A Conversation With Joe Apfelbaum of Ajax Union

Joe Apfelbaum has a wonderfully informed opinion about marketing in the digital age. He shared his take on personal branding (you have to), spraying and praying (don't!), fans, and strategy. Host Matthew Dunn & Joe get into a few mini-debates — can you really break through the fatigue and filters? Should you keep trying? Fortunately, they agree on the value of voice lessons, and the long-term viability of email.

If you want a raucous, barely-take-a-breath conversation about marketing on the edge..this is the episode for you.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: This is Dr. Matthew Dunn hosted the future of email marketing. My guest today is Joe Applebum, CEO of Ajax Union, a marketing agency in the Bronx. If I'm not wrong.

[00:00:19] Joe Apfelbaum: Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. Okay. It also starts with

[00:00:23] Matthew Dunn: both, both start with a B uh, I've not actually been to Brooklyn, said to say, have you been to the Bronx?

[00:00:29] Uh, yeah, but passed through not pretty lucky. You just flew

[00:00:34] Joe Apfelbaum: right through the Bronx through right

[00:00:35] Matthew Dunn: through the Bronx. Got it. Got it. Are you native to that neck of the woods?

[00:00:40] Joe Apfelbaum: I was raised in grazed and Crooklyn

[00:00:44] Matthew Dunn: sounds like you sounds like you've said that before. Hey, introduce, uh, introduce Ajax Union and maybe a bit about yourself just to orient.

[00:00:54] Joe Apfelbaum: Yeah, my name is Joe Applebaum. I'm the CEO of Ajax Union. We're a B2B digital marketing agency based in Brooklyn, New York. We've been around for 13 years now. And I'm featured on the Inc 5,000 is one of the fastest growing companies in the U S when I started my book. I really didn't understand business.

[00:01:10] I was more of a web designer, you know, I designed websites and you know, the famous saying, if you build it, they will come. That's not true. I build it. Nobody came. So I had to learn marketing. And the first thing that I realized is search engines were hot back in the day. And so I said, all right, well, let me see if I can get this website on a search engine.

[00:01:29] And it was really easy in the beginning. I would just add some meta-description meta titles. I would have do some onsite SEO. But then marketers ruin everything. So that got ruined and I had to do offsite SEO, and then that got ruined. I had to do technical SEO. So I became a SEO expert for my clients. And people started knocking on my door saying, Hey, we need search engine optimization.

[00:01:52] Can you help us? And then social media came out. So I had to become an expert on social media and started doing social media for clients to build. And then email marketing and that turned into a whole full, full fledged, full service digital marketing agency. Right now we serve as B2B companies and we build marketing funnels.

[00:02:09] We create the right strategy. We build the right funnels, the right assets, and then we send traffic using search social and email

[00:02:19] Matthew Dunn: succinct. What's the, what's the history of Ajax Union?

[00:02:23] Joe Apfelbaum: Well, when I started the business. Um, 13 years ago, we were mainly focusing on small businesses. So are the small businesses that we were focusing on were many mom and pop shops.

[00:02:36] We were, if they had a website, we were servicing them. We were helping them rank with SEO. We were doing articles, blogs, classified ads, directories. Social bookmarking was a thing. That's what they needed in order to succeed. And we were sending traffic to them. But what happened was is that, although we were sending traffic to the people and they were ranking, their businesses were still going out of it.

[00:03:04] Because most businesses go out of business within three years. And if you're not profitable and you're not strategic and you get all the wrong customers, you're going to go out of business faster. So we found that a lot of our clients are going out of business and we're trying to figure out what's going on.

[00:03:18] So we started to get more strategic with them and we realized that businesses are missing strategy. If you just start using energy without strategy. Well, often you'll find that it's a waste of time. I'll make you rank number one on Google for all the wrong words. You're not going to get clients. You're going to get.

[00:03:32] And so understanding that and setting a strategy for us was a game changer for us. And so we became really, really good at being strategic for our clients and understanding that it's a long-term game, especially in the B2B world when your business. You have to nurture clients. I think it was Nielsen recently put out a study that it takes 33 touches to close a deal.

[00:03:56] Well, 33 touches and we think we're going to do a one-call close. Yeah. On a $50 deal or an a $2 toothbrush. You can do that. But if you're trying to close a $10,000 deal or a $50,000 deal, or a $200,000. That's going to take multiple buyer centers. Yeah. She means influencer decision-maker buyer, user gatekeeper, going through different people that have all have different needs and different thoughts and different emotions and different preferences and different unique selling proposition for each one, you really have to understand how to speak to the different buyer centers and with B2B, it can get complicated.

[00:04:37] So the more complicated it is. The more strategy you need in order to succeed. Like for example, with connect four, you need a basic strategy. Try to make sure I don't get four pieces of the same color and I'll try to get right. The strategy simple, but compare that to chess with chess. I need to think a few moves ahead.

[00:04:56] And then based on what you do that throws a, a wrench into my whole game. Right. And then compare chest to fortnight where you have to like build and fly and run and jump. And there's a hundred different people that are real human beings playing against you all at the same time. So the right strategy will save you a decade

[00:05:18] Matthew Dunn: and businesses becoming a good bit more like Fortnite sounds like

[00:05:22] Joe Apfelbaum: there's a lot of moving parts.

[00:05:23] It's not the way it used to be. Especially digital marketing. So business itself has its fundamental. You have to know who you're targeting. You have to get the right message, solve a problem and rinse and repeat. And if you can do it correctly to the right people and you solve a big problem, you can make a lot of money rinse and repeat.

[00:05:44] But when it comes to marketing, what worked yesterday, doesn't work today and what works today. It's probably not going to work tomorrow. So understanding that why? Because things are changing. People are changing. It used to be when I opened up an. I would look at the subject line before I opened it up. I don't look at subject lines anymore.

[00:06:02] Right now I look at who sent me the email before I even looked at the subject line. It used to be that social media was a fun place to see family and friends. Now I see advertisements left and right, I'm getting bombarded with the same ads from the same people that are walking around with their Lamborghinis.

[00:06:18] Trying to tell me that I could make, become wealthy overnight by buying their book or by watching their automated webinar. Right. That doesn't work anymore. It worked in the beginning and people made money, but that doesn't work anymore. Building real relationships, always worked and will always continue to work because people do business with other people that they know they like, and they trust.

[00:06:41] Matthew Dunn: I asked you about that, cause it was the perfect segue, by the way. I, uh, I was, uh, I was reading up a bit on your, your company and you, and you, you had, uh, uh, a recent, I think video posts. If you don't have a personal brand, that is your personal brand. You're walking down the sidewalk and talking about that.

[00:06:58] Could you, uh, could you relate

[00:07:00] Joe Apfelbaum: that to some people are afraid to put themselves on. They don't put their photo online. They don't put information online. They put very generic info. Well, the internet has your info already. Cause other people are talking about you and because of public records, I mean, you exist as a human being.

[00:07:19] Your information exists. If you own a company or if you run a company or if you're in a position, your resume gets scraped. You're on there. You're online. Now the question is, do you want, when someone Googles you for them to find a bunch of disjointed information. Or do you want them to find you walking down the street, having a conversation with them and educating them?

[00:07:39] How do you want your personal brand to look? If you just run away like an ostrich and put your head in the sand, then you're going to have your personal brand. Be you being an ostrich with your head in the sand, just because your head's in the sand. That doesn't mean that things aren't going on in the world.

[00:07:53] So instead, what you need to do is you need to look around and say, okay, how do I want to be seen from a personal brand stamp? And then proactively create that for yourself, whether it's on LinkedIn, whether it's on Instagram, Tik, TOK, Twitter, whether it's having a PR a website or like you have a podcast.

[00:08:11] The key is for you to understand who your demographic is, where they are, what context you need to talk to them in. They say that content is king. Well, that used to be true in 1990 today, it's context is king because we're no longer watching television. We're now watching Netflix or. And it's highly, highly curated and highly, highly customized.

[00:08:35] And so you have to proactively create your personal brand. If you want to be able to show people what you want them to see instead of what you hope that they'll see. I was recently talking to an author of a book and he said, Joe, I don't read my reviews. And I said, well, let me read one of your reviews.

[00:08:53] It's a one-star review. He's like, please don't. I was like, no, this one you want to read. And he's like, all right, go. I said, I started reading the review and the review said, the reason I'm leaving this review is because I want to get the authorization. I absolutely loved his book. It's extremely valuable, but I'm leaving him one P a one-star review because he had some grammar errors.

[00:09:16] And I have a company who does editing. Here's the name of my company. And he puts the name of his company in there. Like, please contact me to remove all the grammar mistakes. And I was like, dude, you should call them up and make them to change it to a five star review because they actually liked your book.

[00:09:33] And they're trying to get you as a client. I mean, this is. Below the belt approach, but you know, they left you a one-star review. So contact them and have a conversation and that'll turn into a raving fan and maybe you'll turn them into a client to coach them how to properly do BizDev instead of using this blackmail approach.

[00:09:53] Matthew Dunn: Interesting. I don't entirely disagree with you, but I also find it frigging exhausting, the personal branding, because the more you're out there. The more you get, pardon me, bullshit tactics like that, that demand more attention than you could ever spare.

[00:10:10] Joe Apfelbaum: That's the fear that a lot of people have. I am very, very out there and I don't get as much as I thought I would get before I put myself out there.

[00:10:19] Exhausting. I actually find it rejuvenating because, because. Have a thousand people waiting to connect with me. And I just ignore all the people that are using the crappy tactics. Right. I literally I've, I've learned to ignore it. Just like I ignore the spam that goes into my spam box. I just press select all delete.

[00:10:40] If there's something important there, someone will message me again. We'll find a way to get through to him. Select all elite. Ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore. And if something keeps coming back, I'll take a look at it. I'll give it a second look. But most people they're spraying and praying. There is no follow-up.

[00:10:57] The fortune is not in spraying and praying. The fortune is not showing up and throwing up the fortune is in the follow-up. I always tell people, if you don't follow up with someone, they're not going to be connecting with you. I sent an email to 98 CEOs. 98 CEOs of the fastest growing companies in America in the food and beverage industries.

[00:11:23] Only two people replied to my first email. It was going to say

[00:11:26] Matthew Dunn: response rate, couple of

[00:11:28] Joe Apfelbaum: percent, right? Who people respond it's at a 2% response rate. This was a direct email. One-to-one using technology. So it was batch cold email using Mailshake only two people responded. I sent a second email. Five days later, seven people responded.

[00:11:45] I send a third email, another four people respond. So, what I do is you don't send one email and forget it. You keep following up and following up. And every time you follow up more and more people will respond. Cause not everyone sees the first email, but if they see you keep bumping it and bumping it and bumping it, right, eventually they're going to respond either, ask you to go away or say, Hey, I'm super interested in, by the way.

[00:12:13] Lots of people are interested, but let's,

[00:12:16] Matthew Dunn: let's chase that for a second because what you just said does not scale very well, because if you got it 1, 2, 3, and finally, you're finally getting up into what double digit response rate a year from now two years from now, five years from now, it's going to be even worse because there's guys doing exactly what you do.

[00:12:33] Joe Apfelbaum: They're not doing exactly what I do because it's not scalable. You don't want to scale it. You want a customer. When you're on Netflix and you're watching a documentary, you and 75 other people watch a documentary, not you and 75 million people watched a documentary because they have documentaries there that are for a niche group of people.

[00:12:55] What people are creating is niche communities. This is the next level. People want customized, customized art, customized and. Customized trips. They don't want just be one of many. We'll soon be able to change. I mean, Mercedes-Benz is coming out with a car where you can push a button and change all the colors on the outside of the car and everything that happens with the car is completely customized to who you are as an individual.

[00:13:24] It's about the individual, not about the collective, the collective already happened with Coca Cola, but now could you imagine you can infuse your drink to make it exactly how you. That's the next level. Not that everybody gets the same thing, but that you have a brewery that makes a bourbon that you like, and you don't need a million customers to make a very good living.

[00:13:47] If you have the right 1000 fans is Kevin Kelly, the author, the editor of wired magazine. He has this thing called the 1000. If you have 1000 fans that will travel a hundred miles to watch you sing, you can make a really good living.

[00:14:02] Matthew Dunn: Right. Right. Now it's just, it's the, um, it's the blast filters that we're constantly trying to get over to find those things.

[00:14:13] That strikes me as a non-scalable exercise. My inbox is like yours, right? Constant barrage. I filter on who subject line matters less and less repetition, actual relationship. Those, those, those definitely affect the filter, but it takes time to, it takes time to build that. And

[00:14:33] Joe Apfelbaum: yeah, it does take time and it's not really that arbitrary if you know who your target market is.

[00:14:37] So if I was targeting you as a podcast, Yeah. And I knew your podcast and I listened to an episode for a few minutes and I sent you an email and said, Hey, Matthew, I listened to your podcast with Joe Applebaum. And I absolutely loved that. I loved what he said about spraying and praying. I got a lot of value on it.

[00:14:52] I just want to take a moment to thank you. Did you write a book? Do you have a book that I can buy on Amazon? Now you might reply to that, or you might not. Now if you don't reply, then you're not, you're not paying attention. If you

[00:15:06] Matthew Dunn: fallacy, I'm not going to read it because. You just said that

[00:15:11] Joe Apfelbaum: you, you don't know who I am, but I'm a fan of yours.

[00:15:13] And I mentioned your podcast and I mentioned someone specific.

[00:15:16] Matthew Dunn: You said, you're going to go down and look at the who and hit delete. You just

[00:15:18] Joe Apfelbaum: said that. Correct. But I'm also going to scan and see if somebody, if it seemed like this person is a person that is a fan of mine, because I am looking for fans cause I have a podcast.

[00:15:31] So I'm going to be paying attention to, so I have different email addresses. I email address from my pod. It gets very little email. I'll get maybe 20 emails per week. My business email I'll get three to 500 emails a day, cause I'm really out there. So I have a special, uh, special, different, personal brand where I'm watching my fans.

[00:15:52] So if I only have a thousand fans, I could still make a very good living. But my thousand fans I'm maybe going to have 10 fans email me. Yeah. I'm not going to have a thousand fans emailing me every month. So because I get a few spam messages, I delete the spam messages and I get the occasional, oh my God, I bought your book.

[00:16:06] I love that. It changed my life. Let's connect. I'm going to reply to that in my main email, if you're trying to hit people up on their main thing, you're going to ignore. You're probably going to ignore stuff. If you don't have. But that's where the follow-up comes up. So if I'm going to email you one time, Matthew saying, I love the podcast, you have a book on Amazon.

[00:16:23] You're probably not going to reply, but then I'm going to bump it up next week, five days later, like, Hey Matthew, not sure if you saw my email, I really would love to buy your book. If you have one, let me know. If not, no worries. I know you're very busy and then you won't reply to. And then I'll send you another one.

[00:16:37] I'll be like, Hey Matthew, I checked you out on LinkedIn. Oh my God. I love the recent post that you posted. I liked and commented on it. I hope we can. I hope I can learn more about you and then I could, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I follow up like that. And I can do this with a list of people because I have certain variables that they all have the same thing.

[00:16:54] Matthew is your first name. I could find the other person's first name. I could find their podcasts. I could find them on LinkedIn. I could find all that stuff. And now I have a list of 200 people that are the same thing, and I'm trying to target them. And because I only need 10 clients, I'm happy. So if I have 10, if I add up the 200 people, I get 10 of them to have a conversation with or 20 to have a conversation.

[00:17:13] And because I know exactly that I can solve a problem for you. I know that I'm going to get 10 customers out of that over the course of let's say six months and that's enough because each person's paying me 50 K. And that turns into a very nice business for me, because that hits my goal. So if you do think strategically that's called having a strategy.

[00:17:31] If you do think strategically, you don't need mass numbers, you don't need millions of people. The average CEO is 930 connections on LinkedIn. The average LinkedIn user has 440. 58% of people are logging from their phones. So if I hit you up in many different ways, some people are going to get annoyed. I had somebody tell me, please never contact me again.

[00:17:50] Please never contact me again. You hit me up on Facebook, on WhatsApp, on Instagram, on LinkedIn. Are you crazy? Yeah. And then at the same time, another person. Oh, my God, Joe, I love that you hit me up on Facebook, on Instagram, on WhatsApp, on LinkedIn. And you emailed me, let's have a conversation. It seems like the universe wants us to connect.

[00:18:10] And that is a relationship.

[00:18:12] Matthew Dunn: It turns into one. Let's let, let me take that and flip that to talk about email marketing though, because I understand the logic of what you're saying, but it's the reason my inbox is successful in email marketing, uh, uh, 15 20% success rate is regarded as good to me. That's an 85% failure rate.

[00:18:35] 85% of the email you sent out, went into a black hole, was a complete waste of everybody's time.

[00:18:41] Joe Apfelbaum: What's worse is 97% of people that are coming to your website don't even want to buy. Right, right. Only 3% do. Right. But the 3% do those are the people that. And the 97% need to be nurtured. And so a lot of the cesspool stuff, a lot of the garbage that's out there, that's just what you know, did you know that 80% of people are living paycheck to paycheck?

[00:19:03] Let's let's even, let's take it a little step. We, okay. So we said, w email, okay. 85% of Canada, then we said, oh my God, nineties, ever 80% of people are living paycheck to paycheck. They're in debt. They don't even have a thousand dollars in savings. How could that be? How could that be in the greatest country in the world?

[00:19:22] How could that be in America, that this is happening? How could it be that 10% of people in the world don't even have food? And when we will, we have unlimited ability to manufacture food. How could that be? Because that's the reality of it. The reality of it is that most people are living a scarcity mindset.

[00:19:40] We are programmed as human beings to survive and we're in the survival mindset. And if you can change the thriving mindset, focusing on what works. Thinking about your goals being strategic. You're, you'll be one in very few people. You have to keep trying. I have somebody, I spoke to somebody. I said, how do you get through to the CFOs of companies like Pepsi?

[00:20:04] You know, when she says on average, it takes 59 emails. Wow. Can you imagine if I followed up with you 59 times and I followed up with your admin 59 times, and I followed up with your colleagues 59 times. And that's the average with some people, it could be 173 times I followed up. Now it depends if you're networking or prospecting, there are people that are networking friendly, and there are people that are not networking friendly.

[00:20:31] There are people that are prospect friendly. There are people that are not prospect friendly. You don't need every customer. You need the right customer. Someone who is interested, someone was willing to have a conversation with you. Most people won't. I go on the train and I sing Frank Sinatra song my way nobody's.

[00:20:48] Nobody's even looking up in the subway. I tried it out. Let me see what happens. Let me sing. There are two people on the train that have a smile on their face and they're just, don't stop looking at me. So I walk over to them like, what'd you think they're like, you made my day and they start telling me why.

[00:21:04] And then they gave me their business card. It says, are you willing to come sing in my company? I said, no, but I can do a seminar at your law firm because it looks like they're a lawyer. They're like, oh my God, I would love for you to do it. So. There's a hundred people on the train. No, one's interested. One is, and that's all I need.

[00:21:19] All I need is one. Yeah, it's the same thing you don't worry about being the don't worry. See perfection is the enemy of execution. When we try to perfect it and get a hundred percent response rate, we're never going to do it. It's like fishing. Most of the time spent fishing is drinking beer and waiting for the fish to eat your worm.

[00:21:41] I'm going to be like, I wasted all this time. I could just go to the fish market and buy the fish. Right? Not fishing. There's

[00:21:46] Matthew Dunn: no fishing. You touch close to my heart. I'm a fly fisherman. It's about it's. It's about fishing. It's not about catching.

[00:21:55] Joe Apfelbaum: I sent you an email. Yeah. Talking about fly fishing. I promise you you'd pay attention.

[00:22:00] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Guaranteed. Right? That's the subject line key right there. Shit. Well,

[00:22:08] Joe Apfelbaum: anyone listening to this podcast don't tell anyone else, but if you want to contact, Matt mentioned fly fishing in the email,

[00:22:16] Matthew Dunn: that's it right there. Or, or in your case, a Frankston up, you actually.

[00:22:21] Joe Apfelbaum: I enjoy singing. Yes, I have. Well, I wouldn't say that I'm a professional singer.

[00:22:24] I just enjoy singing and I hired a voice coach and she said, Joe, your voice is so good. You need to sing Frank Sinatra songs. So I, I picked my way cause I really, it resonates with the words though. I don't know if you know the lyrics of Frank Sinatra song. But it's very, very powerful and it really resonates with me when I sing it.

[00:22:42] I feel alive and I resonate. And the fact that I'm even resonating into the mic right now is because I practice resonating when I sing and I'm singing from my, with my body and my different resonation points on my face. Yup.

[00:22:56] Matthew Dunn: Yup. Yup. Got it. Yup. Ditto ditto. Ah, fascinating. See, we already went way down a rabbit hole.

[00:23:02] What's it have to do with email, everything

[00:23:04] Joe Apfelbaum: I'll tell you. I'll tell you what it has to do with email. Let's say, for example, I wanted to, um, I wanted to find people who I wanted to sell my coaching services to, and I want to send them emails so I can go on Facebook, find a F I was a fly Fisher. Let's just say I go on Facebook.

[00:23:19] And I find a group of fly fishing, people who are into fly fishing, and I get their first name, last name, and I put them into my tool and I get all their emails. And now I send them an email about fly fishing and build a relationship with them around fly fishing. And I said, Hey, I noticed that you're in the Facebook group on fly fishing.

[00:23:37] And I just wanted to reach out and tell you I'm a fellow fly Fisher, any great tips. And then I start a conversation and it turns into like, Hey, what do you do? What do I do? And now we have a relationship. People don't care about what, you know, until they know how much you care. Nice to put. Yeah. Ziglar said that it wasn't even me

[00:23:55] Matthew Dunn: still.

[00:23:57] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's, uh, it's, it's something we're not going to move away from the fact we're probably moving towards it. The power of, I know this person, as you said, know, like, and trust, um, relationship centric thing, this just, uh, it's exhausting to get there sometimes they'll because of the spray and pray crowd.

[00:24:22] Joe Apfelbaum: And the spray and pray crowd is a real, real thing. It's a real thing. It's a real thing. And you know what? You just gotta do it. You just gotta, you just gotta be there. You just gotta do it. You just got to build relationships and you got to learn. What's working. Take the right courses, pick the right coaching programs, work with people and just take one day at a time.

[00:24:47] One step at a time. Most people are just so busy trying to get it. Perfect. That they never even take action. It's okay for you not to be high perfection. If you walk into nature, you'll notice the nature is not perfect. It's actually far from perfect nature is far from perfect, but that's where the beauty is.

[00:25:07] That's what life is. Life is not about being perfect. Life is not about. Making sure that you have everything perfectly correct. It's 100% about trying, doing your best and pushing one day at a time. You do things one day at a time. I want a

[00:25:28] Matthew Dunn: real back about 20 minutes. Um, when you were talking about sort of the roots of your company, um, am I correct in hearing that you sorta grew out of the mom and pop into larger.

[00:25:43] B2B focused clients, correct?

[00:25:47] Joe Apfelbaum: Well, I started off when we started it off. Pause, uh, Networking. So I, I initially I was doing prospecting and just basically cold calling to get clients. And we were very successful, but we were getting all the wrong clients were getting companies that were under a million in revenue.

[00:26:05] Those were the ones picking up the phone and we were just closing and closing and closing and doing really well. But those clients wouldn't last because they would go out of business or they really wouldn't have a lot of money. And they, you know, they took a gamble on SEO, but it didn't really work.

[00:26:18] What we found was what we found was that the right customers didn't necessarily come from prospecting. They came from networking. I had a networking conversation with a, with a friend of mine who wasn't a friend at the time. Now he's a friend of mine. And I said, what can I do to add value to your life?

[00:26:37] And he said, Joe, I want to meet people at hospitals. I want to meet executives at hospitals at more than 500 employees. I said, I have a list cause I'm, I have access to millions of contacts. So I said, can I give you that list of all the decision makers at those hospitals in New Jersey? He's like, oh my God, that would change my life.

[00:26:54] He's like, what can I do for you? I said, I'm looking to meet sales directors, accompanies with sales teams. So he's like, okay, two weeks later, he calls me up. He's like, I have a friend, who's a sales director at a company. There are 400 million in revenue and they're desperately looking for a new agency.

[00:27:07] They're currently using three agencies. They're not getting. I got an instant meeting with him. He set up an email, uh, email connection. I got an instant meeting and it turned into a company, a client that spent $2 million at my agency and services besides several million dollars in advertising, 2 million just in services alone.

[00:27:26] The only way I was able to get a client that would be paying me that type of money was through networking. And that completely shifted. And I realized I need to focus on B2B. I need to focus on larger companies and I need to do more networking. So I joined the. Successful networking group that you have to make, you know, almost a very significant investment to join.

[00:27:48] And your business has to be over 3 million in revenue to be part of it. And I joined it, I made the investment and it changed my life. Um, professional networking with the right people, getting into the right companies. People respect me, they introduced me, we have conversations, it's fun. And now I teach people how to do that online.

[00:28:06] Matthew Dunn: Nice. Nice, interesting inflection point that, uh, that conversation with your now friend. Yeah.

[00:28:14] Joe Apfelbaum: Very, very powerful. Most people, they don't go through that. They don't, they don't take the time to go through that. And as a result, they don't end up getting the results you need to yeah. You need to be able to do those things in order to get the results.

[00:28:28] You need to be able to take one step at a time.

[00:28:32] Matthew Dunn: So when you get. When you get coaching clients, because you mentioned that's part of your business now, um, how do you start sizing up what they need?

[00:28:43] Joe Apfelbaum: Well, step number one is we do an assessment. We have a four step process assessment, exploration, onboarding, and.

[00:28:51] You first do an assessment. We try to figure out, okay, how can we help this person? What is their need? Usually we're talking to the marketing director at the company and in our assessment, we identify, oh my gosh, they don't even have a strategy. They have a website, but they have no funnel. You have a website and you have no funnel.

[00:29:09] It'd be very difficult to be successful with no funnel. So we help you build it. We'll so we'll say, okay, well we need to build out a funnel and we have a conversation about. And then we do a capabilities review. And then based on that, usually we'll, we'll be able to service them and support them and help them grow their business.

[00:29:28] That's really the approach. That's how we do it.

[00:29:31] Matthew Dunn: Got it. So there, there are, there are repeatable structures. I hear you saying, and you can identify what's going to work even with, even with a new business, new client.

[00:29:43] Joe Apfelbaum: Correct. We know what's going to work because we've been, we've been working this. We've been working the system.

[00:29:49] We know it takes time. We have a webinar that people watch after they watched a webinar or they get emails with more lead magnets. And then over time they say, you know what, let me raise my hand. I'm interested. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and most people never even take the time to nurture their leads. And as a result, they're not successful or they have the wrong types of customers.

[00:30:10] I want you to have the right types of customers, not the wrong types of customers.

[00:30:13] Matthew Dunn: Nice, nice. You've got your, you've got your. You've got your own strategy and tactics in use, which has probably goes to my next question, which is how do you keep abreast of this constantly shifting marketing world?

[00:30:29] Joe Apfelbaum: The way that I stay abreast with a constantly shifting marketing world is by reading what's going on by testing with our existing clients, by constantly working the system.

[00:30:43] I, you gotta, you just gotta keep working the system. One day at a time and not worrying about, you know, like for me, it's about getting to know people, building a relationship, figuring out what's working for them. What's not working for them. Marketing is about testing. I don't know that something's going to work when I'm marketing, but I certainly know that just spraying and praying is definitely not going to work.

[00:31:10] So my goal is to take a step. And find out what's working for my customer is find out what's working for their customers. Find out what's working in the industry. I speak to other marketers all the time. We have a marketing director's round table and our marketing directors round table. We learn what's working with other marketers.

[00:31:31] That's why we hold a round table to kind of like learn all that. So that's been really powerful

[00:31:36] Matthew Dunn: as well, but mastermind structure. Nice. Nice. Yeah, I would think that would be. Fruitful because everyone's in, everyone's in the trenches,

[00:31:46] Joe Apfelbaum: correct. Everyone's in the trenches and it's really, it's really nice to like connect with people and build deep, real, meaningful relationships.

[00:31:55] I mean, it's just, it also, it's one heals trauma. We all have trauma growing up. Every single person experienced some level of trauma and it usually came from a relationship or multiple relationships. And so if we can, if we find relationships that are nurturing and loving, And trusted. We can heal that trauma that created the trauma in the first place.

[00:32:16] Matthew Dunn: Nice. That's a, that's a, it's a great thing to get out of, uh, what starts as a professional circles when it grows into something that's more than that

[00:32:25] Joe Apfelbaum: in my book, I energy networking, which I just published for my birthday. Hey, congrats. I talk about the five levels of a relationship. There was a person that you wave the person, you have drinks with the person you have lunch with the person you have dinner with and the person that you bring home to your.

[00:32:40] So there are different levels in a relationship, and sometimes you go from one to the other. Sometimes it's just a connection. Sometimes it becomes a friend. Sometimes it's a relationship that you're trying to build. Sometimes it's a partner. So it depends on the level of the relationship, know where people are and then communicate appropriately.

[00:32:55] Hmm.

[00:32:56] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. How long did it take to write?

[00:32:59] Joe Apfelbaum: I took me about two months to write the first draft. It took me about three months to edit it and then maybe another month or two to publish it. So, so far that over the past five years, I've published a new book.

[00:33:10] Matthew Dunn: Wow. I've had multiple, uh, multiple guests on this podcast who are, uh, who relatively recently published something.

[00:33:19] And it always makes for an interesting conversation just to drill into the, the, the, the process and the work of actually capturing enough on paper to be worth printing. Now you've done it multiple times.

[00:33:32] Joe Apfelbaum: Yeah. And it's also because it's something I'm very passionate about and I'm sharing my experience.

[00:33:36] So. Because I'm very, very passionate about it. I'm able to, I'm able to do it. I mean, you know, if you're passionate about something you're going to, you're going to be excited about doing it and that's going to help you be able to succeed you right

[00:33:52] Matthew Dunn: at the keyboard or with. Keyboard keyboard. Cool. Um, outlines and drafts or blast through it and then go back and refine it.

[00:34:01] Talk about,

[00:34:03] Joe Apfelbaum: yeah. At first, right? The table of contents is step number one. Once I write the table of contents and the table contents is done, then. Set up a time where I write 2000 words a day for, let's say 20 to 40 days, but well, and then I basically go through each chapter, I knock it out and then I put it to rest for a little bit.

[00:34:21] And then I go back and start editing. Yep. Got it.

[00:34:24] Matthew Dunn: Um, preferred word, uh, processing. You use Google docs. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I'm dating myself. I still, I still prefer. Microsoft word for, for long stuff because of the muscle habits that are wired in. Oh, they got it. Style sheets, baby stuff. Sheets definitely, definitely gates me.

[00:34:48] Although I, I, my, my, my son got hooked on word as well. It doesn't happen that often in their generation. Um, and, and publishers, you're working with public.

[00:34:59] Joe Apfelbaum: No, I self-publish on Amazon.

[00:35:01] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Boy, that, that process is, has gotten so streamlined. And like, I think that's, I think that's a heck of a favor.

[00:35:09] Amazon's done the world and a lot of ways.

[00:35:11] Joe Apfelbaum: Yeah. Can I have a coach and I have a coach that helps me, that supports me. Yeah. Coach

[00:35:18] Matthew Dunn: with a coach.

[00:35:19] Joe Apfelbaum: Every coach needs a coach. Every, any, anyone that's successful by anything needs, you need a, you need to have someone that will support you.

[00:35:27] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Nice. Nice. Um, we didn't talk about email marketing much, but in the five minutes that we've got left, all the principles and approach that you've been talking about, strategy, networking, et cetera.

[00:35:43] How does that, how does that feed into, um, what Ajax Union does for clients in the email domain specifically?

[00:35:51] Joe Apfelbaum: Well, once you have a strategy, you know, Well, you're targeting, you know, what mayor messaging is, and you have assets built out. Then it's time for you to be able to create email sequences, because you want to nurture those, those, that target market.

[00:36:07] So creating email sequences, there are two different ways that we send out emails for our customers. There's either prospecting emails or there's branding, uh, like newsletter type emails. And those are the two types of emails. So there's also transactional emails, but when it comes to like the prospecting.

[00:36:24] Um, if we're at, let's say targeting to state lawyers for a client, what we'll do is we'll build a list of estate lawyers in a particular general, uh, geographic area. Um, and then we'll find with big data, we'll find their first name, last name, title company, how many employees, they have their email address, all their information, and then we'll create a custom messaging campaign to that particular list with a series of emails that will go out to try to book a meeting.

[00:36:52] Um, alternatively, we will run ads to drive people to a landing page for people to fill out a form, to download a lead magnet, and then we'll get them into an automation or to join a newsletter where we send out a newsletter on a regular basis, whether it's a weekly newsletter, a monthly newsletter. And sometimes it's just promotional emails that we send out on behalf of customers for our double opt-in emails.

[00:37:13] So it depends on what the strategy is and what we're looking to do. But that's the general general idea. Got you.

[00:37:19] Matthew Dunn: Very, very, data-driven very research intensive upfront. You're not just, you're not just blasting.

[00:37:25] Joe Apfelbaum: Yeah. We're not just spraying and praying or just blasting and having fun.

[00:37:29] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. You will have to know which, which does it work before you tell people that over and over, and you'll still get someone saying I bought this list.

[00:37:36] No, it's not. It's not how it works. Right. It's really not how it works.

[00:37:41] Joe Apfelbaum: LinkedIn has a lot of really good data. Um, and you're able to. Get data from LinkedIn. That's, you know, that's definitely something that you can get. Um,

[00:37:52] Matthew Dunn: yeah, it's actually a sales navigator blows my doors from a bunch of reasons though.

[00:37:58] They don't have the, the depth and breadth of what's there. The speed is just astonishing. You really, you really can, um, target in narrow in, uh, with a lot of specificity. I mean, there are other databases, but that's the one that particularly impressed. Very powerful. Yeah. Very, very, very, very powerful. Um, so if we've got someone listening who says, Ooh, I like, I like the philosophy.

[00:38:25] I like the approach. Maybe they can help my business. Um, what characterize a good client for, for you and your company?

[00:38:36] Joe Apfelbaum: If you go to Ajax, union.com and you watch our marketing funnel webinar, we have a webinar on the homepage that walks you through. It's a 20 minute video walks you through the marketing funnel, very comprehensive.

[00:38:48] And you say, you know what? I really like to have a marketing funnel built for my business like this. Cause I think it'll help me. And it's worth it for us to have a conversation. Usually the companies that we work with have a marketing director, or sometimes the owner is the marketing director. They wear that hat, but ideally there has to be someone that's committed to working with us through the process because it's really a partnership between us and the customer.

[00:39:09] Matthew Dunn: Got it. Got it. Yeah. You don't want someone who says I'll just turn it over. Cause you're going to affect their business top of the. Yeah, we're going to help them out. Yeah. Yeah. It makes a ton of sense. Where do you see your company going? We've got a minute left. I want, I want the future, man.

[00:39:24] Joe Apfelbaum: I want to continue to add value to, to our clients and make a difference.

[00:39:28] We're not, we're not going to explode and turn into a hundred million dollar business for us. It's going to become is still going to be us, you know, just adding value to a small amount of clients, making a difference for them. One at a time, going deep for me, it's about going deep. Um, and I, I would rather market my own businesses.

[00:39:44] Like we're marketing our own company called evergreen, where we train people on how to use links. So we're going to be a marketing or I'm going to purchase a more companies and we're going to be marketing our own companies. And that's what we're mainly going to be using Ajax Union for us to market some clients and market our own businesses.

[00:40:01] Interesting.

[00:40:02] Matthew Dunn: Interesting. That's a, it makes a lot of sense, actually, if you've got the power of, uh, of a repeatable methodology, uh, on the hardest part, I think of growing a business, which is the marketing. Why not? Why not turn it to your own purpose? Yep. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Terrific. Well, Joel, thank you for a great conversation.

[00:40:24] Joe Apfelbaum: Thank you for having me. I'm really glad that I was able to be here. I appreciate you. And I look forward the thing and touch.

[00:40:29] Matthew Dunn: So my guest has been Joel Applebaum, Ajax Union, Ajax, union.com, right? Yep. Cool. We're out. Thanks

[00:40:37] Joe Apfelbaum: Jill. Thank you. Bye.

[00:40:39]