insane is that? That means that the search engines are picking this up. Let's see if Grok picked this up. Uh, is there a recap? Of the 2026 LinkedIn Influencer Summit that you can find? Okay, and I'm gonna ask Gemini the same question. Gemini. And I'm gonna ask, um, I'm gonna ask Gemini, I'm gonna ask Claude the same question. I'm gonna ask Claude the same question. I'm gonna ask Perplexity the same question. Okay, so I asked. Yes, the recap exists. It covers eighth annual event four-hour Zoom hosted by Substack. Substack. Substack. Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! Look, and it pulled up ten different sources. What an amazing influencer summit. LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, YouTube. It pulled up my replay from yesterday. Ah, I'm so in the LLM. We gotta play a song about this. We gotta play a song. You guys ready for the song? Yo, the J-O-E, so deep in the LLMs. Oh, Claude wasn't able to find it. A LinkedIn post. Ah. Oh, Grok picked this up, baby.

Woo!

Let's see ChatGPT.

Joshua Lee in the box, call him Dopamine King. Talking AEO, how your vibe makes the right ears ring. Not just search, how you show up in the soul feed. Turn the scroll into trust, that's our hope. Reading around, they hit the call with the face red flame. Breaking down your profile pic like it's part of your name. Eyebrows, eyes, yeah, the Michael Science peaks. She can read your brain story in a 5-second peek. Welcome to the LinkedIn Influencer Summit. Joe and Esty got the spotlight. That'll never get old. Never ever get old. When John Keel dropped in with the deep dive play, showed you how to pull contact in the clean-cut way. Little tweaks to your search, make the list turn rich. Turn the cold first touch to a warm bread pitch. Sand splitters speaking sales math science. Filters so strong they could cut old bias. Real lists so tight they convert on sight. From the first connection click to the calendar invite. Woo! Welcome to the Leech Big Influencer Summit. Joe and Esty got the spotlight running. 8 years deep, got the whole head humming. 1,000 on Zoom, yeah, you know we all coming. Psych, buy you in the chat if you feel that. Screenshot the screen, let them see where the real at. Linkin Daddy, Esty Star, keep it 100. Influencer Summit, every year we done it.

Guys, do you see the way that Claude picked up 2025 recap, 2024 recap, 2023 recap? Oh my goodness. And it picked up all the LinkedIn articles. And it also picked up the 2026 recap. So, and this one's just a post. I'm going to say open link just to see the post. 8th year. Okay, so I gotta write a post about the recap, but what I'm gonna do better is I'm gonna write an article about the recap. I'm gonna write a newsletter and I'm gonna email the newsletter to thousands of people. So I'm gonna show you how to do it. But first, let me go ahead and give Rick a comment on his post. Rick, what's cooking? What's cooking, Rick? What's cooking in the house? What's cooking, Rick? I'm gonna click on this over here. Rick's got it going on. Laney's story reminds me of the early days of pitching strategies. Ooh, I love that. Uh, are you doing the, the news thing or the newsjacking thing? Oh my goodness, that's such a good idea. Let's try to do a newsjacking article right now. Should we do a newsjacking article?

A is live. Zoom room packed. 1,000 deep. Yeah, we back. It's the LinkedIn Daddy, Joe Way in the frame. Built the summit out of hustle, turned connections into flame. 8 years running, never lost that spark. Interview after interview from sunrise to dark. That's the star on the side, that's the co-host queen. Tag teaming every question, keep the convo clean. From the first little panel to the thousand on the call, they've been putting folks on, they've been lifting us up. LinkedIn Daddy, we at the summit. Jack going crazy. Hunter reacts on it from the green room jokes to the live room facts. If you log one time, you gonna keep coming back. Hey, LinkedIn Daddy. Keep it classy. A thousand on Zoom and the vibe still classy. Influencers in the box, but the game so real. If you want that sauce, you know how it feel. Joshua Lee slitting dopamine in his tone, talking AEO. How to speak to the phone, not to search, but emotion in Keep it classy, a thousand on Zoom and the vibe still classy. Influencers in the box, but the game's so real. If you want that sauce, you know how we feel. And John Keel dropped in with the lockpick mind, showed a hundred little ways you could find who to find. Contact hacks, warm tracks, the combo to start, turn a cold, cold search to a hot, warm heart. Sam slid through, navigator on deck, showed us how to use the filters like a personal check, from the list to the lead. To that follow-up flow, we made the whole crowd see how to scale what they know. Eight years in and they still go hard. Joe with the jokes, Esty playing that card. Every story, a win, a fail, then flex. Turn a simple small post to a big boy check. Linkin Daddy, we at the summit. Jack going crazy. Hundred reacts on it from the green room jokes to the live room facts. If you log one time, you gonna keep coming back. Hey, Linkin Daddy.

Yo, it's the J-O-E-J-O. I'm making a mega prompt right now.

They've been putting folks on. They've been lifting us all. LinkedIn Daddy, we at the summit. Hey, chat going crazy.

Honey reacts on it from the green room joke to the live room facts.

If you log one time, you gonna keep coming back. Hey, LinkedIn Daddy, yes, they keep it classy. A thousand on Zoom when the vibe still classy. Influencers in the box, but the game's so real. If you want that sauce, you know how I feel. Let's go. Joshua Lee slitting dopamine. To the live room facts. If you log one time, you gonna keep coming back. Had LinkedIn Daddy, asked to keep it classy. $1,000 Zoom and the vibe still classy. Influencers in the box, but the game so real. If you want that sauce, you know how it feel. Then John Keel dropped in with the lockpick mind. Showed 100 little ways you could find who to find. Contact hacks, warm tracks, get the convo to start. Turn a cold, cold search to a hot, warm heart. Sam slid Navigator on deck, showed us how to use the filters like a personal check. From the list to the lead to that follow-up flow, he made the whole crowd see how to scale what they know. 8 years in and they still go hard. Joe with the jokes, Esty playing that card. Every story, every win, every fail, then flex. Turn a simple small post to a big boy check. LinkedIn Daddy, we at the summit. Hey, chat going crazy, 100 reacts on it from the From the green room jokes to the live room facts, if you log one time, you gonna keep coming back. Hey, LinkedIn Daddy has to keep it classy. 1,000 on Zoom when the vibe still classy. Influencers in the box, but the game's so real. If you click that link, then you know the deal. Woo! LinkedIn Daddy. LinkedIn Daddy. Daddy in the building, Joe A in the chair. SC Star on the side, that's a legendary pair. Every year, same link, whole squad laws. You know, 1,000 faces in the gallery, locked in. 8 years of the summit, that's a track record. Influencers in the window like a scat header. From the green room chat to the live Q&A, they've been putting people on every single replay. Hey, welcome to the LinkedIn Influencer Summit. Joe A and SC got the spotlight. A thousand on Zoom. Yeah, you know we all coming. Side value in the track. If you feel that, screenshot the screen. Let them see where the real at. Leaping Daddy, S D Star, keeping one hundred. Influencer Summit every year we done it. Joshua Lee in the box. Call him Dopamine King. Talking A E O. How you vibe? Mr. Right is ringing. Not just search. How you show up in the selfie? Turn the scroll.

I have a question for you guys. Um, do you want to do newsjacking? Is that something that you want to do? If you do, then go get that prompt that I just put in our community. That's an amazing AEO result. I need to get on Substack stat. Joe, J-O-E, Deep LLM sounds like a rap making a LinkedIn daddy. Menachem said sup. Oh, let's pull up Menachem's profile real quick. Look at Menachem. Oh, he sent me a connection request. Oh, he's in Israel. I thought he was in New York. I don't know why I thought he was in New York. Okay, I'm gonna press connect. I am going to save him. Uh, I had a conversation with him. He reached out to me. He read my book. I'm gonna press save. I just saved him. The last time he posted on LinkedIn was ten months ago, and I'm gonna look up his profile over here. Where's his profile? Here it is, Manachem. I'm gonna do a little bit of research on him, see what comes up for him using AI. Kind of save this information over here. Menachem services chief growth platform inventory-backed finance model within chains. Okay, key services, client impact. Volunteer helps clients unlock cash flow tied up into inventory. Location New Jersey. Okay. All right, let's see if he's in New Jersey. Let me ask him where he's based. Where Are you based? Okay. I see your successful exit from Same Day Restoration. What are the key shaped your approach to scaling Lab 3 and Lab 4? With your IDF Golani Brigade service and real estate background, how does your discipline influence your growth strategy for DocFi? As a father of 2 daughters who love sports in Israel, what's one trip that inspired you from a business perspective? I want to say, as a father of two daughters and loves sports and travel, what's your one trip that inspired your business perspective? That came from my AI. Well, okay. Notable achievements: successfully exited Same Day Restoration after leading it as CEO. Okay. Served as Sergeant First Class in the IDF Golani Bridge. Holds a real estate license from. Brooklyn, from Brooklyn School of Realty.

Wow.

These build rapport through standard themes of resilience and entrepreneurial exits. Love that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna save this. I'm gonna save this as a note under his profile over here. I saved this as a note right over here. Um, That is, yeah, context is key. Context is key. Wow. I'm gonna— I don't even know his email. What's your new email? What is your new email address? Okay, I'm gonna go in here and let me, let me look at what's going on over here. By the way, if you guys are currently offering something, if you currently have an offer, let me know what your current offer is in the chat. I'd love to hear from you. And it looks like my video might've frozen. Let me turn my video off. If you guys currently have an offer, let me know what your offer is. I'd love to hear from you. I just turned my video back on. I don't know why my video froze. Um, okay, got it. He gave me his email address. I'm going to drop it in over here, save it. Um, and I'm going to copy his cell phone number, drop it in here. Here, and then boom. Okay, so now I have it saved into Evie AI properly. I'm gonna go to messaging, see what people have been messaging me. Sam, Sam, hi, I'm feeding for the first time. Very informative. I liked each segment, was kept the interest in flow. Had to jump before the Q&As due to work. Staying at the long challenge due to 5-time at a rate. Looking forward to getting the email and participants info. Some areas might want to dig deeper. What is your sell? Okay, so I just said, what is your sell? I'm gonna press Gentoon just like that. Would love to connect. Would love to connect and learn more about your goals. That's one of the most important questions you can ask on LinkedIn. What is your sell? Most people don't ever do that. It looks like we lost somebody in the summit. Sent a connection request. We lost someone, which is fine. Um, let me just see how many people are waiting to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm gonna see how many people are waiting to connect with me. And by the way, guys, tell me what you do for a living in the chat. I'd love to hear from you. Look how many people are waiting, waiting to connect with me. After viewing, I'd be honored to connect with you, blah blah blah. I love the summit today, Shelley said. I'm gonna go ahead and accept it. It'd be great to be connected. Karina Lance. Um, amazing. What is your cell? Would love to speak and learn more about your goals. Okay, now I'm going to click here like this. June Collins. June Collins tells everybody what you do for a living. Menachem said, sup, man? What's up, Joe? Love the recap too. Too many practical ideas. Okay, so every single one of the speakers in the summit gave me ideas for things to do to improve Evie AI, to make Evie AI better. I'm going to go to chat, see what's going on there. Nothing's going on there. Let me look at this. Likes. A bunch of people looked at the recap. A bunch of people love the recap. Melanie restacked your recap. Amazing. Thank you, Melanie, for restacking the recap. Um, okay, so Joshua talked about 3 things. He talked about the core SEO to AEO and why it's so important. So instead of me getting carried away for 2 hours, what I'm just going to do is I'm going to show you how I create a post on LinkedIn today as an article. So yesterday I wrote an article. What did I write? Uh, did I do it on high-energy prompting? Yeah, I did it in high-energy prompting. So today I'm going to do it on Advanced LinkedIn Tips and Tricks. I'm gonna do it there. And the title is gonna be Influencer, I'm gonna say LinkedIn Influencer Summit 2026 FAQ Recap Notes. By Joe Apfelbaum, CEO of Evvy AI. Okay, so question, are you, um, where can I find the notes for the 2026 LinkedIn Influencer Summit? Answer. Okay, so this is how you do it. The answer is you can find the notes as part of the Evy AI Bundle Plus offer at http://www.thebundleplus.com. And also you can Get all the replays from all, from all the years in the past once you join the Bundle Plus. In the meantime, here are a few FAQs. Let's say, in the meantime, here are a few FAQs that might be helpful for you. Okay, now I want to create, uh, I want to upload an image from NotebookLM. So I'm going to press upload. I'm going to try to find the image from NotebookLM. Let's see. Nope, that's the wrong one. Disregard. Um, where's my NotebookLM? I'm going to go to NotebookLM. .google.com. I'm going to click on Try NotebookLM. I'm going to open up the Influencer Summit recordings NotebookLM, and I'm going to click on the, um, this infographic over here. I'm going to use this infographic. Save image as— oh, it looks like I already saved this image. Yeah, I already saved the image. I'm just going to tell it to make me another infographic. I'm going to click on infographic here. It'll make me another infographic right now. And in the meantime, I'm going to upload this infographic here into Photos, LinkedIn Influencer Summit. Let's see if I could find it. Oh, it's Influencer Summit, Influencer Summit, and I'm gonna double-click on this like that, okay? I'm gonna press Next, and that's gonna be my cover image of the Influencer Summit, okay? Here is the LinkedIn Influencer Summit FAQ. Here's the LinkedIn Influencer Summit FAQ and notes. Okay, so I'm trying to rank for these things, LinkedIn Influencer Summit FAQ and notes. In the meantime, here's some FAQ that might be helpful. All right, so let's open up a document that I created yesterday. So I created yesterday a detailed, very, very detailed document. I'm going to pull up the document in my downloads. Which is the FAQ. Let me pull up the FAQ right over here. So here's a very detailed document of the LinkedIn Influencer Summit FAQ. Section 1, about the summit. Okay. So question, what is the LinkedIn Influencer Summit? The LinkedIn Influencer Summit is a free annual event hosted by Joe Apfelbaum and SC Star, bringing together the top LinkedIn influencers, share distinct entrepreneurs, coaches, salespeople, and B2B professionals. Okay. That's good. So let me copy the whole section 1 here and see if it'll translate in here. Okay. Copy. I'm going to go here and I'm going to say paste. Oh my goodness. It worked about the, about the Influencer Summit 2026. Okay. What is the LinkedIn Influencer Summit? And there's a— okay, no cost. You can sign up for future summits here. I'm going to go to Evie AI, evieai.com/linkedin-influencer-summit. We have a page to sign up to future events, and I'll put it in there in the article to train the AI. Who hosts the summit every year? Joe Apfelbaum and SC Star. They meet at Speaker years ago. They discovered they both had LinkedIn systems, decided to bring together collection of proven experts. They run it every year as a public service of the LinkedIn community, funded by the sales of the recordings. Here is the waitlist for 2027. Okay. Is the summit really free? Yes. Attending the summit is completely free. Recordings are available to purchase. Influencers Summit to help the recordings production, or if you are a member of the Evie AI Bundle Plus during the summit, there's a discounted rate available. Okay, um, what is it? How big is the summit 2026? Over 1,000 people registered, nearly 500 attending concurrently to peak. WhatsApp with, um, with a community of 215 were active during the event, typically 4 to 6 hours, 90-minute Q&A. What makes the summit different from webinars? Um, every speaker is handpicked based on 2 criteria that makes them personally successful on LinkedIn. Practical recaps. Okay, speakers are vetted. Who are the speakers? Joe Joshua Lee, Joshua Lee, the Dopamine Dealer, Nat Berman, Nat Berman, John, uh, SD Star, um, John Keel, Sam Rathling. Joe Apfelbaum, Rhonda Scher, and Troy. Okay. Will there be a summit? Yes, yes, yes. Join our summit. Watch for the waitlist and join the Evi AI community. To get notified too. Okay, I'm going to copy the link to the community from here. Join community, copy and paste it in here. Okay, next. All right, so, so this is a quick little recap. So I'm going to get more notes because I have a ton more notes here that I took. Section 2, LinkedIn profile optimization. All right, so we're gonna add this section here. So as you can see, I'm literally just feeding the LLM. That's literally what I'm feeding. And I'm also gonna add before section 2, I'm gonna add an image. I'm gonna add this image here. Okay, nice little image about the event.

Okay.

Section 2, um, virtual provider. What is the most important elements of LinkedIn profile according to SD Star? The focus on 4 elements: your banner, your profile, and I'm going to say Evvy AI can create your graphics, headshot, and headline, and about section. For free, check out www.evi.ai.com to learn how, or join our office hours at strategy.evi.ai.com/officehours daily. Okay. How often should I update my LinkedIn about section? Joshua Lee recommends monthly. He monitors whether he's showing up in AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and When people search. If his signal starts to fade, he revises about section and answer blocks, 2 or 3 sentences with Q&A pairs. How do I add my phone number and email? John Keel shares his hidden hack. Go to your education services section, activate it if needed, add your phone number and enemy— and email in the first entry. Once saved— Let's look up John Keel. I'm going to select his name. I'm going to press Alt+Shift+K. By the way, tell me what, uh, what is your specialty in the chat? If you have a specialty, what is your specialty in the chat? And I'm gonna go ahead and take a screenshot of this here. I'm using a tool called Snagit, by the way, to take screenshots. Okay, I'm gonna go here and I'm gonna select this, press this like this, and oh. Hack alert. I'm gonna put this like this, drag it. LinkedIn hack alert. Copy it. Let's see if it'll paste into LinkedIn right from there. Oh, I love that. What's a good LinkedIn headline formula? What should I post on my profile on different platforms? Joshua Lee. How do profiles translate into business? Rhonda says she calls it the hidden gold. Okay. Oh, I love this. All right. Um, this is a hack that John shared on the summit. Okay. All right. So here we go. So that's what we got going on now. And then, by the way, if you guys are live right now, let me know that you're live in the chat and tell me, tell me who is your favorite speaker or who, who added major value to your life? Like, who was the person that added some major value? Like Who is the most memorable to you right now? Evan said, these notes are gold, Joe. Uh, Rick said the newsjacking mega prompt worked like a charm. The only glitch was it looked like the first news story because I tried to copy all the links and it only copied the first one. I help busy entrepreneurs work in a space. I'm a mediator. Guys, tell me who your ideal clients is in the chat. I'm curious to know who your ideal clients is in the chat. Let me know. I'd love to hear from you. Okay. So, okay. So go to the next FAQ section. The next FAQ block is content strategy and posting. So section 3 is content strategy and posting. I'm going to go ahead and put this in here as an FAQ. Paste. Okay. What type of content should I post on LinkedIn? Ask these frameworks. Uh, how often should I post on LinkedIn? Joe posts daily on LinkedIn. He streams 200 times a year on LinkedIn. What is a 20-cent commenting strategy? What is a 3-2-1 news strategy? How do you make LinkedIn posts worthy? Um, let me see if I can pull up this right here. Oh yeah, I'm going to press copy this, paste this image in here, and I'm going to link to the prompt in our community. I'm going to go here, crazy newsjacking prompt in the evviai.com community. Okay, what makes LinkedIn newsworthy? Blah blah blah. Which I write in my LinkedIn posts. What's a 15-minute content approach? Okay, domain authority. All right, next. Next, next, next. I'm gonna close this out here. All right, what's next? Section four outreach and DMs hand raisers. Oh my God! So much, so much to digest. So much to digest. Okay, I'm gonna go here, pop this in. Hand raiser da da da da. LinkedIn.com, find someone calendar link. Check out all the 99 hacks at 99hacks.club. Um, get a special deal on— okay, who'll be in my profile? Okay, I'm gonna go here. What is a real voice messages playing outreach? Multiple speakers said, including Ronda Scher, Sam Rathbun, and Troy, mentioned that voice messages are a powerful way to stand out. Okay, perfect. Okay, section 5, Sales Navigator. Section 5, Sales Navigator. Ooh, I love this one. Section 5, Sales Navigator. I'm gonna paste it in here. All right, linkedin.com/sales/ssi. Okay, moving on. Section 6 is AEO, the future of LinkedIn. I'm gonna go here, I'm gonna press copy. Okay, uh, that's section 6. How does sharing a job volume use specifics determine— after publishing a LinkedIn newsletter, he immediately shares it to X. X posts are indexed in Google Instant Which means his newsletter article gets indexed instantly. Where is the influential summer recording? I already sent to Freean. See the chat with him. Please confirm. Okay. How's today looking for you? It's looking. Good. Okay. Section 7, daily habits, systems and time management. All right. Let's see. Systems and time management. 15, system. Section 8, monetization and leads and closing. Section 9, I'm actually gonna put at the end of section 8. By the way, is this too much? Do you guys think this is too much or this is epic? Write, this is epic, if you think this is epic, if you're gonna read it. I'm gonna go here, grab that, uh, Section 9, Tools and Technologies. I'm actually going to say section 9. Let's see, enable editing. By the way, if you guys want the document, if you're already a client, you get the full document. Okay. Uh, what tools are most recommended? How do I contact LinkedIn support? Um, I love that. And then community and networking, the summit features past speakers. Okay, community networking, and then Section 11. Okay, section 11. I still have questions. Okay, directly from the speakers, connect with Joe Applebaum and his star on LinkedIn, join the communities, attend the next Influencer Summit. All speakers' profiles and resources are available there. And I'm going to say, and I'm going to go up here and grab this also. You can find the notes as part of the area bundle. Remember, every speaker stage where you're at, what separates them is not talent. Please share with a friend and save this. Boom. Okay, I'm gonna go here and I am going to press next. Now I'm going to write about it. Um, I'm going to go to Evie AI content writer and I'm going to say I just did an amazing article that's attached below. About the frequently asked questions related to the LinkedIn Influencer Summit. It has many dozens of questions that basically break down everything that was said in a Q&A format, specifically for AEO, which is answer engine optimization. And I'm so excited that I was able to write that this morning while I was on LinkedIn Live, which is just incredible. So if you want to go to my YouTube, you can actually watch a Recording of me writing this article in detail, and looking forward to seeing what you guys have to offer. If you like this video, tag someone that you think would find this valuable. I'm going to press generate. It's going to generate a post. Once the post is generated, I press insert. This morning, while on LinkedIn Live, I poured my heart into an article that has dozens of questions and. all being focused on AEO, like a roadmap. Um, I'm gonna push this. It's like a roadmap being found and people find answers.

Okay.

I'm gonna go here. All right, I'm gonna press publish. Let's see what that looks like. Did it get published? View post. Oh, look at that, the post is live, baby. I could even boost this. Look at that, I can boost this for, uh, I'll do it for one day, for 2 days. $20 boost. Okay, I just boosted this for $20. All right, now let's see. I'm going to share this in the community. I just posted a detailed FAQ. Okay. All right, that's my, that's my FAQ. I just posted a very, very detailed FAQ. Incredible, right? Um, let me see the, the new 2 minutes ago. Wow, look at this one. The LinkedIn Influencer Playbook 2026 Strategy. Oh, I like this. Download. Oh my goodness, this is good. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take a screenshot of this because what I do is when— if I take a screenshot of this instead of downloading it, what it will do is it'll take off that CR thing. I'm going to press copy. I'm going to go to Facebook. And I'm going to click in here, paste it, and I'm gonna say, I just wrote an epic article on LinkedIn with tons of FAQs related to the summit. If you, if you want a link, let me know. Here are a few FAQs. Okay, I'm gonna press next. So a lot of— I see a lot of people doing this where they put the actual FAQs, um, as a— I'm gonna say open split view. Actually, I'm gonna go here where they put the FAQs in the comments. I don't know why this is not coming out over here properly. Press edit article and try to— maybe I'll try to edit this. There's something wrong with this image. Update. Okay, I'm gonna like my own post. I'm gonna grab this. What is the LinkedIn Influencer Summit? I'm going to press comment. I'm going to comment on my own post here, you see? So I'm basically adding questions and answers from the Q&A into here. Is the summit really free? How big is the summit? What makes the summit different? You see the way I'm taking the questions and answers and kind of popping them in here? I'm just taking them one at a time from LinkedIn and just popping them in here. And then as they get created, I'm gonna go I'm breaking them down one at a time, just popping them in here just like this. And then I could just keep going on and on, or I could just share the link. Okay, so I just posted this link over here. I'm gonna wait till it loads. Let's listen to another song. Here's a song.

Let's listen to another song. They've been putting people on every single replay. Welcome to the LinkedIn Influencer Summit. Joe and Nasty got the spotlight running. 8 years deep, got the whole net humming. 1,000 on Zoom, yeah, you know we are coming. Type value in the chat if you feel that. Screenshot the screen, let them see where the real at. LinkedIn Daddy, Nasty Star, keeping 100. Influencer Summit, every year we done it. Joshua Lee in the box, call him Dopamine king talking to you. How your vibe makes the right ears ring. Now just search how you show up in the selfie. Turn the scroll into trust. That's a whole breed. You're around and hit the call with the face red flame. Breaking down your profile pic like it's part of your name. Eyebrows, eyes, get a micro science peek. She can read your brand story in a five-second peek. Welcome to the league, man. Influencer something. Joe and Nasty got the spotlight running.

Eight years deep, got the whole I gotta make a, I gotta make a quick call, guys. Ooh, but listen to this podcast. That's what I wanted to do. I want you guys to listen to this podcast. I'm gonna stop this for a second and I want you to hear this podcast real quick that I created with Notebook LM. Uh, this is an insane podcast that I made for you that I want you guys to listen to real quick. Um, it's only 15 minutes, so here we go. The LinkedIn explainer.

Uh, it's right here. Listen to this.

I think it's this.

Who invests in relationships?

Here it is.

Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are doing something, uh, a little different today. Usually we take a book or maybe an article and we break it down. Today we are tackling a massive raw data set, the full transcript from the 2026 LinkedIn Influencer Summit.

Yeah.

And before you tune out because you think this is just another, you know, optimize your headline refresher, I really need you to pause.

It's definitely not that. We're looking at about, what, 8 hours of audio from the summit hosts, Joe Apfelbaum and St. Star, plus a dozen other heavy hitters in the B2B space.

And the picture they paint of the platform, it's radically different from even a year ago.

It really is.

It feels like the platform is split into 2 distinct realities. On one side, you have this hyper-technical, almost cold strategy focused on answer engine optimization. And on the other, you have tactics that are so aggressively human things, like buying prospects coffee before a meeting and literally reading their facial features to close a deal.

That's the core tension of the summit.

The—

I mean, the whole theme is high-tech for high-touch. Yeah, you use the robots the AI, the search strings to find the people, but then you have to be more human than ever to actually do business with them.

Let's start with the robot side then, because answer engine optimization or AEO, that was the opening argument from Joshua Lee.

Mm-hmm.

Most of us are conditioned for SEO, search engine optimization. We wanna be on page 1 of Google, but AEO, it implies the game has changed entirely.

It has. Joshua Lee's whole argument is that Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. Yeah. They don't browse the web like we do.

Yeah.

When you ask them a question, they don't give you a list of 10 blue links and just say, good luck.

No.

They synthesize an answer.

Yeah.

Synthesis engines.

Right. If I ask an AI, who is the best expert on B2B sales automation, it doesn't send me to a website. It gives me a name.

Exactly.

It says, based on the data, this person is the authority.

Exactly. So the goal isn't to rank your website anymore. It's to rank yourself as entity. Lee breaks this down into 5 signals the AI looks for: entity, clarity, authority, recency, and accessibility. If you don't hit those, you are, for all intents and purposes, invisible to the answer engine.

Clarity seems to be the one where most smart people trip up. We tend to write these long, nuanced, kind of rambling posts thinking they sound intellectual, Yep. But Joshua Lee suggests that to an AI, that just looks like noise.

Which brings us to his 3-2-1 strategy. It's a formatting protocol designed specifically for this new reality.

Okay.

It goes 3 lines of context, 2 lines of perspective, and 1 clear takeaway.

It's almost algorithmic in itself. You're structuring your own thought process like clean data.

Precisely. You're telling the large language model, here's the situation, Here's what I think about it, and here's the lesson. It's infinitely easier for a machine to index that structure than a 500-word block of text.

You're making it easy for the AI to quote you.

That's it. He also mentioned answer blocks, which I thought was a really strong tactical takeaway for building that authority signal. Right. This is all about owning the question. So you identify the 3 questions you get asked the most often in your field.

Okay.

You write a concise, jargon-free, 2 to 3 sentence answer for each one. And then, and this is the important part, you publish that as a LinkedIn newsletter.

Why a newsletter specifically? I mean, why not just a post?

Because LinkedIn newsletters have massive domain authority. Google and the AI models, they trust LinkedIn.com way more than they trust your personal blog or some random post.

Ah, okay.

So by putting those clear answer blocks in a newsletter, you are effectively training the AI to use your specific definition When someone asks that question.

So you are feeding the answer engine the script you want it to read. Got it. Okay. That covers the machine side, but then we have the human side, which Esty Star focused on.

Right.

She uses this party metaphor to explain why so many people feel awkward.

Coffee shop.

Yeah.

It's aesthetic, chatty, visual. TikTok is a slumber party. Messy, chaotic, anything goes.

And LinkedIn is the networking event.

Correct. You are in a room with professionals. You wouldn't walk into a business mixer in your pajamas, and you wouldn't walk in screaming about politics or showing everyone a video of your cat without any context.

Unless you want to be escorted out.

Exactly. She talks about the get dressed rule. Before you even engage, you have to look the part. Okay, this means your wallpaper, profile photo, headline, and your name. If those are sloppy, it's the digital equivalent of showing up in sweatpants.

You lose credibility before you even open your mouth.

Right. And she also offered a framework for content, this EIEIO framework.

Wait, EIEIO, like the song?

Like Old MacDonald. Yeah, it stands for educational, inspirational, entertaining, informational, and offer.

Okay.

But the critical insight here isn't just the categories, it's the ratio. The offer, the buy my stuff post, that should only be about 10 to 20% of your output.

Right. The rest is just adding value to the room. If you're at a party and every sentence out of your mouth is a sales pitch, people just walk away.

Right. And she pairs this with a commenting strategy that I think is much more sustainable than the old advice we used to hear. You remember the $1.80 strategy?

Oh yeah. Leave your 2 cents on 90 posts a day.

Right.

Which is impossible if you have a job, a family, or a need for sleep.

Esty suggests the 20-cent strategy. Forget 90 posts. Just pick 10 strategic people, prospects, peers, industry leaders, and leave a meaningful comment on their posts.

Not just great posts.

No, something that actually advances the discussion or offers a counterpoint. It signals to the algorithm that you're relevant to that specific network, and it doesn't take 4 hours out of your day.

Efficiency seems to be the trend here, which transitions perfectly to the lead gen strategies they talked about.

Yeah.

And we had a really stark contrast between Nathaniel Berman, who's all about the manual grind, and Sam Rathling, who is the sales navigator wizard.

It's the difference between farming and hunting with a laser sight. Nathaniel Berman mines his own data. He looks at who liked his posts, who commented, who viewed his profile, who followed him.

The low-hanging fruit. These people already know you exist.

Exactly. And his outreach script is painfully simple, which is probably why it works. If it's a connection he hasn't spoken to in a while, he just says, it's been a while since we connected. Figured I'd say hello again.

That's it. No pitch.

No pitch. If it's someone who engaged with a post, he says, I noticed you engaged with a post of mine recently. He calls commenting and DMs the new cold calling. But unlike a cold call, it's warm because they engaged first.

Okay, now compare that to Sam Rathling. She's using the Fuel framework on Sales Navigator. This is for people who want to go after cold leads and aggressively.

Right. So Fuel breaks down as F is for fuel using filters to find companies with money. You look for triggers like recent funding or department headcount growth.

Smart.

U is for understand. So mapping the buying committee.

Which is rarely just one person in B2B.

Almost never one person. is usually 9 to 15 people. You have to identify the CFO, the CTO, the end user, the manager.

Right.

E is engage, so interacting with their content before you pitch. And L is for leads, treating them like humans. But the killer feature she highlighted was smart links.

This is the feature that tells you if someone actually read your proposal.

It's incredible intelligence. Instead of sending a PDF attachment, you send a smart link.

Okay.

LinkedIn reports back to you exactly how many seconds they spent on the document.

And it breaks it down that page?

Yes. So if they spent 10 minutes on the pricing page and 0 seconds on the About Us page, you know exactly where their head is at.

That is a game changer for negotiation. If you know they obsessed over the technical specs, you bring your engineer to the closing call.

Exactly.

If they stared at the pricing, You bring your finance options.

It removes the entire guessing game. You aren't asking, did you get a chance to read it? You know they read it and you know what they care about.

Okay. Now for the listeners who are thinking, all right, I have the strategy, but what do I actually do on Monday morning? John Keel provided a very specific daily routine.

He did. It's a 7-step workflow. It starts with sending 40 invites and reviewing your profile viewers, but the core of it is step 4. Number 4, the hand raiser.

I flagged this one. This seems to be the solution for people who hate being salesy.

It is. The hand raiser is a message you send to your existing connections, and the script is key. It's, just circling back, info only, I launched this new thing, would it be worth a check? From the 90% who aren't.

So you find the buyers without burning bridges with everyone else by being annoying.

Exactly.

John also dropped a sort of a glitchy little hack about the education section of your profile. Why would we mess with that?

This is a classic user interface trick. On mobile devices, the education section often shows up right at the top of the profile, just under your headline and banner. Oh, so John puts his phone number and email address in the education field.

So instead of someone having to click contact info and hunt for it, it's It reduces friction.

If they want to call you, the number is staring them in the face. It's a small detail, but in a world of short attention spans, reducing clicks matters.

Speaking of reducing friction and maybe bypassing permission entirely, we have to talk about the Google search hack from Joe Apfelbaum. This felt like digital breaking and entering.

It's certainly aggressive, but it leverages public data. Joe suggests using a Boolean search string on Google to find calendar links that people have, you know, left public.

Let's walk through the syntax because this is powerful. What exactly am I typing into Google?

You're typing site.linkedin.com. That tells Google to only search LinkedIn profiles. Then in quotes, you type calendly.com. That tells Google to look for that specific phrase. And finally, you add the job title, like CEO, Or marketing director.

So the whole string is site.linkedin.com/callenly.com/ceo, right?

And Google pulls up every LinkedIn profile where a CEO has put their Calendly link in their bio, their about section, their featured section. You just click it and book a meeting directly on their calendar, bypassing their assistant, their gatekeeper, their email filter, everything.

That is high risk, high reward. If you just book a meeting to Pitch them garbage, you are going to get blocked immediately.

Absolutely. You better have a really good reason for being on that calendar. But if you do have a genuine value proposition, you just skipped the line. You went straight to the decision maker.

Okay. So once you get the meeting, or maybe to get the meeting, Rhonda Elsher had a tactic she calls the Starbucks closer. This is pure psychology.

It relies on the law of reciprocity. If a prospect books a time with you, or if you're trying to confirm a cold meeting. You send them a $10 digital Starbucks card before the call.

With a note?

A simple note. Coffee is on me. Looking forward to our chat. It does 2 things. First, it makes it incredibly socially awkward for them to ghost you.

Right.

They accepted your gift, they feel obligated to show up. And second, it signals that you're a professional who invests in relationships. She claims it reduces her no-show rate to near zero.

It's a $10 insurance policy on your time. And frankly, it stands out. How many sales reps send you coffee before they ask for money?

None. And that's the point. It breaks the pattern.

We're seeing a theme here. The hacks that work best are the ones that break the pattern of robot behavior.

Right.

Which brings us to the most, I guess, controversial part of the summit. Rhonda Elsher came back with something that sounds medieval. Face reading.

Physiognomy. It's an ancient practice, and honestly, it's usually dismissed as pseudoscience. But she's applying it to modern sales with an app called Know Your Prospect. The premise is that facial features correlate with personality traits and, um, buying styles.

I was really skeptical reading this part of the transcript, but the examples were specific. What are we looking for?

She gave a few specific indicators. For instance, if someone's eyebrows extend far out to the sides of their face, almost wrapping around, she identifies them as a finisher. A finisher?

Finisher.

They're process-oriented. They finish what they start. They hate loose ends.

And if they have a round, high forehead?

That indicates a methodical thinker. So if you're pitching that person, you don't use hype, you don't use emotion, and you definitely do not rush them. You bring data, you bring a spreadsheet, you give them time to think.

And the opposite of that?

They have full cheeks and sort of soft eyes. They're nurturers. They care about the team, the relationship. So for the nurturer, you ask, how will this help your team?

Right.

For the methodical thinker, you ask, does the ROI make sense?

So even if we put aside the scientific validity of physiognomy, there is a utility in the practice itself.

That's the real takeaway. Whether or not eyebrows actually predict punctuality, the discipline of face reading is valuable. It forces you to pause, look at the person's face, and ask, who is this human? Instead of launching into your script.

It forces empathy. It breaks you out of sales mode and puts you into connection mode.

Exactly. And in a world where everyone is using AI to write their scripts, that moment of hesitation and observation is what makes you different.

And that really ties the whole summit together, doesn't it? We started with Joshua Lee telling us to optimize for AI to be clear and structured data, but we end with face reading and buying coffee.

That's the high-tech, high-touch synthesis. You use the Boolean searches, the answer engine strategies, the automation. You use all that to get in the room. But once you are in the room, Llama 3 and GPT-4 cannot help you build trust.

Only humanity can do that.

Right. The algorithm is smart enough to spot a fake.

It is.

As Joe Apfelbaum said at the summit, the algorithm is trying to simulate a dinner party. If you act like a spam bot, you get kicked out. If you act like an interesting, genuine generous guest, you get introduced to everyone.

So for the listener who's staring at their LinkedIn profile right now, feeling overwhelmed by 8 hours of tactics, what is the one move?

I'd say pick one from each column. For the tech column, try the Google Calendar search or clean up your profile for the answer engine. Do the 3-2-1 check on your next post.

Okay.

For the touch column, try the Starbucks card or the hand-raiser message. Just one of each.

I'm going to try the calendar search. I'm very curious who has left their door unlocked, so to speak.

Just remember to wipe your feet before you walk in.

Always. Now, before we wrap up, I have a thought that's been nagging me. We're optimizing our profiles for AI. We're using AI to read faces. We're using AI to write newsletters.

There's a lot of automation. Yeah.

If the algorithm knows who your entity better than you do, and it knows your prospect's personality based on their eyebrows, Is the digital twin version of us doing the real business?

Mm-hmm.

At what point are we just the assistants to our own profiles?

That is the question of the decade. In an answer engine world, you have to make sure you're the one writing the answer or the AI will write it for you.

That's a deep dive for another day. Thanks for listening.

See you next time. I also had Manus.im.

You know what Manus.im is? Manus.im is a robot that does work for you, a really, really powerful robot. Oh shoot. Hey everybody, you're still on LinkedIn Live. Let's listen to this song now.

Faces that glow. Hit join once, now you stuck in the flow. LinkedIn Summit, everybody gonna grow. Walk in the room, who's shaking the scene? Joe Apfelbaum, LinkedIn Daddy on screen. As he starts shining right by his side, 8-year team, that's a long-term stride. Interviews live, yet a chat going wild. Influencers lined up, profile on fire. From the first cold DM to the warm invite, we've been learning how to turn blue. That's a bright light. LinkedIn Daddy running the summit. SD in the car, whole crew say love it. Down on Zoom, every square feels sunny. Turn that profile to pipeline money. LinkedIn Daddy running the summit. 8 years deep and they still stay hungry. Drop one gem, whole timeline jumping. Tag your friend, tell them Joe's still coming. Joshua Lee came through with the data refills. Dopamine dealer turning scrolls into deals. Talking AYO. They ain't searching a phrase, they searching for a person, for a heart, for a face. Run the shirt, read a page in a blink. Showed her a selfie, say more than you think. Lines on your face, lines in your post. She can spot a quiet lurker or a natural host. Then John Keel slid in. Let me tweak that flow. Contact info tricks that'll make a lead show. Lil hack here. Lil script in your hand and you're just checking in. Turn to where do we land. Turn anyone here to these my people, my choice. From the headline text to the bow, you write to the comments, you leave every late night swipe. It's the playbook live right in front of your eyes. Summit turns strangers into business allies.

LinkedIn daddy running in the summit, asking the car, whole crew say love it.

Thousand on Zoom, every square feels sunny. Turn that profile to pipeline money. LinkedIn daddy running in the summit. 8 years deep and they still stay hungry. Drop one gem, whole timeline jumping. LinkedIn Summit, yeah, you know we coming. 8 years running, we've been running this show. Hey, Zoom room packed, thousand faces that glow. Hit join once, now you stuck in the loop.

Guys, check out this video.

All right, let's dive in. Today we're talking all about LinkedIn, specifically how to actually master it. We've taken a playbook from some of the top experts out there to help you finally cut through all that noise and get some real results. But first, let's just do a quick reality check. I mean, are you really getting what you want out of LinkedIn? You're putting in the time, right? You're posting, connecting, commenting. But is any of it actually moving the needle? Or does it kind of feel like you're just shouting into the void? You're not alone if you feel that way. And today we are going to fix it. So what we've done is we've basically squeezed hours and hours of insights from the world's best LinkedIn pros into one single powerful playbook. Get ready, because these are the new rules of the game. The stuff that actually works right now in this crazy world of AI and, you know, real human connection. Okay, let's start with the foundation, your profile. You have to stop thinking of it as just a digital resume. It's so much more than that now. In today's AI-powered world, your profile has to impress 2 very different audiences at the same time, the LinkedIn algorithm and the actual human being on the other side of the screen. To win, you've got to nail both. For years, all we heard about was SEO— search engine optimization. We were all obsessed with ranking our web pages. But, as expert Joshua Lee points out, there's been a massive shift. We're now living in the age of AEO. So, what on earth is the difference? Well, this pretty much says it all: AEO— answer engine optimization. This is a total game-changer. See, AI doesn't just look for keywords anymore; It's actively trying to find the best answers to people's questions. So your goal isn't just to be found anymore; it's to be chosen as the go-to expert. You're not trying to rank a page; you're trying to rank yourself as a person. And here's exactly how you apply that. Influencer Esty Rand has this brilliant metaphor. She calls it getting dressed. Simple, right? Before you go to a party, you pick out the right outfit. Your LinkedIn wallpaper—that's your personal billboard. Your photo—it has to be recent and friendly. And your header? That's your elevator pitch— your value proposition boiled down to one line. This is your first impression for both the algorithm and your next client. So, your profile is optimized, you're all dressed for the party— what's next? Well, now it's time to actually join the conversation. This part is all about creating content that doesn't just get views but actually sparks real connection and gets people talking. Here is a framework so easy you'll never forget it: EIEIO. Yep, just like the song. Every single thing you post should fit into one of these categories. Is it educational, inspirational, maybe entertaining or informational? Or is it an offer? But look closely— offers should be a tiny piece of the puzzle, like 20% max. The big idea here is to give, give, give value before you ever ask for anything in return. But what if you feel like you're not a content creator? Creating machine? Well, this quote from John Keel is a total game-changer. Seriously, the quickest way to get visible and build authority isn't always about creating your own original posts; it's about adding real value to conversations that are already happening. So, how do you do it right? First things first, forget comments like nice post or great share. A truly high-value comment is gonna be at least 15 words. You wanna add your own perspective, some new context, maybe a key takeaway. You're not just reacting, you're contributing. That's what makes you look like a thoughtful expert. Okay, so your profile is looking amazing. Your engagement game is smart and people are starting to notice you. Now for the million-dollar question: how do you turn all that visibility into actual business? This is where strategic, and I mean non-salesy, outreach comes into play. These templates from expert Nathaniel Berman are just Beautiful. They're so simple. The key here is you're just acknowledging something. You're not pitching. You're starting a conversation based on an action they already took. It's warm, it's relevant, and it's totally non-aggressive. You're just opening the door for a chat. And John Keel packages this all up into a simple daily routine with what he calls the 4 C's. First, you connect with your ideal clients. Then you converse to warm them up. Next, you contribute value consistently. And only then, after all that, do you even think about trying to convert those relationships into real opportunities. It's a system, not just a one-off action. So, what's the ultimate secret weapon for this whole process? Sam Rathling puts it perfectly. She says using regular LinkedIn is like driving a Ford Fiesta— it'll get you there. But Sales Navigator? That's like being behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car. It gives you incredible precision, speed, and data to find the exact right people at the exact right time. And why is that precision so absolutely critical right now? Because you're probably not selling to just one person anymore. The average B2B buying committee, the group of people who make the decision, is now up to 15 people. Trying to navigate that maze of decision-makers without a tool like Sales Navigator? Yeah, that's like trying to win a Grand Prix in a Ford Fiesta. You've got to be able to map out the entire organization just to have a shot. Wow. Okay. We've covered a lot of ground from AOO and content frameworks all the way to outreach scripts. But all of these tactics, all these tools, they're all built on one single fundamental principle. In an age that's becoming so dominated by AI, your greatest advantage is something a machine can literally never replicate. This right here, this is the most important takeaway of all. While AI rewards clarity, humans, well, we're driven by something way more fundamental— trust. As Joshua Lee puts it so perfectly, the goal isn't just to be found by the algorithm, it's to be felt by the person on the other side of that screen. That is the real key to building genuine relationships and ultimately real business. And this is maybe the simplest, the most powerful reminder of all, from Sam Rathling: Every lead, every profile, every number on your dashboard— it's a person. When you start approaching LinkedIn with that kind of empathy and a genuine desire to connect, all the tactics we just talked about become infinitely more powerful. So, I'll leave you with this one question to think about: When the algorithm is looking for the best answer, and a potential client is looking for someone they can truly trust, What signal are you sending out? Is it clear, authoritative, and authentically human? Or is it just more noise? The choice and the opportunity is all yours.

And we can do that.

All right, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, I gotta sit down. I have an interview now with Laurie.

All right, let's dive in. Today we're—

did you guys enjoy that? If you did enjoy it, I walked away from the computer while that was happening. Let's see if we lost everybody here. We probably lost everybody while I did that. Oh, look at that! There's still four people here. You can write I'm still watching if you're still watching. But let me let me ask Laurie. Let me go into my Zoom and talk to Laurie for a minute. Let's see if she's here. She's going to be talking about Evian progress. Hi, Laurie.

Hello.

How's it going? I'm doing well. I'm doing amazing. I'm gonna turn off the LinkedIn Live so we could have a private conversation, but I'm gonna first pull you into the LinkedIn Live. Just say hello to everybody. Hi. Hi, everyone. Me and Laurie are gonna have a conversation about Evie AI and the benefits she gets from it, et cetera, et cetera. But if you guys haven't checked out Laurie Osborne, definitely check it out. She's the Authority Amplifier and she helps people with their websites and their brands. So if you're a coach, an author, a speaker, and you need a brand or something, Laurie is amazing. Definitely hit her up on LinkedIn and let her know that you saw her at the tail end of this LinkedIn Live. And thank you very much for watching this. Thank you, Laurie, for doing great work for coaches, consultants, authors, speakers,