Henry Kauftheil on Business

So, what island are you in? I'm on the island of Borough Park, Brooklyn. I'm loving your background. I'll tell you as we had in that initial conference call video, I mean, we've been living in in cyberspace for a long time. And I basically find myself looking at myself most of the day with some kind of background. So, I I put this up a while ago. I've got a big screen. I I'm sitting here in Brooklyn, which is kind of drab to be locked into this place during this whole uh uh pandemic. So, um this makes me feel so much much less stressed. I took a shot of something in Turks and Caicos. Um I could transport myself there. So, I know this is not may not sound appropriate I love it. for a business uh conference call, but I actually use this on business calls. They bring me in all the time. People always stop and say, "What is that?" Well, that's where my head's at. It's in a relaxed place with a breeze. And and I feel that um you know, it's a lot less stressful that way. So, hope you don't mind that um No, we're loving it. I think everyone who's watching is going, "Wow, I hope that the I hope the camera stays on you and not me." So, uh no, we appreciate that. So, let me let me let's segue to that. Which is, you know, I you're a a person who's involved in multiple businesses. These are very different interesting times. And we've been talking the whole show about this stuff, about leadership ideas from the business community and what this means as we fuse spiritual and and and physical. So, this is a hack that you just used, which is brilliant, which is how a way to stay in Brooklyn and still be sort of allowing yourself to to de-stress. But, take us a little bit deeper into the way you think, the way you see the world. And what are some of the tips that you can give us as we navigate this through and things that you've learned along the way from your business career uh in terms of how to how to become better and more successful. Well, that's a mouthful. Let me That's a big one. Um Well, as you know, we've we've we've been in touch in the past. Um I started out quite young. I was in the marketing business um right when I got out of um Yeshiva, graduated high school. And um started quite early, you know, with a creative bent and um very early on, I looked at the world as as um you know, what what's going to be my mission in life? What am I what what do I want out of life? I looked at I actually went to the dictionary. I took out the Webster's dictionary. It said under under business, it said, "Business is the practice of making one's living by engaging in commerce." And then I looked around and I saw so many people that were engaged in commerce, but not only making a living, they weren't really living. And people would ask me like, "What do you work for a living? What do you do for a living?" I said I said, "I don't work for a living. I like to live for a living." So, very early on, I decided that my my life's going to be about living. It's my work happens to be part of the things I'm doing in my life. Um you know, in reality, I've found so many people that have made their business um the center of their life and the business is becomes their life. Uh I early on decided that, you know, people say when people want to make a point, they say, "I mean business." As if that's the epitome of like of of of truthfulness and all that. I decided a long ago that I'd like to be in business. I'm a businessman. I'm ambitious. I've I've grew up uh with a lot of um you know, ambition and drive to do things. But, to what end? I mean, what was my what's the goal? Is the goal to make a lot of money, to amass a fortune, or is my goal to actually accomplish things? And right from an early age, I decided to do that. Uh we mentioned before um um you know, working today through pandemic without a playbook. I never had a playbook. I I I look at business uh I look at opportunities. The idea is to look at something I could be passionate about, something that would give me joy, something that will will use my God-given talents for uh for something good. Something that I could take my talents and and and utilize them. Um you know, I'm not a morbid person, but I do have a view of the end. You know, I look at this like I check into the world over here and checking out over there. Now, that's very far away, another 70 years, hopefully. Uh but but I always think about at that point of what's going to be important to me. What I what what that I'm doing today will be important to me at the tail end of this thing. Yeah. I'm not even talking about when we come up to Shamayim, we come up to God and they say like, "What what did you do? Like, who is this guy?" And they might say, "Oh, he owned Evergreen, owned Gourmet Glatt, owned this business, owned that business." In fact, it could be irrelevant at all. You know, the the achievements are going to be the the the the way I touch people's lives, the way I better people's lives, the way I actually accomplished something, um built uh um you know, created, comforted, um you know, supported. Uh that's going to be what's going to be relevant. So, in thinking of that, I I I've watched so many people cuz I'm really like a watcher, you know, like I watch I watch so many people that made a lot of money and then lost it and or made a lot of money and lived in miserable lives with a lot of money. So, you know, my I set out to say, "Look, I want to make a lot of money because I need a lot of money because the way the world works is not to accomplish things, you need a lot of money. You need to you need money to do things." And I got into businesses that I liked and that I thought that I could actually do something in that business that would be able to change uh the world or touch a lot of people's lives. And that's why you see this varied things from food to real estate to to to health care. And and thank God um I've had uh some amazing some suc- successes. I've had some fantastic failures. Uh it really pretty much what life is about. Life's not a hockey stick. Life is pretty much like that. Um and you know, it's interesting what you said I want to I want to want to drill down on, which is this idea that, you know, you're you're you're you're not in business to make a living. You're in living to make a living. And so, you're you're trying to to find ways to make a difference. This you know, as you know this this is great concept where, you know, you're supposed to be thinking about the end. We're supposed to have a moment where we are cognizant of the fact that we are not here forever and that drives our decisions. Not in a morbid way. Not in a morbid way. We're just Right, not in a morbid way, in a very powerful way. That's you know, it's Yeah. You know, it's amazing. Based on what you know, it's interesting. I I want to ask you about this. I know I know people are are aware or remember this stuff. But, a year ago um a little bit more December 10th, 2019, there was a shooting in Jersey City, if you remember. That a a a gunman came into a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey and and opened fire uh and killed people at the store. Now, I understand that and tell me if I'm getting the story right, which is that's a grocery you're in the grocery store business. I know many of your grocery stores. In fact, I think that, you know, a lot of my income exactly go goes to your grocery stores. I can look at my Yeah, you're sure of that. my expenditures, by the way. But, that's a whole 'nother story. The that you're in the grocery store business for what I understand that the grocery store that was shot up Yeah. wasn't your grocery store. And yet you and a few people went to the grocery store when they did get shot up and restocked it and helped them get back to be. Tell us a little bit about what happened there. Well, it it goes to the core of of what grow- we're not in the grocery business, by the way. We're in the business of serving and elevating the kosher food experience to a completely new level. You know, as you know, in your in your I can attest to that. Right. In your in your corner of the your neck of the woods, I actually fell into the business. I actually just was not in the food business other than a quite apparent affinity for food. But, other than that, I didn't know anything about food business about 15 years ago. And I went into an area we found, you know, there was a challenge there. We ended up coming in and pretty much let's say saving the day with the concept saying, you know, kosher food has always been kind of a hostage situation. Uh you know, you have to buy kosher, so service was was non-existent and it was just pretty much you know, come and pack your own bags. And when I went to this, I didn't want to the grocery business. I I decided right from the beginning to open a corporate entity that would that would train people, that would service um you know, patients, that would take cashiers to next level, uh that would that would, you know, create a buying experience that would be unparalleled. And I hope you actually enjoy it We do. as as other people. Um and we have several I I'm involved in two different groups in Gourmet Glatt, Evergreen. Um but, you know, when once we got the hang of it, that we built and we and Baruch Hashem, thank God, uh people actually appreciated it and they love shopping there. And then when this horrible thing happened in in Jersey City, to this called Jersey City Kosher, to Mr. Mr. Feren Moshe Feren and and his wife was killed. And it was just a horrible horrible anti-Semitic and terrorist kind of um act. Uh it was terrible. If anyone watched it, and so literally if you walked into the store afterwards, you picked up a a avocado, there was a hole bullet hole through avocado. It was just horrible. And then I thought like, "What can we do here?" I mean, our whole business is is built on on on on chesed. Our whole business, even in Five Towns and wherever we are, is built on chesed. During multiple uh events that happened, one of our one of our competitors burned down and we took over the store and we've helped them because we don't look at competition as anything that affects me. My business is not going to get affected by competition. Uh my employees know that competition is in the mirror. You look in the mirror. That's who you're competing with. That's it. So, be be there. Be gracious. Be be generous. Help the community. And when we looked at these guy at this this this family um Nabuch in in Jersey City, it's like, "How can we help them?" Um he had no clue. The guy was completely shattered, as you can imagine. Uh and I and we realized that we, you know, we can never give bring back the loss of life, but we could you him something that would help him go forward. And you know, we had the experience, we had the buying power, we had connections. Uh we had it was pretty clear to us that we could probably recreate something pretty quickly. And we got together with a group of other stores. And my partner Joe Rothfeld, kudos to him, he took the lead on all of this. And we actually helped him build the store. Within 3 months he had a gorgeous new store. You know, it's called the Olive Branch in Jersey City. Uh so he was able to get his life, at least that part, the financial part of life back. But what was that? That was That was really just utilizing what I feel that God has given us to to to help him out. Amazing story. Hesky, thank you so much for joining us and for your leadership. It really it really does complete this package of where when your insights and your ideas are aligned it really does lead to your actions. We thank you for who you are and for all that you do for for our community and for everybody around you. Thanks so much for watching. For more content, like and subscribe, and be sure to tune in live every Thursday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern at the Shmuel Buchman.com or right here on YouTube.