Joe Apfelbaum - Pathways to Influence

Embark on a journey through the professional networking wilderness with your trail guide Darren Mass and the LinkedIn sage Joe Apfelbaum, as we traverse the pivotal landscape of digital influence. We unfurl the map to achieving a standout presence on LinkedIn, revealing the artistry behind setting SMART goals, generating captivating content, and fostering robust connections. Joe's mastery sheds light on the nuances of navigating post-Microsoft acquisition LinkedIn, offering you a trove of strategies to elevate your profile and, ultimately, your business.

Let's elevate the discourse beyond the platform, shall we? Our discussion peels back the layers on the role of technology in problem-solving for entrepreneurs, with a mix of philosophical musings on life's love affair with challenges and the pitfalls of excessive positivity. Hear how a hiccup in my own LinkedIn coaching was reimagined into a cutting-edge AI venture, showcasing the transformative potential of where you cast your gaze in both life and business.

Wrapping up our expedition, we share heartfelt anecdotes of personal evolution, the intrinsic value of customer service from a CEO's perspective, and the ongoing battle against societal prejudice. As we navigate through the terrains of goal-setting and relationship building, I invite you to consider the importance of extending your reach to touch lives today, tomorrow, and beyond your lifetime. So, tune in, and let's hit the trail together for an episode that promises to arm you with the insights to forge ahead in your professional pursuits with unwavering confidence and renewed inspiration.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, joe Apfelbaum, are you okay with being recorded
on a podcast?
I am.
There goes that liability.
This is, I Took a Hike.
I'm your host.
Darren Mass, founder ofBusiness Therapy Group and
Parktime Wilderness Philosopher,here we step out of the
boardrooms and home offices andinto the great outdoors, where
the hustle of entrepreneurshipmeets the rustle of nature.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
In this episode we talk about passion and purpose
and drive Boreditude with theguru of LinkedIn creation
himself, joe Apfelbaum.
Our topics include 1000 to 1million supporting your
community, reaching for yourpotential and upping your social
game with plenty of tips andtricks.
This episode was remarkablyinspirational when I took a hike

(00:47):
with Joe Apfelbaum.
This episode is proudly broughtto you by Brand Built, a
dynamic social media networkingcommunity designed to elevate
your success.
Feeling stuck in a brand loop,your brand matters more than
ever and falling behind is notan option.

(01:08):
Join our dynamic community forexpert social media guidance,
valuable lessons, education,weekly spotlights, monthly
speakers and a robust brandbuilding network.
For more at wwwschoolcombackslash brand built.
That's S-K-O-O-Lcom backslashbrand built.

(01:28):
Join me in the chat for athriving journey to success.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Joe, would it be fair to say that you are one of the
OG LinkedIn influencers?

Speaker 3 (01:42):
When you think of the word influencer, and LinkedIn
influencer specifically, peoplethink that an influencer means
somebody that likes going viraland that has millions of
followers.
When it comes to doing realbusiness on LinkedIn, being an
influencer is about having acommunity that you influence.
It's not so much about havingmillions of followers but about

(02:05):
having the right strategy,because even if you have very
few views, but you have theright views that can translate
into business.
If your goal is doing businessand influencing the right people
, then LinkedIn is a greatplatform.
To be an influencer like thatit doesn't really take much.
One of the things I always tellpeople is the reason I love

(02:25):
LinkedIn so much is because withLinkedIn, you're able to add
many followers by just addingconnections.
You know how easy it is to adda connection.
I've been teaching LinkedIn fora decade, but I haven't
formally taught it in a courseplatform until the pandemic
started.
That's kind of when I gotstarted with that.
But yeah, I would say that I'vebeen tinkering with LinkedIn

(02:48):
for over 10 years, teaching it,showing people how to use it.
It really changed a lot in thepast five years because
Microsoft paid $26.2 billion forLinkedIn.
That's it.
That's it.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Small round-the-gear.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, people are like , oh, should I take LinkedIn
seriously?
I was like, if Microsoft istaking LinkedIn seriously one of
the biggest companies in theworld then you might want to
consider looking into why theyinvested so much money into
LinkedIn.
So that's the thought process.
What is your number one tip?
So, what's your plan?
What do you want to achievewith LinkedIn?
You want to get a job?
Do you want more clients?

(03:21):
Do you want more calls?
Do you want more followers?
Like, what are you trying toachieve?
And then, who is the targetmarket?
Who are the people?
So there's the plan who are thepeople?
Who are your ideal clients?
Who are your centers ofinfluence?
Who are the people that need tohire you?
And then number three is what'sthe promise?
What's your messaging?
So in our course, we teachpeople how to come up with their
plan.

(03:42):
We give them a framework forfinding the right people and
then we teach them how to createthe right messaging for those
people.
And that's the first tip is.
Number one is have a strategy.
If you don't have a strategy,energy without strategy is a
waste of time, and the rightstrategy will save you a decade.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
So do you think it is a good strategy to say I want
to make a lot of money on mysocial media as a strategy, or
is that just too broad.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
I think success we can define success however we
want.
If we define success as I wantto make a lot of money in a
general sense, then it's not asmart goal, it's a very.
It's a dream.
It's not really a goal, andit's nice to dream.
I want to make a lot of money,I want to be rich, I want to do
all the good fun things right,yep, yep, but you're not going

(04:34):
to be able to get there becauseyou don't know where you're
going.
If you don't know where you'regoing, you might get somewhere
else.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
I love that You're just filled with these great
nuggets.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
I got the nuggets baby, I used to have the chicken
nuggets, now I have the goldennuggets.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Hey listener, thanks for hiking along with us.
Discover more episodes atiTokaHikecom, or to recommend an
adventurous guest, apply to bea sponsor, discover books along
the trail, or to simply drop usa line.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
The second thing is and the second tip I give people
is have assets.
Like, what are your assets?
A lot of the times you get onLinkedIn and you're not sure
what to message, you're not surewhat to post, you're not sure
what to do.
If you have the right strategybut you don't have assets that
align with that strategy, thenyou're going to end up having
something called writer's block.
You're going to be lost.

(05:24):
You're going to have theparalysis of analysis.
Paralysis of analysis.
Let's stop analyzing and createsome assets.
We teach people how to come upwith their stories.
We teach them how to improvetheir presence.
Then we teach them how to usetools.
Like we have an AI tool calledEVI.
We teach them how to use thattool to create a persona within

(05:47):
it and then use that tool tocreate content that's relevant
and, having tons of differenttypes of assets, to create
direct messages that arerelevant, so that you always
have direct messages ready to goTo enable you to comment.
All those are assets.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
What do you think leveraging AI is cheating.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
I think that leveraging technology can be
seen as cheating, but is using adrone cheating?
Let's go get a crane, because adrone is cheating.
What Using an airplane ischeating.
Let's take a bicycle toCalifornia.
Think about that for a second.
It's cheating.
Of course it's cheating.

(06:25):
It's cheating, but who makesthe rules?
Cheating is only if there's aset of rules and you're breaking
the rules.
Entrepreneurship is cheating.
You should be having a job.
That's cheating the system.
Being able to becomefinancially free and wealthy and
successful is the cheat code togetting where you want to go.

(06:45):
Some people are going to belike it's not fair.
You have an unfair advantage.
That's how you win.
You want to win, follow therules, but you get to create the
rules yourself.
With AI, the rules are train it.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Train the AI.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
You have to be the conductor of the AI.
You have to because AI makesthings up.
Ai doesn't know better, it'sjust a computer.
Computers are not that smart.
It's artificial intelligence,not real intelligence, not
creative intelligence.
We have infinite intelligenceinside us, but we could leverage
artificial intelligence inorder for us to have an unfair
advantage, in order for it toseem like we're cheating, but

(07:28):
we're not really cheating.
What we're doing is we're beingsmart.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
So do you think I'm going to go off the deep end for
a second?
Do you think we should fear themachines?
Do you think there will be aSkynet Terminator type of
scenario?

Speaker 3 (07:43):
I think we should fear people that use the
machines if we don't know how touse it.
Meaning yes, fear yourcompetitors if you don't know
how to use AI and they know howto use it because they will have
an unfair advantage.
So you need to learn how to useartificial intelligence.
In our new AI course, weessentially walk people through
the 20 technologies they need toknow in order to have an unfair

(08:05):
advantage against theircompetitors.
At the end of the day, there's10,000 technologies.
You don't need to know all ofthem to have a competitive
advantage.
You need to master one.
Start with mastering one, butthen have one for the different
things you need to do.
For example, you need to writecontent.
Have one that helps you writecontent.
You need to write scripts.
Have one that helps you writescripts or edit videos.

(08:27):
Have one that will help youclone your voice.
Have one that will help youcreate graphic design or
presentations.
Have one that will help youtranscribe content and summarize
meetings and be the best of it.
And just learn to use one toolfor each problem that you need
to solve in your business.
That will save you time inmaking money and then you're
much more likely to besuccessful, because now you have

(08:51):
an arsenal of tools, okay.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Do you love your life ?
I love my life.
Would you change?

Speaker 3 (08:58):
anything.
I'm constantly evolving, I'mconstantly improving.
I'm constantly looking for waysto transform more than change,
because the more things change,the more they stay the same.
So I'm always looking toimprove.
I have very specific goals andI know that wherever I am right

(09:18):
now is exactly where I need tobe to get to the next level of
success.
So many people resent wherethey are, and resentment is the
poison that you drink, hopingthat other people will die.
So you got to let go of that.
You got to stop eating somebodyelse's poison.
Let go of it, accept the moment, go on a hike and let the fears
take a hike.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
So I love that because you and to be fair to
all my guests see theopportunity in taking a hike in
nature and just seize it.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
Seize the opportunity to take a hike in nature, get
really, really clear about whatyou want in life and then go
after it.
And if you're busy thinkingabout what would I change?
What are my regrets?
What are the things that arenot working in my life?
That's where the focus goes.
Where focus goes, energy flows.
So if you want to be successfuland you have a goal and you
want to achieve it, you got tofocus on how you want to

(10:12):
transform to get to that goal,not what you can change about
your life, because if morethings change, the more they
stay the same.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
I think you have probably the same amount of
taglines and cliches as I do, soI love it.
I teach my kids when they're,or I taught my kids when they
were starting out to ride a bike.
Where your eyeballs look, yousteer.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yeah, like the racing cars, they train you to look
where you want to go.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Right, or if you're not looking at the golf ball
when you're down right.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
Keep your eye on the ball.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
That's right.
So the same thing in our mentalcapacity, same thing in our
professional success or whateversuccess that is, if you're
thinking about head trash, trashis going to be your outcome
Exactly.
If you're thinking positive,then you're going to reap the
positive rewards.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
But not like at the end of the day.
There's a concept called toxicpositivity, where you could not
look at reality and always justthink positive, think positive,
think positive.
Meanwhile you're in quicksandRose-colored glasses.
So you got to look at reality.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
You got to have the balance.
You got to have the money afterbad and make some mistakes.
So there has to be the yin andyang of balance.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
You got to have the yin and yang and know where your
reality is.
At the same time, look at thepositive and find the
opportunity, and it begins withasking the right questions.
A lot of people ask thefollowing question.
They say why me?
Why does this always have tohappen to me?
And what I say instead is howgreat is this?

(11:43):
What's great about this?
When an opportunity strikes,sometimes it comes as skies, as
pain.
Sometimes it comes as skies asa problem.
But I don't look at problems asproblems.
I look at problems asopportunities, because every
single problem that you have isan opportunity in disguise.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
That's what I truly believe Every problem should
have a solution and if you'rewise enough to find your
solution, you can see through it.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Or sometimes you don't even need a solution.
You got to just look at theproblem from a different angle
and realize that, hey, this isnot actually a problem, this is
the solution.
Not that the problem is asolution, but the fact that
there's a problem is a solution.
I'll give you an example.
I had a huge problem in mytraining business.
I trained over a thousandclients to learn how to use

(12:28):
LinkedIn over three years.
Very successful, helped a lotof people.
But there were many people thatsimply don't have the time to
do LinkedIn properly and, as aresult of that, maybe they don't
want to continue with LinkedIntraining, maybe they don't want
to keep spending and investingin that.
So how am I going to grow thebusiness if I can't build up
that reoccurring revenue becausepeople just simply don't have

(12:49):
the time?
Big problem, right.
And I could say, okay, well,I'm not doing LinkedIn training
anymore because people don'thave the time.
But instead I said, oh, peopledon't have the time, that's a
great problem, because now I canbuild an artificial
intelligence tool where peopledon't need the time and the fact
that they have this problem.
That was my problem before.

(13:10):
Now this problem is mycompetitive advantage.
Now this problem is my nextbusiness.
Your Clients problems, yourbiggest problems are your next
business, the bigger the problem, the bigger the business.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
So I like it.
So you find a problem and youfind a solution to it, and
that's essentially every greatinvention that has ever existed
has been a solution to a problem.
Yeah, we had plaque on ourteeth and we had what was called
the skin on our teeth Right.
So somebody said, huh, I'mgoing to figure out a way to
brush that off.
At first it was a twig, then itbecame bore bristles and then
eventually Colgate, or Mr Crestor Mr Orbit.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
And now it's oil pulling with coconut oil.
Whatever, it is Full circle.
We can't full circle.
Back to the natural habitat.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
This is what human beings do.
We take it, we feel like wehave to fix things that need to
be fixed, even though theydidn't really need to be fixed
in the first place.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
That's why I said the problem is the solution yeah,
Electric toothbrushes.
They don't do anythingdifferent Right, but we were
marketed to and we buy them.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
We buy them because someone saw a problem and they
said I'm too lazy to manuallybrush my teeth, so let me turn
on an electric toothbrush with19,000 pulses.
Yeah, not realizing I had oneof those for a while not
realizing that you are actuallybrushing your teeth the same way
with manual.
Only now it's powered.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Using less energy.
All right, so step back alittle bit.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Did you set out to be this guru of LinkedIn, or it
just happened organically?

Speaker 3 (14:39):
I did not set out to be a guru.
As a matter of fact, when Istarted my business, I had this
like thought in my head like whoam I?
Who am I to teach people?
I'm just a doer.
I'm just like a problem solver,a fixer.
I don't teach anybody anything.
I was actually afraid of publicspeaking.
Like if you asked me to speak15 years ago and go on a hike, I
would say take a hike, Ibelieve it.
I would not do it, absolutelynot.

(15:00):
And the reason is because Ididn't know myself.
I didn't know who I was, Ididn't know my power, I didn't
realize how much of an expert Iam, because the more you know,
the more you know how much youdon't know.
Okay, the bigger the expert,the bigger you realize how dumb
you are and how you know nothing.
The more you know about theworld, the more you realize how
small you are and how little youknow and how much more there is

(15:23):
to know.
Like if you didn't even knowSEO existed, you wouldn't even
know it existed.
But if you know SEO exists andyou start looking into it, you
realize, oh my God, there's 500different parts of the to the
Google algorithm.
That's crazy.
I have so much more to learn,and so I just became like this
learner.
I just wanted to learninformation about everything
that I can get my hands of whenit relates to business, growth

(15:44):
and marketing andentrepreneurship.
And then what happened was is Idiscovered LinkedIn.
I discovered that LinkedIn isan extremely powerful platform
where people are doing thefollowing On Instagram, people
put a handle what's your handleon Instagram, mine's at Joe
Applebaum what's yours?
I took a hike podcast.
I took a hike podcast.
It's perfect.
I took a hike podcast onInstagram.

(16:05):
Guys, by the way, if you'relistening to this, follow his
Instagram account.
They're organic, the way Ithrew that in there.
The thing is about Instagram isI don't know who you are by
going to your Instagram page.
I don't know your first name.
I don't know your last name.
What was your handle?
Again, I took a hike podcast Idon't want to connect with.
I took a hike podcast.
I don't even know who it is,but I want to connect with
Darren.
I want to get to know him, Iwant to build a relationship and

(16:26):
on LinkedIn, I can see yourfirst name, your last name, your
company name, where you work,what you've done, every single
post that you have every commentthat you left all our mutual
connections where you went toschool.
Like, I know a lot aboutsomebody when I go on LinkedIn.
So I'm able to build a muchdeeper, more meaningful
relationship on LinkedIn, andthat's why I'm so gung-ho on
LinkedIn and that's what Idiscovered many, many years ago

(16:47):
that LinkedIn gives meinformation as a marketer, as a
networker, as a relationshipperson that allows me to be able
to connect in a deeper way.
So, joe, what are youpassionate about?
I am passionate about helpinghungry entrepreneurs go from
frustration to motivation.
I want to help 1000 hungryentrepreneurs be able to take
their life to the next level.
Today, I'm doing that throughmy artificial intelligence tool

(17:11):
called EVI AI, where I enablepeople to have a voice on
LinkedIn using artificialintelligence.
This tool that we developedactually has 2000 people
globally using it right now.
My vision is really to help1000 people use it every single
day, but my bigger vision is toenable a million people on
LinkedIn to be able to use AIwith their voice properly.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
I like how you caught me there.
I slipped and you caught me.
That's what I do?

Speaker 3 (17:37):
I got five kids.
I got to catch people when theyfall, so you have reflexes like
a catch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm likeSpider-Man when it comes to that
Exactly, we don't look like itbut the webs can come out.
The webs can definitely comeout.
So, yeah, so that's my thing islike.
My passion is really being ableto find solutions to other
people's problems, especiallywhen it comes to business.
I'm very passionate aboutentrepreneurship, and the reason

(17:59):
I'm passionate about it isbecause I watched my mother try
to build her store in the LowerEast Side for literally a decade
and eventually she went out ofbusiness.
What was the store?
It was a women's clothing storeon the Lower East Side, on
Orchard Street and DelanceyStreet, and Gus Pickles were
right there.
Right around the corner.
It was guys that used to go toGus's Pickles all the time.

(18:20):
I love Gus's Pickles.
Shallow and Pito is a kosherpizza shop right around the
corner.
Yeah, so I grew up there, yeah,watching them Cats and Russ and
daughters all that, yeah,exactly.
And Gertels Bakery was rightaround the corner from Gus, and
so I grew up watching themstruggle, trying to make a
living.
And when I built my business,ajax Union, when I started 15
years ago, within three years wewere number 178 on the Inc 500.

(18:42):
Then it was the Inc 500.
Now it's the Inc 5000.
We were one of the fastestgrowing companies in America.
And if I look back at what Idid differently than what my
mother did, it was I had astrategy.
I had the plan, the people, thepromise.
I had that laid out for myself.
And now I have a strategy forEVAI to be able to impact so
many more people.
And that's what it's about forme.
It's about the impact I canmake in someone's life.

(19:03):
A woman messaged me on LinkedInyesterday and she said Joe, my
EVAI stopped working, I can'tlog in.
I went to her LinkedIn, got hercell phone number, picked up
the phone and called her ateight o'clock at night.
She picked up and she's likehello.
I'm like this is Joe Appelbaum,founder of EVAI.
I was like I heard you have anissue.
You messaged me on LinkedIn.
She's like no, my issue gotresolved, but you called me.

(19:25):
It's like the CEO of Googlecalling me.
I'm like or not Google, butyou're one of our first hundred
customers, one of our firsthundred premium members.
I want to show you respect.
And she's like I'm going totell the whole world about this
tool, because this tool ischanging my life.
I'm able to post, I'm able tocomment, I'm able to direct
message all with artificialintelligence and it drafts it

(19:47):
all for me, never, automatesanything.
So I was like you know what?
Thank you for saying that.
Do you mind leaving us a fivestar review on the Google Chrome
store?
And she's like I'm going to dothat right now.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
I love the ask, so there is an important learning
lesson in what you just said andI work with a lot of CEOs that
they seem to miss this pointwhere they graduate away from it
.
The thing that made you sosuccessful as a CEO is your
ability to be the one who hasthe most to gain, most to lose.
In it, you accepted risks.
That means you had to shakehands, kiss babies and talk to

(20:16):
every single customer.
You were the top salesperson inyour world, 100%.
Eventually, when you becomevery successful as a CEO, you
hire people to do that and youstep away from that approach.
In fact, you begin to pushyourself away from wanting to
interact with customers, andthat's where I will pull you
back and say no, you are theperson that has the most to gain
, most to lose, and you shouldabsolutely be willing to pick up

(20:38):
the phone and call a customerto either just randomly check in
or to follow up when there's anissue.
Because what you did rightthere you appear like the CEO of
the universe to your customer.
They were mystified by it, butyou created a lasting impression
that will transcend just thatphone call.
What will end up happening isthis individual is going to

(21:00):
shout it from the rooftops ofhow great you are.
Give you the five-star reviewthat you asked for.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
They are your biggest fan and they're paying less
than a dollar a day and itdoesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
That's the point because you could only care.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Thank, you Right, but it's all has to do with your
passion.
If you're not passionate aboutyour company, we're talking
about passion.
I'm so passionate about helpingpeople.
If someone has a problem andthey tell me their problem, I am
so dedicated to finding asolution to that problem,
whether it's building technology, making an introduction,
recommending a book it doesn'thave to be my book.

(21:32):
I published five books.
It doesn't have to be one of mybooks.
I recommend hundreds of otherpeople's books and I love doing
that because when I I alwaystell these people, when I teach
them about networking, I say,when I solve a problem for you
in your life, if I recommend abook for you, you will forever
thank me for the lessons thatyou learned from the book that I

(21:56):
didn't even write because Irecommended that book.
So the value that you get frommy recommendations are all
attributed to me.
There's a book called theMiracle Morning by Hal Elrod.
Have you heard of it?
I have not.
A lot of people are nightpeople, night owls, and they
want to become a morning person,and in that book I kind of
learned that there's no likemorning person or night owl.
It's all a matter of likeroutine.
When you wake up right.

(22:16):
You need a certain amount ofhours, a certain amount of sleep
cycles.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
I'd like to explain that to my wife, by the way, who
is from California originallyand is convinced that she's
always on California time.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
If someone's convinced about something, I try
not to convince them and trynot to change them.
I tried that with my ex-wife.
It didn't work, hence she's myex-wife now.
But you know only good thingsto say about everyone in my life
.
I love all the people in mylife, but I believe that if
someone has a conviction, whichis a strong belief, even if you
show them that the world isround and you show them the

(22:45):
truth and you show them pictures, they're not going to believe
it.
Do you know?

Speaker 1 (22:47):
there are more flat earthers today than there was in
Christopher Columbus's day.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
Because there are more people today than there was
then.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
The economies of scale.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
Think about how many billions of idiots there are now
.
Compared to then, there wereonly a few idiots.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
That is the sad reality that sometimes the idiot
has the loudest megaphone.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
Especially on Tiktok.
That's why I love LinkedIn,because on LinkedIn, people are
afraid to start spewingstupidity, because it represents
them and their career.
When it comes to business,people are much more
conservative and that's why it'salso harder to get engagement
on LinkedIn.
But if you use the strategiesthat are popular, there are ways
to do it.
There are ways to get dozens oflikes and comments and build a

(23:29):
real community, and it has to dowith your strategy Because,
like I said earlier, the rightstrategy will save you a decade,
and that's what I'm passionateabout is helping people come up
with a solid strategy.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
I think when it comes to LinkedIn, you have to be
willing to put yourself outthere.
You have to be willing to bevulnerable.
Absolutely, be honest.
Do not come across salesy.
Be willing to help others andinspire and just by nature of
that, people will align with you.
It is not about the amount offollowers or connections.
It is about the quality of yourmessage and you will eventually

(24:00):
get rewarded.
But you have to be willing toshare on others' posts so you
find yourself a community, not apod Pods.
To me, it's a big thing now.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
If they're there just to game the system, it's not
going to work long term.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yeah, if you're there with a bunch of people that
you're in a networking group sothey say, yeah, we'll all
comment and like your stuff up,that's not authentic, that's not
genuine and people will seethrough that.
But if you find five to tenpeople that post regularly and
you align with their message andyou further their message in
the comments share, reshare whathave you it will pay you back

(24:37):
in the long run because you'llalso have a deeper sense of
purpose.
Yeah, sure, I found that withmy own posting.
Community creates purpose.
There is a community.
So I think that's a very wellrounded message there.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
There's a question I asked my clients do you know
your connections?
A lot of people are hoardingconnections.
If you're hoarding connections,the likelihood of you being
successful on LinkedIn is low,because you can hoard 30,000
connections.
It's useless.
What you want to do instead ofhoarding connections is build
relationships.
That means read someone'sprofile.
Rai will take someone's profileand create a bullet point
summary for you in about tenseconds so that you have bullet

(25:11):
points of who the person is,because it does take a few
minutes to read a profile, butit takes a few seconds to read a
summary.
That is right, and so that'skind of like one of the features
that we have over there to makejust again, just to solve
problems, for people, to makelife easier.
And, by the way, this stuff isavailable for free for people to
try out, so I encourage peopleto kind of check that out for
free.
I love adding free value.
Like you said earlier, freevalue, add value to other

(25:33):
people's lives.
I'm always teaching.
I've posted on LinkedIn over5,000 times and this is what I
want to tell people If you don'thave exposure, it's because
you're not exposing yourself.
Now, in the woods, nobody'sgoing to know.
If we expose ourselves becausethere are no followers, there's
no one behind us.
So you need to add connections.
You need to add the rightconnections.
It's easy to get followers onLinkedIn because every

(25:54):
connection becomes a follower.
But you need to expose yourself, which means start posting,
start engaging, start messaging.
Do it strategically and if youdo it consistently and
strategically, you're going toget results.
You're going to getconversations and some people
say, oh Joe, does LinkedIn work?
I say does networking work?
Does relationship building work?
If you don't believe thatnetworking works, a lot of

(26:16):
people don't.
A lot of people thinknetworking is a waste of time
and it's because they have afear.
90% of people are afraid ofpublic speaking and networking
is a form of public speaking.
So if you can overcome thatfear of yourself, of presenting
yourself to the world, thenyou're able to build those
relationships, then you're ableto grow your business and then

(26:36):
you'll want to make thoseauthentic connections.
A lot of people don't want toconnect authentically because
they don't love themselves Well,so you struck many great points
there.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
One overcoming fears is the marker of very successful
people.
Every successful person has hada fear, whether it was public
speaking, networking or justputting themselves out there and
networking.
Every successful salespersonhas mastered networking.
You cannot be great at sales ifyou cannot communicate and
network with a potentialaudience.
We're accustomed, so they'vehad fear right.

(27:08):
Like you, I don't like publicspeaking, but I forced myself to
do it.
I was the CEO of a company.
It was a requirement for thejob, and after you do that you
practice enough you then getgreat at something.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
Tony Robbins.
I watched Tony Robbins.
Are you familiar with TonyRobbins?
Of course.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
I watched him speak and he said Every once in a
while I'll play the humble.
No, please tell me.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
But of course I know Tony.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Robbins.
Wasn't he the awesome characterin Shallow Hell?

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Well, if he was.
But yes, tony Robbins is one ofthe world's greatest
professional speakers Very, verysuccessful.
Some people say he's the mostsuccessful professional speaker
in the world.
And one of the things thatreally struck me that he said is
like when he started early on,he was basically homeless.
He was living out of his car,blah, blah, blah that whole sob

(28:00):
story that people give whenthey're trying to sell
motivational stuff.
And he met this guy named JimRohn that was doing personal
development seminars.
And Jim said hey, why don't youfill my seminars and I'll give
you a commission on everyonethat you fill.
And he started listening to JimRohn's seminars and eventually
filling his seminars.
And he said you know what?
I want to start doing speakingengagements myself.
He said the average speakermaybe does one engagement a week

(28:24):
if they hustle.
He said I'm going to do threeengagements a day.
Practice, even if it's at aDenny's restaurant, even if it's
at a Denny's restaurant, evenif, nowadays, even if it's on
Facebook Live or whatever, or onLinkedIn Live.
He became a subway musician.
If you are not putting in thework, you're not going to get
good.
The better.
The more work you put into it,the better you get at it.

(28:46):
You still need the rightstrategy, because energy without
strategy is a waste of time.
So have a coach, have someoneto guide you to make sure you're
taking the right actions.
But let me tell you somethingthere's no way to learn faster
than by doing that's.
That's exactly right.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
And Tony is a classic example of someone who had
fears, uncertainties and doubtsand pushed past it.
If you look at him as aphysical human, he has gigantism
.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Yeah, he keeps growing, even till today in the
sixties, he's growing.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Lots of insecurity, loads of insecurities, but he
had to push past that and it wasthat, those insecurities, that
created fear.
But it was that desire to pushpast it which created the larger
than life character he is.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
He calls it hunger.
Yes, he has this like hunger.
Not everybody has hunger.
If you're not hungry, then youare dying.
I went to Alaska, talking aboutdoing a hike.
I went to Alaska and I watchedthe salmon come back to the
place where they were spawned.
Initially Talking about beers.
There's beers out over here,where we are Actually.

(29:47):
There's here, yes, and so thefish.
When do the fish die?
When do the salmon die?
The salmon don't just die.
The salmon die when they stopeating.
They literally become zombiefish.
I don't know if you know this.
Did you know that salmon stopeating?
They become zombie fish andthey allow themselves to die.
And then the beers come andthey eat all the dead salmon.
That basically just decidedthat their life is over and they

(30:08):
stopped eating.
Well, their purpose was to laythe eggs upstream and then come
back to where they were born andthen boom and then just stop
eating.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
So if you lose your hunger if you lose your hunger,
you're dead.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
That's my point.
My point is if you lose yourhunger, you've got to have the
hunger.
And what creates the hunger?
Excitement and passion.
If you can find your passion,if you can create that
excitement, you're going to lovewhat you do.
And if you love what you do,they say, you never live the day
and never worked a day in yourlife if you love what you do.
But for me it's a level deeper.
It's not just loving what youdo, it's loving how you do it as

(30:40):
well.
Like I'm here doing a hike.
I'm not just loving this hike,I'm not just loving this podcast
, I'm loving how I'm doing it aswell.
Isn't that interesting?

Speaker 1 (30:48):
So you were on this hike because I stopped being
hungry.
I lost my way.
After I saw my business, Ichecked off a whole bunch of
boxes that anyone would want tocheck off, and that was it.
I thought I did it.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
You made it, I made it.
You got to the top of thesummit.
You're like I got enough moneyto feed my kids for the rest of
my life.
What am I going to do now?

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Check off a whole bunch of don'ts.
But then I realized, when thehunger was gone, so was my
relevancy, passion and purpose.
And then I went on a hike.
Someone took me on a hike it'smy brother and I realized, oh, I
got to be hiking.
And then I had a conversationwith someone like you,
inspirational, motivational, andthat is what sparked that fire
in my belly again to realize thegoal that you set needs to be

(31:30):
reset constantly.
Because, when you finish thatrace.
Usain Bolt needed another race,yeah, otherwise you start dying
quicker.
Yeah, you die on the inside.
So, joe, what is yourdefinition?

Speaker 3 (31:43):
of success.
I believe that success has todo with setting a goal and then
achieving it.
I think that money is a metric.
Money is definitely a metricthat can tell you if you're
getting closer to your goal ornot getting closer to your goal.
The goal can't be the metric.
It's like if you're looking atthe gas tank and it says the gas
tank is, like you know, halffull, half empty.
Is that the metric?
Is your speedometer the metric?
The speedometer tells you ifyou're within the limit or not.

(32:05):
Within the limit Is how manymiles you went.
Is that the metric or is themetric the journey?
Is the metric the point or isthe journey the point?
The metric can't be the journey.
The metric can't be the thingthat you're doing for the metric
.
If you're just doing it for thenumbers, if you're just doing
it for success, just to make acouple dollars, you're

(32:26):
ultimately not going to be happy.
But setting a goal and settingthe right goal is really, really
key.
So for me, making sure that Iset goals in the different areas
of my life, I always say setgoals to your roles.
What are the different rolesyou have in your life?
Father, right, you said father,husband, father's number one,
father's number one, husbandSome people say husband's number
one Okay, father, husband,community leader, a podcast host

(32:49):
, business owner, whateveryou're, a coach, whatever you do
there are different roles thatyou have in your life.
But there's a role that a lotof people miss out, that they
don't set goals aligned with therole of self.
They say, oh, father's the mostimportant thing, or they say
husband's the most importantthing, or CEO's the most
important thing, but they forgetthat self is a role too.
Self is, I believe, the mostimportant role that we need to

(33:11):
set goals to, and sometimes wekind of overlook that and we
don't set goals.
And those goals need to notjust be aligned with metrics
Metrics are a key performanceindicator but also about feeling
, thinking, about the ontologyof life, of like you're thinking
about, like, how do youexperience life?

(33:31):
Like, if you look around rightnow, with this beautiful,
beautiful view that we'rewatching here, we're
experiencing, if we're trying toaccomplish something by what
we're experiencing, we're nolonger experiencing.
You are in my office.
This is our work day, right now.
Success here is being presentand being now.
Success ultimately, fordifferent roles are related to

(33:53):
ego, are related to roles.
For that there are metrics thatyou can measure, but there's
different ways to measuresuccess.
I think the balance ofunderstanding, experience versus
action, versus doing and justexperiencing and being able to
kind of have the experiencewhile you're climbing and
getting closer to your moneygoal or to your health goal or

(34:14):
to your relationship goals, Ithink that that's where it's at.
I think there's a book I calledHigh Energy Purpose and I talk
about there's an internalpurpose and there's an external
purpose.
The internal purpose is aboutbeing present.
The external purpose is aboutunderstanding what your goals
are and going to achieve them.
Money's not a bad thing.
Money's just a tool.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
It is not evil.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
If you just focus on the tool, it's not evil.
If you believe it's evil, itbecomes evil.
What you believe aboutsomething, that's what it
becomes.
For me, I'm very into being inthe journey and looking at the
metrics and knowing where we'reat.
Looking at the indicators,looking at life surrounding
yourself.
I have so many things that Ineed to be doing right now, but

(34:55):
I'm right here in the moment.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Well, that's why we hike, because you're not in a
studio wondering where the nextcall's going to be or what time
you have to be here or there.
You are on a mountain with me,you are present and we're
getting a more authentic versionof you, a more open and honest
version of you.
I want to touch on the pointthat you basically said love for
oneself, care for oneself.
That's the reason why self isat the top of my star.

(35:17):
It's not selfish.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
Self is at the top of the shelf we're coming up with
cheesy taglines everywhereBecause it's Christmas guys.
It's like the shelf and the elfand the shelf.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
We're the bench on the bench, the bench on the
bench.
There you go.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
Let me pivot this.
Do you believe that you aresuccessful?
I believe that I've had a lotof success in my life because
I've achieved a lot of goalsthat I've set.
I believe that I have many moregoals that I'd like to achieve.
I believe that I have beensuccessful and I continue to be
successful because I'm notwilling to give up.
Failure is not the ultimatefailure.
Failure is the path to success.

(35:51):
You have to fail.
You have to fall before youwalk.
You have to fall before you run.
That's just what it is.
If I quit, then I failed, thenI have not been successful.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Well, quitting is misunderstood too.
It is okay to quit.
I quit a job to start a company.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
But you didn't quit a job, I didn't quit a life.
You quit your misery.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Well, I wasn't miserable, but I still have an
opportunity.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
If your goal was to have a job and you quit your job
, then you quit your ability tohave success.
Because you quit and you gaveup on it and now you're just
doing what you're doing inCalifornia and Venice Beach
living in a tent You're like, ah, quit, you could be successful
for somebody Exactly, I could betheir successful KPI Most of
the people that are there arehaving mental health issues.
This is true in Venice Beach.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
I like how you phrased that Quitting is okay,
but if you quit your goals,that's the failure.
That's the failure.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
But failure is good.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
I love.
I embrace failure.
Every time I failed, I'velearned Every time you failed,
if you chose to turn it into alesson you learned you avoided
falling on the bike or making aleft turn down a dead end.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
There's always going to be somebody else that's more
successful than you.
So the concept of are yousuccessful?
Are you not successful?
If you look back five years agoand you look back and you
progressed from where you werefive years ago to where you are
today and you are satisfied withthat progression, and then you
look forward another five yearsand then you see where you want
to go very clearly and you havea clear vision and you will have

(37:10):
a plan for progressing towardsthat, then I believe that you
are a successful person.
Love that Because you set yourgoals, you achieve them and
you're looking forward to new,bigger goals.
I have a big, herioticious goalI want to help a million people
on LinkedIn.
It is a big goal.
That's a big, big goal.
That's a huge, huge goal.
Is it attainable?
I believe that there's no goalthat is too big, only a timeline

(37:30):
that is too small.
I heard Jim Rohn said that andI really, really believe that.
The reason I believe that isbecause my goal doesn't need to
be fulfilled in my lifetime.
My kids can take it over, but Ibelieve that it will be
fulfilled in my lifetime.
I believe that I'll be able toimpact a million people very
deeply, because there's rightnow a billion people on LinkedIn
.
That's one tenth of one percentof people and there's 60

(37:52):
million people logging in everyday for more than 17 minutes a
day.
Amazing, if I can impact amillion people somehow, and the
way that I'm going to do it isvery clear I'm going to help a
thousand people.
Help a thousand people Athousand times a thousand is how
much.
Let's do the math.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
That's a million.
That's a million.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
Right.
Ten times a thousand is tenthousand.
A hundred times a thousand is ahundred thousand.
A thousand times a thousand isten times that which is a
million.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
So you've got to get to a hundred thousand.
I learned that from Tora.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
I learned that from Tora.
Tora never talks about amillion.
When it talks about a million,it says a thousand thousand.
If you go to the Tora and youlook up the word a million that
doesn't exist it says a thousandthousand.
So I was like you know whatthat's a million?
How do you really impact people?
It's a thousand people.
You impact a thousand people.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
There's a guiding I want you to impact a hundred
thousand, because a hundredthousand, a hundred, well, I
don't think that's possible,right, but that's a billion,
that's a billion.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
But I don't need to go to the billion, because
that's how many people are onLinkedIn period and only 60
million are active anyway, thatare logging in every day for 17
minutes a day.
So if I can make a differencefor a million people, I think
that that's fine by me.
That's my goal.
Now some other people want tomake an impact for a billion.
That's okay.
Soon there's going to be 10billion people in the world,
mcdonald's aren't that goal andI'm okay with that, and they did
what they needed to do.
But for me it's about knowingwhat I want to do and so I know

(39:04):
that I can hit it.
There's the rule of a thousandfans.
Have you heard of that rule?
I have not.
Kevin Kelly in Wired Magazinewrote an article called the
Thousand Fans Rule.
If you can get a thousandpeople to become your loyal fans
, you have a business.
So he's like a thousand, athousand is not a big deal.
How many connections do youhave?
12,000 connections.
Do you know a thousand of them?
Did you go through all 12,000?
I actually do.

(39:25):
Right, because the originalhalf.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
The base half was in my industry and these are people
.
Well, back in the earlyLinkedIn days, you had to know
someone to really connect withthem, do you?
Really know this person?
Yeah, but the human brain capsoff right around there with the
amount of connections you've got.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Well there's something called the Dunbar Law.
I don't know if you ever heardof Robin Dunbar.
The Dunbar Law states that theaverage person can only have 150
relationships at any one giventime in their life, but that
doesn't mean that you can't havemore.
You can have many more than 150relationships Just at any given
one time.
Your brain can't really holdmore than 150 people in as
inputs in close contact.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
You can't remember their names, their kids' names.
There are companies that haveactually really worked with
Dunbar's thinking.
Robin Dunbar Amazing, they haveopened up offices that have
capped out at 150 employees.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
Think about how the Army works yes.
Think about how the policedepartments work yes.
Think about how B&I works.
Have you ever studied B&I?
I haven't studied it, but I amvery familiar with B&I.
So B&I stands for BusinessNetwork International, the
world's largest professionalnetworking organization.
They have over 300,000 membersglobally of people that want to
network with each other andbuild relationships, and I

(40:36):
actually got access to take alook at their membership.
You know I have some reallygood connections networking-wise
and I took a look at theirmembership and I realized that
they break up chapters andregions in small little chunks.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yes, Because you become a family in a way and you
really get engaged, and thenthey also make sure that there's
no competition in those groups.
So there's one accountant, nottwo, not three, not ten, that's
in those groups.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
But even in like regions they break their regions
down in manageable numbers.
Have you heard of theEntrepreneurs' Organization?
I have EOS.
I was a member of EOS for many,many years.
I was on their board and one ofthe things that I noticed is
that chapters really cap outaround 200 to 250.
It's very hard to get a chapterpast 200 sustainably.

(41:23):
Some of them do it, but most ofthe time it's like 150 that
range, because that's whenthings start breaking down.
But you lose people.
You lose people, you lose thesocial connection.
If you want to build acommunity, I would say, go for a
max of 250 people in yourcommunity.
But if you really want to buildsomething robust, you know,

(41:44):
build four groups of 250.
Build five or six groups of 150.
Think about it like that, likesegments, like that, and you're
going to be much more likely tobe successful with what you're
doing.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
It's a quality thing.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
Keep your community small, embrace each other and
you can build upon that, as yousaid, you still need to have a
certain level of quantity.
You can't just focus on quality.
So many people are focused onquality that they forget about
quantity, and they don't.
You know.
You need to have a combinationand a balance, a yin and a yang
of quality and quantity, butquality cannot be overstated.

(42:16):
Like you need to have quality,otherwise it's not going to work
.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
But your example of a thousand, a thousand, a million
yeah, a thousand is a largequantity, depending on how
you're looking at it.
In the case of networking, athousand is not a lot.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
It depends on what you consider networking, online
networking, yeah, digitalnetworking.
Online followers and fans.
A thousand is not a lot ofpeople, but a thousand
relationships online is a lot ofpeople.
Like if I, if I most peoplethat I start coaching, I say,
okay, let's look through yourconnections, I teach them how to
download their connections andI say, how many of these people
do you recognize, how many ofthem are strategic for your

(42:52):
business?
So I do recognize, strategizeand prioritize.
And how many of them would youprioritize to have a
conversation with in the nextyear?
So I've been preaching thisconcept of a thousand Guess for
how long, I'm going to say forat least a few years, 15 years.
My goal with AJAX union was toservice a thousand clients.
What does AJAX stand for?
Ajax stands for asynchronousJavaScript and XML, the

(43:13):
technology, but it also standsfor Alan, joe and X.
X is the customer, it's a unionand, by the way, I live in
Union County now.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Did you do that on purpose?

Speaker 3 (43:23):
No, no, no, I didn't even know Union County was a
thing.
I had no idea you lived inJersey.
Yeah, I recently moved here.
I'm eventually going to move toFlorida.
Like I'm looking into things inFlorida, so I'm going to be
living in.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Florida very soon.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
My parents are retiring.
They're a little bit elderly.
They live in Florida.
I'm divorced now so I can moveto Florida, there's no problem.
So I'm definitely going to moveto Florida.
But in order to move to FloridaI first have to move out of New
York and then get closer to theairport.
Then I'm going to starttraveling a lot to Florida.
Then I'm going to make myFlorida my main residence.
My kids are still young, so Iwant to still be around them,
but I'm no longer living in NewYork.
My youngest is seven, my oldestis 17, so they're still young.

(44:00):
But as they get emancipated andas they get older, my goal is
really living in Florida andmaking that my place.
Let's talk personal.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
So you grew up in Manhattan.
I grew up in Barrow Park, inBarrow Park, brooklyn, and your
mom had a store on the LowerEast Side.
Yeah, did you grow up inManhattan?
I did not.
My father did.
My father grew up in.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
That's how you knew about Gus's pickles.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
Oh yeah, my father grew up in the 40s, that's the
1940s.
It's so easy to fall here, it'sso easy to fall.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
So your father grew up in the 40s in the Lower East
Side.
He grew up in Stigh Town, whichwas the absolute ghetto back
then, War vets were givenhousing, basically.
Oh really, I didn't know that,yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
That was, oh, like Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.
No, well, that's a differenttype, but no, this was Stigh
Town, peter Cooper Village inStuyvesant Town, on the East
Side of Manhattan, between whatis that?
14th Street and 23rd Street.

Speaker 3 (44:52):
Yeah, oh, that's where they have a lot of clubs
now.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yes, well, now it's cool.
Now it's the largest privatelyowned property in Manhattan, but
back then it was rough.
You were very poor, wow.
So I have a lot of history thatties back to that, including
when I moved into the city.
I moved to Peter Cooper Villagein Stigh Town.
So let's talk life.
You grew up not wealthy.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
No, my parents didn't really have any money.
Their parents didn't reallyhave any money, but they worked
hard.
They were hard workers.
You know, that's the thing, thething is, that's their legacy
when you're a hard worker,eventually it's going to work
out.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
So I have this conversation quite often with
close friends that you can workvery hard, you can amass enough
wealth, hand it down to yourchildren, but have spent no time
with them.
Yeah Right, and we see thiswith very wealthy people.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
And we see that they leave a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
I actually saw a video recently about that, where
a kid is seeing giving theirparents like $5, and the
father's like what do you want?

Speaker 1 (45:58):
He's like can I just have one minute of your time?
Oh, that's sad, it's very sad,but it's like you know it
strikes a chord.
But that's where it came to meand I realized that you can hand
your kids a lot of money forwhen you die and have taught
them no real valuable lessonsand now they become very wealthy
upon your exit, or you can handthem with no monetary wealth

(46:20):
but the wealth of knowledge,inspiration, guidance, the
wealth that you can teach themto make their own wealth and
pass it forward.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
And to me that is a much better legacy.
I think that's important.
And you know, for everybodyit's something else.
You know it's like what was it?
The father drove the bicycle,the son drove the Honda Accord,
the his son drove theLamborghini, and then whatever,
and then eventually they drovethe bicycle.
Yes, that's right.
Oh, by the way, shoes untied.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
I want to get that, so you don't trip.
All right, so let's go into asensitive topic these days.
Yeah, you are clearly Jewish.
I am Jewish, yeah Right, and weare living in a very tough
world right now.
We are, and I would say it's afrustrating existence.
It is, you know, the lessons ofmy grandparents and I'm sure

(47:09):
the lessons of your grandparents100% have struck a nerve these
days.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
It's not just the lessons, it's the DNA.
It's the DNA.
My great grandparents were inthe Holocaust, or their whole
family was killed, and mygrandparents actually not my
great grandparents, but, likeyou know, their whole family was
killed and they moved to Braziland they started a new family.
So that's my father.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
That, obviously, you moved to Brazil, you moved to
America, you moved to Israel.
Right, you got out of Dodge, soto speak.
And you know.
And now, with the turbulenttimes of today, we are seeing
how real it is that people canjust hate for no reason based on
stereotyping Exactly.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
So they have a reason , but their reasons are not
valid.
They're not true, they're lies,and that's why that creates
intolerance.
Ignorance creates intolerance.
So they believe that Jews ownthe media, that Jews own the
world or whatever it is, andthey have reasons for hating
Jews.
You could find reasons foranything for hating anybody,
that's right.
For hating any creature in thisworld, and if somebody's full
of hate, they're always lookingfor the scapegoat they're always

(48:13):
looking for that goat.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
So I find it interesting that if the
stereotype is that the Jews ownthe media, then why does the
media continue to portray thehatred that is being spread?

Speaker 3 (48:22):
across the board.
It doesn't have to make sense.
Blood libals don't make sense.
Jews are not gonna eat blood,but they still say that they eat
blood of kids or whatever it is.
You know like they make up liesthat don't make any sense.
They're not rational, butthat's you know.
That's what some people do andthey feel justified for doing it
, they feel good about it, theyare on a mission and then

(48:43):
eventually they forget about it.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
Yeah, well, it's like everything else in this very
short-minded, short-term worldwe live in.
The next story comes outMichael Jackson will come back
to life and die again will payattention to that for a little
while.
Have you experienced anyprejudice or anti-Semitism in
your life?
All the time?

Speaker 3 (49:01):
all the time.
What does that look like?
So when I was younger, therewere teenagers that chased me
and pulled my amic off my head.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
But you grew up in Borough Park.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
I grew up in Borough Park and still even in Borough
Park, there was a lot ofanti-Semitism.
Really, yeah, people cursing atme for being Jewish, you know,
just yelling at me on the street.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
What do you do with that?

Speaker 3 (49:21):
I, you know I'm not gonna fight.
I'm not gonna sit there andfight with them and like yell
back or whatever.
But you know, I'll engage withit a little bit and see if
there's a reasonableconversation that we can have
about what they're talking about, because I wanna show them that
I'm a regular human.
But if once I realize that it'sjust spewing anger and hate and

(49:41):
they're like riled up and angry, I'll just keep myself safe.
You know you wanna keepyourself safe.
As a human being.
Your first priority is makesure that you don't get killed
Yep, by a snake on a hike yeah,or by an anti-Semite a.
Manhattan or somewhere.
So I'm always vigilant, I'malways on the lookout because I
need to be.
You know I've gotten hate onLinkedIn where people commenting

(50:04):
on my posts you know sayingsaying negative Jewish comments,
and then they get blocked byLinkedIn.
You know like I delete thecomments, I report them, I block
them and then they end upgetting off the platform.
Because people do createaccounts and they talk.
You know hate because I'mclearly Jewish.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
Why, especially on a professional platform like
LinkedIn, would you ever spew anegative comment on a real
profile?

Speaker 3 (50:29):
Because hurt people hurt other people.
Yes, they're deeply, deeplyhurt and they're not intelligent
.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
But some of these hurt people that are hurting
people are real people andthey're putting their
professionalism or profession onthe line.
So do you ever let the hate getto you?
No, I don't let it get to me,and that's the lesson of your
grandparents andgreat-grandparents, I exercise,
I work out.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
You know, if something's getting to you, it's
not because something elsehappened on the outside, it's
what's going on on the inside.
So you can actually work oncreating the right emotions, the
right energy, the righthormones.
You know there's dopamine,there's serotonin, there's
oxytocin.
Like you have to think about,like, how can I create the right
environment for myself toexperience joy?

(51:10):
Every day, you have the abilityto experience joy.
You can't be angry and gratefulat the same time.
So, focusing on gratitude,focusing on blessings, taking
care of your body gettinghydrated you saw, I drank an
entire bottle of waterthroughout this journey.
I want to drink more water, butI don't want to have to.
You know, let the universe havethe rest of it.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Well, on the last week's episode, Daisy Joplin did
drink from a moving stream.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
She's still alive.
I have a question, ok.
Ok, well, there is somethingcalled Life Straw, now that you
can drink from any stream.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
I made the recommendation.
I think I have one on me.
There's bacteria over here, soyou've got to be careful.
Yeah, you don't want Giardia.
That's a nasty little bugger.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
Well, I did drink from a glacier, though.
There, I felt comfortable.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
That is amazing, though, but that is as pure as
pure can be.
So what's next for JoeAppelbaum?

Speaker 3 (51:56):
So for me, I'm really focused on giving people a
voice with artificialintelligence.
We do a lot of AI training.
We have an AI businessdevelopment circle that we're
running where we're trainingpeople three hours a month on
how to use artificialintelligence for business
development, marketing and sales.
I'm very focused on AI rightnow.
Artificial intelligence is veryhot.
It's here to stay.
Yep, if people learn how toleverage it, they can really

(52:16):
make a big impact and achievetheir goals.
It's definitely not a bubble.
It's been around for manydecades, but right now it's
where it's having its moment,and so, learning to leverage it,
learning to use it in yourmarketing, learning to leverage
it to be able to save time, makemoney that's really the key.
My AI tool, evai EVY it'sspelled EVYAI is great LinkedIn

(52:38):
AI Assistant.
We're going to keep building it.
We're going to keep adding newusers and make a difference for
people.
We're already in like 13different countries and 24
different states and I plan onkeeping to grow and making a
difference for people.
Get to your million.
Yeah, that's how we're going toimpact.
Linkedin is in 200 differentcountries around the world, so I
didn't even know that.

(52:59):
Finland it was a little islandin Finland.
Somebody bought my program fromFinland, from a little island
in Finland, and I had aconversation with them and did
they finish your program?

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Oh dad jokes.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Dad jokes come out all the time.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
How old are your kids .
I have three daughters.
Oh, I have three daughters too.
I've been blessed with.
We'll just leave it at that.
What are their ages?
Twins that are nine, that arecompletely opposite children
they just happen to be born onthe same day Wow and a
five-year-old daughter.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
They were from two separate eggs.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
They were from two completely separate.
In fact, without getting intotoo much detail, they were from
two separate fallopian tubes.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
Oh wow, that's amazing.
That was a miracle.
I thought you were saying theywere from two separate fathers.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
Well, that is a joke that I have off air.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
No, because you have two personalities.
That's a twist for that one.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
I usually tell people that they came from two
separate mothers.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
They wash their face, go huh.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Do you trust anyone that says that the kids are
everything to them, their entirelife, and they love the heck
out of their kids?
Because?

Speaker 2 (54:04):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
I find that to be delusional, because there are
moments where I question why Ihad children.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
It's at least once a day.
Some people become blind tothat and they need to become
blind to that because of the waythat they were treated, and so
they put up with a lot of stuff.
There are lots of differentparenting methods.
I trust that people are doingthe best that they can with the
information and the tools thatthey have.
There's a book called One, two,three Magic.
Highly recommend that book foryou, for your five-year-old and
even for your older kids.
It's a great book that teachesyou discipline through words

(54:33):
instead of through physicalaggression towards your kids,
because kids can get frustratingbecause they challenge you.
Kids have six different waysthat they try to manipulate you,
and that book basically breaksdown all the different ways they
try to manipulate you.
And it can be reallyfrustrating when you're trying
to enforce some normalcy in yourhouse, and especially if
they're smarter than you.
Sometimes your kids have yourDNA and they're smarter than you

(54:55):
.
They know how to get under yourskin and they know what to say
and they know how to do all thework arounds, because they are
you.
Yes.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
What are my children?
And I won't say which one.
But one of them every once in awhile I turn to her and say
you're good.
But, I'm better until you getto my age.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Well, age is not always something that creates
wisdom.
No, but, Sometimes it createsroutine in blind spots, but it
can create intuition andrecognition.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
Recognization, I agree.
Recognition I can't speak inthe cold.
That's what I'm learning youcan, you can stumble a little
and then learn from yourstumbles.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
You're the worst podcast guest you've had on a
hike the worst that's a good one, to be honest, don't mention
their name.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Stop it.
No, no, we never mention thename.
I have not produced a singleepisode that has had the worst.
Every episode has been great,and it's because when people
come out on trails, they becomeopen, they become human, they
become vulnerable.
You're worried about trippingand falling.
You're worried about this.
You're taking in the scenery,right, yeah, you've already been

(55:55):
qualified as a businessachiever or a success minded
individual.
You have a story to share, 100%, right.
So I?

Speaker 3 (56:02):
don't have the worst.
You're the facilitator.
Yes, what's the mostchallenging one?
Do you ever get someone who'squiet the whole time and he's
like a monk and you're askingquestions and he's not
responding?

Speaker 1 (56:10):
No, but I will say I did have a worst guest who also
fit the.
I had to really get them toopen up and we will not be
producing that episode.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
So it happened.
So yes, how would you rate thisepisode on a scale of 1 to 10?
So far.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
You have.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Because it can go down the rabbit hole now.
Yeah, you can, and I like that.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
You have extreme knowledge to share and a talent
to tell a story.
I would say this will be upthere with one of the more
engaging and more excitingepisodes Aw.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
Thank you for saying that, but I won't give you a
rating, because that would bedisingenuous, because I haven't
heard the episode Exactly, wegot to go back and listen to
what we said because we don'tknow what we said because we're
so present in the moment.
That's right.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
I will say, though, that I've enjoyed hiking next to
you alongside you and with youbecause I personally have
learned.
What's interesting is I've beenengaged with you for quite a
few years.
You are a face and with Zoomyou're more of a face than I've
seen.
I've been in networkingmeetings with.
You've taught and done yourroutine, but the magic of today

(57:21):
got us to meet.
And now we are connected Rightand now there's a circumstance
in the situation.
This is a memorable moment 100%.

Speaker 3 (57:29):
So that's why it's so important for you to be able to
do what you love doing and theway that you're doing it.
How many guests do you thinkyou've had on this podcast and
how many more do you want?
So I've had 38 recorded, wow.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
We have crushed the milestone of the first 20 in
podcasting.
Wow, usually the podcastingdrops after 20.
My goal is to get to 100 guests.

Speaker 3 (57:50):
Wow, and who's your ideal guest?
An achiever that lives inJersey.
No, no.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
I have car, will travel.
In fact, we have a fewscheduled in May in North
Carolina.
Oh wow, I've been invited tocome out to Silicon Valley.
Wow, good, hiking out in theSan Francisco area.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
I know someone who just became an EOS coach.
He sold his business.
He had a very nice exit.
He was on the Inc 500 fiveyears in a row.
He's a client, very nice guy,and he lives in Wayne.
Oh, perfect, so I'll introduceyou to him.
We love introductions.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
I'm Andrew, because I do have a goal to write a book
and the book will be somethingalong the lines of I Hiked with
100 of the world's best businessachievers Amazing, and this is
what.
I've learned.
So, Joe Applebaum, we havecompleted our hike Pyramid
Mountain, Taylor Town, Sparta,New Jersey.
So I thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
This is my first hike in New Jersey.
Thank you so much.
This is great.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Thank you, this is the first hug.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
The first hug, the first hug.
I love it.
The first hug would have been ahug.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
This was an awesome episode.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
I had a really good time.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
That is great Well thank you guys.
It was great and that will be awrap Next time on.
I Took a Hike.
We take in the sounds of abrisk morning trek with a
trailblazing entrepreneur andthe owner of a precious metals
recycling company Jeremy Royzen.