Latest / None of Your Business Podcast / How Fundraising Transformed Sarah Rivkah Kohn

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How Fundraising Transformed Sarah Rivkah Kohn · None of Your Business Podcast

• 0:00
  I was 9 when my mother passed away.
• 0:01
  I actually ran to a neighbor's house and I literally knocked on
• 0:04
  their door. I said my mother passed away.
• 0:05
  My father explained to me how Shiva works and he said to me,
• 0:08
  you know, you're not bus mess, but you're not 12 years old yet.
• 0:10
  If you don't want to sit Shiva, you can go to school tomorrow or
• 0:14
  if you want to, you can stay home.
• 0:15
  I said I want to go to school. So I went to school the next
• 0:18
  day, Monday. I can tell you today that I did
• 0:20
  very not well. Inside I was a mess.
• 0:23
  I was an absolute royal mess. I was angry, I was sad.
• 0:28
  And then I hit high school and I hit 10th grade and it hit hard.
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  Really, really, really hard. I was desperate for the Shiva
• 0:35
  that I never sat. I wanted a week where I could
• 0:36
  sit in a chair and everybody would tell me stories and I
• 0:39
  would sit there and I could be sad in peace.
• 0:43
  None of your business Oshi, None of your business Michael.
• 0:46
  It's the None of Your Business podcast hosted by Michael
• 0:49
  Anoshi. Welcome back, everybody, to
• 0:52
  another inspirational episode of the None of Your Business
• 0:56
  podcast. I'm your host, Michael
• 0:57
  Greenfield here alone by myself. But I'm not really alone because
• 1:01
  I have a guest. And this guest is Sarah Rifka
• 1:03
  Cohen. Welcome to the program.
• 1:05
  Thank you. Thank you for having me.
• 1:07
  So appreciative of you being here and I'm sorry that I was
• 1:11
  late. No worries.
• 1:13
  I'll tell you something. I'll get straight into this for
• 1:15
  a second. Is that when, when you're
• 1:17
  really, really that busy, by the time you hang up the phone and
• 1:21
  put something in your calendar, you already got three more phone
• 1:23
  calls and five more things to do and 10 other thoughts that you
• 1:25
  forgot that you needed to do, so you didn't put it in correctly
• 1:28
  or you didn't put it in at all. And that's what happened to me.
• 1:31
  I want to tell you something there.
• 1:32
  It's very interesting. I go on the road a lot,
• 1:34
  fundraising, and when I'm in a different community, I sometimes
• 1:37
  like I'm going from one meeting to the next.
• 1:38
  I don't remember. So I have a literally a WhatsApp
• 1:41
  chat with one of the people in the office where I voice note
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  afterwards I'm like this happened and this needs to
• 1:46
  happen and this has to be scheduled for that time.
• 1:48
  If you trust me to put anything in my calendar never happening
• 1:51
  at the right time, I'm going to get confused.
• 1:52
  So what you basically said is you have an assistant.
• 1:54
  I outsource all my executive functioning.
• 1:57
  Like literally all of it was interesting because somebody
• 2:00
  said to me the other day, he says I don't understand.
• 2:02
  Like you're all over the place in the sense of your brain goes
• 2:04
  to so many different creative ideas and stuff like that.
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  Is it right? The the success is that I'm able
• 2:09
  to outsource all my executive functioning.
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  Anything that needs to follow through the detail that you
• 2:14
  know, all that stuff is outsourced to somebody in my
• 2:16
  office. I'd love to learn about how you
• 2:19
  got to that point, the struggles of where it got you, you know,
• 2:23
  to and the journey along the way and understanding who you are.
• 2:28
  Why did you get into what it is that you're doing?
• 2:30
  What is it that you're doing? And really, you know, we used to
• 2:34
  do this thing, chat, you know, chat chi PTI think like chat chi
• 2:37
  PT. I'm so done with chat chi PT by
• 2:38
  the way, in terms of promoting them.
• 2:40
  I use them everyday, but I'm not promoting them anymore.
• 2:42
  The world knows about chat chi PT.
• 2:44
  It is what it is. Let's not discuss it.
• 2:45
  It's part of our life. It's like saying you know you're
• 2:48
  you're. On the funnest part of your
• 2:49
  segment though, I was like how did they get this information?
• 2:52
  You want it back. Like I want it back, I said to
• 2:55
  somebody. I said if I come here and he
• 2:56
  does ChatGPT, I'm actually genuinely curious what in
• 2:59
  heaven's name they would pick up.
• 3:00
  No way. I said it it.
• 3:02
  You're the first time I'm not doing it.
• 3:03
  Bad timing. Bad timing, right?
• 3:05
  You know. What?
• 3:06
  I'll do it live. But oh gosh, what do you put in?
• 3:09
  I'll do you get the types of results that you get 'cause I
• 3:11
  can ChatGPT myself. I would never get the stuff that
• 3:13
  you get about people. What are the what?
• 3:15
  Are the targeted questions that you're asking.
• 3:18
  So what most people are not aware of is that ChatGPT has
• 3:21
  projects and in each project you can define for the project all
• 3:24
  the rules and details. Got it.
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  So what I suggest to people that are using ChatGPT on a daily
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  basis like myself is start a project sales, OK, fundraising,
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  right? A project within your
• 3:35
  organization and then go to it and teach it and say, have a
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  conversation first. What is the best practice of
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  fundraising? And tell me what you understand
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  about philanthropists and entrepreneurs and how to achieve
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  the goal of telling them what I do in the quickest way possible
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  and making the biggest impact on them.
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  And you know, and talk to Chachi PT and then say, give me
• 3:53
  information. Take that and then ask Chachi PT
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  please make rules for this project that from now on when I
• 3:58
  have conversations with you, it should be directed in that tone
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  and then have an overarching Chachi PT understanding of who
• 4:06
  you are as a person. So Chachi PT knows me, it
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  understands what the name of the business.
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  So you're going to get the answers that nobody else.
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  Gets it, knows I'm sarcastic, it knows I have a sense of humor.
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  Doesn't really know how good looking I am yet because it
• 4:17
  hasn't seen me. But wait, Elon Musk will get
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  there, you know. It's so funny because I know you
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  you can do it while you're doing this, but I know for myself is
• 4:25
  that chachi PT is probably my hardest thing to use because I'm
• 4:28
  old and in my head, I always have to think for myself.
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  And I was pushed to think for myself that it's so hard for me
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  to outsource my thinking. Like you're saying, you know,
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  come up with a script and stuff like, do you know how hard I
• 4:39
  work on those right now? I really should outsource it
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  because hey, Chaz GPT probably has many ideas that I've never
• 4:45
  thought about, but it's it's a struggle for me.
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  It's a real struggle. You're.
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  Talking about the creativity and outsourcing, I mean you can't
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  outsource your. Creativity.
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  Yeah, No. But at the end of the day, like
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  sometimes, you know, I say to myself, OK, what would be the
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  best way to sell this to, you know, sell this corporate
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  sponsorship, right? I I can't yet let go of that
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  piece and let like an AI bot come up with that for.
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  Me it just needs to give you ideas, though it is used as a
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  tool, just like you use advice of your friends.
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  You don't really listen to everything they're saying, but
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  you're taking on the, you know, the the golden.
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  Nugget No, it is it, it is true. And from the couple times that I
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  have used it, you know, here and there, it's, you know,
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  definitely has some interesting, interesting directions that.
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  I've got to be honest with you, I'm not listening to you.
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  I think it's impossible for me to type and listen.
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  And anybody that claims they can do it, I believe is lying to
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  either themselves or to us. You can't type and listen at the
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  same time. When I'm having a conversation
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  with someone, I see they're typing.
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  I automatically pause. I'm like, whoa, continue.
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  I'm like. The same way.
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  I'm the same way, but I'm used to talking to people.
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  You do it and then I'll tell you.
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  I'm used to talking to people who type and and do this at the
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  same time then. They're not really paying
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  attention. That's fine.
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  I go into somebody's office for a solicitation.
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  Sometimes they're texting while they're doing and if I walk out
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  with a check I'll survive. Also because you want to have
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  just subliminal messaging in there.
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  Also, you want to know that they're in front of you, you're
• 6:00
  present, it's fine like that is more.
• 6:03
  Yeah, we'll, we'll take a a 22nd GPT.
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  Says What about Sarah Rifka Cohen from Linx?
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  Is that fair to say? Yes.
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  OK, that's how I start. OK, I I.
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  Always wonder, like, what's on the Internet about me?
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  Let's find out. Oh, yeah, yeah.
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  I don't know if I just dug myself into a hole.
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  No, no. No, God forbid.
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  It's no fluff, read out loud worthy, shocking truth in a
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  world of endless Jewish singles events.
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  Nope, that's not me. So they got the wrong person.
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  Oh my God, really? First time.
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  Leadership role in links an organization focus on strength
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  in connection with the Jewish singles community now.
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  Wow, maybe I spelled your name wrong.
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  Is it SA? RAH.
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  Oh, now I want to know who the other one is SA.
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  RAH. RIVKAH.
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  Oh, the. HS.
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  I didn't put the HS in cone. Is Kohn OK?
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  We do all the H in. I didn't.
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  Put all the HS in. That's fine and you can write
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  links family sometimes that will get it more targeted.
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  How do you spell links, LINKS and family?
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  You know how to spell hopefully. But the it's interesting because
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  there's a lot of different organizations with the word
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  don't. Forget I'm not paying attention.
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  That's fine, they are the. Audiences who care.
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  I'm joking, OK, I'm like wrong one with an H Sarah Rivka Cohen
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  from links family try again, and it's thinking by the another
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  thing, by the way, is that I taught ChatGPT as again, an
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  overall rule is always think before you answer and research
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  the following websites and I direct it of which wow in each
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  project. Wow.
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  OK, so you're Mahanak ChatGPT. I'm like watching that.
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  Exactly. All right, let's try this again.
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  Yeah, if you work, it doesn't. Work, but this would be fun, she
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  started. Links family in 2006.
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  Yep, because she lost her mother at age 9.
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  Whoa I didn't see that coming. I'm sorry no like like old giddy
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  OK and basically said cool the community doesn't have the
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  support so I'm building it. Casual hero behavior.
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  Thank you. Yes, thank you, Chachi PT,
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  You're the only person who can run a grief organization and
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  still have the energy to coordinate Shabba tones.
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  OK, interesting. The world thinks orphans and
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  imagines charity. You build infrastructure, peer
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  support, mentors, guidance, publications, referrals, and the
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  entire ecosystem. Basically turning the pain into
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  a blueprint of help. Yes.
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  Oh, now you're tempting me to use ChatGPT more often because
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  that's a good sales pitch. That's amazing.
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  That is amazing. Wow.
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  OK, well, I'm glad. I'm glad we pushed.
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  Through that we got that way exactly.
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  So yeah. So who am I and what do I do so?
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  Let's start honestly. Let's start when you were a kid.
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  Where did you grow up? Who's your family grew up in?
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  Muncie, Oh, you. Did.
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  OK, bye. Back to my stomping grounds
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  right here. What was your name?
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  So my maiden name is Cutler. I grew up and and not related to
• 8:41
  any of the BMG colors. I'm so sorry.
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  Or the Bensonhurst ones or anybody who wants to be related.
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  That must have been very annoying growing.
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  My father is an only child who was born in Boston of all
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  places. So no, nobody's, nobody's
• 8:52
  relative here. I grew up in Muncie and Muncie
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  then was a very different place than what it is right now.
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  You know, before we started, I was kind of talking old Muncie
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  stuff a little bit. I grew up on Carlton with the
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  4th from family there. So I think that that says a lot
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  about where Muncie was because those houses now have 3-4
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  families on them. But anyway, so yeah, as I grew
• 9:16
  up there and kind of I, I stayed in Muncie till I got married.
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  Interestingly, my husband originally is from Israel, but
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  he grew up in Muncie. And then so when we got married,
• 9:28
  everybody was like, oh, Muncie to Muncie.
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  Cute. You'll stay in Muncie.
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  I live in Brooklyn. My husband was learning in
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  Borough Park and I was desperate to live in a city.
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  I was the kid who didn't belong in the countryside, who
• 9:39
  everybody's like, how do you manage in Borough Park for all
• 9:41
  these years? I'm like, bring me the noise,
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  the trains, the access to things, the movement, the city
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  that never sleeps. That was what I needed.
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  Other people need the quiet and I'm very happy for them that
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  they found Muncie and I'm glad they think it's still quiet.
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  Good one, yeah. But you know, I, so that was
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  kind of my childhood. So I got married, I moved to
• 10:00
  Borough Park. That was 2324 years ago and my
• 10:05
  first career, I mean, I did the very Jewish thing.
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  I went to seminary and then I started teaching and I had
• 10:10
  always wanted to teach like that was a passion of mine.
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  I taught 5th grade, I taught 5th grade English for quite a number
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  of years and then ELAI. So I didn't teach ELAI taught
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  all secular subjects really for 5th grade because they don't
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  really have departmental at that age.
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  So I was teaching math, science, history, English language arts.
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  Yeah, ELA And what grade do? You think is the grade that
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  makes a child like every teacher in every grade.
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  So my. Grade is the most.
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  No I I don't agree with that. I think every single grade does
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  and I think that there's no way to say I skipped 9th grade.
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  Funny story, my school actually was a really small school at the
• 10:46
  time. They didn't have enough kids to
• 10:48
  sustain the 9th grade. I went from 8th to 10th.
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  OK, I still look back. And yet, did I manage it?
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  Sure I did. But was 9th grade a crucial
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  year? Yeah.
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  But when I look back, I say, which grade would I have said
• 10:59
  it's OK to skip? And when you see that there's no
• 11:01
  grade that's really OK to skip, and all of them have something
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  crucial. I felt in the 5th grade, what I
• 11:07
  was doing was first of all, the the material that we taught then
• 11:10
  was fractions and decimals. You know, these days when I do
• 11:13
  percentages and everything like that, I look back to how I
• 11:15
  taught it and I was not a math person.
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  That was a really bad story. I did not know how to teach
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  math, so every night I would teach myself the math the night
• 11:23
  before. So you were responsible for
• 11:26
  teaching different secular subjects.
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  But I had. No idea whether.
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  You knew it or not, correct? Means that's the challenge of
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  when you're not teaching a departmental subject.
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  Like I'm a real English person. I later became an editor of a
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  publication. That's really my passion.
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  History is my passion. I can do that.
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  Math and science, not so much. I pretty much failed all math in
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  high school. I passed by the skin of my teeth
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  by taking it like 3 times. Whereas history I could have
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  totally done whatever I wanted to do in class.
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  And if my history teacher is listening to this, sure, I read
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  more novels in her class than anything else.
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  But because I knew I could, I knew it in my sleep.
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  It was my passion and it was fine.
• 12:04
  I I got great grades with that. Exactly, you're 1.
• 12:06
  Of those that didn't have to pay attention in.
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  History and. Did a good job in.
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  Math I always. Hated those kids but in.
• 12:11
  Math, it was terrible. I would pay attention and I
• 12:13
  would try so hard and nothing about it made sense.
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  The interesting part is that today, just to Fast forward, I
• 12:19
  run a nonprofit and I deal with five and a half, $1,000,000 a
• 12:21
  year. So at the end of the day, I
• 12:22
  better know my math, right? But I'm doing projections, I'm
• 12:25
  doing budgets, and I'm, thank God, really, really, really good
• 12:29
  at it. And I always wonder what
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  happened. And I think some of it was that
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  it became very practical and meaningful.
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  Whereas in school was just like another subject I had to take,
• 12:38
  but there was no practical application for me.
• 12:41
  I didn't have to sit in the bank and say one second, that doesn't
• 12:44
  make sense to me and win my round.
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  Right now. There's an incentive.
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  I want to know these numbers. So I became very good at
• 12:51
  numbers. Percentage is still are tough
• 12:55
  for me, but like anything else, I, I'm, I'm really good at it.
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  I also have a general knowledge of numbers, which as a kid I
• 13:01
  didn't realize that I had the knowledge of numbers without
• 13:04
  knowing how to compute, which meant I had an understanding of
• 13:07
  what $1,000,000 is without an understanding of how do I add
• 13:11
  100,000, How many times do I have to add 100,000 to get me to
• 13:14
  1,000,000? And I think that's just an
• 13:16
  interesting part of our school system is that sometimes we, you
• 13:18
  know, certain things that were not great at school, we end up
• 13:21
  having to teach ourselves in a way that makes sense to our
• 13:24
  brain and we're successful at it.
• 13:26
  But anyway, yeah, so I was teaching 5th grade and then I on
• 13:30
  the side, I was writing for some of the from media that was out
• 13:33
  there. I was writing them for Hamodi.
• 13:34
  I was writing for Bina. This was before Misbah or AMI
• 13:38
  ever existed. And I loved it.
• 13:41
  Who was the 1st? So in the From world, I think
• 13:43
  the, well, the Jewish observer predated everybody, right?
• 13:47
  I think the was after that and then came Hamodiya Jewish.
• 13:50
  Press was always around also, but that was more modern, it's
• 13:53
  true. No, no, no, you're right.
• 13:54
  Yeah, no, but you're right. They were around and then came
• 13:57
  Hamodiya, and then came Vina, and then came Meshbacha and then
• 14:01
  came AMI. Like that's pretty much.
• 14:02
  And then the Yiddish publication explosions has happened in the
• 14:04
  last few years. So I was very invested in, in
• 14:07
  the publishing world and I was doing interviews and getting,
• 14:10
  you know, features kind of stories with different people
• 14:13
  pitching it and, and writing. And at some point I just, I
• 14:16
  couldn't go back to teaching. It was too many days of the
• 14:18
  week, obviously too little money.
• 14:19
  Also, just like I, I, I was coming home with $800 a month
• 14:24
  and I couldn't pay my rent. So that wasn't working very
• 14:27
  well. So I ended up becoming a
• 14:29
  features editor at Bina and Hamadia.
• 14:32
  One of the things that I really started with was a dumb job that
• 14:34
  I hated. It was being the editor of the
• 14:37
  home section. Anybody who knows me will have a
• 14:39
  good laugh. I'm not good with colors.
• 14:41
  I'm not a decorative person, I think this was just the way I
• 14:45
  was raised was take the job you're offered, figure it out
• 14:47
  while you're on there and use it as a step.
• 14:49
  Like as a step to climb higher please.
• 14:52
  Say that message again slower so everyone understands what you
• 14:55
  just said and they can accept it.
• 14:57
  Anyone in their teens 20212223, I would say all the way to 24 or
• 15:03
  even 25 should hear that message again.
• 15:05
  You got to drill it in SO. My, my father Elsham was born in
• 15:09
  the 1930s in Boston. Everything that you wanted to
• 15:13
  get, you really worked very, very hard for.
• 15:16
  And I always say that it's completely his credit that he
• 15:20
  put into me a lot of business senses.
• 15:22
  But one of the things was if you have like, I loved writing,
• 15:26
  right? I want to be in the magazine
• 15:27
  industry. If you become the janitor in the
• 15:29
  place, take it so you're there and you'll figure out a way to
• 15:33
  get up to the position that you want to get up to, But hustle
• 15:37
  hard at whatever they give you. Take it.
• 15:40
  Don't say, hey, I want to be an editor, I want to be at this.
• 15:42
  Nah. So they gave me this job,
• 15:44
  believe it or not, it was from 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM.
• 15:47
  They needed three hours a day, four days a week, and then they
• 15:51
  wanted Sundays. They had nobody who wanted to
• 15:53
  work Sundays, obviously, and they needed someone who's going
• 15:55
  to take the phones and deal with the last minute stuff from 8:30
• 15:58
  AM to 2:30 PM on Sundays. So because I wanted this really
• 16:02
  hard, I took all the hard hours. I was willing to work for those
• 16:05
  three hours. And I'll say this, I got $18.00
• 16:08
  an hour. 10 went to my babysitter and eight went to me.
• 16:14
  OK. And I did this for a reason,
• 16:17
  because this was what I really wanted to do.
• 16:20
  And if I really wanted to do it, I was going to have to suffer
• 16:22
  through the first few months until I proved that I was worth
• 16:26
  more. So what would happen was they
• 16:29
  would do these planning meetings for their yuntf issue, for
• 16:31
  whatever. And as somebody was going into
• 16:33
  the planning meeting, I would slip in an idea.
• 16:35
  I'd say I was always the ideas person.
• 16:37
  So I'd say, you know, hey, I wonder if we should cover XYZ as
• 16:41
  a topic, right? And they'd be like, oh, that's a
• 16:45
  good idea. And eventually they said, you
• 16:46
  know, do you want to come join our planning meetings?
• 16:49
  So I came to join the planning meetings.
• 16:51
  And then they'd say, well, do you want to explain your idea to
• 16:53
  the writer who's going to be doing it?
• 16:56
  And then at some point, I just de facto became their features
• 16:59
  editor because I was doing it. Kudos.
• 17:02
  To them, I have to pause for for recognizing and asking their
• 17:06
  employees to do more and getting them out of their comfort zone
• 17:10
  and recognizing that the quietest person in the room may
• 17:12
  be the smartest and really just like so.
• 17:15
  It was it was an A wonderful ride.
• 17:17
  I did this for about 8 1/2 years.
• 17:19
  Anybody there that you remember specifically that like mentored
• 17:21
  you? They're all.
• 17:22
  Wonderful. You know, there was Mrs.
• 17:23
  Licenstein as something else. There's Rifke Posner, there's
• 17:26
  Mrs. Roth, Pam Scher, Rahlbachi Bennick.
• 17:28
  I worked with all these people for years you're talking about.
• 17:31
  Major talents, Most people. Yeah, many of them are.
• 17:33
  You know, some of them have moved on to other, you know,
• 17:36
  talented stuff that they do. But we really, we had something
• 17:39
  great going and we had we had a wonderful time doing it as well.
• 17:41
  Good to. You guys wow so.
• 17:43
  Yes. Anyway, it was such a team.
• 17:44
  Behind it, that, yeah. And there's and, and I, I will
• 17:47
  tell you that I will never in my life open a publication and not
• 17:51
  have an editorial lens to IT. People know me from my letters
• 17:54
  to the editor that I write fairly often.
• 17:57
  And, and we can talk about how that is just pure marketing and
• 18:03
  my opinions that can't be kept to myself.
• 18:05
  But part of it is because I really recognize the work that
• 18:09
  goes into things. And I know how much effort a
• 18:13
  writer put into a particular thing and getting feedback, even
• 18:16
  if it's pushback, people want to know that their stuff was read
• 18:20
  or listened to. You know, you got to be on a
• 18:22
  podcast. I mean, you want to know that
• 18:23
  people heard the podcast, right, By the way?
• 18:25
  Thank you I I totally forgot we are sponsored by the Prime's
• 18:28
  first production team Stephen's like shoe Thank God he got to it
• 18:32
  thank you to all our subscribers, our listeners, our
• 18:34
  followers, our commenters, our feedback, our pushback.
• 18:38
  We love it all and that's a great reason why I never
• 18:42
  actually clicked with me. Why?
• 18:43
  Like I'm saying, when you're. Putting an effort.
• 18:45
  You don't know, right? We're sitting here now.
• 18:47
  You're going to put this out whenever you're going to put
• 18:48
  this out. You don't know who's listening
• 18:50
  to it. You don't know if these people
• 18:51
  got to it this week right, naturally, or people are really
• 18:54
  weeklies and stuff like that and you want to know that people got
• 18:58
  your feedback. So anyway, while I was doing all
• 19:00
  this because apparently I can't do one thing I like, you've read
• 19:03
  in ChatGPT. My mother had been diagnosed
• 19:05
  with cancer when I was about 2 1/2 years old.
• 19:07
  I'm an only child. Both of my parents had been
• 19:11
  previously married, but I didn't live with their children.
• 19:13
  We're 20 and 25 years apart, so it's quite the difference.
• 19:17
  But I grew up as an only child. My mother got diagnosed with
• 19:20
  stage 4 cancer at when I was 2 1/2.
• 19:22
  And she was given six weeks to live.
• 19:24
  And she really, there's a story that I tell in almost every
• 19:26
  podcast because it's just too good.
• 19:27
  But she had this Doctor Who came in to her and he was a young
• 19:31
  doctor. And he said to her, you know,
• 19:32
  you have six weeks to live. And she looked at him and she
• 19:34
  said, look, you can give me the diagnosis.
• 19:36
  Tell me what you want to do with me.
• 19:37
  But you can't decide you're not God.
• 19:38
  You can't decide how long I'm going to live or not.
• 19:41
  And he said, all right, you have it your way.
• 19:43
  I'm going on a biking trip for the weekend.
• 19:45
  I'll see you on Monday to start treatment.
• 19:47
  Went on a biking trip for the weekend and got killed in a
• 19:50
  biking accident. And she outlived him by 7 1/2
• 19:53
  years. So it's like we really don't
• 19:58
  control the world. And that was where the the kind
• 20:00
  of vibe that I grew up with was. My parents very much believed is
• 20:03
  that everything is as I am. And I lived very much with that
• 20:07
  in my DNA, which doesn't mean it wasn't a struggle later on.
• 20:10
  And it isn't a struggle sometimes.
• 20:12
  But it was very much like this was their mindset for real.
• 20:16
  So I grew up very, very, very happy home.
• 20:19
  My mother was energetic to another level.
• 20:23
  People who were her friends who met me and everybody's like, oh,
• 20:27
  she has so much energy to her right.
• 20:29
  And they're like, this was her mother on a bad day after chemo,
• 20:32
  She's got nothing on her. Like, you can't.
• 20:34
  My mother had crazy energy levels, so that's a crazy.
• 20:38
  Compliment if I ever heard of anything so.
• 20:40
  She she had stage 4 cancer, lived with it for about 7 years
• 20:44
  and I was used to this grind. She would go in for treatments,
• 20:46
  go to the hospital, I would go to somebody else's house for a
• 20:49
  few days 'cause I was an only child and my father Manju was
• 20:51
  working in 47th Street photo Manhattan, commuting, going to
• 20:54
  visit her in the hospital, coming back home, like the whole
• 20:57
  9 yards. They really had a challenge and
• 21:00
  I would live with two wonderful families in Muncie every time my
• 21:03
  mother went in for treatments. And then and then we also at the
• 21:09
  same time, because I told you my mother was like a little crazy.
• 21:12
  She had, do you know Ravi again in Muncie at all?
• 21:15
  So he's a Sparty rabbi. There was somebody Ravi missing
• 21:18
  again in Israel who was very big in care of like it was the at
• 21:21
  the start of our Rahim, they were all doing these seminars in
• 21:24
  Israel and they would have girls who became from and then they
• 21:27
  would go back to the Tel Aviv disco scene and you would lose
• 21:30
  them. So what they realized was also,
• 21:32
  how do you teach someone at the age of 25 everything that we've
• 21:35
  taken 25 years to absorb? It's really hard.
• 21:38
  So their idea was give them a free trip to America, free room
• 21:41
  and board and some from families home.
• 21:43
  They'll learn about Kashra Shabbos, how a from family
• 21:46
  conducts themselves, the nuances, the kind of The Sixth
• 21:49
  Sense and the sixth children. The fifth children are that we
• 21:51
  have and have them live in somebody's home where they can
• 21:55
  get that sense and then they'll be able to build on that.
• 21:58
  So that's where we had. So over 9 years we had 27 girls
• 22:03
  living by us and my parents married each one off.
• 22:06
  They all left our house bar Husha Mescalas.
• 22:09
  We have pictures in the front steps of everybody in their
• 22:11
  wedding gowns and me and another color gown for each wedding and
• 22:15
  they left our home that way. So.
• 22:17
  Yeah, and officially the cover story was that my mother had
• 22:20
  stage 4 cancer and they're going to help out with, you know, kind
• 22:23
  of keeping the house running and helping with the cooking and the
• 22:26
  days that she was week. So she would sit in the kitchen
• 22:28
  and like totally like say this is what we're making today.
• 22:31
  And if she didn't have kayak to stand on her feet, they would
• 22:34
  help by doing that. And in exchange they got free
• 22:37
  room and board and they also got job placement and free dating
• 22:39
  coaching and awesome company and a from house.
• 22:42
  So then every Chavez, all the girls who got married would come
• 22:46
  back with their husbands and their kids and whatever.
• 22:48
  So I didn't really grow up like an only child in the in the real
• 22:52
  sense of the word. And my mother was very concerned
• 22:56
  that I shouldn't be spoiled. So it was like I had a lot of
• 22:59
  stuff because naturally I was an only child and I had a playroom
• 23:03
  that was the basement of a Carlton home and it was very
• 23:06
  big. So all my kids, all my friends
• 23:08
  used to love coming to play and we had a great swing set in the
• 23:12
  backyard. That probably doesn't exist with
• 23:14
  the many families that they have there, but we had a backyard and
• 23:19
  I really had a very, very, very happy childhood in that.
• 23:22
  If you don't. Mind me asking him so just sure
• 23:24
  how were they able to financially afford this in 47th
• 23:27
  street photo? I'm saying you know, unless last
• 23:30
  time I checked so I. Will say that.
• 23:32
  Let's also remember that the house on Carlton cost $90,000 in
• 23:35
  those days. Sure.
• 23:36
  OK. So a lot of the expenses were
• 23:39
  much, much, much cheaper. My mother's parents Sparkles
• 23:42
  were financially comfortable and they definitely helped out.
• 23:45
  I don't know in what way and how much because that is something
• 23:48
  that I wasn't told thankfully. You're saying you're?
• 23:50
  Marrying off over two dozen No. So the 2000 Oh no, no, no, no,
• 23:54
  no, no. So that was all my father's
• 23:56
  fundraising you grew up in. A fundraising environment as.
• 24:00
  Well, OK, so my father worked in 47th Street photo and when my
• 24:03
  mother got diagnosed, my father went to get some brachas,
• 24:06
  obviously. And one of the things that he
• 24:08
  had been told is that in Ilu Devarim we say beaker.
• 24:13
  But yeah, Beaker hollom, Ajna sescala, Lovaisa Mace, right.
• 24:18
  And the the break, I think it was with Hinds Criesworth's
• 24:21
  part, the break between Beaker Hollom and and Lovaisa Mace is
• 24:24
  Ajna Sescala. So getting involved in Akhna
• 24:27
  Saskala distances the two. So helping women who need to get
• 24:31
  married to help you separate the sickness to the death.
• 24:34
  Exactly. So he very much took that upon
• 24:37
  himself, that was. For all the non Jewish
• 24:39
  listeners, yes. Absolutely.
• 24:40
  I'm sorry. So he took it upon himself.
• 24:43
  He went from Shoal to Shoal. Every Sunday on his one day off,
• 24:48
  he would be out of the house from the first minion.
• 24:50
  He would go to base Fila, he would go to Satmar, he would go
• 24:52
  to Visionets, he would go to this one, to that one.
• 24:55
  Every time he heard there was a good powerful minion somewhere
• 24:57
  or a few mignon and back-to-back where it's worthwhile to stand
• 25:00
  there. I don't know if you remember
• 25:01
  this, the old Satmar show on the corner of Phyllis Terrace.
• 25:04
  I don't know if it still exists there in the way that it was,
• 25:06
  but it was a minion factory. So he knew that people there
• 25:09
  generally came at 10. That's when their minion factory
• 25:12
  would pick up. So he knew to be envisioned it
• 25:14
  for the 678 and to go to Satmar for the 9101112.
• 25:18
  Like he had this system really down.
• 25:21
  And he would come home with sack fulls of quarters of singles and
• 25:26
  I would sit on the little coffee table, not as cute as this one.
• 25:29
  And he had these little counting methods.
• 25:32
  Now he wanted me to learn math. Didn't work very well, but he'd
• 25:35
  be like pile the quarters in in multiples of four, right?
• 25:39
  This way, you know, you have 8, you have $2.00, right?
• 25:42
  And I was his counter every Sunday afternoon, I would count
• 25:45
  the money. He never trusted my counting.
• 25:48
  He would count over because he wasn't stupid.
• 25:50
  This girl could not be trusted with money.
• 25:53
  How did he do? How did he do every week but.
• 25:55
  It's very interesting because I don't remember the numbers
• 25:57
  right, I don't remember them off hand, but I remember 2 very
• 26:01
  distinct things. One was that one week I found
• 26:02
  $100 bill, right? And I was like, Oh my gosh, you
• 26:05
  got $100? And my father smiled and he said
• 26:08
  and the guy asked for $99.00 and change.
• 26:10
  And I was indignant. I was so mad.
• 26:13
  I remember being like an 11 year old.
• 26:14
  I was fuming. And I said to him, I said, why
• 26:18
  didn't you, like, get mad at him?
• 26:19
  Like he used you as a change machine.
• 26:22
  Banks were closed on Sundays then you were his change
• 26:24
  machine. And my father looked at me and
• 26:27
  it's something I still use in fundraising.
• 26:29
  And he said, a YID wants to give you a dollar, and you think
• 26:34
  that's not good enough? And it was like, OK, like every
• 26:39
  dollar was holy to him, like in that way.
• 26:42
  So yeah, I would count all the monies and he would use the that
• 26:44
  those funds. He again, we used to make the
• 26:47
  weddings where in the old Yeshiva Spring Valley boys was
• 26:49
  very cheap. Most of the stuff like would be
• 26:52
  donated the gowns. We had like a Gamahan rotation,
• 26:55
  like a lot of things he was. Fundraising for these other
• 26:57
  children. But he would fundraise for they.
• 26:59
  They all got married with his money.
• 27:01
  He paid the first month rent. This is crazy.
• 27:03
  To me, yeah. I'll tell you why simply
• 27:05
  because, you know, I get interrupted a lot in life.
• 27:11
  You know, I was laughing with someone to my friend in
• 27:14
  Urscheloma this morning. He was saying, you know, how
• 27:16
  many times did somebody ever stop you?
• 27:19
  And how many times did someone ever stop you and say Sir, Sir,
• 27:22
  Sir, right, Sir. How many times did anyone stop
• 27:24
  you? Say ma'am, ma'am, to me.
• 27:26
  It's happened many, many times where someone would say, Sir,
• 27:28
  like they would stop me. I'm afraid sometimes to wear a
• 27:31
  nice shirt and sunglasses when I go to the hotel because I'm
• 27:33
  like, Oh no, I'm just going to get stopped away too much.
• 27:35
  I'd rather just like, you know, and then if I do Korea, I want
• 27:39
  to hide it. So I want to see that I'm the
• 27:41
  Korea guy that's coming after me.
• 27:45
  It's two things that that are standing out in what you just
• 27:47
  told me that I want to talk about #1 is that the people that
• 27:51
  are interrupting you in middle of your davening or the people
• 27:55
  that are interrupting you at the hotel, They may be collecting to
• 27:59
  make weddings for other people who without their being there
• 28:03
  and without them being a messenger, wouldn't even be able
• 28:06
  to get married off. And you're looking at them like,
• 28:09
  stop bothering me for a dollar. Stop.
• 28:10
  And what are you doing with your money anyways?
• 28:12
  You're here all day, every day. And meanwhile, you're telling me
• 28:15
  that no, that person was my father.
• 28:19
  And that's just fascinating to me.
• 28:20
  So I just want to mention that SO in. 2nd grade, they had this,
• 28:22
  you know that sometimes you come to school for PTA and they make
• 28:24
  these nice bulletin boards, right?
• 28:26
  Of my mother is or my father is, right.
• 28:29
  And they had this thing about like, I don't know, they had my
• 28:31
  mother, my father, whatever it was.
• 28:33
  And I wrote my father is a beggar because that's the only
• 28:38
  English word that I knew for what he did.
• 28:39
  Did I know the word fundraising, You know, did I know about
• 28:42
  anything else? So I wrote my father, what does
• 28:44
  my father do? My father is a beggar and my
• 28:46
  mother came home horrified and she tells my father, I can't
• 28:50
  believe this is what she wrote. And my father told me the story
• 28:53
  years later I didn't even know about.
• 28:55
  My father said to her, this is the nicest thing she could have
• 28:58
  written about me. What she can say.
• 28:59
  He goes to 47th Street Photo and he does customer service.
• 29:03
  He wrote, she wrote what she sees as the only job, for lack
• 29:07
  of better words, that she knew about me, which is I beg on
• 29:12
  behalf of other people. That's fine.
• 29:13
  What are human beings? So I, I really grew up with
• 29:15
  parents and I, I have to say this like anything that I do, I
• 29:18
  always say, I, I just came. Actually, both my parents are
• 29:20
  buried in Muncie. So anytime I have the
• 29:21
  opportunity, I I love going here as they were snowed in.
• 29:25
  I'm sorry, you're going to have to get used to my dark humor,
• 29:28
  but they were snowed in. I just said to them, I'm like,
• 29:30
  Ma, you know, if you can't get your driveway plowed, I can't
• 29:33
  come visit you. So whatever, how far?
• 29:36
  Were you like you felt like a coin?
• 29:38
  That was really pathetic. My mother at least was buried 2
• 29:41
  feet away from here. My mother and my father are not
• 29:42
  buried in the same place in the cemetery.
• 29:44
  So my mother was buried in the Bastille section, like right
• 29:47
  here, and my father is buried somewhere up there.
• 29:50
  I There's no chance I'm getting to his Cape or whatever I you
• 29:53
  felt. The enemy, it's fine.
• 29:55
  I gave them a piece of my mind. This is what I go for.
• 29:57
  I go for when I really like have a piece of my mind.
• 29:59
  Like I don't understand. The one thing you're supposed to
• 30:02
  do for me is go up and DOB them for me to be with this or that.
• 30:07
  So whenever I get stuck, I just go get them the peace of my
• 30:09
  mind. You don't cook for me for
• 30:10
  Shabbos. You never invite me.
• 30:12
  You don't host me, right? You don't do all these things
• 30:15
  because you're dead. The one thing you're supposed to
• 30:17
  do is dive in on my behalf. I'm not letting you get off with
• 30:20
  this. And sometimes I pin them against
• 30:22
  each other. That's the most fun.
• 30:24
  I'm like, TA, you see, I just talk at the kavaram and I have
• 30:27
  to say this, I've spoken to Manuel about this.
• 30:29
  Not everybody goes and says Tillamack Kavaram.
• 30:32
  Like you got to talk your heart out.
• 30:34
  So I go there and I just started a conversation.
• 30:36
  Now it depends where I want to go that day.
• 30:38
  Sometimes I go to my father because I know he would have
• 30:39
  given me a yes faster on this or my mother, right?
• 30:42
  I got to pin them. You know, it's like in real.
• 30:45
  So I go to my father. I'm like, I already told mom
• 30:48
  about this and she's going to go up and do a good job.
• 30:50
  Go give her backup. It's ridiculous.
• 30:53
  So I feel like my parents when I go, it's tremendously after the
• 30:56
  Maya. You just did this this morning.
• 30:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I. Came on my way from here.
• 31:00
  This type of. Conversation.
• 31:00
  Yeah. So what happened?
• 31:02
  We're doing this concert in two weeks.
• 31:03
  I think I told you about this. It's a very interesting show
• 31:05
  which we can get into just. Tell me quick, what is it the.
• 31:07
  Show is basically it's called the strings concert and it's to
• 31:10
  benefit our pay sock gift card program which funds about 450 of
• 31:14
  our families who lost a parent pay sock wise.
• 31:17
  Like we totally didn't go into that.
• 31:18
  I found in an organization called Links Family, which is
• 31:20
  for kids and teens who lost a parent and it's services.
• 31:24
  I promise you, we're getting back to you.
• 31:25
  Continue. I'm very good at this just.
• 31:28
  For the audience sake, I'm saying that for first.
• 31:31
  So one of the programs that we do is that we have a pay soft
• 31:34
  gift card program. And I this this concert was like
• 31:38
  a brainchild of a couple of years ago when we realized it's
• 31:41
  just a hard time of year to fundraise.
• 31:44
  It's kind of four months after our campaign.
• 31:46
  It's six months before this. Like it's that in between stage
• 31:51
  we had to create something new. So we created the show, which is
• 31:53
  an extremely high end, beautiful show.
• 31:56
  It's couches, it's dinner served couch and tableside and and a
• 32:01
  beautiful show. Like really high end or like.
• 32:03
  Any other potential goer? All I care about is who's
• 32:06
  singing and what kind of food. OK, so the way it works is that
• 32:09
  the first hour and a half is like more of the networking.
• 32:13
  So it's a reception style. It's the like the carving
• 32:16
  stations, the tacos, the fun foods and you know, the sushi
• 32:19
  and everything like that. And then once you get inside,
• 32:22
  it's a real dinner. So it's corporate events, which
• 32:25
  is Heshi Circus. He's done our sabatons for 16
• 32:28
  years now. So I always say, and we can talk
• 32:31
  about that in business. I like to say that if somebody
• 32:33
  does a really good job with you for 16 years, don't reinvent the
• 32:36
  wheel. And he's completely exceeded our
• 32:39
  expectations. Good.
• 32:40
  For you and good for him. I like that.
• 32:41
  Yeah. So.
• 32:42
  So at the end of the day, I, I, we have this meal which is like,
• 32:47
  it starts with starters. You come to your table, there's
• 32:49
  like jerky and nuts and candies and stuff like that.
• 32:51
  You're sitting on a couch. One of the things that we found
• 32:53
  at a show is how often do you want to get up and stretch and
• 32:56
  stuff like that? If you have a comfortable seat
• 32:58
  to sit in that you're sitting, you're staying.
• 33:01
  And we don't find people leave our room.
• 33:04
  How many people are in this room?
• 33:05
  So we make it targeted. It's about 300 to 400 people, so
• 33:08
  3 to. 400 people are sitting on couches, chilling, eating
• 33:11
  correct, networking, connecting exactly.
• 33:12
  And now comes the music, right? Exactly.
• 33:14
  OK, Who's the music part of the show?
• 33:16
  So what's very interesting is we came up with this concept, we
• 33:18
  rebranded couple years ago as Links Family.
• 33:21
  So every year we spotlight a family in music and then we have
• 33:24
  others that are partnerships. So we have very few of these
• 33:28
  singers, even if you've heard them before, do it solo so you
• 33:33
  don't have the expected songs because they've got to sing each
• 33:35
  other's songs and be in each other's faces.
• 33:38
  So something very unique and different happens.
• 33:39
  So we have Avanfried with Eitan Katz as one duo, which is not a
• 33:43
  duo that people usually see. So they're having fun with each
• 33:47
  other. Then there's the duo of Shulen
• 33:50
  Lemmer with Barack Levine, also not a typical duo.
• 33:53
  I like to have fun. We have an amazing production
• 33:55
  when? And where is this?
• 33:56
  February 22nd and I really. Hope I'm here OK.
• 33:59
  I want a couch, I want to put my legs up, I'm going to be fed,
• 34:04
  and I want Chulam, Lemmer and Avram Free to be singing to me
• 34:07
  with a duet. Right, Yeah.
• 34:08
  And then what we did is that we by.
• 34:10
  The way unfortunately, I'm sorry to say, is that the reality is
• 34:13
  your people are going to these things are going to for this,
• 34:16
  we're not going to support whatever the organization is
• 34:18
  correct. So that's what you have
• 34:19
  explained to you from a marketing perspective, what
• 34:21
  happened? Yeah, so and then what we did,
• 34:23
  the spotlight of the family this year is the Salix from London,
• 34:26
  Yigal Salik. His kids and grandkids are
• 34:29
  coming in and doing a tribute to him with his songs.
• 34:32
  Josie. Green was here talking about his
• 34:34
  history with him, yes. Wow, So this is their doing like
• 34:37
  the songs that that people grew up on.
• 34:40
  And here's by the way, I just want to say in a marketing
• 34:41
  level, our median audience of here is not kids.
• 34:46
  It's 30 to 50 year old. We had to go back and say, what
• 34:50
  music do they know? How current are they?
• 34:52
  And you want some current, no question there.
• 34:55
  But what we realized last year with what we had, we had a come
• 34:58
  on, we had a medley of marvelous Medos machine last year.
• 35:01
  Every grown man in that room sang every song by heart.
• 35:04
  It was childhood. And when you take people back to
• 35:07
  that good place, that place of fuzziness, there's a comfort
• 35:11
  zone in it. Like we don't try to be original
• 35:14
  in our song list of like songs that are you hope it's still
• 35:16
  you've never heard of them, right?
• 35:18
  We want to bring you into where you feel like you're part of the
• 35:20
  show. Very.
• 35:21
  Smart. By the way, kudos to you.
• 35:23
  Do you know which songs yet are on the list?
• 35:24
  No, I don't know any, No. Those those I actually, funnily
• 35:27
  enough, before I came in here, I was sent the song list and I
• 35:29
  didn't look at it because I said I'm going on a podcast so.
• 35:32
  Can we look at it together? No, because I'm not outing it.
• 35:34
  Oh. You can't publicize it, no.
• 35:36
  And then what we do is just say this, Yeah, right.
• 35:39
  None of your business. One time I get to say it during
• 35:42
  the show, so great, I got to do it.
• 35:44
  But the idea just from a marketing perspective is that we
• 35:47
  have two reasons to do this show and people say to me all the
• 35:50
  time, it's a very high end show, how do you make money, right?
• 35:52
  There's a lot of questions on a lot of TODEC organizations in
• 35:55
  terms of that and to anybody in business, I want to ask a
• 35:58
  question. If somebody said to you slash
• 36:00
  your marketing budget by 50% and bring in 200% income, you can't
• 36:05
  do it right. And we knew we were building
• 36:07
  something big. I had one rule the first year we
• 36:09
  did it, I said we need to make money and I had an A minimum
• 36:12
  number that I wanted to make OK, if we spend 50 and earn 50, I'm
• 36:16
  good. I see.
• 36:17
  OK, OK, but the. Cost of acquisition exactly,
• 36:21
  but. Year 2, I wanted it to go down
• 36:23
  and we're down, which is amazing, right?
• 36:24
  And I knew that would happen because thankfully the first, I
• 36:27
  would say 50% of the seats we sold to people who game last
• 36:29
  year. So it was our cost of marketing
• 36:32
  and customer acquisition for lack of better words, it really
• 36:35
  went down. This is.
• 36:35
  A paper click campaign concept, by the way, in order to cost the
• 36:39
  acquisition of a customer online is the amount of money that
• 36:41
  you're charging. If you're, if you're spending,
• 36:43
  if you want someone to buy $100 watch from you, you got to spend
• 36:46
  $100 to get him correct? And then you can make the money
• 36:48
  in the future when he comes so. There's a lot of pushback on
• 36:50
  that in the community at large because there have been
• 36:52
  organizations that have spent 100% on a campaign and made 0%
• 36:56
  sure or even 90 to to 10% right. And it I understand the fright
• 37:03
  of a donor and saying why are you doing this right?
• 37:05
  This is crazy. I love.
• 37:06
  It pinhole this for a second because I want to go back to
• 37:09
  what you're you were saying by your parents this morning.
• 37:11
  So what you're, you have two weeks away, OK.
• 37:14
  So I, I need I, I have my last 10 couches.
• 37:17
  OK, that's not a lot of couches. And thank God Jews are last
• 37:21
  minute. So it's not like I'm really
• 37:23
  concerned. Concerned, right?
• 37:25
  That room's going to be full of mid to show.
• 37:26
  I'm we're going to tell this to your parents.
• 37:27
  Are you telling this to me? No.
• 37:28
  No. No, I'm giving you the history.
• 37:29
  I went to my parents and I just said I don't understand what's
• 37:32
  taking so long. Like I don't get it.
• 37:35
  If you have connections with Hashem up there and you have a
• 37:38
  chat with him every day and you're right there like you're
• 37:41
  the neighbors, then hello, what's happening?
• 37:46
  And I I have this all the time. It's the scariest thing.
• 37:50
  I walked out and I got a confirmation of a 50K corporate.
• 37:53
  Stop. It as I walked out, I could tell
• 37:58
  you I sent somebody a picture of me at my mother's caber 5
• 38:02
  minutes later I could show you the timing.
• 38:03
  I had the text from somebody confirming it.
• 38:05
  That's. Beautiful.
• 38:06
  Right now, what is that? That is really at the end of the
• 38:11
  day, it's, you know, we know that you go to a grave.
• 38:13
  You can't pray to the person who's dead, right?
• 38:15
  We don't do that as Jews. We pray to Hashem to use the,
• 38:19
  the merits of the person there, the Scots of the person there.
• 38:21
  Some people forget that. And right.
• 38:23
  And I, that's why I'm saying it. And then and for me, I always
• 38:27
  look at it and say, you know, my parents both died when I was
• 38:31
  fairly young. My mother died when I was 9.
• 38:33
  My father died like a month before COVID.
• 38:36
  I was 30 or 35. Yeah, I'm in my 40s.
• 38:41
  That's fine. I don't have a problem with
• 38:43
  that. But for me, every year is such a
• 38:45
  gift because my parents died when I was young.
• 38:47
  That to me, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I made it.
• 38:49
  Thank you, Hashemi. You made it past you.
• 38:50
  Don't. Look, a day over 30.
• 38:52
  Thank you. So anyway, the bottom line?
• 38:53
  We're holding. That age of a compliment imagine
• 38:56
  we got a really so. Anyway, the bottom line was that
• 38:58
  I, I really recognized that they, they have this gift for
• 39:04
  me, right? I can focus on the fact that
• 39:06
  they're not here. And trust me, there are many
• 39:07
  days that I do, but there's also like, here's my fringe benefits.
• 39:12
  I can cash in on it like any good kid, right?
• 39:14
  Your father has protectia with someone, you're going to go get
• 39:17
  it, right? So I really find that for me
• 39:20
  that that's, that's been part of my journey.
• 39:22
  And because I've worked through all these things, this is some
• 39:24
  of the stuff we're able to do with the kids of, of getting to
• 39:27
  the stage of, of being able to have that sort of connection
• 39:30
  even with a parent who's not alive anymore in that way.
• 39:33
  And it's, you know, it's something that was not easy for
• 39:36
  me at some point, like to develop because I was angry.
• 39:40
  And we can go into that. But I think at this point, I'm
• 39:42
  at the point of like, score me. I'm going to go get what I want
• 39:45
  to get. And this morning was just one of
• 39:48
  those moments. It was so beautiful.
• 39:50
  And I just want to say my entire you're listening to this.
• 39:52
  You're not done yet. We've got 10 more couches to.
• 39:56
  Sell 999. Nine more couches, yeah.
• 39:59
  Couch 9 couch. I mean, hopefully if their
• 40:01
  schedule allows it. But in general, I love what
• 40:04
  you're doing and it's. The concept of it I understand I
• 40:08
  don't I don't understand more of or enough of it so I want to tap
• 40:13
  into that emotion of what you said a minute ago and take me
• 40:15
  back to what you started why you started it you're a teacher
• 40:19
  you're going into this world you're understanding who you are
• 40:22
  you're angry you're you're at the stages of the emotions right
• 40:27
  and you're holding onto 1 stage for quite some time and
• 40:30
  something's happening in your world so let's go there let's
• 40:32
  talk about this so. I was 9 when my mother passed
• 40:35
  away. And just to like take people
• 40:37
  through this, this was the day for the days before there were
• 40:40
  any organizations out there for any type of support.
• 40:43
  Obviously there weren't. Even chairs.
• 40:45
  There weren't even. No, there really was not.
• 40:47
  Nasasam started the same year that I started.
• 40:51
  So anyway, there was there was literally nothing.
• 40:54
  So my mother passed away on Shabbos.
• 40:55
  Actually on Tom Gadalia, which was Anitra that year was a
• 40:58
  pushed off fast. And so it was basically we had
• 41:02
  celebrated Rosh Hashanah for three days.
• 41:03
  Then at that point, and you have to realize on this, I tell
• 41:06
  people all the time, my mother was sick for seven years, But
• 41:08
  because I told you we had kids living in the we had girls
• 41:10
  living in the house, we had a happy home.
• 41:11
  We had everything. She would consistently go to the
• 41:13
  hospital and every time they'd tell her, you're dying, right?
• 41:17
  And every time she would just like say, well, you told me that
• 41:20
  last week also, right? So I never had this preparation
• 41:23
  of like, oh, your mother might be dying like it.
• 41:26
  It didn't even float my mind for a second.
• 41:29
  And to me, I looked at it as like the same way a kid gets
• 41:32
  trapped, goes to the doctor, gets penicillin and is home for
• 41:35
  two days. Like my mother does this with
• 41:36
  the hospital. And honestly, it didn't bother
• 41:37
  me. Like people say to me, it didn't
• 41:39
  bother me. I had such a consistent, loving
• 41:42
  childhood that I didn't even care.
• 41:44
  Like, it didn't bother me. So I went to visit her three
• 41:48
  days before she died in the hospital.
• 41:49
  And it wasn't like she said anything special to me.
• 41:51
  Like, oh, my gosh, you know, I'd love to tell you this before
• 41:54
  because again, even to her, it was like, I'm I'm dead for seven
• 41:58
  years. Like, what does anybody want
• 42:00
  from me? In fact, it was very funny.
• 42:03
  She had a very good friend of hers, Getty, Soloff and Muncie,
• 42:05
  who came to visit her before, before Rosh Hashanah.
• 42:09
  And she said to Giti, do me a favour.
• 42:11
  My mother was my very fashionable and fashion forward
• 42:13
  person, unlike her child. And she she went into it and she
• 42:18
  said to her, do me a favour, go buy me a new robe.
• 42:21
  And Giti like looked at her and she was like, you know, you're
• 42:23
  not doing very well. Like she knew she was really not
• 42:27
  in a great place like medically. And she looked at Giti square in
• 42:30
  the eye. I told you my mother was fun.
• 42:32
  And she said to Giti, listen, if I'm going to die, let me die
• 42:34
  pretty. So it was like this was the kind
• 42:37
  of vibe we had. So nobody ever sat down with me
• 42:39
  like what we do today and say, hey, let's prepare, let's think,
• 42:43
  let's, you know, say goodbyes or whatever it was.
• 42:45
  There was none of that. So my father, kudos to him,
• 42:49
  broke the news to me himself. He refused to let anyone else
• 42:51
  tell me, which was amazing on his end, even though it took a
• 42:54
  lot of courage. And he shared that with me Matzo
• 42:56
  Shabbos. And I was hysterical, completely
• 42:58
  hysterical. Also, I was attached to my
• 43:00
  mother at her hip like I was an only child.
• 43:02
  I went with her everywhere and I couldn't even wrap my mind
• 43:05
  around this as being a fact. Like it was something that
• 43:08
  didn't sit well with me, let's put it mildly.
• 43:10
  Then we went, I had been staying at somebody's house.
• 43:12
  Then my father took me home. I come home and there's Muncie
• 43:15
  was very small then my mother was very popular, so all her
• 43:18
  friends and Rob Bunham were in the house.
• 43:20
  And the house was like a whole hullabaloo.
• 43:22
  And I remember at some point I asked my father for permission.
• 43:24
  I ran out of the house. I actually ran to a neighbor's
• 43:26
  house and I literally knocked on their door and they opened the
• 43:30
  door and I said my mother passed away.
• 43:32
  Or I think I might have said my mother died.
• 43:33
  I don't remember when my mother was nipped or whatever.
• 43:35
  I said whatever the line was that I used.
• 43:37
  And she literally asked me to repeat it twice because she
• 43:40
  wouldn't believe that a nine year old kid would come to say
• 43:42
  this like knock, knock, knock. Hi, let me share the news with
• 43:44
  you. But I was desperate to tell.
• 43:47
  Like there was this tell in me that I couldn't, you know, And
• 43:50
  then I called some of my friends actually, and I told them.
• 43:52
  And it was like, first of all, it was the days before texting.
• 43:54
  I don't know what I would have done today, but at that point I
• 43:57
  was, I was desperate to tell, like there was this peace in me
• 43:59
  that just had to get out. Anyway, we had the Levi.
• 44:01
  Levi was a huge event. And after that, I came home.
• 44:04
  That was on Sunday. I came home and my father
• 44:06
  explained to me how Shiva works. And he said to me, you know,
• 44:09
  you're not Bosmus, but you're not 12 years old yet.
• 44:13
  If you don't want to sit Shiva, you can go to school tomorrow.
• 44:16
  Or if you want to, you can stay home.
• 44:19
  And I assessed my house where I was going to sit with my
• 44:23
  grandmother, who I loved dearly, but she was an older woman and
• 44:26
  my father and all these people coming into the house.
• 44:28
  And I said I want to go to school.
• 44:32
  So I went to school the next day, Monday.
• 44:35
  And let me tell you something, I went on the bus.
• 44:38
  OK, Oh my. God, now I knew there were no
• 44:41
  bus teachers on the bus or no monitors the drivers weren't
• 44:44
  from nobody made an alert. Hi SOS school, the kid came to
• 44:47
  the bus. Regular E rampo transportation.
• 44:50
  I'm standing at the bus stop. I get on the bus, I come to
• 44:53
  school. Nobody had thought the update
• 44:56
  like the principal, the teacher, Anybody realized they were all
• 44:58
  friends of my mother? They had just been a little by
• 45:01
  the Shiva. It takes time and.
• 45:03
  They're like, you know, processing it on their own.
• 45:07
  And I come to school and nobody knew what to do with me 'cause
• 45:11
  they were like, oh, this is an unexpected plot twist.
• 45:14
  We didn't see this one coming. Now, I came into school not
• 45:18
  crying. I came into school regular,
• 45:20
  which is what I teach and train people today.
• 45:23
  Kids at that age sometimes can put up.
• 45:25
  It's not even a front, it's their survival.
• 45:27
  They they need to get back to Lego and Playmobil and dolls and
• 45:30
  whatever they're into so they will push themselves in that way
• 45:33
  because that feels safe. That's what I know.
• 45:36
  And I wanted for safety to be back at school because then I'm
• 45:38
  like every other kid. So I was at school and there
• 45:41
  were a lot of funny stories the week of Shiva, like that.
• 45:43
  They used to have these notes that they would give out to the
• 45:45
  whole school when a parent was sitting Shiva.
• 45:47
  So they gave out the notes and I'm like, you could leave me out
• 45:50
  of this one. I don't need this one.
• 45:52
  I actually know this. Or we had a new kid in the
• 45:54
  class, poor girl, and she came in and I was sitting on the
• 45:58
  floor cutting out. This was the end of time.
• 46:01
  So I'm cutting out arts and crafts in 4th grade.
• 46:04
  And she said to me, you know, my father said that it's not a good
• 46:06
  idea to sit in the floor 'cause it's like when you're sitting
• 46:09
  Shiva and I'm like, I am, but I'm just not home.
• 46:12
  So there were a lot of crazy stories.
• 46:14
  Like when I look back, like there was serious dysfunction in
• 46:17
  the fact that I went. I think that was fine.
• 46:19
  Other. Yeah.
• 46:20
  Oh, I did. I completely did.
• 46:21
  So anyway, the the concept that the school then adapted, and I
• 46:24
  can't even blame them for it, was let's not rock the boat.
• 46:27
  She looks like she's doing fine. She's clearly giving us the
• 46:29
  signals of she's fine. Let's leave it right.
• 46:34
  And the line that I use now is the boat's been rocked.
• 46:37
  You can't really rock this boat. The boat's been rocked already.
• 46:40
  And I really did need someone to reach out and to kind of
• 46:43
  connect. And I was desperate.
• 46:46
  So I asked my father. I said, you know of any other
• 46:50
  girl in Muncie who lost a parent?
• 46:53
  And my father said no, But there's a man who dabbins A
• 46:55
  shul. He was young, and I'm like, he's
• 46:57
  old. He was probably like 29 or 31.
• 47:00
  And I'm like, ha, he's old. Like why would I want to even
• 47:02
  have a conversation? And my father couldn't find
• 47:04
  anyone. A couple years later, somebody
• 47:06
  connected me actually with a girl.
• 47:07
  We had a short lived pen pal relationship, if you remember
• 47:10
  what those are, where we wrote letters.
• 47:14
  But I kind of always sought this out when I got to camp in 7th
• 47:18
  and 8th grade, I made more friends who had lost the parent
• 47:20
  and I really connected. And those friendships were
• 47:23
  treasures for me. And I kind of planted the seeds
• 47:25
  in my head before I started an organization of the biggest
• 47:29
  support for kids who lost the parent is kids who lost the
• 47:31
  parent. When you meet another fifth
• 47:34
  grader or another third grader or another 12th grader, you know
• 47:38
  that you're not the only one. And for me, part of the
• 47:40
  loneliest part of the journey was that I was an only child,
• 47:44
  and I knew nobody else my age who this had happened to.
• 47:46
  And when you feel that alone, everything goes up, whether it's
• 47:51
  the sadness, the anger, the everything like that, because
• 47:53
  you feel like I am the only person in the universe going
• 47:56
  through this. And it's, it's not a pleasant
• 47:59
  experience. So that was kind of my, my
• 48:02
  journey. I had a lot of ups and downs.
• 48:05
  My father remarried and I, I moved back with him.
• 48:09
  I had been living with a different family.
• 48:11
  My father remarried someone who was not previously married and
• 48:13
  didn't have children. So I didn't have step siblings.
• 48:14
  I remained the only child, but it was a journey.
• 48:19
  And my father also wasn't young at the time.
• 48:21
  And say, don't forget, I was a second marriage for my father.
• 48:24
  I was born of a second marriage. So it was it was definitely a
• 48:27
  journey in terms of all that. And I kind of went through a lot
• 48:31
  of skipping over grief in my elementary years.
• 48:35
  And then I hit high school and I hit 10th grade and it hit hard.
• 48:38
  Really, really, really hard. I was about 15 years old.
• 48:42
  I was desperate for the Shiva that I never sat like that was
• 48:46
  what I was desperate for. I just wanted a week where I
• 48:48
  could sit in a chair and everybody would tell me stories
• 48:51
  and I would sit there and I could be sad in peace.
• 48:55
  And I didn't have that. So I actually went to a payphone
• 48:57
  in camp. That's a funny story, sorry.
• 48:59
  But I went to a payphone in camp and I called the Mahon Lahara
• 49:02
  hotline, which is a hotline that existed in Muncie a million
• 49:07
  years ago. Never.
• 49:08
  You want to now have a lot of pity on the rub who takes the
• 49:11
  call? Listen to the call.
• 49:12
  I said, I'm 15 years old. I'm in camp.
• 49:14
  My mother passed away when I'm nine and I'm not giving him my
• 49:16
  name. And I said, and I want to sit
• 49:20
  Shiva now. You're the row of taking this
• 49:23
  call. Let me tell you something.
• 49:24
  It's like by mistake we got disconnected, right?
• 49:27
  But he didn't. He was incredible.
• 49:29
  And I wish I knew who he was because I don't.
• 49:33
  And he validated. He said, I just want to tell you
• 49:35
  something. Hashem created a system for how
• 49:39
  we grieve. There's the leviah, there's the
• 49:42
  first 3 days of intense crying. There's the seven days of Shiva.
• 49:45
  There's 30 days that we keep certain things.
• 49:47
  There's a whole year that we keep other things, and then we
• 49:50
  have yard sites continuously. And Yusker, right?
• 49:53
  When you mess with that system, it makes sense that you're not
• 49:57
  feeling OK. And I remember he made me feel
• 50:01
  normal because I really thought I should be locked up at that
• 50:04
  point. And I was like, I must be crazy.
• 50:06
  15 years old, and I want to set Shiva.
• 50:08
  When something happened six years ago, there was nobody out
• 50:11
  there to tell me that grief lasts forever or that these
• 50:13
  things don't get resolved so fast.
• 50:15
  I was like, it's six years out. I should be over this right?
• 50:19
  So by validating that he did me one of the greatest Hassadam in
• 50:21
  the world. And then he said to me, and I'm
• 50:25
  so sorry, you can't really said Sheva now, right, But it was a
• 50:29
  magnificent answer of this like validation and not even but and
• 50:36
  so that was kind of the the start of real angst in 10th,
• 50:40
  11th, 12th grade. I was good kid on the outside.
• 50:43
  I was the kid that everybody would have said does well
• 50:46
  academically, socially in every way.
• 50:48
  And I can tell you today that I did very not well inside I was a
• 50:52
  mess. I was an absolute royal mess.
• 50:55
  I was angry, I was sad. I really felt like this world
• 51:00
  was a very dark place. But I didn't have any of that on
• 51:03
  the outside. It was all all inside.
• 51:05
  You see all the pictures from then?
• 51:07
  I'm smiling, I'm laughing, I'm creating Hagigas, I'm Gio, I'm
• 51:11
  doing the whole thing. I'm like walking the walk.
• 51:15
  Part of that was the mentality of which many of us were brought
• 51:17
  up with the soldier mentality of it didn't really matter what you
• 51:20
  went through. My father went back to work and
• 51:22
  I went back to school, right? Like we just did what we needed
• 51:24
  to do. But I definitely wasn't.
• 51:27
  So it kind of planted the seeds of like, I needed more
• 51:30
  understanding, I needed more compassion.
• 51:31
  I needed to be more connected to people who got it.
• 51:34
  I needed the language for what was happening to me.
• 51:36
  And I think the lack of having all that, I felt very much like
• 51:39
  I was, I was turning inwards. And that turning inwards for a
• 51:42
  teenager is a very, very, very scary thing.
• 51:45
  So that's kind of. It's making me think also, by
• 51:48
  the way, and addicts need help from each other to understand
• 51:53
  the emotion and support one another.
• 51:55
  It's not just for addicts. It's anyone, anyone that's
• 51:57
  suffering from a challenge. The second you find other people
• 52:01
  that are doing it, like I resonate with it personally, and
• 52:04
  I just want to share it with you for 30 seconds.
• 52:06
  And I'm sure many of our listeners are, you know,
• 52:09
  thinking, you know, similar stories that happened to them.
• 52:11
  I've learned over the years that when someone says a story as
• 52:14
  badly as you want to say, Oh my God, it happened to me too.
• 52:16
  Like, Oh my God, I have a version of that that's even
• 52:17
  cooler. Nobody cares, you know, just
• 52:20
  listen to the other person's story for crying out loud.
• 52:22
  So I, I, I saved this response for like 20 minutes ago from 20
• 52:27
  minutes ago when you started saying about your, your, your
• 52:29
  parent, when you found out you have to tell someone you ran
• 52:31
  over. And what a crazy story.
• 52:33
  I can't like I'm just thinking what happened to me when my dad
• 52:37
  died and I was in my young 20s and I was in touch with Atzalah
• 52:42
  constantly because he was going And when he died, I called them,
• 52:47
  I remember being Mikhal Shabbos. And I'm thinking to myself, OK,
• 52:51
  I'm, I'm, I know I'm not supposed to pick up the phone
• 52:53
  now, but I'm going to do it. And I picked up the phone and I
• 52:56
  called Atzalah and I'm like, hello.
• 52:57
  And they're like, yeah, I can help you.
• 52:58
  Atzalah Atzolah, right? You know, they pick up they're
• 53:01
  amazing, by the way. So I can't wait to get Kalish,
• 53:05
  CEO of Atzalah. He's coming on the podcast.
• 53:07
  He, he needs a lot of accolades and credit.
• 53:10
  But anyways, I'm like, my father just died and they're like, it
• 53:16
  was silent and I, I just never forget it.
• 53:19
  And the guy was so compassionate over the phone.
• 53:20
  He says, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
• 53:23
  And I'm like, but but he died. But what should I do?
• 53:25
  What should I do? And I remember thinking, what
• 53:27
  should I do? Just remembering now.
• 53:30
  It's the first time I've ever said the story to anybody.
• 53:32
  Actually, I'm just telling you 2 now.
• 53:33
  I remember thinking that I just now when you're saying it, I'm
• 53:38
  thinking back, I just needed to tell somebody.
• 53:42
  And it's like when you're just like when you're happy, you need
• 53:45
  to tell someone, you need to dance with someone, you need to
• 53:47
  sing with someone, you need to say thank you, Hashem with
• 53:49
  someone. It just feels good.
• 53:51
  So to the emotion, the opposite effect is true as well, which is
• 53:54
  amazing. Like wow.
• 53:55
  So, but tell me what happened with your process about how this
• 53:59
  LED you to starting something because like, you know, it's
• 54:02
  amazing. I'm thinking back like, Oh my
• 54:04
  gosh, I don't have support systems for this.
• 54:05
  Everyone should have a support system for something.
• 54:07
  How is there nothing there in? 2006 it's.
• 54:09
  Bothering me, yeah. Right.
• 54:10
  So it's very interesting because now they're now I'm in, there's
• 54:12
  so many different organizations right now in different parts of
• 54:16
  those things that deal with that.
• 54:17
  And sometimes people are like, oh, you know, when did you
• 54:20
  start? And I'm like, started before
• 54:22
  there was anything on the market.
• 54:25
  So anyway, what happened was that in 2006, I had been working
• 54:28
  for the magazine. I was teaching and everything
• 54:29
  like that. And I had my first child.
• 54:31
  And somebody came to me and said, you know, there, there
• 54:35
  should be. I think that was the words that
• 54:36
  they used. There should be a magazine for
• 54:39
  teens who lost a parent. Now I have to give everybody
• 54:41
  context for a second. In 2006, which was 20 years ago,
• 54:44
  a Times main service was a magazine.
• 54:47
  Hi, Lifeline had a newsletter for parents with children of
• 54:50
  cancer or something like that, I don't remember exactly.
• 54:53
  Like all the large organizations, their main
• 54:56
  service that they would advertise was their magazine or
• 54:59
  their newsletter. Why?
• 55:00
  Nobody was going out to events. Nobody was showing up and
• 55:02
  saying, hey, I also. So everything came to people's
• 55:05
  homes and it was delivered. And in those days we didn't even
• 55:09
  put the name and the return address.
• 55:11
  We just put the address. So like people were very like
• 55:16
  kind of sand offish like yes, I want the support, but I want it
• 55:18
  from afar and. Then so and then put it under
• 55:20
  the rug and we're done so. Somebody said to me, you know
• 55:23
  why there should be a magazine. So I said, sure, I I'd be happy
• 55:26
  to help with that. And she said no, no, you should
• 55:28
  do it. And I pulled out a shelf in my
• 55:32
  pantry. True story.
• 55:34
  And I screwed in a light bulb and I put the Mac in there that
• 55:37
  we had the iMac. And I wrote almost the whole
• 55:41
  magazine under 6 different pen names.
• 55:43
  And my husband designed it and I sent it out to 10 families who
• 55:48
  agreed to get it. And from then until now, we'd
• 55:52
  never send anything out to a family unless they've asked for
• 55:54
  it. Like we're, we're very
• 55:55
  respectful of that. So there were ten families.
• 55:57
  I knew that I'd lost a parent. And I called each of them and
• 55:59
  said, would you like to get a magazine for teenage girls?
• 56:02
  And they're like, yeah, so I sent it.
• 56:04
  And then I did the marketing move.
• 56:07
  I said, how am I going to get other people to know about this?
• 56:09
  So I printed 50 extra copies. I only had money for 50 more
• 56:12
  copies and I put it in an envelope and I sent it to about
• 56:17
  30 rub on him like 5 therapists who I knew and five principals
• 56:22
  with a cover letter saying, hey, here's a new project that I'm
• 56:25
  starting for teenage girls who lost a parent today.
• 56:28
  We do girls and boys just to, but we started initially with
• 56:30
  this. And today we don't only stick to
• 56:32
  teens, we do zero to 23. But this was how it started.
• 56:35
  And I wrote, I'm starting this with teenage girls who lost a
• 56:37
  parent. If you know a family who could
• 56:38
  benefit, here's the information you can give them.
• 56:43
  And this is how they can sign up.
• 56:45
  And we got families who were reaching out and saying, oh,
• 56:48
  we'd love to get this magazine. Oh, we'd love to get this
• 56:51
  magazine. And that's literally how our
• 56:53
  word got out. Did did you know that you had
• 56:55
  this marketing ability in your head at that point?
• 56:59
  Because that's actually a very smart move.
• 57:01
  You know, in order to get to your market, you're reaching out
• 57:04
  to the leaders of the industry and just going in to there and
• 57:08
  they're going to bring in to you from their community.
• 57:10
  Very smart so. I I didn't know there must.
• 57:13
  Be like a name for that in the marketing world, but.
• 57:14
  It really, it really was a good marketing movement when I look
• 57:17
  back at it. And then at the end of the day,
• 57:18
  what happened was a year later, 7 girls sat around my dining
• 57:22
  room table and said, would you start a Shabbaton weekend for
• 57:25
  us? Moving up from a newsletter to a
• 57:28
  chavatone, that's like a huge movie and.
• 57:29
  I said sure because I was so young and so dumb and I had no
• 57:33
  idea. By the way, the first e-mail
• 57:34
  address we had was Links magazine because that was all it
• 57:37
  was supposed to be, was a magazine.
• 57:38
  So there was no chavatone in that guidebook.
• 57:41
  So we then had a chavatone where 50 girls came and that was
• 57:45
  considered huge. We did it in a hotel that no
• 57:48
  longer exists. I think it's a nursing home
• 57:49
  actually today. Got to remember now that Madison
• 57:53
  Suites, they were called in Somerset, NJ.
• 57:56
  I didn't know what I was doing. I hired actually a guy to find
• 57:59
  this hotel for me. He charged me a whole $2000 to
• 58:03
  organize the whole thing and we did this.
• 58:06
  I got somebody to fund it and my father raised the 1st $10,000
• 58:11
  and we had this. Your father, I'm telling you,
• 58:14
  legend. Legend.
• 58:15
  So we started. Did he tell?
• 58:16
  You that he's going to do it? Yeah.
• 58:17
  Yeah, yeah. And my father was like the
• 58:18
  proudest, proudest Peacock of this project.
• 58:21
  Like you couldn't find somebody prouder.
• 58:23
  My father used to approach anybody in Muncie.
• 58:25
  Did you say the proudest? What Peacock the.
• 58:27
  Proudest Peacock of this project.
• 58:28
  Yeah, I never heard of that term.
• 58:29
  Oh. Yeah, proud Peacock.
• 58:31
  So he was like the proudest Peacock.
• 58:32
  And it was like, it was just, he went over to like, people who he
• 58:35
  had fundraised, you know, $100 or something from.
• 58:38
  And he said, you know, my daughter's doing something very
• 58:41
  big. And it was like, whatever.
• 58:44
  And he schlepped me around to a couple people as well.
• 58:46
  He knew. Oh, yeah.
• 58:48
  And he really, you know, and, and I came out with, you know,
• 58:51
  $500 from this one, or 250 or $1000.
• 58:55
  And he put together about $10,000, which was amazing.
• 58:58
  Anyway, Long story short, we started the Shabbat tone.
• 59:02
  And one of the best stories, I think, was that Rematse Solomon
• 59:06
  said he would come for Sunday to speak and he came in and he
• 59:10
  said, I'm in my 70s and I lost my parent as a child and I've
• 59:15
  been waiting all these years to be in a room with people who
• 59:18
  understand. That was his opener.
• 59:21
  So that made the mission. That was the mission.
• 59:23
  It was like, oh, we need to get people into a room with other
• 59:26
  people who understand. So we really made a lot of fun
• 59:29
  mistakes on that first weekend. And I always, and I'm just going
• 59:32
  to say this, any organization that's making a Shabbat tone, I
• 59:36
  am happy always. I give him a 20 minute consult
• 59:39
  and I will tell you all the mistakes I've made so that you
• 59:42
  don't have to make them. I do this all the time, you know
• 59:44
  I want. To get into that for a minute,
• 59:45
  if you don't, yeah. Sure.
• 59:46
  And we touched upon this earlier and I said we're going to get
• 59:48
  back to it. And here, OK, let's talk about
• 59:51
  organizations not for profits starting.
• 59:53
  So, you know Rev Matisyo, by the way, who's done so much for
• 59:57
  Claudius role for the Jewish people as a whole, he can come
• 1:00:00
  to a. Dinner say one line and suddenly
• 1:00:04
  form an organization that lasts a lifetime.
• 1:00:06
  Obviously we should never need this, but you know, the reality
• 1:00:09
  is it is needed and it's unbelievable the power of that
• 1:00:12
  one human being that can say one line and it's amazing amazing
• 1:00:16
  that impact. So thank you for sharing that
• 1:00:18
  story. I I I'd like to go, you know,
• 1:00:21
  into the world of non for profits fundraising,
• 1:00:24
  understanding this world. If I was to open one up
• 1:00:27
  tomorrow, why should I? Why shouldn't I?
• 1:00:31
  Definitely shouldn't if you want a life.
• 1:00:35
  Before we do, growing up, your personal life, what you said
• 1:00:39
  before, you know, as a young girl, what's your message for
• 1:00:44
  someone who's going through that or scared to go through it,
• 1:00:47
  who's unfortunately through the process right now?
• 1:00:50
  There are people that are going through this process of, you
• 1:00:52
  know, having a loved one that's going through Hospice or, you
• 1:00:56
  know, knowing that. So I'd just to pause the
• 1:00:59
  segment, you know, and just talk about that for a second.
• 1:01:02
  What would your message be to those people?
• 1:01:03
  Or if you look back at yourself, your younger self, that you can
• 1:01:06
  tell yourself like just this one thing I want to share with my
• 1:01:09
  younger self, what would that be?
• 1:01:11
  So it's. Very interesting.
• 1:01:12
  We just a video that we're showing actually at the concert
• 1:01:15
  and label. Schwartz asked me a question.
• 1:01:18
  Yeah. He's amazing.
• 1:01:19
  He's amazing, and my brother-in-law works for him for
• 1:01:21
  many, many, many years, which is how we connected.
• 1:01:24
  So anyway, the bottom line is that Label sat down and Label
• 1:01:28
  asks some of the best interview questions I have ever heard in
• 1:01:30
  my entire life. And he asks me questions in a
• 1:01:33
  video when we're producing as a fundraiser, things that I'm not
• 1:01:37
  usually pushed to answer. And he said to me, he says, you
• 1:01:40
  know, it's very interesting. You're in a grief space.
• 1:01:41
  You're in a very sad space. But every time I come to your
• 1:01:43
  office, it's a very upbeat place.
• 1:01:46
  What what makes links happy, right, If you're dealing with so
• 1:01:51
  much sadness and so much death? And I said to him something that
• 1:01:54
  I had never thought about consciously before, but I
• 1:01:57
  realized that as I said it, and it's the answer to your
• 1:01:58
  question, we know grief, right? And, and many of our staff, not
• 1:02:05
  all, but many of them have also lost a parent as a child.
• 1:02:08
  And it's sad and it's heartbreaking.
• 1:02:11
  And let me tell you something, it is brutal the journey and
• 1:02:16
  not, but we have such hope when we deal with these kids because
• 1:02:21
  to us, we see it and we've seen this journey so often before.
• 1:02:25
  And we know what they don't know.
• 1:02:27
  I know what the village on the other side looks like.
• 1:02:30
  They've never rode there. I know it.
• 1:02:33
  And I can say that I'm doing this now.
• 1:02:35
  In 20 years, April's going to be 20 years.
• 1:02:38
  I have alumni in their 30s who are the most stupendous human
• 1:02:42
  beings on earth, doing the best things for Claudia's film, being
• 1:02:46
  the best parents they can be, being the best people they could
• 1:02:48
  be. And so when I see a 13 year old
• 1:02:52
  or an 11 year old, what I wish someone would have had for me,
• 1:02:54
  not even said to me, because nobody wants to hear at 11,
• 1:02:57
  you're going to be amazing and you're going to be fine, right?
• 1:02:59
  Nobody wants to hear that because right now I'm not.
• 1:03:01
  But if somebody would have had that hope for me, that would
• 1:03:05
  have translated in the way that they sit with someone.
• 1:03:08
  And so if there's anybody listening to it and going
• 1:03:11
  through it, it's brutal. It's painful.
• 1:03:14
  We'll we'll walk you. We'll hold you through that pain
• 1:03:17
  and know that there's greatness that comes out of this pain
• 1:03:21
  likes of which I've never seen. It just is.
• 1:03:26
  So yeah, I have a lot of hope. Amazing.
• 1:03:29
  Kudos to you on that talk. About the nonprofit Fun stuff.
• 1:03:31
  Yeah, because what happens is a lot of people that start
• 1:03:36
  organizations, they do it for the right reasons.
• 1:03:39
  They're passionate, they're creative, they understand the
• 1:03:42
  why they're solving an issue. What they don't realize,
• 1:03:45
  unfortunately, is that they're going to end up having to be
• 1:03:48
  salesman and they're going to end up having to be marketing
• 1:03:50
  directors, brand developers and networkers.
• 1:03:53
  And it's not just about the passion of the product or the
• 1:03:55
  service that they want to do. So how do you marry those two?
• 1:03:59
  How do you like deal with the people that come to you?
• 1:04:01
  Give me a good example of someone that came to you, that
• 1:04:03
  asked you a question and you're able to answer it in a way where
• 1:04:06
  you explain the dynamics of not-for-profit.
• 1:04:08
  Or what do you have to go through as a woman, as an
• 1:04:11
  Orthodox woman, as someone who has to be shaking hands
• 1:04:14
  proverbially all day long and you can't, but you have to.
• 1:04:18
  And you know, take me through that journey.
• 1:04:21
  Explain to me what I need to look out for.
• 1:04:23
  Tell me that what I I should learn from your mistakes.
• 1:04:26
  I'd love to learn from your. Mistakes so I think that the
• 1:04:28
  first thing is that you have to own the fact that all these
• 1:04:33
  roles that you just mentioned are your roles.
• 1:04:35
  And I think the first thing that I find sometimes when I meet
• 1:04:38
  specifically nonprofit leaders who started this because they
• 1:04:40
  want to do good in this world and are not business people or
• 1:04:43
  not marketing people or not salespeople by nature.
• 1:04:47
  And sometimes they fight me on it.
• 1:04:48
  They're like, I know, but I can't I can't do that.
• 1:04:50
  And I always say to them, I said at the end of the day, you can
• 1:04:53
  sell the organization best because there's a reason why you
• 1:04:56
  started this. You're passionate about the fact
• 1:04:59
  that these families or these kids or these people need this
• 1:05:02
  type of support, right? Or you wouldn't have started it.
• 1:05:04
  So going there and not doing any of this work, right?
• 1:05:08
  And saying, I, I got to help me find a company that's going to
• 1:05:11
  do this for me. There's no company that can ever
• 1:05:13
  do this. So if somebody's going to start
• 1:05:15
  a nonprofit or really take their nonprofit up a level, they have
• 1:05:18
  to own the fact that these are their roles, right?
• 1:05:21
  And then the harder part is that they have to own what's no
• 1:05:24
  longer their roles as they grow. For me, that was a lot of grief,
• 1:05:29
  right? I started this because I was
• 1:05:30
  running that chabatome for girls.
• 1:05:32
  I was writing those magazine articles.
• 1:05:34
  I was going snow tubing down the mountain with kids, right?
• 1:05:37
  I was having those collar shopping with every collar.
• 1:05:40
  I was going around and sitting in a very painful space when a
• 1:05:43
  kid was having a real meltdown about the fact that her parent
• 1:05:47
  was not there for a milestone, right?
• 1:05:49
  You know what? I don't do any of that anymore.
• 1:05:51
  Not even one of them. Everything that I just listed I
• 1:05:54
  can't do because I'm on the road fundraising, because I'm busy
• 1:05:57
  with the technical stuff, because I'm sitting with the
• 1:06:00
  lawyers and with the state. And if I'm out all those hours,
• 1:06:04
  they usually contradict. Like if you're going to wait to
• 1:06:06
  figure out when you could do a snow tubing trip for when I'm
• 1:06:08
  there, that's a terrible idea because I'm not there.
• 1:06:12
  I'll be in Chicago on Monday and if a donor calls me in Florida
• 1:06:15
  that he can meet up on Tuesday, guess what?
• 1:06:17
  I'm on the plane on Tuesday. So it meant that I had to keep
• 1:06:22
  letting go of things that were really important to me in the
• 1:06:25
  way that I started, but letting go to the right people.
• 1:06:29
  And to me, that's the second piece of of a nonprofit leader.
• 1:06:32
  And I have this hashtag on, on LinkedIn called Tales of a
• 1:06:34
  Leader. When I started on LinkedIn in
• 1:06:36
  2017, I was one of the first definitely in the in the from
• 1:06:40
  female world to start there. And I started with a hashtag,
• 1:06:43
  Tales of a Leader. I said, I'm going to take the
• 1:06:46
  ambiguity and the shadows and the curtains around the
• 1:06:48
  nonprofit world. And I'm going to put it right
• 1:06:50
  there in front of people. I want them to learn about the
• 1:06:52
  process because I think when people learn about the process,
• 1:06:56
  you know, I think if you do a behind the scenes one time and
• 1:06:58
  what it takes to produce a, a podcast, what it takes to get
• 1:07:01
  the people to sit in this chair, right?
• 1:07:03
  What it takes to set up a studio that looks like this, what it
• 1:07:06
  takes to then edit what it takes to put out, people start to have
• 1:07:09
  an appreciation. Oh my gosh, that's what you do
• 1:07:11
  to get me the content, right? And I felt that sometimes people
• 1:07:14
  just had no idea what it took to run a nonprofit.
• 1:07:16
  And therefore it was like easy to just, you know, kind of have
• 1:07:20
  opinions, if you will. Once they understood the
• 1:07:21
  process, there was so much more compassion for the process, dare
• 1:07:24
  I say so. Anyway, part of what I had to
• 1:07:28
  let go of was a lot of the stuff that I loved.
• 1:07:31
  But my, my fingerprints are still all over it in the sense
• 1:07:35
  of people know the style that I want it done in.
• 1:07:38
  People know what matters to me culturally.
• 1:07:40
  You know, all that type of stuff.
• 1:07:41
  We have a hashtag called Dignity Matters.
• 1:07:44
  We have never in 20 years shown a face or a video or picture of
• 1:07:48
  a child that we've serviced. Never.
• 1:07:50
  Not even if they offered because it's something that I believe
• 1:07:54
  compromises dignity. So we're so careful.
• 1:07:56
  We never use the word orphans in our ads.
• 1:07:58
  It's children who lost a parent. It's just kinder, it's softer.
• 1:08:02
  It's not their identity. There's so much more than a
• 1:08:05
  child who lost a parent. That's one of the people pieces
• 1:08:08
  that happened to them. So all these things are are part
• 1:08:10
  of and parcel of what we do. So it's not like I I'm not
• 1:08:12
  involved in that sense, but I have to let go.
• 1:08:16
  And I think for a lot of nonprofit leaders, that's the
• 1:08:17
  hardest part. The joke that there's, there's
• 1:08:19
  certain Rob who made this joke with me, he says you started in
• 1:08:22
  kind of like every good Russia Shiva and you ended up in
• 1:08:24
  fundraising. But it's the truth.
• 1:08:26
  It's at the end of the day, you have to let go of so many parts
• 1:08:30
  in order to really fundraise. And the best fundraisers usually
• 1:08:33
  are the founders because they know why they're doing it.
• 1:08:37
  I'm also probably the only person who will not rest until I
• 1:08:42
  have something that I know a family needs it.
• 1:08:44
  It bothers me, right? I made you angry before.
• 1:08:47
  It makes me like just go on edge and say I got to get this done.
• 1:08:51
  How are we getting this done? And that's what forms all
• 1:08:53
  different fundraising ideas and opportunities.
• 1:08:56
  So I think for me, one of the biggest things in the beginning
• 1:08:58
  was I hung back and I said, I'm not a fundraiser.
• 1:09:01
  And you can't say that doesn't happen.
• 1:09:03
  If you got to get it done, you've got to get out there and
• 1:09:06
  get it done. And if you can't, then you're
• 1:09:09
  going to have to believe that your your organization may stay
• 1:09:11
  very small and limited. And that's OK for some people.
• 1:09:14
  That's what they're willing to take such a kind.
• 1:09:16
  Way of saying it. I was thinking if you can't then
• 1:09:17
  don't do it, no. No.
• 1:09:19
  But I there are people, there are people who will say, listen,
• 1:09:21
  I can distribute it. Yourself, yeah.
• 1:09:22
  Cases of something to my block and you want to do it that way
• 1:09:26
  and you know that I don't have. An issue with anything is that
• 1:09:28
  there are some people that they can deliver boxes, but they
• 1:09:30
  think they they can move mountains and they they're not
• 1:09:33
  sure of how to do it and what to do and then.
• 1:09:35
  And I want to tell you something.
• 1:09:37
  I am a forever learner. That's just my nature.
• 1:09:40
  So I'm I'm a learning job, OK, Part of the reason that I got
• 1:09:44
  hooked on your podcast. OK, let's talk about this for a
• 1:09:47
  second. And I think this is true for any
• 1:09:48
  nonprofit. There's a lot in common between
• 1:09:51
  business and nonprofits. And for anybody who thinks
• 1:09:53
  that's a dirty term, they're wrong because at the end of the
• 1:09:56
  day, if you don't run your nonprofit, first of all, from
• 1:09:59
  the IRS perspective, your business, the category of your
• 1:10:02
  business is a nonprofit. But when you get you, you get
• 1:10:06
  incorporated, you are a real business and you better run your
• 1:10:09
  business like a business in terms of books wise, right?
• 1:10:12
  They want your PNLS, they want your forms at the end of the
• 1:10:14
  year. They don't want any jokes going
• 1:10:16
  on here, right. So you better understand the
• 1:10:19
  mechanics of what it takes as a business in terms of that.
• 1:10:21
  But also so many other mechanics that work in business work in a
• 1:10:25
  non profit as well, whether it's how you hire, how you structure
• 1:10:29
  things, how you teach your team, your mission, your vision and
• 1:10:33
  get that to be so that they can do 10 times more.
• 1:10:36
  They've 10X to what I've done in terms of programming.
• 1:10:39
  They're much better than I could ever be.
• 1:10:40
  Because if I'm going to try to do everything right, I'll be
• 1:10:43
  like that entrepreneur who's just is the only person to do
• 1:10:46
  it. So there's really a lot of
• 1:10:47
  learning in terms of business. When I saw your business, your
• 1:10:50
  your podcast pop up and the word business was in there, right?
• 1:10:53
  It attracted me right away because I'm like, I like to hear
• 1:10:56
  from people in business how they make their decisions, what
• 1:10:59
  structures that they have in place, what's going on.
• 1:11:02
  And I don't care if they're in healthcare or they're a dentist
• 1:11:05
  at the end of the day, I want to be able to hear, you know, I, I
• 1:11:07
  listened to Naomi Streicher's thing.
• 1:11:10
  It was fascinating, but it was also fabulous in terms of
• 1:11:12
  there's so many things that are happening in real estate that at
• 1:11:15
  the end of the day, I take, I listen to shimmy JS piece and
• 1:11:18
  there's so many pieces of marketing that I'm like, oh,
• 1:11:21
  that's a genius idea. Let's take that and make it our
• 1:11:24
  own in our own way. And so for me, I'm a forever
• 1:11:27
  learner. So I'm taking courses, I'm going
• 1:11:30
  to seminars, I'm listening to podcasts, I'm reading like
• 1:11:33
  people know my reading list is like a little scary.
• 1:11:36
  I could read four or five books at a time.
• 1:11:37
  I'm a readaholic. I, I like read them and I'm
• 1:11:41
  done. And I love that because it helps
• 1:11:44
  me grow. And then I'm able to help my
• 1:11:45
  team grow in their own way where I'm like, hey, sometimes it'll
• 1:11:49
  be a suggestion of like listen to this or whatever.
• 1:11:51
  But at the end of the day, it's about really learning and
• 1:11:54
  learning and learning. And that's one of the rules to
• 1:11:56
  me in a nonprofit is a nonprofit who says, well, this is how
• 1:11:59
  we've been doing it, right? I'm like, aye, aye, my heart
• 1:12:04
  goes out to you When I have that type of call.
• 1:12:06
  I know that I'm not going to get anywhere, that it's a waste, you
• 1:12:09
  know, and the 1st. That's the first breakthrough
• 1:12:11
  that you can't do the same thing.
• 1:12:12
  And, and part of the reason, by the way, that I make my 20
• 1:12:14
  minute calls is because people paid it forward to me.
• 1:12:16
  When I started out, I was Schimshen Lauber.
• 1:12:18
  I'll never forget him from Becaholm of Rockland County.
• 1:12:21
  He was, he was a neighbor of ours growing up.
• 1:12:23
  He lived 2 doors away. And I sent him a copy of the
• 1:12:26
  first magazine and he wrote me the most magnificent thank you
• 1:12:28
  note and letter of encouragement back.
• 1:12:31
  And I just looked at that of like people who paid it forward.
• 1:12:34
  I've sat with leaders of so many nonprofits when I was starting
• 1:12:37
  out who gave me good advice and I said, you know, if I can pay
• 1:12:40
  it forward. And then it got to the point
• 1:12:41
  where I said I can open a consulting agency.
• 1:12:42
  I just don't have time. So that's where I have my 20
• 1:12:45
  minute rule. I have a certain like block of
• 1:12:47
  time every week that I'm willing to put in my 20 minute sessions
• 1:12:50
  and that way people come with the most important things that
• 1:12:52
  they wanna do and we try to get through.
• 1:12:54
  I like. That 20 minute rule, yeah, I
• 1:12:56
  wanna go into, we'll wrap up with this simply because it's
• 1:13:01
  Arab shopping. You know, people don't know what
• 1:13:06
  goes on behind recording. What I told you, do a behind the
• 1:13:09
  scenes, Yeah. Yeah, I'll tell you behind the
• 1:13:11
  scenes right now, it's 4 hours before Shabbos and we both we're
• 1:13:15
  still going. To Brooklyn, right?
• 1:13:16
  You're still. Going to Brooklyn and I'm
• 1:13:17
  hosting a whole Shabbat tone and, and we both have a lot
• 1:13:21
  going on in our lives. And, you know, so this is the
• 1:13:25
  part that I want to talk about and I want to, I want to
• 1:13:27
  hopefully learn from this process of yours.
• 1:13:31
  Your father was a very, very busy person.
• 1:13:34
  And I don't know how much you got to see him and the impact
• 1:13:39
  that he has on you emotionally and the connection that he had
• 1:13:43
  obviously with you and the amount that you grew from him is
• 1:13:47
  astonishing of how potentially, I don't know, little time you
• 1:13:51
  may have spent together because he was busy.
• 1:13:52
  He was out there. Dare I say that you might have
• 1:13:56
  that same challenge today as a person, as a.
• 1:13:59
  Right. As a friend, as AI mean, you
• 1:14:03
  know, as a business partner, as a family member, one of the
• 1:14:08
  biggest challenges that I have in terms of doing things for
• 1:14:13
  others is being there for myself, being there for others,
• 1:14:19
  being there for the family and prioritizing.
• 1:14:21
  So I have my own little way of doing things, but I'd like to
• 1:14:24
  learn from you in terms of how did your father make such an
• 1:14:28
  impact on you without being around so much So my.
• 1:14:31
  Parents are my guilt trip. They are my absolute guilt trip.
• 1:14:34
  Because if you think about it, a mother with stage 4 cancer going
• 1:14:36
  chaperoning every trip and taking me and my friends out for
• 1:14:38
  pizza every Friday and my father being the busy man that he was
• 1:14:41
  and leaving this type of impact. I struggled with this for many
• 1:14:44
  years because I have 4 kids, bar Hashem and a robust life in many
• 1:14:52
  different ways and the best possible way and yet I have so
• 1:14:56
  many like dual responsibilities that are sometimes schlepping me
• 1:14:58
  in different directions. I don't know if my kids know
• 1:15:02
  this, but the reason we don't have guests for Shabbos is
• 1:15:04
  because it's the only time that I'm 100% guaranteed that I'm
• 1:15:08
  home. And I knew that there were times
• 1:15:10
  that my father had that were exclusively mine.
• 1:15:13
  And I think that that's subconsciously some of this is
• 1:15:16
  there are times that I am exclusive.
• 1:15:18
  I am exclusive in that way to my family.
• 1:15:21
  My family can be my extended family as well.
• 1:15:24
  But it's family time for me. And Shabbasam and Yamim tell him
• 1:15:27
  I like to spend that way so that I know that this is my, my time
• 1:15:33
  that I squeeze in. Now, that doesn't mean that
• 1:15:35
  during the week I'm away all the time.
• 1:15:37
  It's actually something my, my husband always, you know,
• 1:15:39
  reminds me of that. For many, many, many years,
• 1:15:41
  especially when my kids were younger, I was always home.
• 1:15:43
  When their bus came home and stuff again, it meant that I
• 1:15:45
  burnt the midnight oil. I would get back on that laptop
• 1:15:48
  and be working from 12:00 to 2:00 sometimes or stuff like
• 1:15:50
  that. But to put it in, but I was
• 1:15:52
  there and I, I tried to have that conscious effort in terms
• 1:15:55
  of that, but it's not perfect. And, and I know that my kids
• 1:15:59
  would listen to something like this at some point and say,
• 1:16:01
  right, and you missed this or you did that or stuff like that.
• 1:16:03
  And, and it's fair, it's fair. It's not even something I would
• 1:16:06
  get defensive over. It's something that's true.
• 1:16:09
  And it's a struggle for many of us who are out there building
• 1:16:12
  anything. And, and it's the truth.
• 1:16:13
  And I would never be able to do without my family support.
• 1:16:16
  And I'll just say here that it's something very rare is my family
• 1:16:19
  doesn't get to enjoy any pieces of it.
• 1:16:22
  We don't allow any of our staff kids into any event, which means
• 1:16:27
  that they've never seen the inside of our work.
• 1:16:30
  And I do that by design because I feel that for a kid coming to
• 1:16:32
  an event, it's not fair to find a classmate of theirs there,
• 1:16:35
  especially if that classmates going tati, come over here,
• 1:16:37
  remind me, come over there when they don't have a parent.
• 1:16:40
  Like how am I doing this to them?
• 1:16:41
  It's terrible in my, in my view. So I couldn't, I couldn't do it.
• 1:16:44
  And I've never allowed my children to join anything.
• 1:16:46
  But that means they're not getting the perks, if you will,
• 1:16:48
  of whatever happens at a Shabbaton or whatever gifts are
• 1:16:51
  being given out here. It just was never something that
• 1:16:53
  we did. They certainly got no fame for
• 1:16:56
  it. They've, they've just lived a
• 1:16:58
  regular life in that sense and had to divide their time between
• 1:17:02
  me and, and communal responsibilities.
• 1:17:05
  So I think it's tremendous respect to them.
• 1:17:07
  And I'll, I'll always have that, that torn piece in terms of
• 1:17:10
  that. It's finding pockets of time,
• 1:17:11
  for me at least, and. Yeah.
• 1:17:14
  And I, and I'll just say this, this was something you, you said
• 1:17:17
  before and it's just interesting because it kind of ties here is
• 1:17:19
  this piece about fundraising and in general, you know, listen, I
• 1:17:22
  have to pull in five and a half million.
• 1:17:24
  So it's got to be a way to do it right.
• 1:17:25
  So the way we structure it, the way I see it, talk about what
• 1:17:28
  I've learned from business. If you put all your eggs in one
• 1:17:30
  basket, which is what I did when I started, I had one main
• 1:17:33
  sponsor. My budget arguably was smaller.
• 1:17:36
  It was 30,000, but it was one person who was funding that
• 1:17:38
  30,000. I didn't have a need to go out
• 1:17:41
  and get to know other people. And the problem with that was
• 1:17:44
  when the market went down in 2008, so did this donor.
• 1:17:48
  And with that came a big, big shock of we didn't have a
• 1:17:52
  Shabbatone that year and we didn't have a lot about the
• 1:17:55
  programs and services. I had to hold everything, which
• 1:17:57
  is the mistakes. I teach people all the time you
• 1:17:59
  can never put your eggs in one basket.
• 1:18:01
  So right now what we do is like 2 1/2 millionairees in a
• 1:18:03
  campaign in the beginning of the year, which is a separate fun
• 1:18:06
  conversation. That how that works.
• 1:18:09
  We are probably the only ones who do all our marketing in
• 1:18:12
  house and stuff like that, most of it, and we really pull out I
• 1:18:17
  would say a tremendous amount of profit from that campaign.
• 1:18:21
  Then we do parlour meetings which are designed to get to
• 1:18:23
  know communities like where I Got to Know You and their Get to
• 1:18:27
  Know Shout. Out to Nachemi Zweig for hosting
• 1:18:29
  an amazing event as. Being he, he and speed reader
• 1:18:31
  are amazing. They pull this off in months
• 1:18:33
  every year. That's right.
• 1:18:34
  And and then at the end of the day, so we get to know people in
• 1:18:37
  different communities and obviously we raise the next, I
• 1:18:39
  would say million or so comes from communal parlour meetings,
• 1:18:42
  doing 910 of them a year. And then and then we have the
• 1:18:46
  concert and then we have the knock, knock, knock.
• 1:18:50
  I come to peoples doors and I wait there and I want to just
• 1:18:53
  tell you something. It gives you a whole different
• 1:18:55
  perspective on Kanihad Daifikala Pesa.
• 1:18:58
  Like a poor man knocking at a door sometimes even when I'm
• 1:19:00
  cold and I know I'm going to be respected and and treated well.
• 1:19:04
  But you that minute you ring that doorbell, your heart
• 1:19:06
  lurches into your stomach and I'm say.
• 1:19:08
  You're the beggar and. Right.
• 1:19:10
  And I'm sitting there going, oh, that feeling, gosh, why do I
• 1:19:14
  have to do this, right? And, and there are people who
• 1:19:16
  make it really easy for me and they're incredible.
• 1:19:19
  And there are people who make it really difficult for me.
• 1:19:21
  And it's hard. And you come home smashed after
• 1:19:24
  that because you come home saying to yourself, like, why is
• 1:19:26
  this my problem more than anybody else's, right?
• 1:19:30
  And I'm human and I try not to let it get to me.
• 1:19:32
  I'm most things I'm able to let roll off, but there are times
• 1:19:35
  that I just like, I'll stay home from work for two days and I'm
• 1:19:37
  like, I don't want to do this anymore.
• 1:19:39
  I don't. And I really want to quit this.
• 1:19:42
  Like I had this this week, last week where I was like, why
• 1:19:45
  didn't I just go get my MBA and do this whole thing and start a
• 1:19:48
  billion dollar company And then I'll fund this organization.
• 1:19:50
  Like, fine, I'll be the funder, you know, let somebody else do
• 1:19:54
  the fundraising, if you will, you know, and there's ways that
• 1:19:57
  people give that make it so beautiful.
• 1:19:59
  There's people who like literally, they don't make you
• 1:20:01
  chase them. They fulfill their pledges right
• 1:20:03
  away. Those are always appreciated,
• 1:20:05
  right? And there's stuff like that.
• 1:20:06
  And people need to know this is that the person who's coming in
• 1:20:09
  is usually doing such hard work. And I, I say this about myself,
• 1:20:13
  but I say this about every nonprofit leader.
• 1:20:15
  We're out there and we're trying our best to do something that is
• 1:20:18
  for the community that usually didn't exist before we did it.
• 1:20:22
  And we've taken a lot upon ourselves.
• 1:20:24
  And it's exhausting. And 20 years into doing this
• 1:20:27
  fundraising, I could just say some days I'm like, I can't, I
• 1:20:31
  can't do it. And I have tremendous amount of
• 1:20:32
  help these days and I have an amazing director of development
• 1:20:34
  and marketing and stuff like that.
• 1:20:36
  But ultimately the asks for the most part are my asks.
• 1:20:40
  And that's why I'm just so grateful always when there are
• 1:20:42
  people who are surrounding me who are like, you know what, one
• 1:20:45
  second, I have a friend who should meet you or stuff like
• 1:20:47
  that. And people are really, really,
• 1:20:48
  really nice in that way. It's amazing.
• 1:20:50
  But I said to you at the beginning, you know, I said,
• 1:20:52
  were you at ECAP this week, right?
• 1:20:54
  And you said to me, how do you know ECAP?
• 1:20:55
  It's because I genuinely care about the people who get
• 1:20:58
  involved. Like for me, these are real
• 1:21:00
  relationships. And there are people who I still
• 1:21:02
  send gifts to every year who can no longer give me.
• 1:21:05
  Their businesses have gone down and under.
• 1:21:06
  They haven't given in years, but I have Hakara Sato for what
• 1:21:10
  they've given. Really.
• 1:21:11
  Yes, that's a very interesting thing you're saying and I.
• 1:21:14
  Will tell you. I will tell you why there are
• 1:21:16
  people. I, I I'll tell you a quick
• 1:21:18
  story. Mimi Gross, who founded Shammi
• 1:21:21
  Club, which is our boys division, in memory of her
• 1:21:24
  husband, Shami Gross. And if nobody read the biography
• 1:21:26
  Shami, it is the most incredible book about a businessman who
• 1:21:29
  really turned his life into something extraordinary.
• 1:21:31
  It's an amazing book by our school.
• 1:21:33
  But anyway, so she once told me is that perm used to be a very
• 1:21:36
  hectic day for her and a lot of people would come and go.
• 1:21:38
  And not always was it easy to have.
• 1:21:40
  He was a huge bolt stuck on stuff like that.
• 1:21:42
  And after he passed away, it's pretty much gone down right.
• 1:21:45
  Think about a person who gave of his money right and always was
• 1:21:51
  there for the clown. And I think about one of my
• 1:21:53
  donors who built a tremendous business and through no fault of
• 1:21:56
  his own, something happened, right?
• 1:21:58
  Life happens, markets change this, that the business went
• 1:22:01
  down and under, trust me, if he would be able to give me, he
• 1:22:04
  would still give me. But he can't.
• 1:22:05
  So he avoids my calls half the time because he's embarrassed
• 1:22:08
  and stuff of that sort. Isn't it horrible that now as an
• 1:22:12
  organization who benefited probably $100,000 from him over
• 1:22:15
  the years, I now say, well, you're not worth anything.
• 1:22:18
  You're not worth my Shahmanes because you can't give me
• 1:22:20
  anymore. So what am I saying?
• 1:22:22
  This was an entirely transactional relationship.
• 1:22:25
  I believe in real relationships. And if I care about this person
• 1:22:28
  enough and this person cared about my organization enough,
• 1:22:31
  then this isn't a relationship that goes down and under when he
• 1:22:34
  goes down and under. It's just not fair.
• 1:22:36
  It's not fair. So I, I try to do it.
• 1:22:39
  I can't say I'm always perfect about it, but there are so many
• 1:22:41
  people who I owe so much to who for, again, for one reason or
• 1:22:45
  another, are not able to give in the capacity that they used to,
• 1:22:47
  are not able to give it at all. That's not their fault.
• 1:22:50
  Their families, their teenage boys now see that Perm comes and
• 1:22:54
  there's nothing there. So what's my father anymore?
• 1:22:57
  You want to know why they lose respect?
• 1:22:59
  It's not about the money, it's about the way the community has
• 1:23:01
  viewed them. So to me, like I went to my
• 1:23:03
  parents choir and today I take along.
• 1:23:04
  I have a list of names of some of my donors, some of them that
• 1:23:08
  I'd have them for their businesses, for their success.
• 1:23:10
  Sometimes I'll take along. They have kids and should do him
• 1:23:12
  and stuff like that. I want to know who they are, if
• 1:23:14
  they're my friends and I care about them.
• 1:23:16
  And so I want to know that they went to ECAP.
• 1:23:18
  I want to know how it went. I hope they had Hatsaka there,
• 1:23:20
  right? And I hope they had Hatsaka,
• 1:23:22
  they went to base and I hope they had Hatsaka if they went
• 1:23:24
  here, right? I, I know about all this is
• 1:23:25
  happening because I want to, I make it my business to follow
• 1:23:29
  donor statuses and get to know and wow, you had a new
• 1:23:31
  grandchild. That's amazing, right?
• 1:23:34
  Or if there's something going on in their lives, I want to be
• 1:23:37
  able to know that because I genuinely care about them.
• 1:23:40
  And I think that in fundraising and in sales and in anything
• 1:23:43
  caring about people ultimately is where we get to.
• 1:23:46
  And I can say that for my father, the the $100 bill that
• 1:23:49
  he took for $1.00, right? Part of what I learned from my
• 1:23:51
  father with that is are you familiar with our opportunities
• 1:23:55
  Chat? OK, You need to be.
• 1:23:57
  And afterwards you'll get to know why.
• 1:23:59
  Many, not many. December 2021 I got a phone call
• 1:24:02
  from a woman who said she's an Almana, her kid had been part of
• 1:24:05
  our program, needed her wisdom teeth out $1500.
• 1:24:09
  OK, now when you're running a budget of a few million people,
• 1:24:11
  think what's $1500 to you but $1500 * 100 people and I can go
• 1:24:16
  out again and try to do this right?
• 1:24:17
  So I couldn't do it, but it was bugging me.
• 1:24:19
  There's a 16 year old kid walking around with an Abscess
• 1:24:22
  and in their tooth and they can't get teeth pulled.
• 1:24:26
  They're in agony because of $1500.
• 1:24:28
  Something about this just wasn't sitting well with me.
• 1:24:31
  So I said OK, but I'm limited. So I got together with Daniel
• 1:24:35
  Dinesh, who runs our legal division, which does free pro
• 1:24:37
  bono legal and financial services for all our families.
• 1:24:40
  And together with him, I'm telling you, we didn't even get
• 1:24:44
  to, to anything. But basically what we did was we
• 1:24:47
  got a few people. We all brought along friends and
• 1:24:49
  cousins and whatever. And we did a chat of about 75
• 1:24:52
  people on WhatsApp and it was an admin only, no chatting.
• 1:24:55
  I posted this, I said, let's borrow word from the real estate
• 1:24:58
  field. It's an opportunity.
• 1:25:00
  You don't have to invest in it, but I want you to be the first
• 1:25:02
  one to get the opportunity. So I posted opportunity.
• 1:25:06
  This is what we need. And people start D Ming me, I'll
• 1:25:09
  send 100, I'll send 100, I'll send 100.
• 1:25:11
  And before you knew it, within a few hours, I had the 1500 that I
• 1:25:14
  needed, right? And I said, Oh my gosh, we're on
• 1:25:17
  to something. Anyway, Fast forward to today.
• 1:25:19
  We have over 5000 members. Every air of Shabbos at 9:00 AM
• 1:25:23
  Eastern, there's an opportunity posted.
• 1:25:25
  Now these opportunities get vetted through our case
• 1:25:27
  management system, our clinical and rabbinical team.
• 1:25:30
  By the time they make it on there, we've already done
• 1:25:32
  everything we could. If it's something we can fund on
• 1:25:34
  our own, we do it. It doesn't become an
• 1:25:35
  opportunity. It's something different, right?
• 1:25:38
  And we post it at 9:00 AM every their Shabbos.
• 1:25:42
  I'm telling you. So this Shabbos was a family
• 1:25:44
  that we are funding their therapy.
• 1:25:46
  The kids found the father when he died and it was a pretty
• 1:25:49
  gruesome death. And two of the children now need
• 1:25:52
  a much higher level of care where they're going to require
• 1:25:54
  like an in inpatient place. And it's just, it's a fortune.
• 1:25:57
  So we just had to do it. And so the regular therapy
• 1:26:02
  funding was being covered by us because we have a fund we pay
• 1:26:04
  almost a half $1,000,000 on this a year, but this was not so like
• 1:26:08
  OK, we need more last week insurance.
• 1:26:10
  Is not covering, no. No, no, no, no.
• 1:26:13
  Most of this is not covered. So it happened to have been that
• 1:26:15
  we got it at a very discounted rate because we negotiated and
• 1:26:17
  whatever. So we were talking about 9700,
• 1:26:20
  right? Every error of Shabbos we raised
• 1:26:22
  between 10 and $15,000 and under an hour.
• 1:26:25
  Today, 9700 was in 16 minutes. Congratulations to you by
• 1:26:31
  Bridge. Donation was $33, just to give
• 1:26:33
  you perspective. Oh my.
• 1:26:34
  God, right? Wow.
• 1:26:36
  You know so. But usually businesses are
• 1:26:38
  lending ideas to non for profits.
• 1:26:39
  Here we're learning from non for profit how to run a business.
• 1:26:42
  So this was, I looked at this and said, we started a separate
• 1:26:45
  account. This doesn't go to us.
• 1:26:46
  This has no overhead. This goes directly to the
• 1:26:49
  families that we need. What's happened through that is
• 1:26:51
  that it has grown. We've taught many other
• 1:26:53
  organizations how to have this as well, but and we have it that
• 1:26:58
  every week we know we can cover XYZ.
• 1:27:00
  So sometimes a family will come to us and say I need this and I
• 1:27:02
  can say in three weeks I'll have it for you.
• 1:27:04
  You know, in terms of that we had last week, I think was a
• 1:27:07
  woman just lost her husband and she does carpool for her kids
• 1:27:10
  and everything. She lives in a community where
• 1:27:12
  fussing is not a thing. And her car died and the
• 1:27:15
  mechanic was honest with her. He said I could fix it.
• 1:27:17
  It's going to die in a week. It's over.
• 1:27:19
  This car's over, right? She found the car for like
• 1:27:23
  $15,000. So we raised $15,000 in about 40
• 1:27:28
  minutes. It was unbelievable and it's
• 1:27:30
  became a race. Also, people like it's the gold
• 1:27:32
  rush. Like people.
• 1:27:33
  I went to Florida and a guy tells me, he says, oh, you're
• 1:27:35
  the lady from the opportunities. I have an alarm set every Friday
• 1:27:37
  8:59 so that I make it because otherwise sometimes I open at
• 1:27:41
  9:10 and it's gone. That's beautiful so.
• 1:27:44
  It's like Kylie sells racing. There's thousands of people
• 1:27:46
  racing in a thing. Nobody sees names and nobody
• 1:27:49
  sees amounts. Wow.
• 1:27:51
  So it's completely like that. So that's yeah, that's that's a
• 1:27:54
  piece. And what's happened as a
• 1:27:55
  byproduct of that is we've sensitized the community to
• 1:27:58
  things that they never thought happened and we've sensitized
• 1:28:02
  them to what we deal with on a day-to-day basis.
• 1:28:04
  Answer. Your question, you know, I've,
• 1:28:05
  I've been going through a project for the past few months
• 1:28:08
  and building a girls high school.
• 1:28:09
  Anyways, I've been speaking to a lot of women that are very
• 1:28:13
  powerful women, women that don't have time for WhatsApp.
• 1:28:17
  They only text that when you call them the response when they
• 1:28:21
  tell you when they pick up is how's 8:30 tonight?
• 1:28:24
  Like that's how they talk and and boom, boom, boom on the
• 1:28:26
  money, doing things, helping Claudia stroll building
• 1:28:30
  organizations. And I have I just have a
• 1:28:33
  question for you. So when you hear the name Rabbi,
• 1:28:37
  it's sort of like it's a connotation of, of like, you
• 1:28:40
  know, success, like you're a rabbi, you know, don't call me a
• 1:28:43
  rabbi, you know, I'm not a rabbi yet, you know, But when you
• 1:28:46
  learn something, so I have a thing that I always say, if I
• 1:28:48
  learn something from you, you're my rabbi, you know, So let me
• 1:28:51
  call you a rabbi. Just take it.
• 1:28:53
  But I rabbitson doesn't have the same thing as rabbi.
• 1:28:57
  So I don't know what to do because there's a lot of women
• 1:28:59
  that I want to call them rabbitsons because they are
• 1:29:01
  succeeding and surpassing what a rabbi ever did in their life.
• 1:29:06
  And I want to call them something other than Sarah Rivka
• 1:29:09
  Cohen. What do I call you?
• 1:29:12
  So I always say, by the way, that my, my greatest gift in
• 1:29:14
  life and I, I say this with all honesty and not to be like
• 1:29:17
  facetious in any way. I always say the missus is my
• 1:29:19
  biggest title. The fact that I get to be
• 1:29:21
  somebody's wife and a mother is, is my greatest achievement in
• 1:29:24
  life. It's, it really is.
• 1:29:26
  It really is. And I have to say that the
• 1:29:28
  opportunity to sit with other people in nonprofits and I'm
• 1:29:31
  like, embarrassed you're telling me that they don't have time for
• 1:29:33
  all this, that they're like, how it's 8:30 tonight.
• 1:29:35
  I'm like answering WhatsApp 3 weeks later.
• 1:29:39
  But yeah, but at the end of the day, it's, it's something that
• 1:29:42
  I, I look at and I say, you know, I'm so grateful to have
• 1:29:46
  had this opportunity, so to speak, to get to know so many
• 1:29:48
  people, to be able to impact people in different ways.
• 1:29:51
  And, you know, I'll take, I'll take, I'll say one thing, you
• 1:29:53
  know, not more than any rabbi. I think that I've, I've learned
• 1:29:56
  so much from, from so many people in the field, both male
• 1:29:59
  and female, who've taught me everything that I, I know and I
• 1:30:02
  continue to learn and I really, really, really do.
• 1:30:04
  And, you know, I'm, I'm just humbled and grateful.
• 1:30:07
  What can I say So? You're saying missus?
• 1:30:09
  Yeah, that's it. That's my best title.
• 1:30:11
  That's a good thing, because I think Rabbiton honestly has has
• 1:30:14
  such a different kind of. Definite.
• 1:30:15
  I'm saying I can't in terms. Of that, no, I'm not, you know.
• 1:30:17
  I'm no rabbiton like I don't make kugel.
• 1:30:19
  OK, rabbitons do a lot more than that.
• 1:30:22
  I've gotten to have to nail some of them down for hard jobs, but
• 1:30:25
  yeah. You have such a rich history of
• 1:30:28
  different things that you've gone through in terms of growing
• 1:30:30
  this organization and what you've done with yourself from
• 1:30:33
  not understanding math to really raising over $5 million at a
• 1:30:36
  budget now. And you're you're running a
• 1:30:38
  concert, a production, It's a you're doing campaigns and and
• 1:30:42
  neighbor, you're in like we started sales marketing.
• 1:30:45
  And you're not just the beggar, but the connotation of that
• 1:30:47
  really means a lot because ultimately you you're humbled by
• 1:30:51
  that understanding and the beginning of a person and to
• 1:30:54
  where you've gone to right now. Kudos to you.
• 1:30:56
  Thank you behalf of the entire, I, I guess Jewish community for
• 1:30:59
  the things that you've been doing and helping, you know,
• 1:31:02
  people that have lost people in their lives and.
• 1:31:05
  I, I hope it's OK that I say this, but if you are someone who
• 1:31:08
  lost a parent and, or you have a child who lost a parent, we're
• 1:31:13
  here, we really are. And we always say this like we
• 1:31:16
  don't know where a podcast sometimes lands to a person in
• 1:31:18
  the moment that they are. And you know, whether it's kids
• 1:31:22
  and we do have some adult services as well, just for
• 1:31:24
  people to know that they don't have to go through this alone.
• 1:31:27
  I don't want anyone listening to this podcast who lost the parent
• 1:31:29
  to think that they have to struggle in their own little
• 1:31:31
  corner. That's.
• 1:31:32
  Absolutely beautiful. Before we wrap up, two more
• 1:31:34
  things to do. Do you know what they are?
• 1:31:36
  Do you know? OK, Number one is do you have
• 1:31:37
  any questions for me? OK, that's I'd like to wrap up
• 1:31:40
  before doing that. And then we're going to ask you
• 1:31:43
  to pick somebody who can fit in a role in being a guest on this
• 1:31:47
  podcast. Oh.
• 1:31:48
  You want a recommendation? Oh that was a great.
• 1:31:50
  I got a long list so. So let's start off with, do you
• 1:31:53
  have any questions for me before we wrap up?
• 1:31:56
  So I actually, I have so many questions for you, like almost
• 1:31:58
  too many questions. You've, you've shared so many
• 1:32:00
  parts. I know that you got involved
• 1:32:02
  with the school and stuff like that.
• 1:32:04
  For me, the the biggest question is how have you found
• 1:32:07
  transitioning from the business world into the nonprofit world?
• 1:32:13
  I couldn't have done it without my business knowledge and
• 1:32:16
  without my support and understanding from my people,
• 1:32:19
  from with my organization and my family.
• 1:32:22
  When you're in the non for profit world, you have to be a
• 1:32:25
  certain type of crazy is something I learned is to be a
• 1:32:27
  leader in the non for profit. And I get crazy like Sterley
• 1:32:30
  Green taught the world these days.
• 1:32:32
  He has a great song. And so the number one thing is
• 1:32:37
  that you do not go into leadership of a non for profit
• 1:32:40
  world without your family and your business support 110%.
• 1:32:44
  So that's the one thing I've learned.
• 1:32:45
  And the second thing is, which you hit the nail on the head.
• 1:32:48
  Treat it like a business. I would not have been able to,
• 1:32:52
  you know, start off a high school and with a faculty and a
• 1:32:57
  leadership and a board and rabbinical board and systems and
• 1:32:59
  financial backing and marketing and production and plays and
• 1:33:03
  Shabbatons and HR and drama. You know, drama on the stage,
• 1:33:07
  drama off the stage, drama behind the stage.
• 1:33:10
  There's drama everywhere. But I welcome the drama because
• 1:33:13
  like I said to everybody listening to me when we started
• 1:33:15
  the school is that drama means that we're communicating.
• 1:33:18
  So at least we're communicating and I know how to handle drama.
• 1:33:20
  So bring it on. And that's that's, that's my
• 1:33:23
  answer to you in terms of what it took.
• 1:33:26
  Wow, Wow, Wow, wow. No, it's, it's it's amazing.
• 1:33:29
  Amazing. In terms of who I would suggest
• 1:33:32
  sitting in the seat, well, the the problem was that I was
• 1:33:33
  really going to suggest label shorts, which we had no, no.
• 1:33:36
  No, he hasn't come on yet, OK. So very good.
• 1:33:37
  So label, label should definitely be in this seat.
• 1:33:40
  Thank you. For the suggestion, thank you
• 1:33:41
  for coming on, this was Misses Sarah Rifka Cohen.
• 1:33:45
  What an interview, what a story, what a life, what a lesson.
• 1:33:49
  What I just I want to make this episode.
• 1:33:53
  Lela Nishma's your mother and your father.
• 1:33:54
  So if you don't mind saying their names.
• 1:33:56
  That's very special. OK, so my mother is Shoshanna
• 1:33:59
  Mariam Bas Emmanuel and yes she was born in Egypt and my father
• 1:34:04
  is you saw Brian Ben. I say it with their father's
• 1:34:07
  names, which is way traditionally we say it happens
• 1:34:10
  to be in my own community in Stalin where I'm married into.
• 1:34:13
  They use the mothers names after they passed away, but I never
• 1:34:16
  got used to it because my parents would say their father's
• 1:34:19
  names after death for their own parents.
• 1:34:20
  So I leave it and. It's like you said, they know
• 1:34:23
  they're listening, they're up there, they have more
• 1:34:25
  connections, you know, than us. And I really, I, I thank you for
• 1:34:29
  coming on and sharing all that with us.
• 1:34:31
  It's it was so beautiful. And then Shama Shah have an
• 1:34:34
  Aaliyah and you and your family should have should merit only
• 1:34:38
  good from everything that you're doing and all the history that
• 1:34:40
  you come from. And what a beautiful message.
• 1:34:43
  What a beautiful story, what a beautiful background.
• 1:34:45
  I really appreciate you coming on here.
• 1:34:46
  Thank you. Thank you to all our subscribers
• 1:34:49
  or our listeners. Thank you to the prime source
• 1:34:50
  production team. We're doing great things and
• 1:34:53
  we're so glad that you're with us.
• 1:34:55
  That's a wrap. Wow, amazing.
• 1:34:56
  Thank you.