Latest / Tribe and Tribulations With Julia Makowsky / From Loss to Legacy, How Abbey Wolin Became the Adult She Always Needed.

Transcript

From Loss to Legacy, How Abbey Wolin Became the Adult She Always Needed. · Tribe and Tribulations With Julia Makowsky

0:00
I was only given two tracks, get a job or learn a trade and go get a job.
0:04
Why are we asking kids, what do you want to be rather than what lights you up?
0:08
We've lost the sense of passion being part of the equation.
0:14
I was stuck in my practice just doing the same thing over and over again.
0:18
And I was like, I need an outlet.
0:20
I need a creative outlet.
0:21
If you want to go to college and get a degree, by all means, please.
0:25
And if you want to go and become makeup artist or learn a trade and have that job,
0:30
Absolutely.
0:31
But there is another option.
0:32
And I did not know that I was an entrepreneur.
0:35
I didn't
0:35
realize that that's who I was.
0:37
It was only when I became 40 that I figured it out.
0:40
And I feel like
0:41
the lack of education, access to knowledge, mentor and support, it just breaks my heart.
0:46
And I really want to be there for that generation.
0:51
Welcome back to Tribe and Tribulations.
0:52
I am
0:53
Julia Mikowski, and I am so lucky that you are here.
0:56
And then I'm joined by the one and only
0:58
Abby Bolin.
0:59
If you do not know her, she is the founder and CEO of AW Media, but she's so much
1:07
more than that.
1:08
She is a serial entrepreneur, a wife, a mother, and now a budding founder of a
1:15
brand new organization, which we will get to.
1:18
We are so excited to have you here.
1:21
And this is a
1:22
personal pleasure for me because those of you that don't know, pre-Abby doing her ceramics
1:29
and pottery, pre-AW Media, Abby was one of my elementary school teachers.
1:35
Yep.
1:36
You know, it's funny.
1:37
Like would you ever have imagined both of us sitting here today?
1:40
Oh, absolutely not.
1:41
I think this is so wild.
1:43
You know, it's funny.
1:44
You weren't even that much older than me.
1:45
You're not that much older than I am.
1:47
No.
1:48
but they basically, you know, in Jewish schools, they basically throw teenagers in to teach
1:52
school.
1:53
You're like brand new married.
1:54
I think I was maybe 1920.
1:55
Yeah, that makes sense.
1:57
And I
1:58
think I was in sixth grade, seventh grade.
2:00
Yeah.
2:00
Either fifth or sixth because it was Navi.
2:02
Yeah,
2:02
it was Navi.
2:03
My favorite subject actually.
2:06
But I will say that both of us have had stories.
2:12
We are a compilation of many different lives in one, and I actually think that us sitting
2:20
here is so – tracks.
2:24
It tracks completely because we've never been good at sitting still and we've never
2:29
been good with fitting into a box.
2:34
So I am so glad you're here.
2:35
Welcome, Abby, to Tribe and Tribulations.
2:38
Thank you so much for having me.
2:40
My greatest.
2:44
I want you to start a little bit with your childhood because a lot of people know you as
2:49
this like powerhouse media person but they don't know who you are the real Abby and I think that
2:57
it's time that people get to know you a little bit okay so I'll take you back to early childhood
3:05
um my mom was you know like suzy homemaker she was she never worked my father worked at a house
3:14
um he was actually in very rare trade for like the jewish community which was uh truck parts
3:21
so he would come home and his hands was filled with grease and um and he was also a baseball
3:26
player he used to play in the community and it was like his like big thing he was the coach so
3:30
everyone calls him coach.
3:32
When I was six years old, they sat me down and they, my parents told
3:35
me that my father had cancer.
3:37
He was a redhead.
3:38
Actually, I've never spoken about like what kind
3:40
of cancer he had, but he, um, he was redhead.
3:43
He never wore sunscreen and he, uh, my mom saw
3:46
something on his neck.
3:47
It turned out to be stage four melanoma cancer.
3:51
Um, went straight, he was a
3:52
smoker, went straight to his lungs, then metastasized in his brain.
3:55
And then he passed when I was,
3:57
you know, I say it was my 11th birthday.
4:00
Um, unfortunately that year, my Hebrew and English
4:04
birthday landed on the same day.
4:05
So I can't even like get away from it.
4:08
Um, but I was like, in,
4:11
in essence, I was really a 10 year old because it was like on my 11th birthday.
4:15
Um, and it was hard
4:17
because my whole childhood, he was sick.
4:20
Um, so I have these like great, like rose colored glasses
4:23
idea of what my childhood was.
4:26
And then it just like fell off a cliff.
4:29
The reality versus the imaginary highlight version.
4:35
Yeah.
4:35
I remember I was, it must've been like two weeks before he died.
4:39
And I remember sitting in
4:40
my bed.
4:40
I was trying to go to sleep.
4:41
I couldn't sleep.
4:42
So I was just thinking.
4:43
And I remember
4:44
thinking to myself, like I prepared myself for his death.
4:48
Like I said, he's not going to walk
4:50
me down the aisle.
4:51
He's not going to be at my bat mitzvah, which was going to be like a year later.
4:54
He's not going to, you know, see me at my graduation.
4:56
He's not going to meet the person
4:58
that I'm going to marry.
4:59
Like he's never going to meet his grandkids.
5:01
And like, I remember like
5:03
mourning that in my bed.
5:05
At a young age.
5:06
At such a young age.
5:07
And I told myself, and it like only
5:11
as an adult, you know, you start to understand, like, you know, you start to unpack the trauma.
5:16
But at that age, I told myself that the only person that was going to be able to take care of me was me at the end of the day.
5:22
And, you know, my mom was taking care of my father.
5:26
And it was like, you know, it was just us.
5:31
You know, how are we going to, you know, take care of the things that we needed to do and who was going to look out for me?
5:37
I had my big sister.
5:38
And so she was there for me.
5:40
Talk a little bit more about her later.
5:42
But it was really like just I was on my own.
5:46
Yeah.
5:47
So hard.
5:48
And then after your father passed, that's when things I think took a turn for you.
5:55
And it was such an interesting thing.
5:58
I really resonate with this part of your story because life can change in a second.
6:05
And not only did you lose your father, but then you lost the life you thought you had.
6:10
Correct.
6:11
Yeah.
6:12
And to me, it shows such resilience because you had to pivot every stage of life.
6:21
And, you know, sometimes the hardest part isn't what happened, but it's also like who you become because of it.
6:29
Yeah.
6:30
And when you were growing up, talk to me a little bit about what happened when your mother got married.
6:38
Okay.
6:39
So first, for two years, it was like a girl's house.
6:43
So we were three girls, my older sister Ita, my younger sister Shana, and then two little
6:47
boys.
6:48
My two brothers, the youngest was one when my dad passed, and the other one was three
6:52
or four.
6:53
So they were very little, and it was us, the three musketeers, taking care of what we needed
6:58
to.
6:58
My mom, again, she was Susie Homemaker.
7:00
Now she was working.
7:01
She was never home, and she was trying to make a buck and help us survive.
7:08
The community was amazing.
7:10
The community was amazing.
7:11
Where'd you grow up?
7:12
I grew up in Los Angeles.
7:13
So I grew up in the Valley.
7:14
I'm a Valley girl, total Valley girl in North Hollywood.
7:18
And the community was amazing.
7:19
However, there is another side of Chesed.
7:21
When you become the Chesed case, that is not a good feeling.
7:26
When people see you in shul and they have these sad eyes.
7:28
My father was 36 when he died.
7:31
36.
7:31
I mean, like, okay, I'm 45 years old.
7:34
I just turned 36 this week.
7:35
Okay.
7:36
So just think about that for five seconds, losing somebody that you love or somebody in the community that passes that young.
7:45
Now, how do you interact with those children?
7:48
The first thing, by the way, everybody wants to do is marry off the guy, marry off the girl.
7:53
Nobody's ever thinking about the kids.
7:55
No one.
7:55
How are they going to internalize everything that's happening to them?
7:59
How are they just managing in school?
8:01
How are they functioning?
8:03
you know I was a very allergic kid growing up so 70% of my body was covered in eczema
8:09
so just alone like I was so itchy and uncomfortable in my skin I didn't do well in school found out
8:14
later that I had learning disabilities but now my dad's passed everyone looks at me like oh that
8:19
poor girl poor Abby Chinsky she's so like nabokh so sad right and so you have to kind of be like
8:27
I'm not a chesed case.
8:28
I'm not like I, I got this.
8:31
Right.
8:31
And so my mom then two years later,
8:35
she, she met a really great guy, lived in New York, had four kids of his own.
8:42
We had five.
8:43
And they just packed us up.
8:45
The Brady Bunch.
8:46
From hell.
8:47
Excuse my language.
8:48
But yes,
8:48
it was not easy in the beginning.
8:50
But moved us to New York.
8:51
I mean, imagine Los Angeles with like
8:54
palm trees and weather and beautiful.
8:56
And I was in seventh grade.
8:57
I was about to graduate
8:58
with my class.
9:00
And then I had to do eighth grade in New York with a whole new set of kids
9:04
in a whole new community with a whole new family structure.
9:08
Yeah.
9:10
That is impossible.
9:11
And like, you know, we talk about the Brady Bunch,
9:14
but that's not really the reality of things.
9:17
When you are coming somebody from divorce or
9:19
somebody from loss and creating a new dynamic, you are not just blending families.
9:26
You're blending worlds.
9:29
100%.
9:30
And it's not simple.
9:32
And you had an added layer of not just like, okay, we're in the same community and we're
9:35
marrying each other.
9:36
It's – I can tell you firsthand experience that moving from Los Angeles to New York is
9:43
a lot in and of itself because the pace is different.
9:47
The lifestyle is different.
9:48
The attitude is different.
9:50
And then you have to come in with new siblings, new parental figure.
9:59
And there is no other parental figure for you to run to, let's say, if you don't get
10:03
along with this person because you are coming from a place of loss, not divorce.
10:09
Right.
10:09
You're stuck.
10:10
You're literally stuck.
10:11
I remember just thinking like I have no control.
10:13
I have no control over my situation, no control over my life,
10:17
no control over what's happening to me.
10:19
And I kept always thinking like, why?
10:21
Like, why?
10:22
Why
10:23
is this happening?
10:24
Like I couldn't, I couldn't fathom it.
10:26
And all I could do was just, just push
10:27
through.
10:28
How did those years shape you then?
10:31
And how does it make you view yourself now?
10:36
So it's interesting because as I'm become older, I realized, okay, there are like when bad things
10:44
happen to a person, there are lots of different reactions, right?
10:48
So there are people who bad
10:49
things happen to them and they just, they can't get past it, right?
10:52
Like they sit on that stoop
10:53
and they cry and they become an emotional mess.
10:55
And they just, you know, sometimes it's like,
10:57
you know, mental health issues, but a lot of times people just have to wallow in that
11:01
sadness.
11:02
And you have other people who are, bad things happen to me.
11:04
So I have to like,
11:06
the world owes me, right?
11:08
Like the world owes me for the pain that I've suffered.
11:11
And therefore
11:12
I'm entitled to everything that comes to me.
11:15
And then there are people who say, despite what
11:17
happened to me, I am going to make something of myself.
11:20
Now, that was my reaction always until
11:22
when I became older and I realized that that was actually sitting in victimhood.
11:27
And I felt like
11:29
I used my pain and I used my struggles as the story as to why I had to be so tough, right?
11:36
I had to do all of these things because of what happened to me.
11:40
And yes, that is a story,
11:41
but it's not my story anymore.
11:43
You have to like let it go and say, okay, these things happened
11:47
and now we're going to move forward from it.
11:49
It's detaching.
11:51
There's a difference between detachment, like from the therapy component, but there's a difference
11:56
between detachment and strength and owning your story.
11:59
So it's interesting you talk about this
12:02
because I say this a lot online that I don't want to be my sob story because that's not who I am.
12:07
I don't lead with it.
12:08
I don't talk about it.
12:10
Why?
12:11
Because that is not who I am.
12:14
I created the person who I am now based on the things that I've been through, but I am
12:20
not that story.
12:21
And there are plenty of people who lead with the pain.
12:24
And that's okay too.
12:26
You have to do what works for you in order to get to the next phase of your life.
12:31
But it sounds like for you and I, we aren't into that.
12:36
We are not into wallowing in what has been and working towards what comes next.
12:43
Right.
12:43
So what can I do because of what happened to me and give back?
12:47
My whole entire life has been about just helping others and not making them feel like a chesed
12:52
case, not making them feel bad or sorrow or make them sit in their pain.
12:57
I'm like, okay, this happened.
12:59
Okay, but that's not your story.
13:00
And what can we use to grow from it?
13:02
so one of the things that had happened to me was that in eighth grade I I hated life I mean like
13:12
I really I was upset I was really upset talk about like you know if anybody here is has had
13:19
loss in their life know somebody who has lost a spouse I'm going to give you really good advice
13:23
and that advice is do not be quick to tell them to get remarried that is like the biggest advice
13:28
that I can give.
13:29
They have to sit in their pain.
13:31
They have to, the children have to sit in that
13:33
pain and they have to get past it.
13:35
Putting in another person into that equation when they
13:38
haven't dealt with their, their struggles is really not healthy.
13:44
It's not good.
13:45
And I've
13:46
seen it firsthand.
13:46
I've seen it with my friends.
13:47
I've seen it in my own life.
13:50
Um, and people always
13:50
like, okay, give me advice, right?
13:52
Like a friend of mine, her husband passed away and said, give
13:54
me advice and the advice was think about your children's like you I understand that you are in
14:00
pain but from a child's perspective they are their entire world has been destroyed and they are now
14:07
going to live their life okay yeah you think like okay I'm an adult and this happened to me and it's
14:12
about me it's not and it's you have children and you have to think about them and I think that
14:19
I think that where a lot of missteps are is that they just, they're so quick to like try to fix it.
14:25
Let me fix it.
14:25
Let me put another woman in there or let me put another man in there.
14:28
And that's not
14:29
the way to fix it.
14:30
My, I only found out later, later as an adult.
14:33
Okay.
14:34
I only found this out
14:35
as an adult.
14:35
I couldn't understand why were my step siblings so angry?
14:38
Why were they so mad?
14:40
Why didn't they want us to be there?
14:41
And I only found out later that they had gotten married six
14:44
months after their mother had passed.
14:46
Julia, six months.
14:48
Okay.
14:49
So now I don't know, like this was
14:51
the nineties.
14:52
Okay.
14:52
This was the nineties.
14:53
This is what people did.
14:55
Okay.
14:55
My, my dad died in 92.
14:56
They were married in 94.
14:57
My mother waited two years.
14:59
I didn't know this and I couldn't figure
15:01
it out as a kid.
15:02
Like I didn't have therapists.
15:04
I didn't have mentors.
15:05
I didn't have teachers who
15:07
understood what was going on.
15:08
I left.
15:09
I literally like my whole life, my whole world had changed.
15:13
So now as an adult, I'm like, oh, no wonder.
15:17
Like, you know, and my step siblings, by the way, are my siblings.
15:19
Like, I love them to pieces.
15:21
Like, we are so close now.
15:23
But like, things didn't have to be the way that they were.
15:27
Right.
15:27
I think that most parents, and this is one thing I keep, I'm navigating as a parent and
15:32
as a child, that everyone is just trying their best and everyone is living in a place
15:38
of, oh, my God, am I doing the right thing?
15:41
Is this okay?
15:43
And especially then when specifically for a man, they want to get them married off because navigating children and raising children without a maternal figure is – all of a sudden they're thrown into this and they're like, we don't know what to do.
16:00
And I think that that actually goes to a lot of what we need to do for the next generation is sort of this stop putting people in boxes, stop putting people in these specific roles.
16:13
You need to be able to manage your finances as a female.
16:16
You need to be able to pick up kids from school as a male.
16:21
These roles, while they are wonderful and beautiful and have amazing aspects to it, you don't know when the other shoe could drop.
16:31
God forbid it drops.
16:32
Listen, my mother lost her father at five and she was an only child and my grandmother worked for my grandfather and the family took over the business and cut my mother out.
16:47
Oh, my God.
16:49
My grandmother out.
16:50
And I'll say this.
16:52
It wasn't because they were trying to hurt her.
16:55
They always loved her.
16:56
But like she worked for free.
16:58
She didn't take a salary.
16:59
She was just in the toy store that they owned.
17:02
And my grandmother spent her entire life working and trying to figure out how to maintain this dynamic for her child.
17:13
And she never got remarried because she felt like I was married.
17:21
I am married.
17:23
And so there's pros and cons to both sides.
17:25
And I think we need to find like that middle ground.
17:27
And I think we're at a better place in life now, I will say, with a lot of mental health help and organizations and things like that where people are – obviously there's always room to grow.
17:39
I'm not like making a blanket statement, but people need to remember that you're always
17:46
in a constant state of healing.
17:47
So holding yourself back from getting married again, not healthy.
17:52
Pushing yourself to get married right away, not healthy.
17:55
We need to figure out what makes a person whole outside of another person.
18:01
Oh, 100%.
18:02
I also, I mean, I want to like give a massive shout out to Sarifka Cohen who runs Lynx,
18:07
who does, she works with orphans and people who have like dealt with loss.
18:11
She even has a whole, she actually just ran a whole program for adults, like who are grievers
18:17
who have lost a child, lost a parent when they were young.
18:23
And I, you know, I give her so much props because this was not happening when we were
18:27
younger.
18:28
Nobody was talking about it.
18:29
No.
18:29
Nobody was talking about it.
18:31
And I think that a lot of times we think that we're doing the right thing by giving advice
18:34
to people but sometimes we have to ask them like what do you want yeah what do you want what can i
18:39
do to help you where are you holding right like we don't ask we don't sit and say let me sit down
18:45
with you next to you in your pain and let me hear where you are and where can i meet you i think it's
18:49
more of like we come from a place of like let me just help you and not necessarily is that the
18:53
right thing and i think i mean again this was in the 90s so like things are like so much more like
18:59
i think we are in a good place i think that things have changed yeah there's always room to grow
19:04
But I think that, you know, the things that happened to me weren't – they were indicative of the times.
19:10
Yeah.
19:12
Talk to me a little bit about your teenage years because I always say that a person who is an entrepreneur definitely was a rebel rouser in their high school years.
19:23
There's no one I know who's not in that kind of field who wasn't stirring things up growing up.
19:31
Okay.
19:32
Okay, so I need to just give a little bit of context.
19:34
So two months after my mom married Elliot, okay, background, I was raised Maseiakov.
19:40
So I went to Taurus Emmes in LA.
19:43
My step-siblings all went to BYA and Chaim Berlin.
19:46
And like we were a major Maseiakov family, okay?
19:48
They get married.
19:49
And two months into the marriage, they say, you know what?
19:52
Guys, you can do whatever you want.
19:54
Do you want to go to public school?
19:54
Go to public school.
19:55
If you want to go to yeshiva, go to yeshiva.
19:58
Whatever you guys want to do, you can do.
20:00
And I think they did that because we were all like we were firing on all syllables and we were all we were trying so hard to like just find out who we were and we were rebelling.
20:11
And so they felt, which I think is the smartest thing that they ever did, was to give us the freedom of figuring out who we are and where we are in this crazy environment that we were living in.
20:21
They moved they moved out of Brooklyn.
20:23
And we moved to Long Beach, this one big historical house, you know, like those old homes in Long Beach that are, you know, massive and huge and old.
20:31
And so we each had like our own space and our own like room.
20:35
And they just said, you know what, whatever you want to do, do.
20:39
OK, fine.
20:39
So I'm in Halb, eighth grade.
20:41
And these girls are nothing like L.A. girls at all.
20:45
And I just didn't like it.
20:47
I remember going to my interview.
20:49
I've never told these stories, by the way.
20:51
I went to SKA for an interview.
20:52
I sit down in front of the principal because my two older sisters were there.
20:55
And she says to me, so why do you want to come to SK?
20:57
And I said, I don't.
20:59
And she looks at me.
21:00
She goes, what do you mean you don't?
21:01
I said, I don't like the girls in my class.
21:04
So she calls my mother and she goes, I don't think she should come here.
21:07
And now if I had been the principal, I would have said, well, there are girls from all over who are going to come to this school.
21:12
But like she didn't like my behavior.
21:13
She didn't like my attitude.
21:14
So she was like she cut me off already.
21:16
So my mom, I remember driving back from that interview.
21:19
My mom's like, what am I going to do with you, Abby?
21:21
What am I going to do with you?
21:22
Like I had a mouth.
21:23
I didn't take crap from anyone.
21:25
Okay.
21:26
And nothing has changed.
21:30
Well,
21:30
anyways,
21:31
needless to say,
21:32
she,
21:32
so she was like,
21:32
what am I going to do with you?
21:33
So I remember my teacher,
21:34
her name was Shoshana.
21:36
Heyman.
21:37
I love a shalom.
21:38
She actually passed.
21:39
She is,
21:40
she was in the Sparrow accident.
21:42
I remember I had just come back from Sam.
21:44
I had just gotten married and I got the call that she had passed in the,
21:47
in the terrorist attack.
21:48
She was just newly married,
21:49
four months pregnant.
21:51
She is, she was a malach.
21:53
I'm telling you because she was my eighth grade teacher.
21:55
She was from LA.
21:56
She knew my story.
21:57
And she said to me, hey, so where are you going to go to school?
21:59
I said Long Beach High.
22:01
I did not care.
22:02
I didn't care about Yiddish Chai.
22:03
I didn't care about anything.
22:04
I was like, so like I was lost.
22:07
You were disconnected.
22:08
So she said to me, she goes, okay, you're not going to public school.
22:11
So she called Rabbi Frankel, who was the rabbi of Long Beach at the time.
22:15
He was also a big rabbi in Hank and got me into Hank.
22:20
So that's where I went to high school.
22:23
And I remember I had a friend who was a Shomar Shabbos.
22:28
And I remember we were at her house one time and she asked me, we were going to go out.
22:33
And she was wearing pants and it was Shabbos.
22:35
So I was like dressed nicely, whatever.
22:36
I was more modern, whatever.
22:38
She said, oh, turn off the radio and we're going to go.
22:41
And I remember looking at the radio and saying, I keep Shabbos.
22:45
And I told her, which by the way, I was like so nervous to tell her.
22:48
I was like, I'm Shomar Shabbos.
22:49
I can't turn it off.
22:50
So she turned it off.
22:51
And I remember making that choice at that moment in
22:53
time and saying, that's not where I'm going.
22:55
I'm going to keep Shabbos and I'm going to,
22:57
you know, stay, stay quote unquote for a modern Orthodox.
23:00
I wore pants, I wore shorts,
23:01
I wore t-shirts, I wore, you know, whatever I wanted.
23:03
But Shabbos was Shabbos.
23:04
Kosher was
23:05
kosher.
23:05
Those were like the standards that I had.
23:07
I got into ninth grade and I got into a bad crowd.
23:10
Of course, I just became friends with the misfits and the ones that were, you know,
23:14
brown and black and like the coughing.
23:16
But I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't, I did never do drugs.
23:19
I never smoked.
23:20
I mean, I'm asthmatic, so that would just be an idiot thing to do.
23:24
But I was with friends who were just trying to find life.
23:28
And I realized that the school labeled me that by the time I got in 10th grade.
23:31
And I was like, I don't – they took me out of electives.
23:34
They never – I was a lone kid, and my parents didn't really pay full tuition, so they didn't really look at me.
23:40
I didn't have anything to get them to pay attention to me.
23:44
Like I was just like this like lone soul in school and they basically like wrote me off.
23:52
And I remember looking at the girls in my class and saying, okay, I'm changing my story.
23:57
Okay.
23:57
I'm changing my story.
23:58
I looked around and I said, who do I want to be friends with?
24:00
And I found a nice group of girls.
24:02
They were very, very smart.
24:03
And I just somehow like, you know, became friends with them by their lockers or whatever.
24:07
And they were like my closest friends through high school.
24:10
I love that.
24:11
You know, you told me a story.
24:13
Yes.
24:13
A while ago about how you decided at the end of high school that you were going to art school.
24:22
Yeah.
24:22
That she's never taken an art class in her entire life and she wanted to go to art school.
24:29
Now, to your school, that was probably really out of left field.
24:34
Oh, 100%.
24:35
He looked at me like I was nuts.
24:37
Well, you have to understand, all my friends were smarty pants.
24:39
They were all in like the top schools.
24:40
They were going to like the greatest colleges.
24:42
And so they looked at me and said, where are you going?
24:45
So the fact that you decided, you were very driven, and it sort of lends itself to your
24:52
first, I would say your first, second career.
24:55
Yeah.
24:56
In, for those of you that don't know, Abby owned and created, it was like her catalyst
25:04
into social media, I would say, this beautiful pottery and ceramic.
25:10
It was glass.
25:11
Glass.
25:11
Glass.
25:12
It started with glass, but I feel like later on there was also –
25:14
So we did a little bit of ceramics, but like it was mostly glass.
25:17
But yeah.
25:18
She would decorate these gorgeous things.
25:22
Yes.
25:22
Pieces of art.
25:25
But that actually led you into your next career, which was AW Media.
25:32
Yeah.
25:33
And I really want to focus a little bit on that because I got to tell you, how do you jump from painting glass to managing American Dream Mall and doing all their PR and working with rappers to – like it makes – honestly, it makes no sense.
25:53
But nothing in your life seems like there made any sense and that kind of tracks for you.
25:59
Yeah.
26:00
I mean I just follow the breadcrumbs and wherever it takes me, it takes me.
26:03
Okay.
26:03
So follow the breadcrumbs and show me a little bit.
26:06
Hansel and Gretel me to where I need
26:08
to go.
26:08
Okay.
26:09
All right.
26:09
So going back to, I, I decided, as you said, the story was I wanted to
26:14
go to college.
26:15
I did not have anything in me.
26:18
I was, I had learned disabilities.
26:19
I was in the
26:20
lowest class.
26:21
Okay.
26:21
I remember going into my SATs, no pencil.
26:23
I didn't even know what the SATs were.
26:24
I didn't care.
26:26
And so I picked up a pen and paper.
26:27
I was like, I like coloring.
26:28
I like art.
26:29
You have to understand, I couldn't understand really who I was because I was just surviving
26:33
in my house.
26:34
Okay.
26:34
My house was tumultuous.
26:36
So anyways, I get into art school, get in the top art school.
26:41
At the time, by the way, I had met my husband when I was 15 years old, Simcha.
26:45
We say my father was my shotgun because his father was my father's cancer doctor.
26:51
Wow.
26:51
Randomly met on a trip back to LA when I was 15.
26:54
We were like, whatever.
26:56
We were obsessed with each other.
26:58
Okay.
26:58
We loved each other.
26:59
and we went to Israel came back and he said to me I gave him an ultimatum I said I'm not going back
27:03
to like you live in LA and I live in New York that's not working I said you like either we're
27:08
like making this official or we're done and he's like okay fine I'll make it official and we'll
27:12
get married but you have to live in LA oh I gave up bless him so I gave up art school and I went
27:19
to UCLA um design school that's where I went to college and at the time I was teaching and that's
27:24
how I met you.
27:26
That's where it all began.
27:28
Anyways, so then I started a couple different
27:31
businesses.
27:31
But every summer, I would learn how to paint on glass.
27:34
And the third company that I
27:36
ever built was called Not Too Shabby.
27:38
And one summer, I learned how to paint on glass.
27:41
I thought,
27:41
hey, this is pretty cool.
27:42
I brought it to Long Beach to the art festival, sold out completely.
27:48
And then that summer, Facebook asked me, hey, do you want to have a business page?
27:53
I was like,
27:54
what's this this looks cool and that's how i started on social media i was one of the first
27:59
like literally there was three of us okay it was sarah lazary it was me it was melinda strauss it
28:06
was uh hiya forshimer and sharon langer okay that was the original og people do you know how much
28:13
backlash we got you can't be from being on social media whatever oh do i know okay we had so much
28:18
backlash but this was this was who we were anyways we got like you know we um i remember the shift
28:24
from Facebook to Instagram.
28:26
And so I've been there like all along the whole thing.
28:30
The company grew
28:31
to about 100 stores globally, all over the world.
28:34
I did all the massive big trade shows.
28:36
It was
28:36
hand painted glassware and serveware.
28:39
So it was pictures, cake domes, salad bowls.
28:42
Then we would
28:42
do some ceramics.
28:43
We also had a painter owned studio in our place in Passaic.
28:46
That's where I
28:46
lived for 18 years and it was just such a fun time but I was working like lawyer hours without
28:54
lawyer pay I was literally it was 16 hours 16 to 17 hours a day my husband and I were passing
29:00
ships in the night and I said something has to give something has to give and I looked at my
29:04
business I started talking about entrepreneurship on social media and and this was in like 2016
29:09
2017 no one no one was talking about entrepreneurship YouTube wasn't a thing back
29:15
then.
29:15
It wasn't like no one was giving you a device.
29:18
Everything was closed lift.
29:19
And I was
29:19
trying to grow a company.
29:21
And that one woman that I went to would help.
29:24
I would go to men
29:25
and they would sit down with me.
29:26
But no woman would help me.
29:28
I was trying so hard to go to China
29:29
so hard.
29:30
And that one person would help.
29:32
And I vowed that was never going to be me.
29:34
And so I
29:34
started to open the gate on social.
29:36
I started talking about entrepreneurship.
29:38
And people were
29:38
like, oh, my God, like, thank you.
29:41
And I started to grow a group.
29:42
And that's when I started to like
29:43
shift into like, hey, maybe I could go into mentorship.
29:46
Maybe I could, you know, go into
29:47
this world.
29:48
And that was when the JWE, the Jewish Women Entrepreneur, they came to me, they said,
29:53
hey, your background is education.
29:55
You're helping women entrepreneurs.
29:56
You're on social media.
29:57
You're
29:57
friends with all these, these influencers, like every single influencer at that time
30:01
came to me for advice.
30:02
So they became my natural best friends.
30:04
Like they were just my friends.
30:06
We did 500 people at that conference in 2019.
30:08
And I stayed with the JWE for about two more years
30:12
to help them get funding.
30:13
And I then went to go work with other nonprofits and help them raise
30:18
millions of dollars.
30:20
And that's when I realized, oh, I got you all these followers.
30:22
Oh, I got you
30:23
all these subscribers.
30:24
Oh, I got you all this money.
30:25
Okay, now what are you going to do with
30:27
it?
30:27
And they didn't have a media agency or they didn't have a marketing department.
30:31
So I was like,
30:32
oh, I could be your marketing department.
30:33
And that's how AW Media came about.
30:36
So it's a very
30:37
organic like world now american dream how did that happen so abitur gramezian and i were good
30:45
friends from my not too shabby days she used to run the uh boutique the hanukkah boutique over at
30:51
um sar no at uh brewers yes yay brewers yeah so that's how i met her and it was right after covid
31:03
the addresses now was supposed to be Century 21.
31:06
And Century 21 went bankrupt during COVID.
31:08
And they were like, hey, what if we put this into a firm department store?
31:12
And I said to Aviva, I said, so Aviva comes to me.
31:14
She goes, hey, Abby, I need your help.
31:15
And I was like, I can't help you.
31:17
I don't do retail.
31:18
I do nonprofit.
31:19
She goes, Abby, that is not true.
31:22
You did retail for years on your own company.
31:24
You can do this for us.
31:26
And I did it such a good job that Don Gormazian, the CEO of American Dream, said, hey, what
31:30
you did there I want you to come and do for me and so for the last three years I was the head of
31:34
the social media department at American Dream running a full team running the entire social
31:39
media department in all of their channels I worked on some incredible projects like Sesame Workshop
31:44
when they came in it's like Sesame Learning Play is there um Nickelodeon and DreamWorks and like
31:51
I've gotten to work Jonas Brothers when they came and they did their huge Jonas Con like we were
31:54
that we were the media team like it was and we worked alongside the PR and events and like it
31:59
was just one of the funnest times in my life.
32:04
But everything has to come to an end.
32:06
And one of the
32:07
things that we had agreed upon was that they really need an internal team.
32:09
And again, I'm an
32:10
entrepreneur.
32:11
I want to be an entrepreneur.
32:13
And so we set them up and I walked out.
32:16
And now we're
32:17
on to the next great things for Abby Wolin.
32:20
So Abby, when did business not become enough?
32:24
and when did impact become what your next step wanting?
32:31
Julia, it's always been impact.
32:32
Like I don't think it's ever been about business or money.
32:35
Like I don't, maybe that's why I'm poor.
32:37
No, I'm joking.
32:38
Maybe that's why I'm not like so, so, so like mega wealthy
32:42
because I don't care about the money.
32:43
I really care about the impact,
32:44
which by the way, investors, you never want to hear.
32:47
But it's always been about just supporting women in business.
32:51
It's always been.
32:52
So that leads me into the real passion project that you are starting that I don't know if this
33:01
is groundbreaking, breaking news over here.
33:04
Oh, it is very breaking news.
33:06
You are going to have
33:07
the scoop, my friend.
33:08
Okay.
33:09
Abby, share with us this new venture, this passion project that really
33:14
should be a passion for a lot of people within our community.
33:18
Okay.
33:19
So I have noticed over the
33:21
past few years that, and this is working with hundreds of women.
33:27
I won't even say thousands,
33:28
but I've worked with hundreds of women over, I feel like in life you have like kind of like,
33:33
like faucets.
33:34
I don't know how else to explain it, but you have, or chapters let's, you know,
33:38
and, and all those like, and sometimes those, those faucets turn on and then they close because
33:42
you're going on to the next thing.
33:43
For me, all of a sudden I feel like every single faucet that
33:46
I've ever, ever done in my entire life is just running.
33:49
It's gushing.
33:50
It's like all of the
33:51
connectors are finally come together.
33:53
After mentoring so many women and after going through
33:58
and seeing my own children and their own trajectory, I have noticed that there is a
34:03
massive gap in the industry, gap in the marketplace, gap in the education of the next generation of
34:10
founders.
34:11
And I'm not just talking about females.
34:12
I'm also talking about men.
34:15
The minute I started
34:16
talking about this, I cannot tell you how many more women came to me and told me that they need
34:19
this for their sons.
34:23
I am talking about an age demographic between 16 years old and 26.
34:27
My
34:28
daughter is now 24 years old.
34:29
Okay.
34:30
And I'm talking about mostly in the Baseyak world.
34:32
I,
34:33
I think that in the modern Orthodox world, they have a lot more advantage.
34:37
They have a lot more
34:37
support in the Baseyak world.
34:40
We, what I am seeing is the trend is that we are asking our daughters,
34:44
We are telling our daughters that the goal of life is to work, is to support, is to be there for our husbands and our children and to make money.
34:59
Yeah?
35:00
But what happens is that they go to these programs.
35:02
They end up getting a profession.
35:04
And in five seconds, they're married.
35:06
Five seconds later, they have a baby.
35:08
Maybe five seconds later, they have another baby.
35:10
And then by the time they're 24 or 25, they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
35:14
I need to work around my kid's schedule.
35:16
I need to be making more money.
35:18
And I am looking at
35:19
entrepreneurship.
35:20
I'm looking to build my own business and they do not have the skills.
35:23
Okay.
35:24
And what happens is, is that they then are making a ton of mistakes.
35:27
They have no clue what
35:28
they're doing.
35:28
And they look at the other adults and say, wow, wow, wow.
35:30
Like they're making it.
35:32
So why can't I make it and never compare your start to someone else's middle or end ever,
35:37
ever.
35:37
Okay.
35:38
They say comparison is the, is literally the devil.
35:43
It is the devil because you're looking at these older ladies and saying, okay, I want to do that.
35:46
So basically what I'm building is something called the foundry.
35:49
It is a nonprofit organization for the next generation of Jewish founders.
35:54
And it's for boys.
35:55
It's for girls.
35:56
It is mentorship.
35:58
It is access to capital.
36:00
It is everything that you have ever wanted for your child.
36:04
It is there.
36:05
It is now going to be here.
36:06
Now, the thing is, is that we have to catch them early.
36:08
We have to get them in high school because I remember not having any support or any mentorship
36:12
and not even knowing is entrepreneurship even an option for me.
36:16
Okay.
36:17
And the thing is, is that I was only given two tracks.
36:23
Get a job, go to college, go get a job or learn a trade and go get a job.
36:27
I didn't know that I was a builder.
36:28
My first ever company, Julia, was when I was 19 years old.
36:31
I started a camp in the valley.
36:33
Okay.
36:34
I've never told this story to anybody in my entire life.
36:37
That camp was my heart, my soul, my everything.
36:40
They told me, go to this woman in the community.
36:43
She's big in the community.
36:46
She has a lot of power.
36:47
If you can get her to sign on, we'll let you do the camp in our shul.
36:50
I went to the woman.
36:53
She ran the business side.
36:54
I ran the creative side.
36:57
She stole the business, didn't she?
36:58
She stole the business.
36:59
Within two years, she pushed me out.
37:01
She took the camp away from me.
37:03
I had no mentor, no adult.
37:05
I was wrapped up in so much shame.
37:09
She put me down so much that I
37:11
didn't even know how to advocate for myself.
37:14
Not only that, I had come from a family that was,
37:17
like, I had no one.
37:19
Like, I came through so much trauma.
37:20
I didn't even know how to stand up for
37:22
myself anymore.
37:23
I trusted this adult and she stole from me.
37:26
And I never even told anyone that I
37:28
started that company because it was just, I was so ashamed, so ashamed.
37:32
And I think about little
37:33
Abby and I think to myself, wow, if there had been an adult, if I had just spoke to somebody,
37:37
they would have advocated for me.
37:38
They would have like, they would have cut her down so hard and put
37:41
her in her place.
37:42
By the way, she left the community a few years later.
37:44
So something must
37:45
have went down and she was whatever she was.
37:47
But I think about that a lot because there are so many
37:51
young girls who are starting.
37:52
Do you know that I have a bootcamp, a business bootcamp, and it's for
37:55
young entrepreneurs.
37:57
And there's a high school girl in this group.
37:59
Okay.
37:59
And she is, she reminds
38:02
me of me.
38:04
She is so smart and so she's got so much grit and so much perseverance.
38:09
And I just think to
38:10
her, to myself, I'm going to mentor that little girl and she is going to be a rock star when she
38:15
grows up.
38:16
So you're creating this, this organization, what is it called?
38:20
It's called
38:20
the foundry.
38:22
And what is the ideal person to come here and what are you offering?
38:29
We're going to
38:29
forge the next generation of founders and we're going to offer mentorship, access to capital,
38:38
workshops, classes, conferences.
38:41
We're going to offer also a high school program, an elective
38:45
That teaches entrepreneurship to these girls and boys.
38:50
Again, we're offering this in yeshivas because there are lots of boys who are – that's not – this is not the direction they want to go to or they want to be in yeshiva.
38:57
They want to learn half a day.
38:59
They want to own a business half a day, giving them the real mechanics of growing a company.
39:04
I'm going to tell you.
39:05
Yes.
39:06
based on my practice that not only is this necessary, it's crucial because I have clients
39:14
now who are 26 years old, male, female, and they're like, what end is up?
39:20
I was on the track
39:21
to become a doctor, but like, I don't even like medical anything, but like that's, I learned for
39:28
a while and now this is the next trajectory.
39:30
This is the next thing I was supposed to do.
39:32
And I'm
39:32
like, yeah, but if that's not what you want to do, they're like, but I need to make money.
39:35
I was like,
39:36
in 12 years from now, like you need to figure out what, why are we asking kids, okay, what do you
39:43
want to be rather than what lights you up?
39:47
Yep.
39:47
And I think that that is a huge problem.
39:50
We've
39:50
lost the sense of passion being part of the equation.
39:55
Everyone, listen, I did the same thing.
39:58
I was stuck in my practice just doing the same thing over and over again.
40:02
And I was like, I need an outlet.
40:04
I need a creative outlet.
40:06
Why can't they meld together?
40:08
Why can't they be together?
40:09
They should be together.
40:10
But also I think the other thing is, by the way, if you want to go to college and get
40:15
a degree, by all means, please.
40:16
And if you want to go and become a makeup artist or you want to learn a trade and have
40:21
that job, by all means, absolutely.
40:24
But there is another option.
40:25
And I did not know that I was an entrepreneur.
40:28
I didn't realize that that's who I was.
40:31
It was only when I became 40 that I figured it out.
40:33
I know that sounds crazy, but like I just didn't know.
40:37
And I feel like the lack of education, the lack of access to knowledge, the lack of mentors,
40:44
the lack of support, it just, it breaks my heart.
40:46
And I really want to be there for that generation.
40:49
Do you think that those skills can even be taught?
40:52
Because like a lot of the things that you are sharing are so innate, meaning like you're
40:57
passion, your confidence, your resilience, your problem solving, all of that leads to
41:04
a good entrepreneur.
41:06
Is that a skill you can teach or is that something that is ingrained in you?
41:13
I think that, number one, it's a skill that you could learn.
41:16
However, not everybody is an entrepreneur.
41:18
And just because you want to be an entrepreneur doesn't necessarily mean that you should.
41:21
One of the things, by the way, that all entrepreneurs fall into, the trap, is thinking that their
41:26
employees want their company.
41:28
Okay, that's not true.
41:29
There is something called employee mindset.
41:31
And employees want to be
41:32
employees, they never want to own your job, they never want to start something else like there.
41:37
Now
41:37
there are some employees that do but like most employees have employee mindset.
41:41
And that's where
41:41
they stay.
41:42
And I think that most entrepreneurs, if they want to be an entrepreneur, they they can
41:47
learn the skills to be one.
41:49
Now one second, not every entrepreneur has good leadership skills.
41:52
That's true, right?
41:53
There are lots of entrepreneurs that are not very nice,
41:56
and they don't know how to run a team, right?
42:02
Yeah, it's a big problem.
42:04
I'm not going to lie to you.
42:05
And we see it all the time.
42:07
You see some of these people have like successful organizations.
42:10
Luckily, they hire well.
42:11
But sometimes the people at the top are awful and are terrible leaders.
42:16
Yeah.
42:18
But I'm saying like leadership can be taught if they're open to learning it.
42:21
I hear that.
42:22
I appreciate that.
42:23
What's one belief about business or success that you hope the next generation never grows up believing?
42:33
I think that I really want the next generation to believe that competition is healthy.
42:45
But I feel like a lot of people are so afraid to be givers because they're afraid that someone's going to take from them.
42:52
And that is, no, no, no.
42:54
If you live in scarcity, you will always stay in scarcity.
42:58
And so we have to live in an abundant mindset that we're here in this world to give back
43:03
to something.
43:03
A hundred percent.
43:04
I feel so strongly, so strongly that I am just a vessel for Hashem.
43:08
Okay.
43:09
Talk about like figuring out who I am.
43:11
Same girl, same.
43:12
Right.
43:12
Like figuring out who I am, where I am, what I'm doing.
43:15
Like, you know, like my journey has been so from my, I'm talking about religious journey
43:19
has been so vast from like all the way to the right and whatever, right?
43:24
I grew up so Bais Yaakov.
43:25
I'm very modern Orthodox.
43:26
I'm now raising my children in the Bais Yaakov world,
43:29
which I thought I would never do ever in my entire life.
43:31
I couldn't daven to save my life because I couldn't read Hebrew, right?
43:35
Even though I went to Bais Yaakov, I could not
43:37
because I had a major learning disability.
43:39
So now it's like, no, I'm in partnership with God.
43:42
I'm here in this world for a reason.
43:44
And every single morning I have my first business meeting with my partner,
43:47
the ultimate partner.
43:48
I got to dive in because like if I don't tap into that, I'm not tapping into the essence that I'm here.
43:53
I'm literally here for a purpose.
43:56
Do you think that we spend most of our adult life trying to create the people out there that we desperately needed as kids?
44:09
Oh, for sure.
44:10
We like definitely like encircle ourselves around people.
44:14
But I will tell you what my best friend told me, okay?
44:16
My best friend told me this.
44:18
she said to me, because she knows me so well
44:20
and she said, because as I was building
44:22
the foundry I was like I need this person, I need this person
44:24
maybe I'll partner with this person, I'll partner with this person
44:26
she goes Abby, you do not need to
44:28
partner with no one, this is
44:30
yours, stop putting
44:32
all of your co-hosts
44:34
all of your strengths into thinking that you need
44:36
somebody else to support you
44:38
you don't, you can do this on your own, you can
44:40
stand on your own two feet, she goes
44:42
how many businesses do you need to have stolen from you
44:44
to put your like
44:46
like to think that you need somebody else to help you, you don't need that.
44:49
You don't need that.
44:50
I think that like, I hear this all the time in therapy that, you know, we have our own insecurities.
44:56
We have our own stuff that ring true in the back of our head and keep going.
45:02
You can't do this.
45:03
You can't do this.
45:04
But it's not about remembering the things that happen to you that shape you.
45:11
It's remembering who you are in this moment.
45:14
And you've done that.
45:16
You've created a organization, companies, all of these things, family that represent
45:26
all the positive things in your life, not necessarily the stories that have come before.
45:34
And that's a beautiful thing.
45:35
That's something that I think beyond entrepreneurship, beyond all the other stuff, you've built a life that's meaningful based on God, based on authenticity and honesty.
45:51
And that to me is something so beautiful and something you should be giving over to the next generation.
45:57
And I'm very grateful that my daughter or sons can benefit from something like the Foundry or any organization that is willing to put their own egos at the door and say, I'm here to help.
46:13
It's really exciting, isn't it?
46:14
It is.
46:15
I love it.
46:16
I think like –
46:16
I love how you like make synopsis of things.
46:18
Like you're just able to like just take things and just explain them so well.
46:22
Well, they do pay me the big bucks for that.
46:27
Do you think little Abby would be proud of the person you are now?
46:30
I think little Abby would be in awe.
46:32
But little Abby would think like, how did she do it?
46:35
I hear that.
46:36
You know, I think a lot of times we think about the things that we've gone through and
46:40
where we're holding and where we're going.
46:44
Like I hold my grandbaby now and I'm like, how did this happen?
46:48
I know.
46:49
But like also you're too young to have a grandbaby.
46:50
So that's wild.
46:51
Okay.
46:52
We're going to do a little bit of rapid fire to end if that works.
46:54
Okay.
46:55
Sure.
46:55
Okay.
46:55
Biggest risk you've ever taken?
46:58
Oh, my gosh.
46:59
Just starting a business, going into my own studio.
47:02
What's something people get wrong about successful women?
47:06
That they're sharks.
47:08
They're not.
47:10
They're not.
47:10
They're like so warm and gushy inside.
47:12
Usually
47:12
the hardest people on the outside are usually the gummiest on the inside.
47:16
I like to call it the cactus theory where we are very prickly on the outside, but like literally
47:21
if you cut us open we're like we gel gel that's us yep one lesson every young girl should learn
47:29
before she graduates high school oh oh my god there's so many i won just pick one and quick one
47:40
one lesson a girl should learn before high school like they graduate high school
47:43
um oh my god julia i'll give you mine and then you maybe piggyback
47:50
that your world is really small now and it doesn't define you.
47:55
Okay.
47:56
I'm going to piggyback on that one.
47:57
Your story doesn't define you.
47:59
Agreed.
48:00
It just doesn't.
48:03
Finish the sentence.
48:04
Healing is?
48:06
Really hard.
48:09
Finish the sentence.
48:10
Success is?
48:14
Not defined by the amount of money that you make, but the impact that you do in this world.
48:18
Confidence comes from?
48:23
Knowing who you are.
48:26
If every young woman believed one thing about herself, what would that be?
48:34
I wish people could see who they are.
48:38
Like I wish people could know how other people think of them, like in a good way, not a bad way.
48:44
Meaning like I feel like a lot of times we're in our head and in our own story and the way that we feel like others see us.
48:49
But people see us so differently and I wish that we could have that view.
48:54
I wish that that was like transparent to us.
48:57
You know, it's so difficult to be an adult.
49:03
It's also so difficult to be a kid.
49:06
And one of the things that I wish I learned earlier was that we are our harshest critics, our biggest judge and jury, and everybody else is just thinking about themselves also.
49:18
We are in our own heads.
49:19
We are thinking about all the mistakes we've made.
49:22
And if we took the time to just stop overanalyzing every choice we make and start focusing on
49:32
every choice that makes us who we are, we'd be in a much better place and we would be
49:39
confident, healthy, and happy.
49:41
And that is my dream, my wish for all of these things.
49:44
And it sounds like that's your dream also is to create a world and environment and organization that creates strong leadership that are full of passion, confidence, and still strive to have a Jewish kosher life that's meaningful.
50:06
And I'm really grateful that you're here and I'm grateful for what you're creating.
50:10
And I wish you so much luck on this next chapter.
50:15
Thank you so much, Julia, for having us.
50:16
My greatest pleasure.
50:17
Thank you for having me.