Thomas Power + Joe Apfelbaum Talk about Super Connectors

powerful thing. I, I think it's very transformative the way that Bordi calls me once a week and we talk. Did you set Bordi to call you every week?

Oh yes, I speak to Bordi every day.

So it's just, it's just, it's just incredible. And, um, the people that it helps me meet and the conversations that we have is very, very cool. So how do you, how do you use Bordi right now as a As a super connector yourself?

Okay. So first of all, I just wanted to acknowledge your definition, Joe, of a super connector that you mentioned earlier about someone that does 3 introductions a day, 1,000 a year. That is my definition of a super connector also. So the fact that you've said it and introduced yourself using it, I just wanted to acknowledge and recognize and respect you for Oh, thank you.

You know, you know why I thought of it from that perspective? Because I— there's a guy named Stephen King that wrote a book called On Writing. When I, when I started exploring how to be a writer, because I was always afraid of writing, and I said I started exploring how do you become a writer, because I wanted to publish some books and write some books. And one of the things that really stuck out from the book, he said— I got a bunch of things from that book. It's the only nonfiction book that he wrote. Um, he's a fiction book writer, very, very famous, very popular, Stephen King. And one of the things that he said is, he says, if you don't write 2,000 words a day, you are not a writer. And so I got that to myself.

Interesting.

I applied it to super connecting. I was like, if you're not connecting people, if you're not a giver instead of a matcher or a taker, as Adam Grant puts it in his book, Give and Take, if you're not a person that just is a go-giver, like Bob Burg talks about in his book, If you're not giving, if you're not making intros, then you're not a connector. You got to be making connections and you got to be making them in volume, in the super volume, meaning not ridiculous amount, but give every single day, make a difference every single day. For me, it's 3 a day. For somebody else, it might be 3 a week, but make sure that you're connecting on a regular basis. Just like if you want to be called a writer, you're writing every day. Um, same thing with connecting, be connecting every day. So that's, that's my thought process, but I appreciate you seeing me and I, I feel seen. So thank you for that, Thomas.

Yeah. And I wanted to recognize that, Joe, because there's other people on LinkedIn who do something similar. Um, Charlie Winton, uh, Claire Gilbanks, um, uh, Luke Janssens, uh, Will Polston. There are people who do that same model. And the connection with Boredy is this, is there's a very complex AI emerging around LinkedIn that I'm studying in a lot of detail. And it involves LinkedIn, it involves happenstance.ai.

Very familiar.

Superme.ai, and it involves boredy.ai. And I'm using all 4 of them together.

Wow.

A new, a new, uh, what's the right word, a new sort of matchmaking connectedness is emerging. But you've got to use them all together.

Yeah.

And you've got to know how they all work together.

Yeah.

Because this is a new behavior and being a super connector in London at least.

Yeah.

I'm teaching our 100 members in our group where we meet for lunch and dinner every month how this works. And we keep our membership at 100. We cap it at 100, so it's manageable. You can't really manage more than 100 relationships intimately in detail all the time with lunch and dinner every month as well.

Yeah.

But what's happening is inside— I'll come back to Bawdy and the Bawdy competition— but inside Happenstance, you've effectively— happenstance.ai— you've effectively got the emergence Of a super connector network, of a matchmaking network, but it's only got parts of the solution. It's very good. I'm very pleased that the CEO has created it. It's only got parts of the solution. So what I do with Happenstance is I go into Happenstance and I connect all my networks— my Instagram, my Twitter, my LinkedIn, my Facebook— everything is connected.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that puts about a quarter of a million connections from my whole 40-year career in work inside Happenstance. Every, every network I'm on is connected to it. Now those 250,000 connections inside there, those I have to find out who are the super connectors.

Yeah.

And within, within that 250,000 total people I'm connected, that's, that's all systems, all networks, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, you name it. That's about a quarter of a million. It's 228,800 is the exact number. I then have to figure out who are the super connectors.

Yeah.

And within a network, I estimate there's about 10,000 super connectors worldwide. There's roughly 100 in 100 cities, 100 major cities. There's obviously 1,000 cities now of more than a million people. But I've, I've worked in 100 different cities and there's roughly 100 super connectors per city. So there's about 10,000 worldwide and I'm connected to about 10% of them. I've got 1,000 super connectors in my network worldwide.

On happenstance or in general?

General. On happenstance.

Nice.

Nice. So then I take those, I take those 1,000 from happenstance. And I feed them into Boardy. Okay.

How do you feed, how do you feed them into Boardy? Do you send them one at a time through WhatsApp or do you email it to it?

Yeah, you have to do them one at a time through WhatsApp.

Okay.

And then you ask WhatsApp to make an appointment. WhatsApp will actually take more than one at a time now. It'll take 5.

Okay.

So you have to feed them all into WhatsApp.

You say, here's their first name, last name, email, and cell phone number and whatever, and say, make an intro.

Yeah, you just have to. Interestingly, interestingly, Bordi already has all that data, so you don't have to put all that in.

Okay.

Just have to put in the name.

Well, if you just put in someone's name, then they don't know. You know, there's many Thomas Powers in the world. You're not the only Thomas Power in town. You know what I mean?

Yeah, but super connectors are different.

Okay, got it. Got it.

They'll be top of the list. Bordi is attracting super connectors. Happenstance is attracting super connectors. There aren't that many of us, Joe, worldwide. As I say, I don't think there's more than 10,000 of us worldwide.

Okay. So there's, there's 10,000 super connectors and you have 1,000 of them already that you've, you've accumulated.

Yeah. So then I go into Baldi and I go, I say, here are these 1,000 super connectors that I think are super connectors based on my research, based on their profile on LinkedIn, based on their profile on Happenstance, based on their profile on SuperMeet. And based on their profile, I've bought superme.ai.

I'm gonna come back to that, you know, at the end.

I feed them and I say to Happenstance, I say to Bordig, make an appointment with all of these.

Yeah.

And so I've had all those calls and I do 1,000 calls a year. I do 25 calls a week. I do my 1,000 calls a year. I do my 1,000 introductions a year, the 3 a day. Then Bordig makes all those appointments. and builds me a, uh, a profile inside Bordi as a super connector.

Yeah.

That profile inside Bordi allows you to have a deeper relationship with Andrew D'Souza, who runs Bordi, and the team there.

Okay.

Because you're supporting the development of their AI.

Yeah.

And then when you, when you go into the, uh, when you go into the new competition they've done with Mahir at Deal Ventures, Yeah. Where you win $1 million for your startup, for your new co. You have a very, very intense conversation with the Bordi AI and I mean really intense. There's nothing it doesn't know about that business plan. So the relationship between Happenstance and Bordi and LinkedIn is very, very important. But there's another component and that's superme.ai because superme.ai aggregates your content. Aggregates your content as a super connector. Now, if you consider you and I have been online for 30 or 40 years, we're like digital fossils. We've been online so long.

Wow.

We've been longer online than we've been offline, pre-internet. Now, over the last 35 years, I've posted more than a million posts. of various different sorts, right? Blogs, articles, videos, blah blah blah blah blah. And what Super.me does is it aggregates all of your content into a single place. Okay, all of it, everything you've posted, as long as you feed in all the links.

Yeah, yeah, like it finds your Substack, it finds your X, it finds your blog, it finds your—

You've got to, you've got to connect them, you've got to connect all the URLs.

Right.

And then it aggregates all the content and it did it with me and LinkedIn, one of the founders of LinkedIn is Reid Hoffman. He's one of the backers of SuperMe.ai. Wow. And so when I loaded all my content, I had 1.1 million pieces of content on the web from the last 30, 35 years.

Wow.

And that put me in the top 50 in the world in SuperMe.ai.

Yeah.

Then I took that content back out of SuperMe.ai and I put it back into Happenstance.

Okay.

So you see you're going Happenstance, Boardy, SuperMe, back to Happenstance and then rolling it around. And you've got to keep updating your LinkedIn with this as well because of the competition. So these 4 AIs are all working together, but you have to know how to work them together.

Yeah.

This is how I attract the conversations with the, uh, with the super connectors. Because people know that I'm very intensely using all of these applications at the same time. And then the people in London who are super connectors, they join our group for lunch and dinner. We meet every month and talk. So I'm looking for a very specific profile, and they self-identify through this process. So that's how I use all of these platforms to identify super connectors, and I'm trying to identify all 10,000 around the world so I can put them in a bucket. And we can all meet them in every city in the world.

Amazing. I love that. It's finding every podcast I've ever done, superme.ai. It's asking me to verify every YouTube video I've ever done. It's kind of just like putting everything together to create a digital footprint of who I am and what I've said and where I've been and trying to put together a picture. Yeah.

When you've built it all and it takes a couple of weeks to build it all, to connect it all.

Yeah.

Then cut and paste that out and stick it in Happenstance.

Like basically a directory of every possible website and link and everything you have. So you're basically, this is the aggregator and then Happenstance is the one that kind of saves it and makes sense out of it.

Yes. Now the CEO of Happenstance and the CEO of Super.me don't realize they're doing the same thing.

Yeah. Today I'm using Upwork to hire a WordPress user.

And a super connector. I know they're doing the same thing.

Yeah.

The fact that Reed Hoffman is a backer of SuperMe knows he he knows what's going on here.

Right, right. He's trying to figure out who are the people that are the connective tissue of the world.

Yes. Now happenstance have already figured that out, but happenstance don't really understand superme.ai and superme.ai don't really understand happenstance.

Wow. That's pretty cool.

What's gluing them both together is Bordi.

Yeah.

But I'm not sure Andrew D'Souza at Bordi really understands what's going on at Happenstance and at SuperMe either. Wow. And all of these, these 4 applications are related and connected, but you have to know how to play with them all together at the same time.

Wow. That's cool. Yeah. I'm going to explore. I'm going to explore superme.ai. I'm still, I just created an account just to mess with it. Do they have a paid version or they just have a free version that you mess with and feed it?

Yeah, they got a paid.

I always like—

By happenstance, they've got a paid.

I always like jumping into paid versions to see what I get for it. You know what I mean? Have you heard of clay.earth?

Yeah.

Do you pay for that?

I have. Didn't hold me.

But it didn't hold you. Yeah. Clay's— I put everything into Clay just to kind of see all the different features and how it works and all that stuff because I've been I've been building an artificial intelligence technology. So like, I'm— so like, you're looking for the super connectors in the world. I'm looking, I'm looking for the engaged LinkedIn creators. I have a community of people that are the most—

How many of those do you think there are?

Uh, probably around same thing, like around 10,000 people that are actually engaged LinkedIn creators. That means that they're networking. They're creating, they're commenting, they're super active on LinkedIn. Not a lot of people in the world are willing to comment, post, and build relationships and network. There's a lot of people that want to spray and pray, you know, just post and ghost. That's the idea. Post and ghost, I love that. And there's a lot of people that just want to comment, but they don't want to post. They're like, I don't want to post. I don't want the internet to know who I am or whatever, but I'll leave comments, try to leave it anonymously, whatever, just comment, comment. But I don't really want to post. There are a lot of people that want to comment and post, but they don't want to talk on the phone. I'm not— don't take my cell phone, don't call me, don't build a relationship. They don't want to be a real person. They just want to be an internet person. And then there are people that want to be a real person, but they don't want to be online. You know, like people that go to BNI. I find like 90% of BNI members, they don't want to be on LinkedIn. They don't want to be active on LinkedIn, which is this weird, weird thing. They're like, let's meet in person from 7 AM to 9 AM. every single week for the rest of our life and never connect on LinkedIn. Like, what are we doing? That's 90% of BNI members that I meet. Either they have an unfilled out LinkedIn, that means they have very little on LinkedIn and you could just look at it. I mean, I've been looking at thousands of profiles or they're just not posting, engaging, and messaging. So I thought when I started my company, I started an AI specifically for LinkedIn called Evvy AI that helps you draft comments and write posts and organize your profiles to help make sense out of everything. And I authored a book a couple years ago called High Energy Networking with my experience teaching people how to network.

Oh, I saw that.

So like, so, so Evvy AI, the, the AI specifically for, for, you know, social media, for LinkedIn, it's a sales assistant. It helps you be able to network and prospect and build relationships by helping you draft a post. It helps you draft the comments and it helps you organize and research your network. So if I pull up your LinkedIn profile with Evvy AI, what I can do is I can put you into a list called Conversation 2026, for example.

For example.

And then once I put you into that list, I can then collect your, add your WhatsApp because it's already on your profile. So Evvy AI will automatically grab all your information. And then I can click a button.

What's Evy AI, Joe?

EvyAI.com. And then I could use 7 different powerful AI agents that will tell me everything there is to know about you. It'll tell me that you're the founder of VIP Club, an intimate vetted community of business owners designed to combat business loneliness and blah, blah, blah. It tells me your target audience, which is business owners, founders, long-term relationships, peer support, B2B experts, leaders who are interested in AI, blockchain, and blah, blah, blah. It tells me your solutions, deep networking introductions, mentoring and thought leadership, like, you know, your community curated small, high-trust membership with 7 in-person events per month plus digital engagement, blah, blah, blah. And it gives me your info. It gives me your WhatsApp number. Um, it gives me your email, uh, thomas@vip100.club. It gives me your LinkedIn. It gives me—

Can I pick up on something there, Joe?

Yeah.

The WhatsApp number.

Yeah, it's on your LinkedIn, but it's also— it picked it up from Easy Leads.

Yeah, but the WhatsApp— can I pick up on just that particular issue?

Yeah, go ahead.

So in terms of our London group, our Bit 100 in London where we meet for lunch and dinner every month, yeah, if people do not publish their WhatsApp number on their profile They do not get invited for lunch or dinner.

I love that. Have you looked at my profile to see if I have my WhatsApp number there?

I'm doing that right now.

My hands are right here, by the way. But what's interesting, we had something go— so every year, in order for me to learn how to use LinkedIn, Thomas, you know what I do? I interview the top LinkedIn influencers to figure out the ones that are teaching LinkedIn. If you're teaching LinkedIn and you're a top influencer and you get serious engagement and you're a serious player on LinkedIn, I wanna interview you in front of 1,000 people. I wanna bring 1,000 people on Zoom and I wanna interview you and 8 of your friends that are doing the same thing. Every year for the past 8 years, I've been doing that. So we just did it in February. And I asked them, what are your secrets for 2026? What are your secrets? Tell me what's going on. What do you see? What happened in January? What's gonna happen for the rest of the year? And one of the influencers who happens to be a client of mine, his name is John Keel. He went on to say that what you can do is you can add an education section to your profile, a custom education section, and put your information. You could put your email, cell phone number there, and it appears front and center on your profile. So instead of taking up real estate the way you do on your headline, you can save your headline for whatever you want. And instead of writing Crundon College, because who cares that you went to Crundon College, You can put your WhatsApp number there instead, or your cell phone, or your email, or whatever. So I wrote WhatsApp me, and I put my number there instead of my education. It says it front and center: first name, last name, headline, company, and instead of education, it says my contact info, my WhatsApp number. And I had a lead.

Do you know who taught John Key all that?

Probably you.

Yep.

Amazing, amazing. And so what? What? I just had a lead reach out to me. He said he sent me a WhatsApp message to my my number, and he sent he says Joe, I desperately. need your services. And I said, I love that you WhatsApped me. Did you find it in my about section or did you find it in my, under my logo? He's like, I found it under your logo. I would've never WhatsApped you if I didn't see it right under your logo on the top right corner of your profile. And so I said, thank you. He's like, by the way, how'd you do that? I said, we just taught it at our Influencer Summit. If you'd like the replay, it's available for sale inside our community of 1,700 LinkedIn creators. And he's like, oh my God, I'm so excited. I would love to join your community and be part of it and blah, blah, blah. So I researched you with a click of a button using Perplexity, but I can easily research you on Grok. I get conversation starters. I'd love to hear like, you know, what you're seeing inside the BIP100 around AI blockchain adoption and SME owners. Or you've talked about ORS, open, random, supportive, as a cultural framework. Or you've connected personally with tens of thousands of professionals and handpicked a few hundred for the— A few hundred. Um, what have you learned? What's the difference between a great community member from merely a successful business person? So it kind of asks me things. And if I want to find every podcast you've been on, Super.me does a good job at you verifying that it's actually you on that podcast and you have to go through it and kind of train in or whatever. We do a good job at identifying the top 10 podcasts that you've been on and then giving you conversation starters with the person that you're talking to. So that you know what to talk to them about. Because if you get on a lot of podcasts, which I'm sure you do, you get on a ton of podcasts, I want to be able to find all the podcasts, find the top 10, and then have AI watch all of them while we're talking on the phone, and then be able to pull all that information together for me front and center. So while you're talking, I can continue to define the conversation. I can continue to make sense out of the conversation. And every LLM—

Fantastic.

Oh, you like that? And every LLM has the capacity to visit different websites. For example, Grok is really good at visiting X.

You are a true super connector, Mr. Joe Apfelbaum.

Aw, you're so sweet. You're so sweet. Thank you. So if I want to see—

Let me ask you a question.

Yeah, go ahead.

Your 1,700 LinkedIn creators, how many of those are in London?

Um, so we have a map inside our school community. Let me go to the school community now and check, because I— no one ever asked me that, which is a good question. Um, they're not all networking friendly, so I'm curating the list to make, to make sure that they're all engaged LinkedIn creators. Um, right now I'm looking, there's 114 in London— in not London, but 96 in London, 114 in the United Kingdom and Ireland or whatever. If I scroll down to— oh, some of them are on top in Birmingham. I'm going down to London. I see 41. I'm scrolling deeper. Not Oxford, not Plymouth, not Bath. I'm going down. I see 36, 25. I'm going in because some of them are in Brighton. Some of them are Reading. Some of them are in Chelmsford. Um, in actual— you want like actual London, London? Um, there's like 40, 25 that are actual London, London. And if I scroll down, I can see where within London, if they're in Greenwich or if they're in, you know, Sutton or if they're in Sidcup or, you know, I'm looking at the actual map of where they physically each person are. So for example, Steve is in Upper Norwood and Shalena is, is deep downtown London, like right there. Amir Elimelech, like I could see—

What's Joe?

Yep.

Of the 114, how many do you have the WhatsApp numbers for?

I have, I don't have it organized in that way through WhatsApp. I don't, in the US, WhatsApp is not as popular as in Europe. So we're not, you know, people are not so crazy about it, about WhatsApp in general here in the US. But I, you know, and I don't have it organized that way. Um, to be able to know how many of them I have their WhatsApp. But, um, you know, I, I'm not sure. It depends on how many of them I'm actually connected to and how many of them I've actually WhatsApped. I have several WhatsApp groups. I'm also part of Mark's group. Are you part of Mark's group? The WhatsApp, the WhatsApp, the international WhatsApp group with 500 WhatsApp groups?

Yes.

So I'm sure I'm connected. I'm sure I have a lot of their WhatsApps, but I don't have a specific number of which ones I have or which ones I don't. But Evie AI does collect everybody's information. And then I could probably create a report at some point in the backend to tell me how many of them I have emails for, phone numbers for, WhatsApps and all that jazz for each person.

How come this is the first time we've ever spoken?

Because the universe connects people at the right time when it's the right time for people to connect. You know, like we're on a journey.

Good answer. So I would like to motivate you to introduce me to those people in London. Okay.

All right. I'm happy. I'm happy to connect you with people.

I'll send you some details on that.

Yeah. Yeah. And Evie AI already wrote, you know, like it's very fast at writing introductions. Like it writes a blurb. Like as soon as I save your profile, it tells me, okay, your birthday is February 13th. And then it grabs your websites, it grabs your Calendly, grabs all your information, and then it writes an introduction blurb that I can then use when I'm making introductions to you for for you to people in my network. It says include this: Thomas Powers, a seasoned entrepreneur with a dedicated community builder based in Farnham, England, as a co-founder of E. Academy, um, or something like that. eCademy and current, uh, co-leader in an exclusive BIP 100 club. He specializes in fostering meaningful connections among business owners and innovators with significant experience advising in AI, Bitcoin, and community development. He helps leaders leverage networks for sustainable growth. His insightful approach and commitment to building impactful relationships make him a respected figure in the entrepreneurial landscape. Connect with him on LinkedIn at boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I can edit it if I want. And I could add whatever else I want. So I already have your Calendly in the resources. I'd probably add your Calendly, your, you know, I'll do— I'll probably either do the Discuss VIP Club or the One-to-One Catch-Up. I'll just let them choose. I'll put the generic one over there. And then I do—

Joe, do you have a group in New York?

Um, like, uh, I'm part of something called the Executives Association of New York City. If you go to eanyc.com, we also limit it at 100. We have about Um, 80 active members that meet on a— we're gonna go have lunch now in Manhattan. So we meet for lunch 2 or 3 times a month. Um, you have to do $5 million.

Are you guys on Upper East Side or Upper West Side?

My kids live in Brooklyn. Um, I live in New Jersey. So Manhattan's right in between. So like, I don't know if you know where New Jersey is. It's right off, you know, I'm like 15 minutes from Manhattan.

Yep. Interesting. You're very interesting for me, Joe.

Oh, tell me why. It's—

well, it's possible for you to create a BIP-100 in New York.

Oh, okay. How does that typically work when people create— oh, you have BIP-100s across the world?

Well, we spent the last 8 years building it and now people want us to license it and franchise it to different cities around the world. So we're in the process of figuring out how we do that.

Amazing. I'm part of a group called the Speakeasy Mastermind. I would suggest that you look into that group. I'm going to connect you with Eric, who's, uh, opening 26 chapters. I think he has over a dozen chapters, but I think it would be worth it for you to have a conversation with him about his experience going from one chapter in San Diego to over a dozen chapters in the United States and Canada to now trying to, you know, he's about to launch 26 chapters and he's going to grow. He was a longtime Entrepreneurs Organization member. Have you heard of EO, Thomas?

Of course.

So I've been a member of EO for 15 years. I'm in their Diamond, um, I'm in their Diamond group now, which is for tenured members that have been on the board and launched chapters. And I'm traveling to Japan to meet my international group. We're meeting, uh, 3 dozen of us are meeting in Japan. We have people from country, from all the countries around the world coming. From all the major hubs.

You don't have your own group that you own?

I don't, I don't have my own group, my own formal group. So before COVID I had a meetup group with a few thousand people that I was hosting, that I was hosting events every single month in New York. It wasn't like a formal networking group. When COVID hit, that kind of completely got decimated and I kind of just went online. I do have a group called the Engaged Thought Leader Community. It's a very exclusive group. And I have my own school community and we meet 25 times a year, but it's all on Zoom. We do posting parties together. We do networking events and we have our community members host their own events inside our community as well. So I definitely have my own groups, but they're virtual now. They used to be all in person. I also ran LinkedIn Locals. All over Florida, California. I have many videos of me running LinkedIn Locals everywhere. I was very obsessed with LinkedIn and I still am. I love it. I love the platform. I love the people. I love using it authentically and the real way without trying to go viral, being very, very strategic and by curating your network properly and posting, engaging, and messaging. I have a whole framework for greeting, feeding, and meeting— recognize, strategize, and prioritize. I teach people how to create the plan, the people, and the promise. I have this whole system. Called the Evergreen Networking System.

How many people would you say you know really well in Manhattan?

When you say really well, there's different levels to really knowing somebody. There's 5 different levels of knowing people. Um, I would say I know hundreds. I always say I would know hundreds of people over the course of the past 20 years of me being in business in Manhattan. I would say in the Manhattan and surrounding areas between Brooklyn and Manhattan, all those areas, I would say I know hundreds of people. I review them.

If you were to invite people for lunch or dinner or a one-to-one, how many people would come?

Everyone that I would invite, if they're available, they would come. Meaning like, I, I can fill a room if I want to fill a room. I can fill a room. The, you know, the real question is, the real question is like, A, how much time in advance do I have? B, who's going to be in the room? Who else is going to be in the room? And How does it help? How does it benefit them? If I want to fill a room with 20, 30, 50, 100, 200 people, I can do it. But the real question is, like, you know, 200 people is too much to fill a room with. It's a lot unless I'm doing a conference or something. But I like to cap things at 44. Like, if I'm doing an event, I'd cap it at 44. I want to do an event with more than 44 people just because, like, there's a— depending on also the length of the event, if it's like a 3-day retreat, I would do like 150 people max for like a 3-day retreat. But if it's like a, a 3-hour event, I wouldn't do more than 44 people because I want to be able to say hello to everybody. And I don't think I'd be able to say hello to everyone if we had 150 people in a room. That's one of the challenges that I had in EO when it was EO New York. I would walk into a room for a 3-hour event and I would spend the entire time not even being able to say hello to everyone in the room. I would just basically just— I just found myself just everybody wanting to talk to me and then just, I would talk for 2 minutes to this guy, then get interrupted. 2 minutes for that guy and 1 minute for that guy and 30 seconds to that guy and hello, hello, hello, hello, hug, kiss, hug, kiss, hug, kiss, hug, kiss, and walk out without having any substantial conversations with anyone. Do you get what I'm saying?

Which is your favorite? Which is your favorite group, your favorite network, your favorite community of your whole career?

The executives.

You only pick one.

The Executives Association, EA. Have you heard of the Executives Association?

No. So what and who owns that?

It's a nonprofit. It's a nonprofit. There's a president that gets voted in every year. There's a new president every year that gets voted in. And there's a board. And there's a whole system. It's been around for over 100 years.

Why do you like it so much?

I like it because of the level of people that are part of it. And because a lot, there's a lot of groups out there that is not about necessarily about driving business. This group is a high-level group of business owners. Everybody's over $5 million in revenue in the group. And, you know, some people have 2,000, 3,000 employees and it's, but, but, you know, when you're meeting at that level, like let's say YPO, Or Tiger 21 or Vistage, nobody wants to talk business. Everybody wants to just connect and build relationships and just talk. They don't really want to talk about how they can refer business or do business with each other. And in this group, it's still very, very high level, but everybody wants to talk about who can I introduce you to? How can we do business together? How can you help my business? How can I help your business? And we track introductions and it's like a very a very forward-thinking organization when it comes to doing business. And we do, we say—

They are super connectors.

I wouldn't call all of them super connectors, but within the group itself, everybody wants to connect each other with everyone and trying to help each other. So I sit, I'm a moderator and I'm sitting there and there's a lot of, there's a lot of people that are connectors, but they don't really run a successful business. When I say successful, I mean a business that's doing millions of dollars in revenue. I don't mean, don't mean to say that most businesses are not successful, even though 96% of businesses never hit a million-dollar mark ever. But what I'm saying is like—

Of the 80, of the 80 in the executive network of New York, how many would you classify as super connectors like you and me?

Probably 10%. I would say 10% of the people.

Or 8.

Yeah, something like that. Most people are not, most people are not out there looking to connect in the world and make tons of intros in their life. They're looking to connect in the group because they want to receive introductions within the group and they don't want to look like a jackass. So they try to be as helpful as possible in the group. But they're like me and you, we're out in the world connecting people. We're out in the world connecting people. I walk into a grocery store and I speak to anybody and I'm like, who do you want to meet? Tell me who do you need to meet in your life for your life to become better? And they're like, I don't know. Most people are like, I don't even know. I don't even know who I need to meet. Like, leave me alone. But when you know who you need to meet—

Do you know Charlie Winton in France?

No, I don't know Charlie Winton. Who's Charlie Winton?

I'm going to connect you to Charlie Winton. Joe, of those 8 in the executive network, New York, who you consider the 10% who are the super connectors, do they adopt your principle of 1,000 introductions per year? No. Does anyone in that group of 80 follow your super connector profile of 1,000 introductions a year?

Not specifically that. People are making introductions, but they're not specifically that. They don't— they're not following that specific thing. I know people that are into that, that are, that are into specifically making lots of intros, but there aren't, there aren't You know, many of them are just not in groups. They're like so—they're so busy, and they're—they're meeting with—they're so interconnected that they—they're just not part of groups. You know David Homan?

David Homan, I think I know him. Not sure.

I'm gonna—I'm gonna introduce you to David Homan. Okay. He's the type of guy.

How many people do you know? Do you think worldwide? Not just New York, but worldwide. How many people do you think meet your? Profile criteria of 1,000 introductions a year?

Super connectors, in other words. I would say dozens of people. So you might know 100 worldwide?

Yeah. Interesting.

I certainly— I'm certainly not as organized as you are where you're like, I have 1,000 in happenstance and blah, blah, blah. Like, you have this level of organization where you know everyone. And now with artificial intelligence, I'm building software that will allow me to be able to do that properly. You know, like really be able to tag each person as a connector in my life. Like, you know, David Homan is tagged as a connector in Evvy AI. I have his cell phone, I have his email, I see all his recent posts on LinkedIn, I comment on his posts. I'm very active in that world. So, you know, I'm going to connect you with David Homan so you can get to meet him. Do you know Adam Connors?

Nope.

Adam Connors has his own group. He has his own certification called ConnectWise, NetworkWise. I'm going to connect you with Adam Connors as well.

I do recognize ConnectWise, NetworkWise. Maybe I've spoken to Adam. I'm not sure.

I'll connect you with him and then you could decide. He takes networking very, very seriously. It's like a religion for him. So he would be, he would be a good guy for you to connect to. Um, you know, there's, there's quite a—

Can I ask you a hygiene question?

In terms of like brushing my teeth?

Kind of, but nothing, nothing as personal as that. Um, my daughter is moving to New York. She's 33.

Yeah, of course.

Uh, she, she's the COO of a, of a big addiction clinic there. Okay. And would you recommend she's single? Okay. Successful. Financially independent. Would you recommend she lived on the Upper West Side or the Upper East Side?

Upper East Side. I mean, it depends. Is she Jewish?

She's not Jewish. She does work for a Jewish company.

Does she want to meet like does she want to meet? The east side is a little classier. The west side is a little friendlier, I would say. Like if she—it depends on her goal and what she's trying to do. People say the east side is is is higher class. That's that's that's the vibe that I'm getting. The west side is very very Jewish. Like if she's a young Jewish professional and wants to meet other young Jewish professionals, she has to be on the west side. But if she wants to meet people that are a little higher end and classier, that's the East Side. That's the vibe. You know what I mean?

That's such a, such a very fine difference between the two.

Yeah. I mean, you're both going to find good people and whatever, but the East Side is—

Do you have any daughters, Joe?

I have 3 daughters and 2 sons. I'm a single dad. I was married for many years.

You've got 5 children.

I do. I do.

From the same wife?

From the same wife, yes.

And you're a single dad?

Single dad. Love my kids very much. I have them very often. I'm gonna have them 4 weekends in a row. Usually we split every other weekend, but I'm gonna have them for many, many weekends, and I love it. I love spending time with them. They live with their mom. 4 of them live with their mom. One of them lives with me. And I love— I love my kids very much and I love spending time with them and they're my pride and joy. They're the thing I'm most proud of.

Wonderful. And if your daughter was asking you, should I live on the east side or the west side, which would you recommend if she was thinking about it?

For her, I would say the west side because I wanted her to meet a nice Jewish boy. But if she wasn't Jewish—

Jewish boys are on both the east and the west.

Yeah, but there's going to be more on the west than on the east. But what I would also tell her, if she wants to visit me in New Jersey, it would be easier for her the West Side than the East Side to get to New Jersey, because that's where it is. And she's more into going to Long Island and hanging in Long Island, I would say do the East Side because it'll be easier to get to Long Island. And then I would ask her her preferences. If she likes museums and she likes, you know, higher-end restaurants, go to the East Side. If she likes more like dive bars and shows, Like Broadway shows hang on the West Side. It depends on also her preferences and also, you know, what she likes doing. Either way, I'm happy to talk to your daughter and introduce her to some people here in New York that can become friends with her and have conversations with and blah blah blah. And I also—

I would really like that, Joe.

Yeah, I'm happy to do that. I'm happy to connect with your daughter and maybe even bring her for lunch to the Executives Association as my guest. To be able to be lovely, to be. And also I'll introduce her to a matchmaker, a high-end matchmaker that's in my group, who's also—I wouldn't call her a super connector—but she's very, very connected. Like everybody knows her, and this way she can also as make it for dating. Yes, yes.

Oh, well, definitely. I definitely connect you with Hannah after this call. Yeah, yeah.

I'm happy to connect with her. When was she born? What? Very kind of you. Yeah, my pleasure, Thomas. When was she born? What month?

She was born July 12th, 1992.

So that's what she has in common with my oldest daughter. They're both Cancers.

Interesting. So what, what kind of person should a Cancer be matched up with?

Well, a Cancer is a water sign. Are you familiar with astrology at all?

Yes.

So they're very, they're very flexible, but they're, they don't want— they, they want to be able to connect deeply with people. She's like, she, she's probably intelligent, more intelligent than most people.

She's quite intelligent.

Um, but she's, she's probably not a connector like you necessarily. She probably doesn't have that connector energy, although she likes to connect with people. She is not the type of person that'll be like the center of the room. She'll more probably like to watch, and she's probably pretty organized. She probably likes colorful things. That's what I find Cancers that I know like colorful things.

Yeah, she's very organized and she likes colorful things.

And they, you know, the ones that I know like music, they're introspective, and they are very hyper-aware. They can see everything and they know what's going on around them. So that's, those are the Cancers that I know.

Are you an astrologist too?

My father wanted me to be a rabbi growing up, so I have a lot of spirituality, things that are the ethereal. I'm a Scorpio myself, as you can see on my profile. So I can, I can sum up people very quickly. And, you know, I study a lot and I love learning about things that are the mystical things in the world, but I wouldn't consider myself an astrologer. I'm more of like a a professional, um, people person, I would say. I'm a people person. I love to know people, get to know people, and make a difference. I'm very curious, very creative, um, and I love to be very playful.

Your matchmaker friend in the executive network?

Yeah, her name is Julie.

Julie is, uh, What does Judy charge as a fee to make a match? Presumably like, yeah, she did $10,000, I'd imagine.

I don't think she charges to make a match per se. She has different ways that she works, but I would, I would just have, I would just have your daughter have a conversation with her. She doesn't, I don't think she charges that way. I'm not really sure about her pricing structure. Um, there's, there's, there's a whole bunch of people that, um, that I know. I'm gonna connect you, I'm gonna connect her with a bunch of people, but yes, I'm gonna I'm gonna show her who she is. Um, she might work with her, she might work with Jennifer. She has a few people on her team. Um, so I'm gonna help her. I'm gonna find out who the best person for her to chat with and connect her with the right person. And, um, and yeah.

And you are magical. You are magical.

Oh, thank you.

I'm gonna put you in— I'm gonna put you in my Happenstance post this afternoon.

Oh, you're so kind. You're so kind. Yeah. And I'm gonna make 3 introductions for you. I'm gonna introduce you to that guy Josh, who I think you'll get a kick out of when you meet Josh Cutler. Um, if you connect with me on LinkedIn, I sent you a connection request. I'll be able to connect you with you, you and Josh on LinkedIn, because that's how he likes to connect best. So we have to be connected in order to do that. So remove another Joe if you have 30,000 connections and add me.

I've done that. I've accepted that.

Okay. And so I'll, I'll connect you with Josh.

2 questions, Joe. What is the URL of the Executive Network of New York? EANYC.com. EANYC.com. And just click on that link in the chat and have a read of this Boardy competition, would you?

Okay. Let me, let me, I commented on it already, but let me quickly read it. Big news. Boardy is partnering with Deal to find the best 10 founders on the planet and pitch them when a million-dollar investment. Deal just launched The Pitch, a global competition across 7 cities with 10 winners each in their $1 million investment. Bordy has talked to thousands of founders building companies in every corner of the globe. He knows how to pitch when he— he knows a pitch when he hears one. That's why Deal asked him to help. If you're selected to pitch at one of the regional finals, Bordy will even help you workshop your pitch for the best foot forward on stage. Regional finals in Tel Aviv, March 23rd. Dubai, April 6th. Paris, April 13th. Berlin, April 20th. London, April 28th. New York, May 5th. Singapore, May 13th. See you there. Comment deal and I'll send you the application link. I'm gonna write deal.

So when you apply, Baldy calls you. And the AI interview is about 30 minutes, and it's phenomenal.

I love it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it and let my community know about it.

Yeah, worth doing just to experience the quality of the call. Amazing.

I'm not only gonna do it, I'm gonna do it and go on LinkedIn Live while I do it so my community can see.

That'd be brilliant. Yeah. And your, your, your live feed, is that feeding to your LinkedIn or to Skool?

Uh, it feeds into LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at the same time.

So our call now is live onto all of those?

Not the entire call, but since I asked you and you gave me permission, yes.

Fantastic. Yeah, fantastic.

Just 45 minutes. Yeah.

Uh, I've got another call to go on to at 1. Um, But I want to follow up with eanyc.com for my daughter Hannah and Jennifer and Julie. Yeah, I also want to. Yeah, and I'm going to connect you and David and Adam.

Yep, I'm going to connect.

I'm going to make three introductions for you of super connectors who I really like.

And I and and if if they are active on LinkedIn, that means they they are commenting on LinkedIn and they're posting on LinkedIn and they're networking as well. Those are the people that are most helpful for me, especially if they also have a community. of people that are doing that as well. Um, I'm also gonna— I'm also gonna introduce you to Eric Berman. Eric Berman, he's the Speakeasy mastermind.

Oh yes, yes please.

Remember I told you that I wanted you to learn from him from San Diego?

You're— oh yes please, I would like to speak to, uh, Eric.

Do you know a guy named Clay from H7? Do you know a guy named Clay from H7?

Clay from H7, I don't.

I'm going to introduce you to Clay, Clay Hicks from H7. I'm a member of H7. He has a community of 1,500 people that are active in that.

That's 5 introductions you're going to do, Joe. That's a lot of work.

And then there's another guy that I think you would benefit from that has a group. that, um, I'm forgetting his name right now, um, but he's, um, he has a networking— he has like a networking group that he started that was on the Inc. 500. A very successful guy. Um, he's being, you know, he's having some legal issues with some very large— I can't talk about the details of it, but he was having some legal issues because his, his networking group grew too quick. And, uh, many people from a different networking group left that networking group and went to his networking group. So there were some issues. Um, I'll let him tell you about, you know, stuff if he wants to share, but, you know, regardless, uh, I'm going to connect you with that guy as well. So there's another person that I'm not going to mention now, but I'll, I'll connect you with him.

That's 6. Um, Joe, one more question before I go. You said you had 1,700 LinkedIn creators running on in school. Yeah. Those 1,700, do you charge them a fee to be a member?

No, I don't charge them a fee to be a member, but I remove them from the group if they're not responsive and engaging. If they're not— oh, that's good. Meaning I'm—

Do you charge people a fee to use evyai.com?

We have 3 different levels. We have the no credit card required, just log in and try it out. We have the premium version, which starts at $1 a day. And then we have the pro version, which is like $5 a day or something like that. We have different, we have different plans depending on if you need training or not. For less than $2,000 a year, you can get— that's our— we call it the Bundle Plus. If you want to see it, go to thebundleplus.com, 3 words. That's our main offer, thebundleplus.com. That's basically an all-in-one. That's our best offer, which includes $10,000 worth of—

How many subscribed to the Pro?

I don't know the exact number. I don't know the exact number, but several hundred.

50, 100, 1,000? Several hundred people subscribed.

And to the premium, we have over 1,000 people there. And then we have 23,000 users in general in 40 countries around the world.

Wow. So many of those people would be ideal people to lead VIP groups in their city.

Yeah. You know, what's interesting about it is that it's interesting. It's very interesting. There are definitely people that are interested in doing things, but I'd love to talk to you about what the details are about the VIP group in general. Maybe we should schedule that. Schedule another call about that.

Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. I'm sorry, I've got to go, but I've really enjoyed this. And thank you for getting— who, who put us together? Who put us in touch?

Uh, Bordy. I think Bordy did.

Bordy put us in touch. Of course he did. So Bordy is— so Bordy's connection with Happenstance is working really well. Have you spent much time on Happenstance?

Um, I did spend time. I want to— I wouldn't say I spent a lot of time in Happenstance, but I definitely connected all my stuff and uploaded my Twitter and LinkedIn. And if I click on my connectors, you'll see I connected my, my, my Google, my LinkedIn, my Twitter. Um, I didn't do my—

How many, uh, how many connections did it pop you up as?

Um, if I— I'm not sure. I remember I seeing like, you know, 70,000 or something. I don't remember. Let me see a new note, or let me— I, I— where do, where do I, where do I go to see I'm looking to see where, where you can see that.

Um, uh, so if you go to connectors, it's down below.

Okay. I see there's 43,000, 43,200K. I have 28,000 on LinkedIn, 8,000 on Gmail, um, 2,000 on Twitter, hundreds on, on a couple hundred on Google Calendar. And let me see if I could find— and I researched you, but then I don't know what— oh, Thomas right here. Thomas. And then I don't even know how to add you as a connection on there. It says export on the top, but it doesn't give me the option to add you as a connection there.

Yeah, you have to do them, uh, you have to do them one at a time.

You have to do them one at a time. But if I want to add you, like I have you under research, And then how do I, how do I add you once I have you under research? I don't see that option there to add you.

So you see under friends? You can add under friends.

Got it. So I got an invite link or the invite email. Okay. It says you're friends. It looks like we're friends.

So you've already added me.

I already added you, but I don't know how, just because we're friends, I don't know how to message you here. It doesn't look like I could.

No, there's no messaging.

Okay, got it. There's messaging. Okay, there's no message. So, okay, I could just click on the dropdown and remove friend. There's no, there's no messaging. Okay, so Happenstance is your— Happens between the 3, Happenstance, SuperMe, and, um, and, uh, and Boardy. Which one of the 3 do you use the most? You said you speak to Boardy every day.

Uh, yeah, I'd say Boardy 1, Happenstance 2, SuperMe 3, LinkedIn Okay.

Are there any other? Okay, go. We'll talk again soon. Thank you so much. A real pleasure. All right, bye. Dude, that was incredible. That was an incredible conversation. Were you? Did you tune into that? Did you tune into that conversation? That was pretty amazing. So now I'm going to go ahead and introduce Thomas Power to all these people. And the way that I'm going to do is I'm going to copy his email address right here. And then I am going to go to my Gmail and I'm going to start writing emails for him just to make life easier. I'm just going to go to his email and I'm going to, I'm going to start with, let me see if I could show you how I do it. Okay. So here's what I do. The first step is I write introduction. By Joe Apfelbaum. And then I'm going to say, Thomas, meet, and then that's going to be the, the core, the core part of the intro. So I'm going to say, Thomas, meet X, Thomas, meet X, Thomas, meet X. And so, um, in this case, I'm going to say, Thomas, meet Clay. Okay. Thomas, meet Clay. And then what I can do is I can go in here, grab Thomas's intro from right here that I customized, and then paste in here. And then I can get, uh, Clay's, uh, intro that Evie AI created. So I'm gonna go to Clay's profile. Um, let's see if It picks up Clay's profile. I'm gonna go ahead and pick up Clay's profile. I'm gonna go like that, open Clay's card, write an intro. I'm gonna have Evie AI go ahead and write an intro for me. So it grabs his email. Add it right here. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to add Clay's introduction right after here. Pretty cool, right? Okay. Clay Hicks is CEO. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Control C. And now I just have the intro just like this. And when I press send, it'll send an intro to both of them and boom, there we go. How cool is that, that I can do something like that and connect 2 people together and that I want them to meet each other and build relationships? And then I can just do that over and over and over for each person, saving me a ton of time. Now we're going to be building that right into Evvy AI where I just select the people and hit go, and then it just sends it just to make life easier so I don't have to do this manually each time. So now I have to go here and manually do this, you see, to go here, meet, and who's the next person I want him to meet? Let's see, um, Eric Berman. So I'm gonna say Eric Berman. Um, I'm gonna close this out. I'm gonna close Clay's window here. Um, Thomas Power Networking Introduction. I'm gonna copy this like this.

Okay.

Thomas, meet Eric. I'm gonna go in here, copy this, pop it in here, and then I'm gonna go grab Eric Berman's intro. I'll pull it up in here. Here it is. And then I'm going to paste it in here. I'll grab his LinkedIn also. Um, yeah, powerful stuff. Connecting people, building relationships. So that's 2 connections that I made so far between Thomas and Eric, and then Thomas and Clay. And I'm gonna make 6 more connections. All right, looks like I have to have another call right now, but If you guys are interested in learning more about Evie AI or the Bundle Plus, go to thebundleplus.com or go to evieai.com. Thank you very much for watching this.