Latest / None of Your Business Podcast / 2025 Broke Us… Then Built Us

Transcript

2025 Broke Us… Then Built Us · None of Your Business Podcast

• 0:00
  The phone rang. We need you at heart.
• 0:01
  Hertzel, he was standing there, 12 year old.
• 0:03
  Kid God runs this world. There's nothing that I control
• 0:06
  if we. Came to the United States as
• 0:07
  real refugees. I got to see the fruit of it.
• 0:11
  You never know. Probably went home and cried a
• 0:13
  little bit. I would have to explain what a
• 0:15
  podcast was. It was like a footnote at the
• 0:17
  bottom of an article. I show up every morning and I
• 0:19
  don't know what I'm doing. I vowed I would never gatekeep
• 0:22
  my knowledge. It's like somebody plastering a
• 0:24
  billboard on every major thoroughfare.
• 0:26
  Mishmudova, Nembus. Megithe.
• 0:30
  None of your business, Oshi. None of your business, Michael.
• 0:33
  It's the None of Your Business podcast hosted by Michael
• 0:37
  Anoshi. Happy New Year's, everybody, and
• 0:39
  welcome back to an incredible Top Moment, episodes of the None
• 0:43
  of Your Business podcast. I'm your host, Michael
• 0:45
  Greenfield. With me is Ushi Schwartz, and we
• 0:48
  want to thank you, our subscribers, our listeners.
• 0:51
  We're looking forward for 2026, but right now we are looking
• 0:54
  back at 2025 with all our top moments.
• 0:57
  Thank you again to the Prime Source production team.
• 1:00
  If you're a healthcare facility or any other operation looking
• 1:03
  to cut your cost, check our website out at primesourcex.com.
• 1:07
  First up, we have the incredible Jonathan Pollard.
• 1:10
  What an interview this was in Israel in his office.
• 1:13
  One of the most raw, universal conversations we had all year
• 1:16
  long. What you're about to hear is not
• 1:18
  theory, it's pain, betrayal and moral decisions that have no
• 1:23
  easy answers. Check it out.
• 1:24
  I remember the night of my wife and I were celebrating our 2nd
• 1:32
  wedding anniversary. So I arranged to get rid of the
• 1:35
  kids and a nice bottle of wine, nice music.
• 1:38
  And the phone rang and I put it on speaker and it was a friend
• 1:42
  of mine who's a military rabbi and he said we need you at Har
• 1:47
  Herzl. And I said why?
• 1:50
  He said we have too many bodies and we need you to help dig the
• 1:53
  graves. So I said why are you calling
• 1:56
  me? And he said because I know
• 1:58
  you'll keep your mouth shut. So I and I was kind of trying to
• 2:03
  explain to him that, you know, this is a special night for me
• 2:08
  and my wife. And all of a sudden I see my
• 2:10
  wife walk into the bedroom with a thermos of coffee and to
• 2:14
  Helium and she says go, they need you more than I do right
• 2:18
  now. So transformed.
• 2:22
  And I spent the night on on her Herzl, Mount Herzl, the military
• 2:26
  cemetery with a complete cross section of Israel.
• 2:29
  There were no arguments, there were no political debates,
• 2:32
  nothing from guys full of tattoos and metal piercings all
• 2:37
  the way over to her radium. I was filling the white sandbags
• 2:44
  and as the sun came up, I looked at one of the coffins and I knew
• 2:51
  the guy. And it was very difficult at
• 2:57
  that moment to kind of balance out my joy of celebrating my
• 3:03
  wedding anniversary with a wonderful woman with the loss of
• 3:07
  a wonderful guy with six children and a loving wife.
• 3:12
  But I wasn't really angry or depressed at the situation.
• 3:19
  It's war. But I was depressed and very,
• 3:22
  very angry at the people who led us into this trap because that
• 3:26
  man should have been alive. He should have been able to go
• 3:30
  home to his wife and children, and he should have lived a
• 3:34
  wonderful life. He's a professional soldier, but
• 3:38
  he he should have had the chance to have a, a full life.
• 3:43
  And that was taken from him. And that also is part of Israel.
• 3:47
  It's not that the enemy takes our lives.
• 3:50
  We we're accustomed to that. What we're not accustomed to is
• 3:54
  having our loved ones offered up as a sacrifice by our presumed
• 3:59
  betters in the government, in the military.
• 4:02
  That man should not have died, but he was betrayed and
• 4:06
  abandoned by the same people that betrayed and abandoned me.
• 4:09
  On October 7th, my security phone rang.
• 4:13
  It's a Shabbat. I was getting ready to go across
• 4:15
  the street for services. Shabbat services.
• 4:20
  And I have to answer it because it's glowing red.
• 4:23
  So and it was the telegram, the the Nukpa GoPro of what they
• 4:32
  were doing. And my wife looked at it and she
• 4:35
  said, you know, this is sick. What is this like Fauda?
• 4:38
  I mean, is this a movie? And I said, no, it's real.
• 4:42
  And she started crying. And at that moment my life
• 4:46
  changed. How so?
• 4:49
  Up until that moment, I had assumed that I was the exception
• 4:53
  to the rule. My abandonment and betrayal was
• 4:56
  an outlier. But what I realized on October
• 5:01
  7th, watching those videos, those horrible videos, was that
• 5:06
  the entire country had been abandoned and betrayed.
• 5:10
  And that's when things began to change for me in terms of my
• 5:16
  possibility of me going political or having any
• 5:19
  association with the political process, AKA the swamp in, in
• 5:23
  Israel. So you go from moments of joy,
• 5:27
  I'm getting ready to celebrate Shabbat to absolute fear and
• 5:34
  anger and a feeling of Nakamov revenge for what happened.
• 5:41
  I I have refused to wear a yellow hostage pin because the
• 5:46
  whole movement, the left has taken over and I warned certain
• 5:52
  people about that. They changed from being anti
• 5:57
  judicial reform to, you know, pro hostage to get them out, to
• 6:04
  prioritize the rescue of the hostages to the exclusion of
• 6:09
  everything else. And it was meant specifically to
• 6:13
  undermine the credibility of our conservative coalition
• 6:16
  government. So I, I didn't wear a hostage
• 6:20
  pin. And when confronted by, I
• 6:23
  remember 1 instance near Kicar parties where they used to
• 6:27
  gather in Jerusalem, they, they, they left this, this woman came
• 6:31
  up, American Anglo screaming at me, where is my hostage pin?
• 6:36
  So I looked at her and I just said, do you know who I am?
• 6:39
  And she said, yes, I said, well, did you wear a pin for me?
• 6:45
  And she said, no, why should I? You're a fascist.
• 6:49
  OK, that that was. And I thanked her for her candor
• 6:53
  on that. So I wore a pin that said nakama
• 6:57
  because the yellow pin reminded me of the yellow star that the
• 7:03
  in this case the the enemy that made us swear.
• 7:06
  Next up we have the amazing great friend of mine, Rob Noiki
• 7:09
  Roberts. And this story starts with a shy
• 7:12
  12 year old boy and ends with a life completely transformed.
• 7:17
  It reminds us that believing in someone can change everything.
• 7:21
  Check it out I. Came to be involved a little bit
• 7:24
  with, with, you know, there was a kid that was dropping out of
• 7:27
  high school and and this, this father came to me and said, do
• 7:30
  you want to do you want to teach my kid?
• 7:31
  I'm like, no, he's like, I'll give you £20 an hour.
• 7:34
  I said I'll start tonight, right.
• 7:35
  In those days it was a lot of money and I didn't really know
• 7:37
  what to do. My father, Zaleh Zain
• 7:39
  Gazantungstaku should be healthy and well, is a master mechanic.
• 7:42
  And I said to my dad, what do I do?
• 7:43
  I'm going to get paid real money.
• 7:44
  I'm not a teacher, what do I do? And he taught me the greatest
• 7:48
  lesson there is. He says believe in the kid that
• 7:50
  you're sitting in front of, love him, encourage him.
• 7:53
  And when a person is valued and they could believe in
• 7:56
  themselves, you don't know what you're capable of.
• 7:57
  I don't know what I'm capable of but it but negative limitations
• 8:00
  in your head will definitely stop you.
• 8:03
  So I brought this painfully shy kid into my house and my wife's
• 8:06
  American, you know, she's baking cookies and like, hey, how you
• 8:09
  doing? And he's like, he couldn't even
• 8:10
  answer. And it took like a few weeks
• 8:12
  until he opened up and he was looking forward to the cookies.
• 8:14
  And I'll never forget this day as long as I live.
• 8:17
  And I think it was the biggest gift Hashem gave me in my early
• 8:19
  career. This little boy knocked on my
• 8:22
  door. I thought someone was being
• 8:24
  murdered outside. There was a thump on my front
• 8:26
  door and it was drizzling and raining because it was England,
• 8:29
  right? And he was standing there, 12
• 8:31
  year old kid, maybe he was 11, I don't know.
• 8:34
  And he was doing this. He was crying and he held up his
• 8:38
  Gemara test and he said I got, I got 100.
• 8:43
  And this was a kid who never thought he could achieve
• 8:45
  anything. And I'm telling you, that moment
• 8:48
  I melted with him. I was just like such a.
• 8:50
  Beautiful thing to see to see that the I didn't really do
• 8:54
  anything other than care about him and and at the same time my
• 8:58
  wife sat me down. So she's unhappy my brother was
• 9:03
  learning in coal in Gibraltar picked up the phone two days
• 9:05
  later I said to Hashem, I don't know what do I do.
• 9:07
  I had my whole rabbi. I thought, you know, I might
• 9:10
  settle here and grow here and go to school here and get a degree
• 9:13
  here etcetera. And mom said I can't do this.
• 9:16
  And two days later I got a phone call from my brother who was one
• 9:18
  of the first members of a coal in Gibraltar 35 years ago.
• 9:21
  My Gibraltar was very traditionally as Safadi
• 9:26
  community, but not necessarily, shall we say, a Tyra community.
• 9:29
  What we know, I mean, they were beautiful people.
• 9:32
  I have a story about that in just a moment.
• 9:34
  But they wanted to, to, to further the Tyra growth of
• 9:37
  Gibraltar and they wanted to open some schools and things
• 9:41
  like that. And there was somebody there
• 9:42
  that our current president of the community who wanted a
• 9:45
  mentor and A and a tutor for his children.
• 9:48
  And two days after davening to Hashem that I need a change,
• 9:52
  Gibraltar picked up the phone and said, do you want to come?
• 9:54
  And I remember we flew into Spain and we drove down this
• 9:57
  coast road. It's called the Costa del Sol,
• 9:59
  the coast of the sun, gorgeous palm trees.
• 10:01
  It's like living in Hawaii. It's just nuts.
• 10:04
  And I remember us being in the car on the way down and she's,
• 10:07
  she looked over at me and she said, I don't care how this
• 10:09
  interview goes, we're moving here, right?
• 10:10
  Really. And I moved there on a 2 year
• 10:12
  contract. From Atlanta, GA.
• 10:15
  Right from being 8 months in in Gateshead, right?
• 10:18
  My wife's like, OK, we're going to, we're going to move here.
• 10:21
  And almost 3 decades later, I'm still there, albeit in a
• 10:28
  morphing role just at the moment.
• 10:29
  But it's a special place. And just to give you an
• 10:32
  indication of what the kind of place is, I know I said a minute
• 10:34
  ago, it's not a tire place, an unfair characterization of it.
• 10:38
  They're a deeply spiritual, beautiful people.
• 10:43
  I remember one of my first, I was 22 years old when I moved
• 10:46
  there and I came as a, you know, a youth director.
• 10:51
  Madrid. No, I don't know, like Rebbie
• 10:54
  High School, Rebbie, you know, teaching a bit here and there
• 10:56
  and, you know, being a mentor to to the teenagers.
• 11:00
  And I walked into shul on Shabbos morning.
• 11:02
  There's four very beautiful shuls in in Gibraltar.
• 11:05
  With 100 and. Yeah, yeah, somewhat.
• 11:07
  And they're not. And they're not like you would
• 11:08
  think in American shuls. You know, this one's this one,
• 11:10
  and this one's a literature one. No, they're all the same when
• 11:13
  they came out and say the exact same.
• 11:15
  There's just families hundreds of years ago came and a slight
• 11:18
  different minute. So they say this over here like
• 11:20
  this and you should know for the the four rules, there isn't a
• 11:23
  really enough, you know, peanut butter to spread to keep it
• 11:26
  evenly. So they they're closed.
• 11:29
  During the week. And it's 1 is open during the
• 11:32
  week and everyone goes to that show.
• 11:34
  And then three months down the line, we'll all go to that show
• 11:36
  and three months down there. So they do a rota now that the
• 11:40
  community has grown two of the smallest rules doesn't doesn't
• 11:43
  fit the daily minion or the daily mignon in the community
• 11:45
  has grown so much brush. And so the smallest they're all
• 11:48
  open on Shabbos and they'll open in Yamato.
• 11:50
  But one of the small shows that I went to Aberdraham, I walked
• 11:54
  in on Shabbos morning and I saw this near 80 year old man stand
• 11:58
  up for me. And exactly I did a double take
• 12:02
  and like to see things like secretly I'm, you know, the God
• 12:05
  ladder. I mean, there's clearly a
• 12:07
  mistake here. So I put it to bed and the next
• 12:09
  week when he did it again, I'm like, I was decidedly
• 12:12
  uncomfortable. I think it took three or four
• 12:14
  weeks until I got to know who this man was.
• 12:16
  His name was Mosaic Garrison, a man who could probably quote
• 12:21
  most of Tanaka Balpe, who could lane any partial of the week
• 12:24
  without preparing. You know, you'd see him in the
• 12:28
  street. He's just whispering to himself.
• 12:30
  He's just saying to hit him or whatever it may be.
• 12:32
  You know, this is a man, you know, he was impressed by any,
• 12:35
  any stretch of the imagination. And I went to him and I said to
• 12:38
  him, you know the Torah. Well, you can learn any
• 12:42
  pressure, then you'll know me. Please say if I talk him, I have
• 12:44
  a die Reiser to stand for you, right?
• 12:47
  And not the other way around. It's very awkward.
• 12:49
  You know, you're standing for me.
• 12:50
  And he looked at me as if I'd insulted him and his family.
• 12:54
  And he did this with his no, no, you are the Torah.
• 12:59
  You came to teach the Torah. I stand for the Torah.
• 13:02
  Wow. And this was like I hadn't done
• 13:05
  anything yet, but if I represented that, that's I think
• 13:08
  encapsulates what Gibraltar is. Here we are with the amazing
• 13:12
  Sahi Majeski. Thank you Hashem, for Sahi.
• 13:15
  After losing his father, Sahi discovered a philosophy that
• 13:19
  reshaped his entire outlook in life.
• 13:21
  This is about grief, simplicity, and choosing So what over what
• 13:26
  if? Check it out.
• 13:27
  I like the way you actually listen to a song and you know
• 13:29
  right away who composed it, where it's from, who.
• 13:32
  Like a library of information when it comes to music.
• 13:35
  I think so, yeah. Yeah.
• 13:37
  Again, he's not going to say yeah, you should.
• 13:38
  Own it. Just own it.
• 13:39
  That was not our. Again, if you follow me, then
• 13:41
  you know I if you. I didn't ask you if you could do
• 13:44
  algebra or if you could do calculus.
• 13:46
  Before. Does anyone ever said IYKYK
• 13:48
  before out loud or is it just something you write?
• 13:51
  I don't write it, but I've seen people write that for a long
• 13:53
  time. I didn't know what it meant yik
• 13:55
  yik until somebody like, actually explained what it
• 13:57
  means. I hate those.
• 13:58
  I hate those acronyms 'cause I got to sit there for a minute
• 14:00
  figuring out what the context of the standard.
• 14:02
  Was BRB. What does that?
• 14:03
  Mean the first one I changed. BR not lol.
• 14:05
  Lol wasn't first I. Don't know, maybe BRB be right
• 14:07
  back you. Know yeah but lol was around for
• 14:09
  a long time, could be and still alive and still still kicking
• 14:13
  people. Now there's much more.
• 14:14
  Lol yeah yeah, now there's 15. Yeah, yeah.
• 14:18
  You're just capital letters. It used to be.
• 14:20
  Really annoyed me that started and people like picked up on it
• 14:22
  and it became a thing. It's KK KK 2K like you the.
• 14:26
  Small K on purpose. Just a small K, you know.
• 14:29
  You know that they change it 'cause when you write, can you
• 14:32
  write capital capital? Which means you went out of the
• 14:34
  way. By design.
• 14:36
  By design did it by design. So let's face you sneaky devil.
• 14:39
  You did this man. What's your subliminal message
• 14:42
  that you're sending me here? Well, it's like you're not so
• 14:44
  happy with what I said. And it was like, it was like K
• 14:47
  type of thing. That's correct.
• 14:48
  What is that? What's up?
• 14:49
  Wow. You know, I know we've been
• 14:50
  learning a lot on this podcast. I never thought I'd learn.
• 14:52
  It because what's the two KS all about?
• 14:53
  What's the? What's the How did that happen?
• 14:55
  Oh sure, you remember the original acronym.
• 14:58
  ASLASL. Before BRB, but way before.
• 15:01
  She's not going to remember. That I don't know what
• 15:02
  ASLASASAAOL. If you had AOL, then you'd
• 15:06
  remember. BL location.
• 15:08
  Age. What?
• 15:10
  Oh, is that what it is? Yeah, it's the age.
• 15:12
  BL location, is that what you just said?
• 15:13
  It's great. I did not know that.
• 15:15
  Very cool. Yeah.
• 15:16
  OK. We're aging, we're aging
• 15:18
  ourselves. But anybody who knows what ASL
• 15:20
  is has been on the Jewish Chat. Another detour.
• 15:23
  This is a detour day. Yeah, major detour.
• 15:25
  Yeah, anyways, I just, and I kept on taking music wherever I
• 15:29
  went. I got married because, you know,
• 15:31
  all the music was always my life.
• 15:32
  Then my father passed away in during COVID, but not because of
• 15:35
  COVID. And you know, when you're going
• 15:38
  through that, there's a lot of different things that can that
• 15:42
  you can go like there's many different ways that you can take
• 15:45
  it. And I like to see the world and
• 15:48
  because I'm a simple individual in my head, I'm not worldly.
• 15:51
  I don't know technology. Everyone knows I'm just like,
• 15:55
  you know, I'm me. I just go with it.
• 15:56
  I'm a winged type of guy. I don't plan.
• 15:58
  My wife does all the planning all like everything.
• 16:00
  Like I just go with the flow. I'm a real go with the flow type
• 16:03
  of guy. Always.
• 16:04
  And I always see the world in two ways.
• 16:06
  And to me it's black and white like that.
• 16:08
  But it's kind of in terms of people, what if and So what
• 16:13
  right you can be Oh, what if this doesn't happen?
• 16:15
  What if this does happen? What if it doesn't go right my
• 16:17
  way? What if, what if?
• 16:18
  What if you can live your whole life of a what if or So what?
• 16:21
  So what? That's kind of like my motto of
• 16:24
  a So what? And when I when my father passed
• 16:27
  away, I was like, OK, I could be mad.
• 16:29
  I could be angry. How old was your father when he
• 16:31
  passed away? 74.
• 16:33
  You were close to your father. Yes and no yes, I I mean, I got
• 16:36
  a lot closer to him after he passed away for sure, because
• 16:39
  obviously I'm no family would have experienced it.
• 16:40
  Hopefully you know that I have to, but if you have.
• 16:42
  Makes sense, I could understand that.
• 16:43
  You end up realizing how the. You realize what you're missing,
• 16:45
  yeah? More than no, no, no, I realize
• 16:46
  how exactly like him I am in so many ways.
• 16:49
  And in my whole life I was like, no, I'm not.
• 16:51
  I always thought I was on the opposite.
• 16:52
  That's not who I am. That's not me.
• 16:54
  Like, you know, when you're a kid, you're you know, you're you
• 16:56
  know, you're like my brother said, Oh, you and you and Tati
• 16:58
  burp the same, you know, like to say how much I was.
• 17:01
  And I would always say, no, I'm not.
• 17:02
  And I would chase that and chase, you know, we're rounded.
• 17:04
  And all of a sudden it's like, wow, that's amazing.
• 17:07
  My father's the greatest, greatest man I ever knew.
• 17:10
  But that takes a while and during Shiva so like the second.
• 17:14
  So I had no Shiva really because we all my mom sat in her house,
• 17:17
  my brother sat in their. House of Covic Covic, It
• 17:19
  couldn't be we. All got together for the for the
• 17:22
  I feel we're doing talking about sad things right now, but do
• 17:24
  quickly. So we all got we had 10 people
• 17:25
  at the was the harder Covic. He passed away on April 20th,
• 17:28
  2020. That was actually at night 4/19
• 17:31
  in 2020 heart of COVID. We actually all had our whoever
• 17:35
  the rubs were at the time told us that we was there at the
• 17:37
  school left for me in Brooklyn when my father.
• 17:39
  Dobber Schooler from Turbidas. His son, he has a he has a shoe
• 17:43
  on a Flatbush where my parents live on the Thirties, 35th St.
• 17:46
  And he said we have to go home and wash our clothes even that
• 17:48
  we were wearing even though you're not supposed to during
• 17:50
  the seven days of every. Day because of infection.
• 17:52
  Because of whatever, that's all. That's all the height of it was.
• 17:55
  And we all sat separately and I didn't have really people come
• 17:57
  over, but not even really having you on him.
• 17:58
  That's terrible. Yeah, it was it was.
• 18:00
  But it was also good because I'm not like the rest of my brothers
• 18:04
  in many different ways. And I'm.
• 18:06
  We ended up making like 3 or 4 or five Bringans in my house at
• 18:09
  night in the backyard with a fire pit.
• 18:10
  Everyone sat like around and separate.
• 18:13
  And we just sang. And I spoke about my dad and we
• 18:15
  just I'm a big believer in the illumination of bring out the
• 18:18
  positivity, bring out the good. You can, you could be upset, but
• 18:22
  you know, and one night. And so the for the second night,
• 18:25
  Rea Bloomston came over, the one who started TYH and his brother
• 18:29
  Lamela wasn't there, but Mikey Moss was one of them.
• 18:31
  My and these two, we grew up together in the 30s.
• 18:33
  So we've been friends since were four years old and they're like,
• 18:36
  you know, they came over and we were from bringing we were
• 18:37
  talking like and I said something I don't know what it
• 18:40
  was. I want to thank you so much.
• 18:40
  Whatever, like Oh, you're going to be our biggest you know,
• 18:42
  thank you all sham and I said get out of my house like legit
• 18:45
  just get out, bro, legit story kick them out of like kick the
• 18:48
  knobs and I'm out of the move for this.
• 18:49
  Get out. The next time my friend Mikey
• 18:51
  came over again and we were talking in my backyard and he
• 18:53
  goes and he started doing it again.
• 18:55
  Thank you. Oh shit.
• 18:56
  I'm like dude, stop. Like what are you doing?
• 18:58
  It's just me and you here he goes sucky.
• 19:00
  One of the truth. He goes when my mother.
• 19:02
  I don't know if I don't know if I'm going to say this if he
• 19:03
  wants me to so well ask. But he said when my mother
• 19:06
  passed away, he lost his mother and his father.
• 19:07
  His father only died like 2 years ago.
• 19:09
  But he said when my mother passed away he wasn't as he
• 19:12
  wasn't religious at all and he went through all that but he
• 19:15
  went through a takufo where he was like I could be angry at the
• 19:17
  will and say why me why me? Or I could just be like OK, I
• 19:20
  have to figure it out and be happy because that's what my mom
• 19:22
  would want me to be and that's what I need to to move on.
• 19:25
  You you can't live a life of sadness because it's just forget
• 19:30
  it. I'm not healthy.
• 19:30
  You can't do it. It doesn't work with regret,
• 19:34
  with anger, with aggression. It ends up leading to you being
• 19:37
  angry at the world and you're ruining your relationships with
• 19:39
  your family and your kids and your wife and your partners or
• 19:43
  your boss or wherever you may go.
• 19:45
  If you live with that on your shoulders, you're you're killing
• 19:49
  everyone. Not forget about killing
• 19:51
  yourself, you're killing everyone around you and not to
• 19:54
  be physically killing, but in the sense of you just you're.
• 19:57
  You're toxic, you have to be around.
• 19:58
  Slapping everyone down with your, you know, with your own
• 20:01
  issues, but if you can hone in on those issues and realize that
• 20:05
  everything is from God. And this was the biggest
• 20:08
  awakening for me where I, you know, saying the words, thank
• 20:11
  you Hashem is much different than saying bar Hashem.
• 20:14
  And I realized that because my whole life I said bar Hashem,
• 20:17
  bar Hashem, good bar Hashem, bad bar Hashem.
• 20:18
  But the words that weren't explained.
• 20:22
  So they just, they flew off your lips and they probably still do
• 20:24
  to anyone today. But the words, thank you, Hashem
• 20:27
  were English words. And I know it may sound silly
• 20:30
  and ridiculous, but when you say them, when I started saying it,
• 20:33
  I started processing it, thank you, Hashem.
• 20:36
  And then I would say for what it was.
• 20:37
  And it meant, oh, I did just say thank you.
• 20:39
  I didn't just say bless Hashem. I didn't say bar Hashem bless.
• 20:44
  It's more like you're talking to him directly.
• 20:46
  And then I started saying thank you for my kids quietly to
• 20:49
  myself. I didn't tell anyone thank you
• 20:51
  for my wife, thank you. And I started just saying it.
• 20:54
  And then it started meaning something when I was like, first
• 20:57
  I was just saying it as a joke, you know, thank you, see.
• 21:00
  And then it just started and it's just like, it's like a
• 21:03
  weight off your shoulders when you realize that everything
• 21:05
  comes from God, that nothing can possibly be bad because
• 21:07
  everything is for the good. When you have that moment of
• 21:11
  clarity of saying God runs this world, there's nothing that I
• 21:16
  control. Next up we have the incredible
• 21:19
  Eli Kohanim. Some stories don't just inspire,
• 21:22
  they remind us how fragile freedom really is.
• 21:25
  In this clip, Eli takes us from a childhood in Iran through
• 21:29
  revolution, escape, and survival, sharing what it truly
• 21:33
  means to rebuild life from nothing.
• 21:36
  Check it out. Normally I would say like, let's
• 21:38
  go back to when your life got interesting, like don't take me
• 21:40
  back all the way to the beginning.
• 21:41
  But with you, I actually do want go all the way back to the
• 21:44
  beginning. OK, I understand.
• 21:45
  Like where you were born, where you grew up, what your life
• 21:49
  looked like at that point, a little bit about your family.
• 21:53
  And then when you made your way out, let's let's go through the
• 21:55
  motions on unfold all of this, unpack all of this for us.
• 21:59
  Let's start from the beginning. OK, was she?
• 22:01
  So I was born in Iran, like we discussed, to a Jewish family,
• 22:05
  and Iranian Jews are one of the two most ancient Jewish
• 22:08
  communities in the world. We trace back to the First
• 22:11
  Temple in the Bible. When Jews are forced out of
• 22:17
  Jerusalem and into the diaspora, they go to Babylonia, ancient
• 22:20
  Persia. And so the Jews in Iran were
• 22:25
  there predating the Islamic conquest.
• 22:28
  And so we were there for thousands of years,
• 22:31
  approximately 3000. And Fast forward to 1979.
• 22:35
  There's this Islamic revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini comes in,
• 22:39
  grabs power. The king at the time, the Shah
• 22:41
  of Iran, is pushed out, and the Jews suddenly find ourselves
• 22:46
  under threat. There were about 100,000 Jews
• 22:48
  living in Iran at the time under the Shah.
• 22:50
  You asked what life was like for for the Jewish community.
• 22:54
  Certainly. And I would say for a huge
• 22:56
  segment of Iran, there was a flourishing middle class.
• 23:00
  There was so much prosperity. There was oil and the Shah of
• 23:03
  Iran was modernizing the country.
• 23:06
  And that was part of why the radical Islamists pushed him
• 23:10
  out, because he instituted anti hijab laws.
• 23:14
  He brought again, modernity, prosperity and Western flavor to
• 23:20
  Iran. So if you see pictures of my mom
• 23:22
  in Iran in the 60s and 70s, she looks like she could be in New
• 23:25
  York, she looks like she could be in Paris.
• 23:26
  Really fashionable, really latest styles.
• 23:29
  So 1979 Islamic revolution, 100,000 Jews.
• 23:33
  And one of the first things that the regime did was they executed
• 23:37
  the president of the Iranian Jewish community, Mr. Habib Al
• 23:40
  Vanayan And that was when the Jews in Iran understood that we
• 23:45
  were under threat if they could kill the president of the
• 23:48
  community. Under what charges?
• 23:49
  What was there? I think they call them a Zionist
• 23:51
  spy, which is like the, you know, the typical thing,
• 23:54
  Zionists. That's the go to, yeah.
• 23:56
  The go to everybody's a Zionist spy.
• 23:58
  And so if they could execute him, they could execute anyone.
• 24:01
  And so that was when Mike, my family and majority of the Jews
• 24:06
  of Iran began our escape. We were so blessed and fortunate
• 24:10
  to come to the US and be given refugee status.
• 24:13
  And so we came to the United States as real refugees, in
• 24:18
  contrast to, let's say, a quote, UN quote, you know, the asylum
• 24:22
  seekers who today are coming in through the southern border.
• 24:27
  We were actual political refugees, understanding that we
• 24:30
  could be killed for being a religious minority in the
• 24:33
  country we came from. Yeah, and how old were you at
• 24:35
  that time? I was about 6 1/2 so I started
• 24:38
  first grade in the US. Wow, do you remember that time
• 24:41
  period of actually travelling like to the United?
• 24:44
  Like do you remember that at all?
• 24:46
  Any memories? So she I have a child's memory
• 24:48
  of Iran. I remember our house.
• 24:51
  I remember I have a memory of during the revolution, there was
• 24:56
  a lot of chaos in the streets and there were people just
• 24:59
  shooting bullets into the air. One bullet landed in my cousin's
• 25:03
  bedroom. My own father had done business
• 25:06
  with Israel in the 70s. He had a large construction
• 25:09
  works company and he had hired Israeli engineers.
• 25:12
  And so he, what happened with my family in particular was that he
• 25:16
  had lent people some money during the revolution, try to
• 25:21
  collect. And the person said to him,
• 25:23
  Kohanim, come back again. I'm going to denounce you as a
• 25:25
  Zionist spy. And so that's why my father
• 25:28
  decided very early on in the revolution to leave and we got
• 25:32
  on an airplane and left. After that point we were on, I
• 25:35
  think one of the last flights. They closed the borders.
• 25:38
  Wow, so just in the nick of time.
• 25:39
  Just in the nick of time. And how many in your family?
• 25:42
  So we're 5 total, my parents and three children.
• 25:46
  So older brother, older sister, myself and I just want to share
• 25:51
  we have a real American Dream story.
• 25:52
  So again, I'm so blessed and fortunate to have been raised in
• 25:56
  the US. My older sister is the first
• 25:59
  Iranian American elected judge in the United States, and my
• 26:03
  older brother's a doctor. So my parents, you know, they
• 26:05
  hit all the check marks of Jewish parents, a doctor, a
• 26:08
  lawyer. Did your parents up in heaven
• 26:11
  before they came down and they were grabbing like, you know,
• 26:13
  different luck and different things?
• 26:15
  Did they take it all and leave anything for the next person?
• 26:18
  I I think my parents are amazing people.
• 26:20
  I mean you're all very under accomplished, you know, I mean
• 26:23
  all three, you know, you guys went oh for three there.
• 26:25
  That's very impressive. Thank you.
• 26:26
  I'm. Curious you left people behind.
• 26:28
  I'm curious about that. Like when you left, like you
• 26:30
  knew people that didn't make it out and what was that vibe like?
• 26:33
  Like, oh, we're coming. We're not.
• 26:34
  Kind of interrupted. Do you see the stark difference
• 26:36
  between us? You see how empathetic he is?
• 26:38
  Yeah. He's immediately thinking about.
• 26:40
  All right, so you left people behind.
• 26:42
  And that must have been your friends, your cousins, your
• 26:44
  family. We're impressed by the success.
• 26:46
  And I want. And the glamour.
• 26:48
  That's what I want to know about.
• 26:49
  That's what you'll learn a lot of differences between.
• 26:51
  Well. You're a great balancing.
• 26:52
  Yeah. And Michael, that's a great
• 26:55
  question. So we did.
• 26:58
  So we got here 79 in the early 80s.
• 27:01
  We did still have family left in Iran.
• 27:03
  Eventually all of my immediate family, thank God, left.
• 27:07
  So they either came to the US or majority went to Israel.
• 27:12
  That has been a great advantage for me in life because I am very
• 27:16
  outspoken against the Iranian regime.
• 27:19
  And partially the reason I can do that is that they cannot
• 27:23
  target my family who's still left behind for it.
• 27:27
  A lot of Iranian dissidents, journalists, opposition figures
• 27:32
  are always worried about any family they might have back home
• 27:36
  who will get targeted. I mean, that's a part of what
• 27:38
  the regime does is they target family members.
• 27:40
  Next up we have the incredible Yossi Green.
• 27:42
  This next clip starts with a boat in China and ends with two
• 27:46
  strangers finding their way back to Yiddish Kite.
• 27:49
  It's one of the most unexpected cure of stories we've ever had.
• 27:53
  Check it out and we're back. And we're back.
• 27:56
  One of these trips coming back from China from a city called
• 28:01
  Zhuhai, which is a place where you go with a boat from Hong
• 28:05
  Kong, because Hong Kong is connects it's contiguous.
• 28:07
  You can drive up the the new territories and straight into
• 28:10
  China. You can drive straight.
• 28:12
  Then there is a the, the, the whatever Yangtze River where you
• 28:17
  have to, you have to cross it with a, with a ferry, with a
• 28:20
  boat. It's like an hour.
• 28:22
  So this and you you land in a city called Zhuhai, which is a
• 28:24
  very a commercial city with their manufacturing.
• 28:27
  This was the beginning of the by the way, every time you you went
• 28:29
  into China and you came out, it was a shot of making a Gamal
• 28:32
  every single time you came out of there because they could
• 28:34
  forgotten if you if you got lost there, that's it.
• 28:38
  Nobody would ever know who we're going to call who Ghostbusters
• 28:42
  anyway. So, so I'm coming back and I'm
• 28:45
  one of the, and I'm very, very nervous because at that time
• 28:48
  started the Palestinian crisis was around that time there was,
• 28:51
  and I see this couple that are looking at me.
• 28:54
  The the boy is wear, the man is wearing a, a baseball hat and
• 28:57
  the, and the, and, and the woman is, is also, they're very, very
• 29:02
  beautiful looking people, very classy looking people, but very,
• 29:04
  very Middle Eastern. And they're looking at it.
• 29:08
  They're, they're talking to each other.
• 29:09
  They're leaning on the, on the gunwale of the boat and they're
• 29:12
  looking, they're looking at, over at me the whole time, like
• 29:14
  unabashedly. And I'm getting very
• 29:16
  uncomfortable that this guy, this part of the Jew and they
• 29:18
  figured for G out sake, let's say I want to throw him over the
• 29:21
  water, the Chinese river. It was the end of it.
• 29:22
  I literally had these stupid thoughts.
• 29:25
  And this went on and on and I'm waiting and then I don't see any
• 29:28
  land anywhere. And I'm waiting for this Hong
• 29:30
  Kong to show up already. And all of a sudden I noticed
• 29:33
  from the from the corner of my eye, they're they're coming to
• 29:36
  me. They're coming towards me.
• 29:38
  They come towards me and they ask me, you Jewish?
• 29:42
  And I figured, sure, this is I put two and two together, you
• 29:45
  know, it's over. I said, yes, I'm Jewish.
• 29:48
  He says, well, where are you staying?
• 29:51
  I said, I'm staying in the Hong Kong Hilton.
• 29:53
  And why there is there is a, there's Shabbat.
• 29:56
  This was like Thursday. There's a place where you can do
• 29:59
  Shabbat. I said there is a kabat shliak
• 30:02
  remote Khayafsan, who's Saudi. He's the one that opened up the
• 30:06
  entire Far East. Today there is millions of
• 30:09
  people already and but he is the cap.
• 30:11
  He is the general of that all like, like Rabbi Lazar opened up
• 30:14
  Russia, Rabbi Afsin opened up the Far East.
• 30:17
  Some people don't remember that anymore because it's so big
• 30:20
  already. But he is the father and he as a
• 30:23
  matter of fact, there was a hotel called the Hong Kong
• 30:25
  Hilton, which had room four O 1 was the room that they had
• 30:30
  rented. And that was where the first
• 30:32
  kebab House of the Far East was. And I met him and he told me.
• 30:36
  He says, yeah. And he says Yossi would you
• 30:39
  Friday night. I hope we'll see you by minion.
• 30:41
  Where Minion? What do you know?
• 30:42
  So he told me 4 O1 OK. So I told these guys.
• 30:45
  I said, look, Yeah, you know, really.
• 30:47
  Where where are you? They come there on the other
• 30:48
  side of Hong Kong someplace. Is there a place maybe we can
• 30:51
  get a place where to be for Shabbat or or we can come like
• 30:56
  that. I said, look, I I'll tell you
• 30:57
  what. When you come, I'll look you up
• 30:59
  with this with this Rabbi out son and we became very, very
• 31:02
  good friends. This whole Shabbat.
• 31:04
  We we became, you know, they spoke, they asked me a lot of
• 31:06
  questions about the Yiddish guide him and her.
• 31:08
  I found that there were two single people.
• 31:10
  They were living together at the time.
• 31:13
  They were, you know, they were not they were not connected very
• 31:19
  much to the Yiddish guide yet and so on.
• 31:20
  I had nothing to do with with kiruv today by the everybody's
• 31:23
  into kiruv. I don't know.
• 31:25
  I don't know what that is. I come from a world where, you
• 31:28
  know, just OK, just stay where stay in your lane.
• 31:30
  I'm I'm very happy here, you know, like that was that I did a
• 31:33
  whole thing came to me later on in life and and they they spent
• 31:39
  Shabbos. They wherever I eat the meals
• 31:41
  they can, they ate by by Rabbi Afson and then lots of Shabbos
• 31:44
  they said would can we take you out for a walk?
• 31:47
  And I notice that they're asking me questions about Ashqafa, all
• 31:51
  kinds of questions, Mashiach and, and the reason why I
• 31:54
  happened to be at that time in the right place, because I'd
• 31:57
  been learning Ramchal's farm with the Rebbe for a bunch of
• 32:00
  years. It was very new at the time
• 32:02
  Ramchal came out. It was, it was translated by,
• 32:06
  by, I forgot his name. He translated Der Hashem, he
• 32:10
  translated d'astulness. So we, we start today, the whole
• 32:12
  world is busy with it. But then it was beginning.
• 32:15
  And I was very excited to share. And they were, they loved the,
• 32:18
  the, the apparently they were very cerebral.
• 32:20
  They were very bright people, very educated French, they're
• 32:24
  Frenchies by the people that they lived in Paris.
• 32:26
  And and it got so far that I was going on Tuesday, that Tuesday,
• 32:32
  they asked me if it's OK, if they can, if they can drive me
• 32:35
  to the, they can go with me to the airport because they want to
• 32:37
  spend another two hours. They know I'm going to have two
• 32:39
  hours of wait. Can they spend another two hours
• 32:41
  with me? And I said sure.
• 32:44
  And, and they sat with me for two hours again and again
• 32:46
  non-stop asking me questions that you described about my
• 32:49
  life, about about what Hasidis is and every kind, she would
• 32:52
  throw a question from this side here and then he would interrupt
• 32:55
  and, and ask throw a question. And we're getting closer and
• 32:58
  closer to the flight. And I'm saying the flight is to
• 33:00
  San Francisco. It's a 12/15 hour flight.
• 33:04
  They went, they had gone ahead and they had bought themselves
• 33:07
  tickets. They didn't tell me.
• 33:08
  And they got me no, no business class ticket.
• 33:10
  They just got the three front coach class tickets.
• 33:13
  I sat in the middle, the two of them sat on the side.
• 33:15
  And I see that they're walking me through a plane.
• 33:16
  And I'm saying, I mean, you got to go.
• 33:18
  No, no, no. So are we still walking you?
• 33:20
  That's the kind of people that they are very like, very sneeze.
• 33:24
  But. Escorting nice, beautiful
• 33:27
  people, beautiful people, you know, very, very, very all kinds
• 33:31
  of you know that you can say that they dressed incredibly
• 33:33
  well, very expensively there. That baseball hat was not that
• 33:36
  was not one of it was. It was a Yankees cap designed
• 33:38
  by, you know, by 1. Clearly affluent.
• 33:41
  They were incredibly affluent, the sneakers.
• 33:43
  Today, everybody wears sneakers. Those days he was wearing
• 33:45
  sneakers, but his sneakers were Montana, which cost whatever.
• 33:49
  Anyway, I get to the plane and they're coming out to the plane,
• 33:53
  I suppose going, well, we're still going to be here.
• 33:55
  We asked, They said we can go on with you.
• 33:57
  And, and, and they're sitting down with me and the plane is
• 34:01
  going to take off in about 1/2 hour, 45 minutes.
• 34:03
  And I keep telling them, look, you're going to get there.
• 34:05
  Yeah, yeah, don't worry. A little while.
• 34:07
  And suddenly they put on their their seatbelts.
• 34:10
  Strapping in. They're strapping in.
• 34:11
  They're coming they're here she takes out a little one of these
• 34:16
  cassettes. You know, remember those little
• 34:17
  cassettes Yes, one of these a 12 pack.
• 34:20
  She opens it up with her with her teeth and and and he brings
• 34:24
  out this little paper Cotter and he's talking to her in French.
• 34:27
  Give me give me the tapes. And he's reaching over my back.
• 34:30
  They kept me going for 12 hours non-stop, non-stop, non-stop,
• 34:36
  non-stop. And Fast forward, they got
• 34:39
  married and they have 18 other couples who were their best
• 34:46
  friends who became from because of them.
• 34:49
  He sits and learns day and night.
• 34:51
  He is Balma Kobl. He is he's a holy person.
• 34:56
  He thanks me for his whole life. Fast forward, you want to know
• 35:00
  what the message is? The message is you never know
• 35:03
  when you can say a good word, a good word to A to a person and
• 35:07
  change worlds. Not, not, you know, Hashem
• 35:10
  showed me that time, you know, sometimes you do it and you
• 35:14
  don't get to see the the fruit of it, you know, but I got to
• 35:17
  see the fruit of it. You never know.
• 35:20
  Next up we have the OG of Jewish podcasting, Yaakov Langer
• 35:24
  himself. Before podcasting was cool in
• 35:26
  our world, someone had to explain what it even was.
• 35:30
  And this next moment is about vision.
• 35:33
  It's about persistence and creating something inspirational
• 35:37
  before anyone else did. Lukai and Yaakov, there has been
• 35:41
  a time, though, where our company was actually, like,
• 35:44
  brought into a trial when a patient passed away from choking
• 35:47
  on food. Oh, my God.
• 35:48
  And they called us in as expert witnesses because we understand
• 35:52
  the world of procurement and supply chain and, you know, what
• 35:54
  kind of food product was it the manufacturer was exactly.
• 35:58
  And you know that. So.
• 35:59
  So I just, I find that whole world fascinating, actually.
• 36:02
  So that's a guest that I would love to have like someone like
• 36:04
  that to just learn about that world and.
• 36:06
  Yeah. I I have a guest suggestion.
• 36:07
  I mean, we can do it off here. I mean, he's in that world, but
• 36:09
  he's always looking for things and he's so well spoken.
• 36:11
  Harry Rothenberg. Oh, cool, he's great.
• 36:13
  I mean, at the end of our program, we do ask you to pick
• 36:16
  somebody. OK, so maybe it's gonna be he's
• 36:17
  a good. Guy, right now we have Yahoo
• 36:20
  language. Not how we Yeah.
• 36:22
  So we'll we'll put him aside. We get to know a little bit more
• 36:24
  about you. Sure.
• 36:25
  Absolutely. And I wanna go back again.
• 36:28
  So when was that first moment that you just said I'm doing the
• 36:31
  podcast or was that even the first thing or did you do
• 36:33
  something else prior to? Yeah, yeah, sure.
• 36:35
  So I made a WhatsApp group. It was called, I don't remember
• 36:39
  exactly, but it was like, let's schmooze or something like that
• 36:42
  with my wife and my friend Benji Weintraub, who is a
• 36:46
  photographer. Great guy.
• 36:48
  And he's like very creative. And and I said I, I remember
• 36:52
  saying like, I want to interview.
• 36:54
  It was like Uncle Moshi and Yakov Schwaki and like Rob,
• 36:57
  Ethan Finer. I said we see all these people
• 37:00
  and I would love to just smooth with them, like get to know them
• 37:03
  because no, not for like the art school book about their life
• 37:06
  after 120 or not for like one of these like radio shows where
• 37:10
  like they're promoting an event coming up.
• 37:12
  Like Sky, you're here to promote the event.
• 37:14
  Like I actually want to get to know them and that's where it
• 37:17
  started. But of course, like I was just
• 37:19
  busy and like it just didn't, you know, manifest And then
• 37:23
  knocking. Gordon reached out to me like
• 37:24
  2-3 months later, said he wants to do a podcast for a meaningful
• 37:27
  minute and the rest is history. I'm like.
• 37:29
  So he was already knocking. Gordon was already podcasting.
• 37:32
  He wasn't podcasting yet. No, he he wanted to make
• 37:34
  something called the Meaningful Minute Podcast and.
• 37:37
  Oh, that was his creation, his idea.
• 37:39
  You want to do a meaningful minute and then I'm like, well,
• 37:41
  I I don't want to just interview the Rob on him that are are, you
• 37:44
  know, creating these like short videos.
• 37:46
  I mentioned the idea and then kind of like fused it together
• 37:49
  together. The idea of like plush of
• 37:51
  awesome, great people and also like people that we all know.
• 37:53
  But like for me, Uncle Maishi, I don't know why I'm like, I
• 37:56
  really want to get to know him. Yeah, that's that's where
• 37:59
  meaningful people so. Both of you decided let's do it
• 38:01
  together. So you guys became Co hosts.
• 38:03
  You guys were partners, Yes. And you started that podcast and
• 38:06
  it was called Meaningful People, I think, right?
• 38:08
  Yeah, at the time. And how long did that go for?
• 38:10
  I did that for I don't remember exactly.
• 38:12
  It was like I think around 2 years.
• 38:15
  So for two years. Two years, yeah.
• 38:16
  And who, who's getting the guests?
• 38:18
  Like who was, you know, who's doing the?
• 38:19
  I think we both we, we were, it was like a partnership we were
• 38:22
  both doing. Guys were alone, so you were
• 38:24
  hustling it out. You guys didn't have a lot of
• 38:26
  resources I imagine. No, not so much you.
• 38:28
  Are doing a lot of editing, producing and I.
• 38:30
  Think the most annoying thing about that process was this was
• 38:33
  in 2020. We actually started in 2019.
• 38:36
  But in 2020, I, whenever I would reach out to someone, I would
• 38:41
  have to explain what a podcast was.
• 38:42
  And they're like, if they were like more like Yeshivish, they
• 38:45
  would be like, it's a sheer. I'm like, no, it's not a sheer.
• 38:47
  And they're like, they're like, is it like Oprah?
• 38:49
  Like on the other side, they're like, is it like Oprah Winfrey?
• 38:51
  I'm like, do no one know what? Like I did not realize how few
• 38:55
  people knew what podcasts were. Yeah, some people did, but most
• 38:58
  people I had to explain what it was.
• 39:00
  And it was. A challenge it was AI, remember,
• 39:02
  with Rav Gavi's like a revi of mine.
• 39:03
  And like where? Was your studio.
• 39:05
  It was on Central Ave. So you had a third party place
• 39:08
  where you both went to and that was not.
• 39:10
  Nothing. It was.
• 39:10
  No, it was not his office. That's where we did it.
• 39:12
  I was in his office. It was in his office.
• 39:13
  Yeah. And.
• 39:13
  That went for two years. It went for two years.
• 39:15
  Popular did it get at that point it.
• 39:16
  Got very it was it was so popular, but I think it was also
• 39:21
  like there was barely any competition, like there wasn't
• 39:24
  so many. I remember the, the, for me, the
• 39:26
  first Jewish podcast was forgot his name, Robert Karolovsky.
• 39:31
  I forgot his name. Really awesome.
• 39:32
  He's in the Care World. It's called Jew Schmooze.
• 39:34
  I think that's what it's called. Like he was, he was doing it for
• 39:37
  like 2 years before that even. And I listened to some of the
• 39:39
  episodes. I'm like, oh, it was great.
• 39:42
  But aside for him, I mean, there were, there were, there were, I
• 39:45
  don't remember who was at that point, but, but I, I always
• 39:48
  remember for me, like the big shift for me was like, it was
• 39:52
  always like, OK, it was great. And, and, and I was doing that
• 39:56
  and I was, I was working as well.
• 39:58
  And I remember telling my wife like this is like, I, I, I just
• 40:02
  can't, like it's 2 full time jobs.
• 40:04
  Like I can't do it. And at that point I'm like, I
• 40:06
  had the idea for kosher money and my wife's like, you're
• 40:08
  crazy. And I'm like, listen, when I
• 40:11
  first started this, it was so hard.
• 40:13
  But like as time goes on, it's a muscle like it gets, it does get
• 40:16
  easy. I'm sure you guys can relate to
• 40:17
  that. Like between episode?
• 40:18
  One all the time that they see a difference in the later episodes
• 40:22
  versus the earlier ones. Because like anything else, you
• 40:25
  got a master of craft, you got a learner.
• 40:26
  Repetition always helps. Practice makes perfect,
• 40:29
  literally. And I look back now at our first
• 40:32
  few episodes and I cringe. Yeah, yeah, but but it's if
• 40:34
  you're not cringing, it means you're not improving.
• 40:36
  Like you're just doing the same exact thing.
• 40:38
  Like you have to look at your First off and cringe.
• 40:40
  Like that's and even in two years from now, you watch this
• 40:42
  one, you you should cringe. Like, I think it's a good thing.
• 40:44
  Exactly. But yeah, so, so I just, yeah,
• 40:47
  I, I'm like, listen, I've been doing this for long enough.
• 40:49
  And like, it was just, it was clear that like, and I, I had an
• 40:52
  idea for kosher money and that's an issue and, and a podcast for
• 40:56
  women with I had the idea of Charlene and I'm enough, but.
• 40:59
  And my wife's like, you're crazy.
• 41:01
  I'm like, I think I could handle it.
• 41:02
  And slowly but surely, it's it's, yeah.
• 41:05
  So after your two years, you parted ways, parted ways with
• 41:09
  Nachi. He continued to do meaningful.
• 41:11
  And I remember at the time it was so hard for me because like
• 41:14
  for me at at that point I did not have children yet.
• 41:17
  So for me it was like, it was my baby.
• 41:19
  It was, it was so my baby. And like had to like, like you
• 41:22
  put in all your effort into something and like to give it
• 41:24
  up. It was, it was very difficult.
• 41:26
  You gave it up simply because you wanted the shift and do it
• 41:29
  something different. It was like, it was a great
• 41:32
  experience, but at the end of the day, like we're two
• 41:34
  different minds and he's great. And like he had his vision.
• 41:37
  I had my vision and we would always, I think you could listen
• 41:40
  to it. We would always have like just
• 41:41
  different creative ideas. So for me it was, it was clear
• 41:46
  that like it wasn't, we were not going the same direction.
• 41:50
  And it was very hard. And, and to the credit of a lot
• 41:53
  of friends and family, they're like, I'm telling you, like,
• 41:56
  yeah, you could start at 0, but like, you'll, you'll be good.
• 41:59
  And it was just very hard to like, really just also like part
• 42:02
  of it was like part of my identity.
• 42:03
  Of course, one of the biggest things about divorces is the
• 42:06
  shame that comes along with it is the people around you, you're
• 42:10
  afraid of what they're going to think, you know, are they going
• 42:12
  to look at me as a failure? Because, you know, and that's
• 42:14
  probably something that was going through your mind.
• 42:16
  Yeah, I want to be clear, anyone goes going through the divorce
• 42:18
  is way harder. It was so much easier.
• 42:20
  But but there are there are similarities for sure.
• 42:23
  If you read the AMI or Mishbacha, you know who Shlomi
• 42:25
  Science it is. And this next moment proves that
• 42:27
  vision always comes before validation.
• 42:31
  After years of rejection and crazy idea is that no one
• 42:34
  believed in one tiny article changed everything and launched
• 42:38
  this man's career. Check out the Incredible.
• 42:40
  Episode so this is you're like 2122 I was. 22. 22 at the time.
• 42:45
  OK, so this is like 10 years ago.
• 42:47
  This is 10 years ago, yeah. So I bumped into Turks and I was
• 42:50
  like, hey, aren't you Turks? I was like, yeah.
• 42:51
  And he was very nice. He gave me the time of day and I
• 42:54
  said, you know, I really want to get into this line of work that
• 42:56
  you're in, like I want to start writing for magazines and can
• 42:59
  you get me in? He's like, yeah, I'll make some
• 43:00
  introductions for you. And he made an introduction for
• 43:03
  me to a couple of places. One of them was AMI.
• 43:06
  And then they started taking me seriously.
• 43:08
  So I like I would they they weren't asking me to write
• 43:11
  anything. But it's like you'll pitch us an
• 43:13
  idea and if we like it, we'll we'll we'll green light it.
• 43:15
  So I'll pitch them ideas. And most ideas they said no to
• 43:18
  like, you know, like I remember one of the ideas is like, why
• 43:21
  don't you give me, it's $600.00 so I can go to Jordan and I want
• 43:26
  to go to the Caver of Iron and Cohen on his yard site and write
• 43:29
  an article about it. They're like, no.
• 43:32
  And then years later I that happened.
• 43:34
  Yeah, that's a pretty good idea that that's yeah.
• 43:35
  It was a great idea. That's.
• 43:36
  Not something people would read about, you know, but.
• 43:38
  No one, no one. I guess at that time, no one saw
• 43:41
  my vision. There's like this.
• 43:43
  It's just like this kid who wants us to pay for his travel.
• 43:46
  And I was like, no, you don't, you don't understand what I'm
• 43:48
  going to build. But they didn't see it.
• 43:49
  I saw it. So I just kept trying like every
• 43:51
  year around the yard site. I would, I would call Misses
• 43:53
  Frankfurter from mommy. It's like, hey, you know, it's
• 43:55
  that time of year again. Should we do it?
• 43:56
  And like, she's like, no, not this time.
• 43:58
  Maybe we'll think about it. And then in 2017, so I guess
• 44:03
  it's just about 2 1/2 years after I got married.
• 44:07
  It was literally this time of year.
• 44:09
  It was the end of November. The Lubavitch Kenneson was
• 44:13
  taking place. And I don't know how, but I
• 44:16
  convinced someone that's about to get me a ticket.
• 44:18
  And I went to this thing and I noticed that the all the rabbis
• 44:23
  walking around with power banks. I was thinking like, can't you
• 44:26
  just like get off your phone for three or four hours?
• 44:29
  Why do you need a power bank? And then I realized that every
• 44:31
  rabbi is like a rabbi, a therapist, have a Khadisha
• 44:36
  suicide helpline, anything that needs to be done to their
• 44:40
  community. It's all on their phone.
• 44:42
  So they absolutely need the power banks.
• 44:44
  Little epiphany that I had and I wrote a like a little piece,
• 44:47
  like maybe 150 words. I sent it to Omi.
• 44:50
  I was like, how about this? Would you print this little
• 44:52
  piece? Like actually it's really cute.
• 44:53
  We love it. And there boom, they printed it.
• 44:55
  And once they printed one piece, then they just started coming to
• 44:59
  me like, why don't you do this story?
• 45:00
  And that story started sending things to my.
• 45:02
  Wife. So that was your breakthrough
• 45:03
  story? It was like a it was like a
• 45:04
  footnote at the bottom of an article that someone else wrote
• 45:07
  about the chemist. Wow.
• 45:11
  And they spelled my name wrong. Interesting that was your first.
• 45:17
  Like sorry there were other articles that you wrote that
• 45:20
  were not submitted besides the one that they denied, no?
• 45:23
  Yeah, there were some things that I submitted that they
• 45:26
  denied. None of those have ever been
• 45:27
  printed, right? But there were ideas that they
• 45:29
  didn't green light until after that happened.
• 45:31
  Tell me about other ideas that you because you're not just a
• 45:33
  writer, you're like a walking a story teller.
• 45:38
  Like you're not just writing a story, you're creating the idea,
• 45:41
  the concept, you're there, you're vision.
• 45:43
  It's like, you know, I guess I, you know, I'm just comparing it
• 45:46
  to, let's say my life and I'm walking around.
• 45:48
  I put on something on status. You know, you think of creative,
• 45:51
  you put it up there, but you're taking it in.
• 45:53
  You're you're putting it into a beautiful story.
• 45:55
  You're taking the thoughts and you're putting it out there.
• 45:56
  So that happens to you a lot? Yeah.
• 45:58
  So what happened after that? How?
• 45:59
  Tell me more stories that happened like so.
• 46:01
  I so I remember after that I was.
• 46:03
  Telling you really impressed them or impressed the world.
• 46:06
  I didn't impress them. I so it was basically after that
• 46:08
  one, they're like, they're starting to take me seriously.
• 46:10
  So I asked for a meeting and I walk into their boardroom and
• 46:13
  it's like this big conference table and the publishers there
• 46:16
  and, and all the editors and I said, OK, so I have this crazy
• 46:19
  idea. OK, so here's what I want to do.
• 46:21
  I want to travel to, let's say 50 countries and we're going to
• 46:25
  do a story about a Chabad in this country and in that
• 46:28
  country. And every week we'll have like a
• 46:29
  column about Chabad in this place because I figured this is
• 46:32
  the way I could like travel the world and mix it in with Judaism
• 46:35
  and, and it's going to be great. And they're like, cool idea.
• 46:38
  No, it's, it's just not going to work.
• 46:42
  We can't do Chabad every week. You know, we could do Chabad
• 46:44
  some weeks, but there's so many other groups that that would
• 46:46
  want to be featured and it's just logistically it's going to
• 46:49
  be very hard. And so that was the end of that.
• 46:53
  But and I ended up getting a column that was a weekly travel
• 46:56
  column that I did for a bunch of years.
• 46:59
  So all these ideas were changed a little bit the different
• 47:03
  iterations, but they ended up working out in the long run.
• 47:05
  I've seen someone, I don't know if it's AMI or someone that does
• 47:08
  traveling when they picked a city and a town and they
• 47:11
  highlighted all the things about the town.
• 47:12
  How is that that what you guys were doing or is?
• 47:15
  I mean, there was, there were a few years ago that I had that.
• 47:17
  Yeah, yeah. Where is the AMI headquarters?
• 47:20
  Like who are these people that are making these decisions to
• 47:22
  green light not to? Like this sounds like a really
• 47:25
  big business. This sounds like they're running
• 47:26
  a big corporation. I mean, is a is a big
• 47:28
  corporation. They're a pretty big Jewish
• 47:29
  media outlet, right? Like they're responsible for a
• 47:32
  lot of the news that gets put out there.
• 47:34
  And they're a reliable source, right?
• 47:36
  Like if they post it, like you can have credibility.
• 47:38
  I mean, it's a pretty big deal. Is that right?
• 47:40
  I believe so. So where are they?
• 47:42
  Like, where's their headquarters?
• 47:43
  Like where? Barbark.
• 47:44
  In Barbark. Yeah.
• 47:45
  Now recently they opened another office in Lakewood because a lot
• 47:48
  of it's interesting, but you know, New York is kind of like
• 47:50
  Brooklyn is losing. It's it's not what it used to
• 47:53
  be. No, no, for sure not.
• 47:55
  It's. Being taken over by cameras, by
• 47:57
  banks, by it's. Not Donnie.
• 48:01
  The Brooklyn stock is certainly declining.
• 48:03
  It's you know, it's not what it once.
• 48:04
  Was I? Last week I said, you know, I
• 48:06
  was talking to somebody and I said I think within like 5 years
• 48:10
  Lakewood might overtake Brooklyn.
• 48:13
  Everyone in the room was like that happened a long.
• 48:14
  Time. Yeah, exactly.
• 48:15
  Yeah, really. Next up, we have the amazing,
• 48:18
  wonderful Shimmy. Jay.
• 48:19
  What an energetic episode this was.
• 48:21
  The next story is the definition of a blessing in disguise.
• 48:25
  A moment that felt like total failure that turned into the
• 48:28
  launchpad for an entirely new life.
• 48:31
  Check it out. I think the amazing, I think the
• 48:33
  amazing part of the three of us just sitting here is that we all
• 48:35
  know that in exactly 1 hour we're getting up and we're going
• 48:38
  to have a comes. It's all night as celebrating
• 48:41
  Shabbos of Arkham Shabbos. Malava Malka Lelan.
• 48:44
  Ishma's my mother, my father. It's her.
• 48:45
  Birth on her birthday. It's the highest.
• 48:47
  Sorry that was her name but anyways continue.
• 48:50
  So basically Pish pash baby was great.
• 48:52
  I was dating a girl at the time and she said to me you have more
• 48:55
  potential than sitting behind the desk selling baby strollers.
• 48:57
  Maybe you should go meet with Moshe Edelman my brother-in-law
• 49:01
  and get an interview. Hired me on the spot.
• 49:04
  Six months doing home care sales.
• 49:06
  I went for a raise. I was making 40 grand went from
• 49:08
  36 grand to 40 grand and I was a real good VR.
• 49:10
  I got an Avalon and loved the Avalon.
• 49:12
  Paid by the company no. Paid by you.
• 49:15
  That's the cheap Lexus, by the way, they tell me.
• 49:17
  No raise. I said, what do you mean?
• 49:20
  I wish I wanted a couple, you know, extra.
• 49:22
  We do well. I'm doing very well.
• 49:23
  I should have gotten a raise. They didn't want to give me a
• 49:25
  raise. And then Abe Krauss and Ellie
• 49:26
  Frankel hired me. I knew it.
• 49:28
  Extended care. No way.
• 49:29
  Yes, Brahmi and Ellie. Brahmi and Ellie.
• 49:31
  Amazing. Their first thing.
• 49:32
  And I had no idea how to market a nursing home.
• 49:35
  No idea. Hold on a second.
• 49:36
  That's where we probably first met.
• 49:37
  I I did all the purchasing with them for when the Panets were
• 49:40
  there. I did it.
• 49:41
  And then when they sold it to them, I took over and that's
• 49:43
  when I got to meet those two amazing people by the way, love
• 49:46
  them each. And a funny story, and I say
• 49:48
  this over at a lot, I was working there and they gave me
• 49:51
  even more. I got 80 grand salary and six
• 49:54
  months in, I've got the census up 10%.
• 49:56
  I learnt the business on the fly and no idea what I was doing,
• 49:58
  but I googled what's short term care?
• 49:59
  Long term care. What's a What's?
• 50:02
  A referral and then Abe and he takes credit till today he
• 50:07
  called me up. He said, Shimmy, are you in the
• 50:09
  hospital? I said I'm on the way to the
• 50:10
  hospital. He saw me in the pizza shop
• 50:12
  eating lunch. I was leaving to go to the
• 50:14
  hospital. He said you're fired and he
• 50:16
  fired me and since and then from that I went on to the Miss Park.
• 50:20
  Did I miss something? What's the hospital?
• 50:21
  No, no what? Happened wondering if I was
• 50:23
  rounding in the hospital. I'm like, what?
• 50:25
  Did something happen to you? OK, OK.
• 50:26
  I was getting lunch, but he felt that I wasn't, he thought.
• 50:29
  He was lying to him. He thought I wasn't being
• 50:30
  truthful and I was in the I said I'm on the way to the.
• 50:32
  Hospital I was. Middle eating lunch, I was on
• 50:34
  the way. Fired me till today.
• 50:36
  He takes credit, he said. If I didn't fire you, you still
• 50:39
  be at the Newark Extended Care making 80 grand a year.
• 50:41
  Ah, that's great. I've heard you in the past say
• 50:44
  this story, but you've said it better.
• 50:46
  See, now you said you were actually on the way to the
• 50:47
  hospital and the other ones. No, he didn't.
• 50:49
  He said no, something you were getting ready to go, getting
• 50:52
  ready to go the way I've heard you say in the past.
• 50:54
  You're saying that, you know, look, you know, I actually was
• 50:56
  it was, you know, I was taking it easy and I was doing it and
• 50:59
  and he he caught me and but but what you were saying in the the
• 51:03
  point was that you never know what you think is the worst
• 51:06
  thing in the world. You imagine him after, you know,
• 51:08
  he was caught in a lie, right? We've all done this, right.
• 51:11
  Where are you at different levels of your life?
• 51:13
  You know you have a boss and. By the way, in his mind, it's
• 51:15
  not a lie. I have friends that tell me this
• 51:16
  whole time I'm on the way to the hospital.
• 51:18
  I'm eating, but I'm on the way. I'm saying I've done this myself
• 51:22
  and I would think I'm lying, you know?
• 51:23
  But why? Because I have my own country by
• 51:24
  this side. You don't pay me by the hour,
• 51:26
  you pay me to get the job done. I have a full day in, I'm taking
• 51:29
  my time eating lunch and I don't need to micromanage me.
• 51:32
  And you're asking me questions. Oh yeah, I'm working, right?
• 51:34
  And happens to be he caught him and he caught him not, but what
• 51:38
  he thought probably at that point was like the worst moment
• 51:41
  of his life. That I just went from strollers
• 51:43
  at 36,000. I worked my way up to 80,000 and
• 51:46
  now. And now it's all gone.
• 51:48
  Pay the Avalon bill, right, It's all.
• 51:49
  Gone. That was your biggest.
• 51:50
  That really was your biggest blessing.
• 51:52
  It was really rough, but it was the biggest blessing because
• 51:54
  that Nathan Freund told me to tell me what happened.
• 51:57
  Nothing. He fired me.
• 51:58
  What'd you do? Six weeks.
• 51:59
  What'd you do? What'd you do?
• 52:00
  He lied. I get it.
• 52:02
  What did you do after he fired you?
• 52:03
  How did you find another job? I started to tell you.
• 52:05
  Yeah. Nathan Froins called me up.
• 52:08
  My uncle Yossi Bernfeld. You not understand what I'm
• 52:11
  asking. You get fired and you're sitting
• 52:14
  there in middle of your lunch and you're eating.
• 52:16
  What did you do? Oh, right after that?
• 52:18
  What? How was your life like?
• 52:19
  You just got fired, bro. Probably went home and cried a
• 52:21
  little bit. Maybe slid on the couch.
• 52:24
  I don't know. I was on.
• 52:25
  It was it was a rough time. I'd like to talk about it.
• 52:27
  OK. I wanna hear.
• 52:28
  I wonder the exact. It happens.
• 52:29
  It people get fired and it happens.
• 52:31
  And I'm saying the way you recover is everything.
• 52:33
  Right. So.
• 52:33
  So that's what I wanna. I'm just one thing I gotta say.
• 52:35
  They gave me 6 weeks pay, OK. I knew I had six weeks to deal
• 52:38
  with it. Got it.
• 52:39
  So I wasn't. But I remember going home and
• 52:40
  being very sad. Talk to my father about it and
• 52:43
  right away I went into mode let's let's go what's the next
• 52:46
  thing so my. So you reach out to Nathan
• 52:48
  Freud. Uncle told me Nathan Freund is
• 52:50
  looking for a marketer. He went.
• 52:52
  And good for you, by the way. It took you minutes.
• 52:54
  You cried, and then you got back on the horse.
• 52:55
  And you. That's what I'm saying.
• 52:56
  That's what I wanted to hear. Yeah.
• 52:58
  That's what I was curious. We didn't get into a hole.
• 53:00
  That's what I'm saying. Yes.
• 53:01
  But when I got divorced, I was also very, very down.
• 53:03
  I don't even know that you were divorced.
• 53:05
  And I'd love to get into that. So we'll talk about.
• 53:07
  Let's go back now. We're going to go through the
• 53:08
  timeline. Continue.
• 53:09
  Yeah, this is after my divorce. I was already after you go after
• 53:12
  my divorce. We was learning.
• 53:13
  He was still learning while he was married.
• 53:14
  OK. I didn't realize.
• 53:15
  OK, continue. Yeah.
• 53:16
  So you were in Kylo? I was in Kylo.
• 53:18
  For four. Years I was.
• 53:19
  I learned. How did you skip that?
• 53:21
  We were in pitch. Bosh.
• 53:22
  Where was this? I'm in Kaplan and then looked in
• 53:24
  Long Beach. I looked.
• 53:25
  Oh, after Kylo. Your first job was a 30,000.
• 53:27
  I thought you were a buckler to work in.
• 53:29
  No, no, Kylo. Next up, we have my friend Judah
• 53:32
  Gutwein. Sometimes the biggest blessing
• 53:35
  comes disguised as being pushed out the door.
• 53:39
  This next clip is about courage, mentorship and a terrifying leap
• 53:43
  from salary to ownership. Check it out.
• 53:48
  So the I segued and I digress, but this is what's important, he
• 53:51
  says to me. You've developed that acumen.
• 53:52
  You've done all this digital marketing.
• 53:54
  Manually. Manually, on the ground, in
• 53:57
  person. In person on the Internet from
• 53:59
  our facility, whether blogging, whether social media for major
• 54:03
  platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn,
• 54:06
  all of them have their place and all of that digital marketing to
• 54:10
  bring eyeballs to us. Why don't you parlay that into
• 54:14
  an independent full blown marketing agency to the
• 54:18
  healthcare industry? I'll support you in it.
• 54:21
  I'll I'll invest my effort, my time, my trainer, my
• 54:25
  brother-in-law. He became your I'll.
• 54:26
  I'll give you the gumption and the impetus to get this off the
• 54:30
  ground. You'll be, you'll be great at
• 54:32
  it. And that's exactly what I did.
• 54:35
  Really, brother-in-law? He became your partner.
• 54:37
  He. Didn't become my partner, which
• 54:38
  May. Which makes it all the more
• 54:40
  astounding. More like a mentor.
• 54:42
  Yeah, wow. Makes it more astounding.
• 54:43
  Kudos to him. He had no vested interest other
• 54:46
  than looking to help to train and the continued mentorship.
• 54:50
  Wow, not a guy. Unbelievable.
• 54:53
  Purely for you to become successful.
• 54:55
  And this is, this is a, a situation where you're leaving
• 54:58
  him, right? He's sending you out the door,
• 55:01
  but he's setting you up at the same time.
• 55:02
  Correct, he says I can't keep. I can't pay you more.
• 55:05
  On salary, I can't pay you more. And by the way, not only can I
• 55:08
  not pay you more, but it's a shame for you to stay even if I
• 55:11
  could. You're worth more on your own
• 55:14
  and so I'm gonna help you make it happen.
• 55:16
  So he didn't just cut the cord. He supported me on the on the
• 55:20
  way out. And I built this company with
• 55:22
  that level of support and confidence 'cause let's, let's
• 55:25
  face it, I was always an employee.
• 55:27
  It's a scary venture. It's the, you know, the fear of
• 55:30
  the unknown. As an employee, you're on
• 55:32
  salary. You got a paycheck at the end of
• 55:33
  the week or the end of the month or bi week, bi monthly.
• 55:36
  Lot to be said for that. This is the conundrum.
• 55:38
  Everybody's salary ownership and then the owners tell the
• 55:42
  employees, hey, it's very lonely at the top.
• 55:45
  And when you have trouble with income revenue, you got to pay
• 55:48
  payroll doesn't stop. And then who takes the hit in
• 55:51
  tough times? Who's got to tighten the belt?
• 55:53
  The owner. So there's so I was scared going
• 55:56
  from a steady salary to starting a business.
• 56:00
  And he helped me and I started Sky Care Media.
• 56:02
  Initially we were doing just digital marketing.
• 56:05
  So we were doing search engine optimization, we were doing
• 56:08
  social media, we were doing reputation management on some of
• 56:11
  these major platforms like caring.com and aplaceformom.com,
• 56:15
  wellness.com. These are all the equivalent of
• 56:18
  like TripAdvisor for hotels. This this would be the
• 56:22
  equivalent for people looking for a solution for an elderly
• 56:24
  loved one who needs help. And basically that was what we
• 56:28
  were doing to make our clients shine.
• 56:30
  And then subsequently, as we evolved and as we morphed, we
• 56:33
  undertook new responsibilities. We got into the graphic design
• 56:37
  game. We got into the traditional
• 56:39
  marketing with, you know, rebrands and Flyers and trifolds
• 56:44
  and bifolds and tchotchkes. Because I got into a place where
• 56:47
  people were coming to me and they were saying, you know, we
• 56:50
  want not only the social media, but we need somebody to rebrand.
• 56:53
  And then I'm looking and I'm saying taking a lay of the land.
• 56:56
  I'm saying if I'm going to push them away to my competition
• 56:58
  because I can service this need and I'm not a turnkey operation.
• 57:02
  You got to have the full ecosystem you.
• 57:03
  Got to have the full ecosystem right?
• 57:05
  Otherwise you. Everything is.
• 57:06
  The one to look elsewhere, right?
• 57:08
  So I started doing all of that stuff as well, but it started
• 57:11
  from Internet marketing and and really that's where that it's
• 57:15
  at. And I always say, you know, if
• 57:17
  you have a terrible reputation online, it's like somebody
• 57:20
  plastering a billboard on every major thoroughfare saying this
• 57:23
  place, you'll excuse me. And it sits there in perpetuity
• 57:28
  online till the cows come home. It's incredibly damaging because
• 57:32
  I was mentioning earlier that this is a data-driven industry.
• 57:35
  How do you quantify lost revenue when you don't even know you
• 57:39
  squandered the opportunity, right?
• 57:41
  In other words, what what do I mean by that?
• 57:43
  The people who go online looking for a nursing home and they hit
• 57:46
  the Google business page and one review after the other.
• 57:50
  If you want your dad to die, literally, we're not talking
• 57:53
  about a burger joint, a nail salon.
• 57:55
  Healthcare is vicious. It's brutal when the reviews are
• 57:58
  nasty because it's not just like, oh, the burger was cold or
• 58:01
  they chipped my nail. It's like, oh, I wound up
• 58:04
  finding dad in septic shock on a weekend where you had like
• 58:08
  agency, you know, temps, you know, people on that, that with
• 58:12
  their per diem who don't give a hoot.
• 58:14
  And my dad died. You know, maybe it's
• 58:18
  exaggerated, maybe it's even fabricated, who knows.
• 58:21
  But in the court of public opinion, it's incredibly
• 58:23
  damaging. Those people don't bother
• 58:25
  calling the admissions director. They just say a pox on this
• 58:28
  place. I'm not placing dad there.
• 58:30
  So again, it's lost revenue. You don't even know you
• 58:32
  squandered. So that's why it's so important
• 58:35
  making sure that the, you know, the, the nursing home has a
• 58:38
  great reputation online because if they don't, it's like they're
• 58:42
  pouring water into a cup. All the traditional marketing,
• 58:45
  all the liaisons going out and they're doing a job fair and now
• 58:48
  they go to a church and they grease the skids.
• 58:50
  They're giving gift baskets and whatnot.
• 58:52
  But it's like the, the cup that they're pouring into as this
• 58:55
  gaping hole on the bottom. The hole is the Internet
• 58:57
  presence that's lackluster or terrible, and they're wondering
• 59:01
  how come we're not filling our beds?
• 59:04
  What's the matter with census? And they don't realize because
• 59:07
  they really don't look good online.
• 59:08
  Next we have the amazing, amazing Shmili anger.
• 59:12
  Every artist has that moment when they stop working for
• 59:17
  exposure and start respecting their own value.
• 59:20
  In this clip we discover the hustle, the humility, and
• 59:24
  knowing when it's time to raise the bar.
• 59:26
  Check it out. I released a nice video.
• 59:28
  You know I was gonna get salts band.
• 59:30
  Very cool stuff. Yeah, he's good Shalom results
• 59:32
  money has a good sound, very good sound.
• 59:34
  So so I gave my grandfather 1 he said.
• 59:36
  He says keep it. And then I bought myself a
• 59:38
  Strammel. So what was?
• 59:39
  It gonna $1000 Strimmel. I'm just.
• 59:42
  Yeah, maybe I got 2. Dramas.
• 59:43
  That's how much Strimmel cost. Very expensive.
• 59:45
  Money. Like a wig.
• 59:46
  Yes, more than a wig. More.
• 59:48
  They can pay 8. They can pay up to $15,000 which
• 59:50
  can go also. Crazier, by the way, but yeah,
• 59:52
  but that's. No, but the average Strimmel is
• 59:53
  like three, $4000 just yeah. What's the name of?
• 59:56
  I'm sorry, I really don't know what.
• 59:57
  Kind of fur. What kind of fur?
• 59:59
  Yeah, I. Don't know.
• 1:00:01
  No, OK for six grand. I'm curious.
• 1:00:03
  Look, one. And you know, like if I'm buying
• 1:00:05
  Bitcoin, I want to know what I'm getting.
• 1:00:07
  Yeah, yeah, we have a Reagan Strammel.
• 1:00:11
  Always. Yeah, this is going on.
• 1:00:13
  Forever. But the Reagan Strammel can cost
• 1:00:14
  2500. It's not so expensive, but for
• 1:00:16
  $6000 two Strammel, it's not over.
• 1:00:18
  It's like a decent amount. I don't think I bought the
• 1:00:21
  Strammel. I think I had a guy.
• 1:00:22
  Who sang at your wedding? His name is Sally Gold.
• 1:00:26
  Great question. Is he still?
• 1:00:27
  Is he still around this guy? Yeah, he's a hasidicious singer.
• 1:00:30
  How did he make it to your wedding?
• 1:00:31
  Oh, that's it. Because it came to my wedding.
• 1:00:33
  I had a problem. Who am I going to take?
• 1:00:35
  I was, I was like, I don't know how how prominent I was, but
• 1:00:39
  everybody knew which Millie Anger is.
• 1:00:40
  The locals knew who you were. Yeah, the business knew, the
• 1:00:42
  locals knew and and whoever I was going to take, I was going
• 1:00:45
  to be hurting somebody. So Sally Gold was a very good
• 1:00:49
  option for me because he was a veteran and he was good at it.
• 1:00:52
  He was a good friend of mine. He just fits and I booked him
• 1:00:56
  and I had a lot of singers come over.
• 1:00:57
  I had a lot of say Adela Summer that you only see.
• 1:00:59
  I have to remember Benny Friedman, but he was the
• 1:01:02
  official guy. I know he is gonna start at the
• 1:01:04
  Shuma and when he he's gonna even.
• 1:01:08
  Every wedding needs to have one guy that is carrying the wedding
• 1:01:10
  and has a responsibility. He's the primary singer.
• 1:01:13
  Yes, yeah, I, I can't tell a guy.
• 1:01:14
  Yeah, I have 5 singers there and nobody's taking charge.
• 1:01:17
  Everybody's waiting for the other to do it.
• 1:01:19
  Exactly. So you have to have one guy
• 1:01:20
  anyway, so I want to go back. So you're asking about prices.
• 1:01:22
  So by that wedding, I went for free.
• 1:01:24
  I got 250. And then I started going for for
• 1:01:27
  that, the corner house. They paid me $300 and I would
• 1:01:30
  make my money back overtime. After 11:00 it would be another
• 1:01:33
  $100.00. So that's where I would feel I
• 1:01:35
  made my money because all the weddings would go past 11, so it
• 1:01:38
  would be $400.00. And then the different Takuna
• 1:01:41
  host was 450 depending. And my grandfather, he was a
• 1:01:45
  partner and he told me shmurduvid nimbus Mcgither.
• 1:01:49
  His philosophy was don't sit at home, take jobs, take jobs.
• 1:01:52
  You get an offer for $200. Go go sing.
• 1:01:54
  Don't worry about how much money is first.
• 1:01:56
  Get users, get followers. Yeah, Start building your brand.
• 1:01:59
  Yeah, smart guy, your grandfather.
• 1:02:01
  Yeah, Yeah. You like it?
• 1:02:02
  Yeah, but at this. Is is he still?
• 1:02:04
  Alive. No, he passed away a few years
• 1:02:05
  ago. But he got to see you in your
• 1:02:09
  prime, right? He got to really enjoy the
• 1:02:11
  successes that you were enjoying.
• 1:02:13
  He got to see a bit. He must have felt very proud.
• 1:02:15
  He must have been super proud as he was a part of your journey
• 1:02:17
  from the beginning. And he believed in me and all
• 1:02:19
  the other cousins to someone and what?
• 1:02:21
  1 was a chef, 1 was a drummer, and nobody felt like Zaja didn't
• 1:02:24
  give me any startup money. Why?
• 1:02:25
  Why was he better? So yeah, he definitely gave me.
• 1:02:28
  So he. Created some politics.
• 1:02:29
  Also. Good old talent, you know.
• 1:02:31
  Talked as I'd. He talked as I well, I didn't do
• 1:02:33
  anything. Probably also picked up on your
• 1:02:34
  talent. Yes, ultimately.
• 1:02:36
  And yeah, this is a big part. He wanted to be, he saw the
• 1:02:38
  talent. And also my father wasn't alive.
• 1:02:40
  My father was his oldest. And it was a kind of a way, you
• 1:02:43
  know, he took me in and he he he raised me kind of interesting.
• 1:02:48
  But at the point when he said Nembus Megitte like whatever
• 1:02:51
  take, it was already maybe a year or two that I I've I've I I
• 1:02:54
  felt I put in a lot of work in these Takuna house and I said I
• 1:02:58
  felt I told him Zaidi 450, this is the bottom.
• 1:03:01
  I can't do a wedding. I can't do I'm not going out of
• 1:03:03
  my house less than 450. And and that's what I said no,
• 1:03:08
  but you said you love my Zaidi. But I think that.
• 1:03:10
  My way you by the way. Is the better way.
• 1:03:12
  Yes, yes, it happens to everyone.
• 1:03:13
  But it happens to everyone. So and so we had.
• 1:03:18
  By the way, the old adage, if you're good at something, never
• 1:03:21
  do it for free, right? Never do it for free.
• 1:03:24
  That it's it's your right. This is your talent.
• 1:03:27
  Don't just give it away. You have a minimum.
• 1:03:29
  You want me to get out of bed? You.
• 1:03:31
  Want me to work? For you, this is what I charged
• 1:03:33
  I'm. Curious, was was it at that
• 1:03:35
  point that you knew it's going to be a career or?
• 1:03:37
  Oh, I want to say HELL no, but a big no Wow.
• 1:03:42
  HELL could continue. I I did like 4 years where I was
• 1:03:45
  just spine blit. I was spitting blocks you.
• 1:03:49
  Were you were sweating? That out really, really I did.
• 1:03:51
  I didn't have these fancy bands I had.
• 1:03:53
  I had the the, the the the cheapest musicians.
• 1:03:56
  All of them are great, good people.
• 1:03:58
  How are you getting income besides this then?
• 1:04:00
  You I didn't need income. I was a Bucher.
• 1:04:02
  I was a book. I didn't do it for the income.
• 1:04:04
  I did it for the fun. I, I love to do it and I just, I
• 1:04:07
  still. Was asking, He was.
• 1:04:08
  Not get it at that age of course makes sense.
• 1:04:10
  Yeah, so I I had no idea. That it Instead of washing cars
• 1:04:13
  for $100, he's singing again. Exactly so 4.
• 1:04:16
  For your gig. Other than that, yeah.
• 1:04:18
  So I started 450, then it got the 455750 and then it got to
• 1:04:22
  11. And then when I went from 11 to
• 1:04:25
  14, that's when a big change happened.
• 1:04:27
  I had my, my, my then producer, my musical producer, Navali
• 1:04:31
  Schneisler, He came into my life and, and he told me to up the
• 1:04:35
  price. And he's, he he, he was a big
• 1:04:37
  producer. So just being in his avid, in
• 1:04:40
  his space atmosphere, yeah, gave me courage, gave me confidence,
• 1:04:45
  just just made me feel good. And he started telling me
• 1:04:48
  Shmilly, Oh, that's when I changed my name.
• 1:04:50
  I was named Shmuldovid and I, it wasn't then.
• 1:04:53
  It was maybe a little bit earlier that I made it.
• 1:04:54
  Oh, when I made the business cards, maybe I, I wrote Schmili.
• 1:04:57
  I, I wrote Schmili, but I felt Schmidt Duvard Ungar is very
• 1:05:01
  rubbish. Very.
• 1:05:02
  I didn't like it. Even Schmili Ungar I didn't
• 1:05:03
  like. I thought that if only my name
• 1:05:05
  was Mahal Schnitzler. It's like a name every, it's
• 1:05:08
  good. It's a singer or Lipa
• 1:05:10
  Schmeltzer. Schmili Ungar is like so
• 1:05:12
  foreign. It's like maybe Schlomit Toisig.
• 1:05:15
  That's what I looked at it. All these things sound the same
• 1:05:18
  to me, but I hear what you're saying, OK?
• 1:05:20
  So I changed my name. I also changed my hat.
• 1:05:22
  I used to wear a Stauffenhit, you know, the different hats.
• 1:05:24
  The Stauffenhit I wear. Anyway, it's all a thing.
• 1:05:26
  You. Know about a Stauffenhit now?
• 1:05:28
  Next up we have the amazing, wonderful Sally Klein.
• 1:05:32
  Every once in a while we hear a story that quietly changes how
• 1:05:36
  we see the world. This next moment is about
• 1:05:39
  breaking expectations, overcoming fear, and discovering
• 1:05:43
  a love for learning where no one thought it was possible.
• 1:05:48
  Check it out. Do you like study?
• 1:05:50
  Do you learn? So I'm hearing now throughout
• 1:05:52
  this podcast a few times, you're dropping some of these pearls of
• 1:05:55
  wisdom from like I think you mentioned the Hazonish or
• 1:05:57
  something earlier. You mentioned somebody or it was
• 1:06:00
  a name or whatever, and then Shlomo Hamelich and then and
• 1:06:03
  this and the Gamarra. Do you learn like in your spare
• 1:06:06
  time? I do.
• 1:06:07
  What do you learn like? Well, we did ACM on this
• 1:06:11
  morning. You learned the homosecles of
• 1:06:13
  Otazar Gamar. You can't buy with who?
• 1:06:17
  Part of a year what? I'm part of a learning group.
• 1:06:19
  There's a collection of women that are sitting together
• 1:06:22
  learning Gamara. How dare you?
• 1:06:23
  I know. Right.
• 1:06:24
  No, this is just news that I did not know that this that women
• 1:06:27
  learn Gamara. Well, yeah, Gamara is I guess a
• 1:06:30
  little bit different than what we're used to in our.
• 1:06:32
  Work Michael 3/4 I. Remember being in.
• 1:06:35
  Israel don't learn Gamara. Yeah, yeah, OK.
• 1:06:37
  And I don't think learn anything more.
• 1:06:39
  Who gives this year? Who's who's?
• 1:06:41
  I learned with a women's group called Hadron and the the
• 1:06:44
  Rabaneet who teaches it. Her name is Rabaneet Michelle
• 1:06:46
  Farber. And you learn Rashi and Taishfis
• 1:06:49
  and everything. Ish.
• 1:06:51
  I mean, it's tough Yomi. So it's faster, you know, But we
• 1:06:53
  do learn Rashi and little bit of Taishfis, yeah.
• 1:06:55
  Every day? Yep.
• 1:06:58
  How long is this going on for? I started 18 months ago.
• 1:07:02
  You're kidding me. No, I started with Bhava Kama
• 1:07:05
  and I'm about in two weeks. I'll be finishing Saturday.
• 1:07:08
  But what? What are you getting out of
• 1:07:09
  this? What are you searching for?
• 1:07:11
  Like what? What is the enjoyment?
• 1:07:12
  I can't believe I'm speaking this.
• 1:07:13
  This might be the part that has to be edited out.
• 1:07:15
  I'm not sure we can continue this conversation, but I don't
• 1:07:17
  really talk about. This I don't care if we keep it
• 1:07:18
  in or not. For me personally, this is
• 1:07:20
  fascinating. Because thing though, it's not.
• 1:07:22
  How how does this translate into relevant things for you?
• 1:07:25
  Like how is this helping you in your in your a man has a mitzvah
• 1:07:29
  to learn, so he learns good more.
• 1:07:30
  It's part of it, you know, And there are some educational
• 1:07:32
  things you could take away, don't get me wrong.
• 1:07:33
  But like Avoda Zara, I don't know, like, what are you like
• 1:07:37
  what, what life lesson did you get that I'm going to
• 1:07:39
  incorporate this, This is great. Or I'm a better person.
• 1:07:41
  She's trying to learn a life lesson.
• 1:07:43
  Why else would she be learning? Well, let's first answer that.
• 1:07:46
  Question. You find it stimulating.
• 1:07:48
  I, I just love it. I I don't even know how to
• 1:07:50
  answer that. I wish I had a more.
• 1:07:53
  I wish I had a better answer. Well, what drove you to it?
• 1:07:55
  Why did you decide One day I would like to learn tomorrow.
• 1:07:58
  I think I had this itch for a long time.
• 1:08:00
  I was very intimidated by it. I had some learning difficulties
• 1:08:04
  growing up, specifically with reading Hebrew, reading
• 1:08:07
  anything. I can read very well from left
• 1:08:10
  to right. I didn't know it at the time
• 1:08:12
  that the issue that my brain was having was reading from right to
• 1:08:14
  left and people thought I was faking it because I'm so smart
• 1:08:18
  and I never had a problem reading.
• 1:08:20
  But Hebrew just was so frustrating to me.
• 1:08:24
  It took me really until one of my children was struggling again
• 1:08:28
  30 years later to realize that there's new research out there
• 1:08:31
  and apparently it's a thing that nobody knew about when I was a
• 1:08:34
  kid. I could not wait to leave high
• 1:08:36
  school and be like, I never want to open a Hemish again.
• 1:08:38
  It's not my subject. I really flunked out of all
• 1:08:41
  Hebrew subjects. And then you discovered why.
• 1:08:45
  Yeah, yeah. And I still have.
• 1:08:46
  I, I can't believe I'm saying this out loud.
• 1:08:48
  I'm feeling a little nauseous even talking about this because
• 1:08:50
  I'm so. This is my hypnotic that.
• 1:08:53
  I'm doing me now. I'm very private about this
• 1:08:56
  piece because I still I haven't figured it out and it's like
• 1:08:59
  scary for me to talk about it. Also because I love it so much
• 1:09:02
  and I don't know why because I feel like an idiot.
• 1:09:04
  I show up every morning and I don't know what I'm doing.
• 1:09:07
  It's 18 months and I still feel like I'm barely keeping my head
• 1:09:09
  above water but I I I. So it's a challenge.
• 1:09:12
  You like the challenge? Can I ask you, is that your
• 1:09:14
  first exposure to learning since high school or was there
• 1:09:17
  something else prior to? That so till 2016 I don't think
• 1:09:20
  I read a single educational book.
• 1:09:21
  I read novels, only novels. In 2016 something switched, I
• 1:09:25
  don't know what it was. I picked up a book by accident,
• 1:09:29
  fell in love with it, wanted to know more, remember what it was.
• 1:09:31
  Yep, it was called The Language of Emotions by Carla McLaren.
• 1:09:34
  She really had a great way of breaking down every single
• 1:09:37
  emotion, what it's there for, the movement in the body, kind
• 1:09:40
  of tied into what I said about Mel Gibson and the different
• 1:09:42
  breaths, right? Tied in over there.
• 1:09:43
  To this day, that book is very foundational in this, one of the
• 1:09:46
  courses that I teach a vessel, which is on self development,
• 1:09:49
  The third module in vessel is called The Language of Emotions,
• 1:09:53
  which is the name of her book. It's built on that.
• 1:09:55
  I mean, there's more hash guffa put in because Torah also has
• 1:09:58
  different words for every emotion.
• 1:09:59
  Like there's like 17 words for anger because there's many
• 1:10:02
  different kinds of anger, right? And if you know the different
• 1:10:06
  breakdown of which angers and, and when they're used and what
• 1:10:10
  how they move through the body, you understand.
• 1:10:12
  And not all anger is the same. Some is healthy.
• 1:10:14
  There's an appropriate time to use the different kinds of
• 1:10:16
  anger, right? They have a different breath
• 1:10:18
  patterns. These things were fascinating to
• 1:10:20
  me, but I didn't like learn, learn.
• 1:10:23
  In fact, in 2012, my daughter was rejected from every like,
• 1:10:29
  nursery school in Brooklyn because it's really hard to get
• 1:10:32
  your. Kids Jesus starts already at
• 1:10:33
  nursery. It does where they start like
• 1:10:35
  being selective at which kids they're taking it out.
• 1:10:37
  My God. Yeah.
• 1:10:38
  So I was very, I was very disillusioned with with Judaism,
• 1:10:43
  not as a religion, but as in why am I here?
• 1:10:46
  Like, this is not, this is not like what?
• 1:10:49
  Yeah, Yeah, I was, I was not. I was not a fan, not a fan.
• 1:10:52
  And I was very, I was so unhappy.
• 1:10:56
  It was a very difficult time in my life.
• 1:10:58
  I was also pregnant with my third and he was a miracle baby
• 1:11:01
  because after cancer, I knew that every baby was going to be
• 1:11:04
  a gift. But after our second, we were
• 1:11:06
  told we would never have more kids.
• 1:11:08
  And so this third child was, was an actual miracle.
• 1:11:11
  Like the doctors didn't know we like, we, we could never get,
• 1:11:13
  like we couldn't get pregnant. Oh, we had a fourth child after
• 1:11:15
  that, after 10 years. Yeah.
• 1:11:18
  Another miracle child. But I remember being pregnant
• 1:11:20
  with this miracle child when my daughter wasn't getting accepted
• 1:11:22
  into school and thinking, why am I doing this?
• 1:11:24
  Yeah, like what it like, what is this guy?
• 1:11:28
  I fought for this life. I fought for these kids, and
• 1:11:30
  then they can't even go to Jewish school.
• 1:11:32
  So I was very disillusioned. It's one of the darker things in
• 1:11:34
  our culture is when it comes to schools.
• 1:11:37
  And by the way, I want to go back a minute to the thing about
• 1:11:40
  the Gomara because I don't want you to think no, but I want to.
• 1:11:43
  I want to clarify something. I'm A and Michael knows this and
• 1:11:46
  I've said it on this podcast, so I have proof.
• 1:11:48
  I am a big advocate for women doing anything a man can do, and
• 1:11:52
  I want my daughters to to know that their path is open for
• 1:11:55
  anything. I don't care what it is.
• 1:11:57
  So I'm all for. I just find it so interesting
• 1:12:00
  that out of all the things you want to do that a man does, this
• 1:12:03
  is what you chose to follow. That's all That's all I was a
• 1:12:06
  point to get I I was like a little surprised.
• 1:12:08
  I I didn't know. I hope I didn't come.
• 1:12:10
  Of course, let's. Say this together.
• 1:12:11
  Let's say this together. We listen and we don't judge.
• 1:12:14
  We listen and we don't. Judge OK, Next up we have the
• 1:12:17
  incredible Abby Wollen. This next story that she shared
• 1:12:20
  is for every parent who ever felt like they were drowning
• 1:12:23
  while still trying to smile. Abby was running a growing
• 1:12:26
  business, raising kids and barely sleeping while watching
• 1:12:30
  her marriage become passing ships in the night.
• 1:12:34
  Instead of pretending everything was fine, she did something
• 1:12:39
  radical. She opened the books, shared the
• 1:12:43
  failures, and invited the world to watch as she fixed it
• 1:12:48
  together with their help. What followed didn't just change
• 1:12:51
  her business, it created a movement.
• 1:12:54
  Check it. Out.
• 1:12:54
  I have a child at home. I'm trying to build this
• 1:12:57
  business. My husband and I were actually
• 1:12:58
  passing ships in the night because I would get the kids off
• 1:13:00
  to school. I would then go to work.
• 1:13:02
  I would come home by three. I would that right because all
• 1:13:05
  my kids were coming home. Then I would get them all to
• 1:13:06
  dinner. I would get them everything they
• 1:13:07
  needed. I would do homework with them.
• 1:13:09
  My husband would walk in at 7, I would go back to the studio,
• 1:13:11
  work there till 2 and then come back home.
• 1:13:14
  And he was getting up at like what, 5 to go to because he was,
• 1:13:17
  he's in construction. So he was up and out like very
• 1:13:19
  early in the morning and he would do Basika.
• 1:13:21
  And so like we were just passing ships in the night.
• 1:13:23
  My son was having these issues and my stores couldn't get
• 1:13:26
  enough of it. And so at some point I just said
• 1:13:29
  like enough, like enough, enough because I wasn't, I wasn't also
• 1:13:34
  making enough money. Like I was working so hard and I
• 1:13:38
  wasn't, the profits weren't as good as what it should be,
• 1:13:42
  right? If you're working that many
• 1:13:43
  hours and you're working that hard.
• 1:13:44
  And so I decided to do something called the 30 day challenge.
• 1:13:48
  And I was like, I'm going to figure out what's wrong with my
• 1:13:51
  business and I'm going to take you guys along the ride.
• 1:13:54
  I had followers and I had at that time Facebook had mitigated
• 1:13:58
  to or migrated to Instagram. So I'm on Instagram, I have
• 1:14:02
  about, I don't know, 4005 thousand followers at the time.
• 1:14:04
  That was a lot like this was like a really early new, it was
• 1:14:07
  like 2015, 2016. And I'll never forget.
• 1:14:10
  I ended up getting online and talking about it openly about
• 1:14:14
  business. This was before you have to
• 1:14:15
  remember this. There was no education on
• 1:14:17
  YouTube. Nobody was talking about
• 1:14:18
  entrepreneurship on YouTube. And every person that I would go
• 1:14:22
  to in the woman who were in business, I asked them business
• 1:14:25
  questions. They were like, figure it out on
• 1:14:27
  your own. I figured it out.
• 1:14:28
  You'll figure it out. Like nobody would give me like,
• 1:14:31
  well, how do you look at like what are COGS?
• 1:14:33
  What are you know, how do I figure out how to price
• 1:14:35
  something? Did I even price it right?
• 1:14:37
  Like nobody would help me. My husband finally found
• 1:14:41
  somebody within our shul who would sit down and he was a man
• 1:14:44
  and he actually gave me a ton of support and a ton of help.
• 1:14:48
  And I vowed that I would never do that to another woman that if
• 1:14:52
  that, if I would never get keep my knowledge.
• 1:14:54
  And so that's when I, I just started talking about it like,
• 1:14:57
  here's what I'm doing, here's what my pricing was.
• 1:14:59
  This is why I'm failing. This is why I need to fix and
• 1:15:02
  I'm going to do it. And all of a sudden I went from
• 1:15:04
  4000 followers to 10,000 followers within like a month or
• 1:15:08
  two. And people were were just
• 1:15:10
  polishing for the knowledge. They just wanted to like it was
• 1:15:14
  like almost like opening up the floodgates.
• 1:15:16
  And from there I started to do a business challenge with other
• 1:15:19
  women and I started teaching them and I had to workshops and
• 1:15:22
  I had classes and I started to pivot into this education piece.
• 1:15:25
  And at the same time, I grew my profits on my not too shabby
• 1:15:29
  business by 20%. So it was amazing and I wasn't
• 1:15:33
  working there all day and I was able to be home with my son and
• 1:15:35
  it was like I was able to like focus on him.
• 1:15:38
  And it just like the whole thing just opens up.
• 1:15:40
  I was like, wow, like I really understand this, that I need to
• 1:15:43
  get this back. And at the same time that that
• 1:15:44
  was happening. The Jewish woman entrepreneur
• 1:15:47
  Jwei don't know if you've ever heard of them.
• 1:15:49
  It's an organization for non for women.
• 1:15:53
  She came to me and she asked me Haya Haya Powell fisherman.
• 1:15:57
  She said to me, would you consider helping us run the new
• 1:16:01
  the conference in 19? And I said, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:16:05
  Before that, I was, I was an educator.
• 1:16:06
  I was a teacher for 14 years prior to growing my own company.
• 1:16:10
  And I ran that conference. We had 500 women there and like,
• 1:16:14
  I was obsessed with it. I, I just, it was, it was
• 1:16:16
  amazing. We had all these women.
• 1:16:18
  I remember saying there's two things that I really want women
• 1:16:21
  to get #1 is I want to open up the floodgates of China.
• 1:16:23
  Nobody understands how to buy in China, how to sell in China, how
• 1:16:27
  to, how to get product from China.
• 1:16:29
  And we had somebody who literally told them everything
• 1:16:32
  from beginning to end. It was like amazing.
• 1:16:35
  And the other thing that I really wanted was a Shopify
• 1:16:37
  representative because Shopify was so new back then, but like
• 1:16:40
  it was the biggest e-commerce site and we had an actual
• 1:16:43
  Shopify representative come to conference and give a class and
• 1:16:47
  people were just, the women were just, I don't know.
• 1:16:51
  I don't know how to explain that they were like sponges, like
• 1:16:53
  just taking in the knowledge. And then from there, I helped
• 1:16:56
  the JWE find help. I helped them grow, get funding.
• 1:17:00
  I walked out and I built my own agency because what I heard from
• 1:17:04
  women mostly was, well, if I had more eyeballs on my product or
• 1:17:07
  service, I would make more money.
• 1:17:08
  And we all know that that's not necessarily true because that's
• 1:17:11
  only what marketing is only one tool.
• 1:17:13
  And but I figured maybe that was my way of getting more, like
• 1:17:17
  helping more people. And so I built a marketing
• 1:17:21
  agency because once I first, because I wanted to help more
• 1:17:25
  women grow their businesses. And second of all, once I did
• 1:17:28
  the conference, people just started like coming to me.
• 1:17:31
  So like Nivea or Shilayam, COVID hit, by the way, COVID hit in
• 1:17:34
  2020. So that was right after the
• 1:17:35
  conference has to 24/7 came to me and said, hey, we need to
• 1:17:39
  raise $1.5 million. Will you help us?
• 1:17:42
  Well, really they needed to raise 1,000,000, but we've
• 1:17:44
  raised 1.5. We actually did Supermarket
• 1:17:47
  Sweep at Evergreen. We did like a huge celebrity.
• 1:17:49
  Like I don't know if you ever watched Supermarket Sweep in
• 1:17:52
  like the 90s. It was like my favorite TV show.
• 1:17:54
  When you were sick, you would watch it.
• 1:17:55
  It was on TLC. It was a great.
• 1:17:57
  Show but basically you have like these guys and women they're
• 1:17:59
  like running down a supermarket with their like shopping cart
• 1:18:02
  trying to put things in so we did that with cuts 24/7 raised
• 1:18:05
  1.5 million. Then template shop is the
• 1:18:07
  Brockton County came to me and they asked me if I would you
• 1:18:09
  know help them you know do a campaign.
• 1:18:11
  I did that for them and then slowly but surely it's just like
• 1:18:14
  snowballed into like a, a, a, a fairly large marketing agency.
• 1:18:18
  And we work with some very big clients like American Dream, the
• 1:18:21
  Altair Hotel Yahad, which is under the OU so.
• 1:18:25
  I got I got to be honest, I'm overwhelmed.
• 1:18:27
  You need to slow down. Wow, you're giving it to us all
• 1:18:31
  on one leg. You know, we, we that's great.
• 1:18:33
  It's great. It's fantastic.
• 1:18:35
  I'm thinking like, OK, now's the time when Oshi says slow down
• 1:18:38
  Michael. It was in the tip of my tongue,
• 1:18:40
  but I was. And one way I wanted to be
• 1:18:42
  respectful. And I also like you're on,
• 1:18:44
  you're on a roll, you're on fire.
• 1:18:46
  You're on fire right now. I didn't want to stop you, but a
• 1:18:49
  part of me singing like I gotta remember that so I can come
• 1:18:51
  back. Like I remember that I heard
• 1:18:53
  like 3 or 4 different big things.
• 1:18:55
  No, this is great. It's great doing which is.
• 1:18:57
  Which is amazing and you're a powerhouse.
• 1:19:00
  You really are. Congratulations.
• 1:19:03
  And I'm like inspired by this. I'm motivated by what you're
• 1:19:06
  doing. I just want to go back to the
• 1:19:07
  office right now, go back to work.
• 1:19:09
  I'm like, what am I doing over here?
• 1:19:10
  Keep it to go around. Look what she's accomplished.
• 1:19:12
  I got a lot of catching up to do, but we, we got to dial this
• 1:19:14
  back. We got to start somewhat from
• 1:19:17
  the beginning. We always say, what does the
• 1:19:18
  beginning mean? I, I don't want to hear when
• 1:19:20
  you're an infant. We want, we want to go back to
• 1:19:21
  when things somewhat got interesting for you, you know,
• 1:19:24
  when you started getting some notoriety in your life.
• 1:19:27
  You know, let's, let's take me back to the earliest thing you
• 1:19:29
  can remember. Who are you?
• 1:19:30
  Next up, we have my friend Judah Gutwein.
• 1:19:32
  Sometimes the biggest blessing comes disguised as being pushed
• 1:19:37
  out the door. This next clip is about courage,
• 1:19:40
  mentorship and a terrifying leap from salary to ownership.
• 1:19:46
  Check it. Out.
• 1:19:46
  So I segued and I digress, but this is what's important, he
• 1:19:49
  says to me. You've developed that acumen.
• 1:19:51
  You've done all this digital marketing.
• 1:19:53
  Manually. Manually on the ground.
• 1:19:55
  In person, on the Internet, from our facility, whether blogging,
• 1:20:00
  whether social media for major platforms like Facebook,
• 1:20:03
  Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, all of them have their place and
• 1:20:07
  all of that digital marketing to bring eyeballs to us.
• 1:20:11
  Why don't you parlay that into an independent, full blown
• 1:20:14
  marketing agency to the healthcare industry?
• 1:20:18
  I'll support you in it. I'll I'll invest my effort, my
• 1:20:22
  time, my training, my brother-in-law.
• 1:20:24
  So he became your I'll. I'll give you the gumption and
• 1:20:27
  the impetus to get this off the ground.
• 1:20:29
  You'll be. You'll be.
• 1:20:30
  Great at it. And that's exactly what I did,
• 1:20:34
  really. Brother-in-law.
• 1:20:34
  He became your partner. He.
• 1:20:36
  Didn't become my partner, which make which makes it all the more
• 1:20:39
  astounding. More like a mentor.
• 1:20:40
  Yeah, wow, makes it more astounding.
• 1:20:42
  Kudos to him. He had no vested interest other
• 1:20:44
  than looking to help to train and the continued mentorship.
• 1:20:48
  Wow, not a guy. Unbelievable.
• 1:20:51
  Purely for you to become successful.
• 1:20:54
  And this is, this is a, a situation where you're leaving
• 1:20:56
  him, right? He's sending you out the door,
• 1:20:59
  but he's setting you up at the same time.
• 1:21:01
  Correct, he says I can't keep. I can't pay you more.
• 1:21:03
  On salary, I can't pay you more. And by the way, not only can I
• 1:21:07
  not pay you more, but it's a shame for you to stay even if I
• 1:21:09
  could. You're worth more on your own
• 1:21:12
  and so I'm gonna help you make it happen.
• 1:21:14
  So he didn't just cut the cord. He supported me on the on the
• 1:21:18
  way out. And I built this company with
• 1:21:21
  that level of support and confidence 'cause let's, let's
• 1:21:24
  face it, I was always an employee.
• 1:21:26
  It's a scary venture. It's the, you know, the fear of
• 1:21:29
  the unknown. As an employee, you're on
• 1:21:31
  salary. You get a paycheck at the end of
• 1:21:32
  the week or the end of the month or bi week bimonthly a lot to be
• 1:21:35
  said for that. This is the conundrum.
• 1:21:37
  Everybody's a salary ownership and then the owners tell the
• 1:21:40
  employees, hey, it's very lonely at the top and when you have
• 1:21:44
  trouble with income revenue, you got to pay payroll doesn't stop
• 1:21:48
  and then who takes the hit in tough times?
• 1:21:50
  Who's got to tighten the belt? The owner, so there's, so I was
• 1:21:54
  scared going from a steady salary to starting a business
• 1:21:58
  and he helped me and I started Sky Care Media.
• 1:22:01
  Initially we were doing just digital marketing.
• 1:22:03
  So we were doing search engine optimization, we were doing
• 1:22:07
  social media, we were doing reputation management on some of
• 1:22:10
  these major platforms like caring.com and aplaceformom.com,
• 1:22:14
  wellness.com. These are all the equivalent of
• 1:22:16
  like TripAdvisor for hotels. This, this would be the
• 1:22:20
  equivalent for people looking for a solution for an elderly
• 1:22:23
  loved one who needs help. And basically that was what we
• 1:22:26
  were doing to make our clients shine.
• 1:22:29
  And then subsequently, as we evolved and as we morphed, we
• 1:22:32
  undertook new responsibilities. We got into the graphic design
• 1:22:36
  game. We got into the traditional
• 1:22:38
  marketing with, you know, rebrands and Flyers and trifolds
• 1:22:42
  and bifolds and tchotchkes because I got into a place where
• 1:22:46
  people were coming to me and they were saying, you know, we
• 1:22:48
  want not only the social media, but we need somebody to rebrand.
• 1:22:52
  And then I'm looking and I'm saying taking a lay of the land.
• 1:22:55
  I'm saying if I'm going to push them away to my competition
• 1:22:57
  because I can't service this need and I'm not a turnkey
• 1:23:00
  operations you. Got to have the full ecosystem.
• 1:23:02
  Got to have the full ecosystem otherwise you're.
• 1:23:04
  Everything under. One room to look elsewhere,
• 1:23:06
  right? So I started doing all of that
• 1:23:08
  stuff as well, but it started from Internet marketing and and
• 1:23:12
  really that's where that it's AT.
• 1:23:14
  And I always say, you know, if you have a terrible reputation
• 1:23:17
  online, it's like somebody plastering a billboard on every
• 1:23:20
  major thoroughfare saying this place, you'll excuse me and it
• 1:23:25
  sits there in perpetuity online till the cows come home.
• 1:23:28
  It's incredibly damaging because I was mentioning earlier that
• 1:23:32
  this is a data-driven industry. How do you quantify lost revenue
• 1:23:36
  when you don't even know you squandered the opportunity?
• 1:23:39
  Right. In other words, what what do I
• 1:23:40
  mean by that? The people who go online looking
• 1:23:43
  for a nursing home and they hit the Google business page and one
• 1:23:46
  review after the other, If you want your dad to die, literally,
• 1:23:51
  we're not talking about a burger joint, a nail salon.
• 1:23:53
  Healthcare is vicious. It's brutal when the reviews are
• 1:23:56
  nasty because it's not just like, oh, the burger was cold or
• 1:23:59
  they chipped my nail. It's like, oh, I wound up
• 1:24:03
  finding dad in septic shock on a weekend where you had like
• 1:24:07
  agency, you know, temps, you know, people on that, that with
• 1:24:11
  their per diem who don't give a hoot and my dad died.
• 1:24:15
  You know, maybe it's exaggerated, maybe it's even
• 1:24:18
  fabricated, who knows. But in the court of public
• 1:24:20
  opinion, it's incredibly damaging.
• 1:24:23
  Those people don't bother calling the admissions director.
• 1:24:25
  They just say a pox on this place.
• 1:24:27
  I'm not placing dad there. So again, it's lost revenue.
• 1:24:30
  You don't even know you squandered.
• 1:24:32
  So that's why it's so important making sure that the, you know,
• 1:24:35
  the, the nursing home has a great reputation online because
• 1:24:39
  if they don't, it's like they're pouring water into a cup.
• 1:24:42
  All the traditional marketing, all the liaisons going out and
• 1:24:45
  they're doing a job fair and now they go to a church and they
• 1:24:48
  grease the skids. They're giving gift baskets and
• 1:24:50
  whatnot. But it's like the, the cup that
• 1:24:52
  they're pouring into as this gaping hole on the bottom.
• 1:24:55
  The hole is the Internet presence that's lackluster or
• 1:24:58
  terrible. And they're wondering how come
• 1:25:00
  we're not filling our beds? What's the matter with census?
• 1:25:04
  And they don't realize because they really don't look on
• 1:25:06
  online. No, she sorry, but the people
• 1:25:11
  wanted more stuff and so I had to give it to them at least at
• 1:25:15
  the very end of 2025. From everyone at the None of
• 1:25:18
  Your Business podcast, thank you for watching, thank you for
• 1:25:20
  subscribing, thank you for commenting, and we look forward
• 1:25:23
  to bringing you more amazing content in 2026.
• 1:25:26
  That's a wrap.