#94 - Behind the Bima: Hillel Fuld

from boca raton florida rabbi's ephraim goldberg philip moskowitz and josh brody are taking you behind the bema the brs rabbis schmooze about contemporary issues and talk to special guests who give a behind-the-scenes look at how they got to where they are and what keeps them going welcome to behind the bema good evening it is 9 p.m wednesday evening i'm rabbi from goldberg your host and i'm joined by nobody i'm by myself this week for the very first time and i'm here to take you behind the bema i think this is our first time closing in on our hundred episodes that i'm actually alone uh the adam never yekiti man was created all alone we're supposed to be comfortable in our own skin and be able to practice this podiudus at our core as is taught the show russian hashema the root of who we are is the capacity to be alone so i guess if that's true in life and in general in the conversations we have with the almighty the conversations we have with ourselves i guess it's true for behind the bema the comfort being by ourselves or my birthday is still in israel and out of commission this week but we did not want to take a week off because we have so much we have to bring you hello fold our guest tonight is fantastic there's so much to share so much to get all of us to think about and didn't want to miss out on that so we are here nonetheless hoping all of you are having a a wonderful summer a healthy summer happy summer and a holy summer summer's a time for a lot of breakthrough a lot of opportunity not only kids at camp which are on major stage and platform for self-discovery for growth and for breakthrough physically kids come home from camp and you don't recognize them they grow more literally in the summer than the other 10 months of the year combined but spiritually it's a big time for growth so as life slows down around us we have the opportunity to ramp it up in terms of what we're doing learning reading davening volunteering the different things that we are doing so hoping everybody is taking advantage of that time this summer to do those things not an interesting dilemma a question that was posed to me which is an interesting question for you to think about which is the following we um we for a short time in between the end of school and beginning of camp had a special minion for teens for youth and it went as you might imagine at a very very quick pace someone complained to me after that if you're going to dominate that pace at that speed then maybe it's better not to host such a minion at all which begs the question what's more important to say at least they're there and i'm happy that they're coming or to say we have to defend or stand up for what surah what this is meant to be or look like and if it gets diluted or distorted or corrupted or compromised that it's better not to do it at all and even though the question could be posed with children it applies equally for adults and some of the other mignon that have continued since corona and practices that have happened since then we've discovered all kinds of conveniences and comforts that are easier that are more pleasant or even pleasurable that are more in line with uh who we are or are our premonitions or predilections but that doesn't mean that they're right it doesn't mean that we shouldn't have an aspiration and a yearning an ambition for more or for better so you know do we do we host the type of classes mignon events to create aspiration for or do we reach people where they are even if it's a concession to the way we think it should be it's an interesting debate that can apply in schools and schools for children and adults and i'll let you think about it and talk about it um but this is a short introduction because frankly i'm just basically talking to myself and out loud so we'll go right to welcoming our special guest which i'm really excited to have on hill fold is a fantastic personality he's filled with positivity and dynamism and energy and enthusiasm he's a tech blogger and vlogger startup marketer online influencer public speaker he's been featured on cnbc forbes inc entrepreneur techcrunch he's collaborated with google oracle microsoft countless other companies he's given keynote speeches you can find and access all of his writing and speaking uh and posting on his website hillelfold.com uh he's a major advocate for israel family medallion lives in israel he's a phenomenal person who our paths have crossed and we're friendly but i'm really excited for this opportunity to talk to him about his own life and his own career and about his brother ahri who came to our community ari fulto come demo of blessed memory was murdered in cold blood ari was shopping for shabbos he was stabbed by a terrorist and heroically he did not fall but pursued that terrorist and took down shot that terrorist before the terrorists could hurt anyone else which really the way he left this world is the way he lived in it defending the jewish people and fighting for the jewish people a real hero would talk about ari's legacy as well so super excited to have him without any further ado my friend hillel fold i am really really excited to be joined by hillelfold the great the well-known the ball of positive energy incredible person hello you and i have overlapped we've met several times our mothers actually went to high school together and have remained somewhat friendly but it is great to be together and i can't wait for our listeners and me to just absorb some of your contagious energy thanks for being with us okay so first of all i did not know that information that's that's fascinating second of all i i you know you're you're not supposed to be murray toro like you're calling me a positive wall of energy are you kidding me right now like you are like a walking ball of energy and it's unbelievable i i posted two hours ago that i'm on this podcast my social media is blowing up everyone's like i listen every week so just so you know you have a nice fan club out there very sweet i appreciate it let's get started exactly with that you're one of i try not to look at social media i'm one of those you know i post but i don't consume or i try not to for reasons maybe we'll get into but one of the few people that i like to see is you because you know first of all you're seven hours ahead in israel so you've already posted several things during the day and i wake up to here's what hillary folds is grateful for here are the meetings he's had here's his meeting with the ceo the almighty dominic thomas villain here's who he wants to feature promoted he's wishing happy birthday to here's a connection he's making for someone your entire day before i've even woken up is all positive and helping and supporting and enabling others does that come naturally to you did you have to work on that is this a conscious effort that you make or is it just who you've always been fascinating question for starters you know as we know don't believe everything you see on the internet let's start with that right nobody's that positive right of course you know people say to me a lot you know aren't you worried that people know so much about you and i say you know i'm posting what i want to post i'm sharing what i want to share i'm not sharing things that i don't want to share so of course i'm sharing positive things but the truth is you know last couple of years have been difficult for all of us i think uh in my case i'm sure we'll get into it it's been a rough couple of years and so you know i'm just gonna get it you know it was hard you know mentally emotionally it was hard and so one of the things that i decided to start doing is gratitude lists and you know it really does give you perspective the truth is like many things that i do i did it for myself but uh you know it resulted in hundreds maybe thousands of messages from people around the world saying you you can't imagine like i wake up people said to me literally someone wrote me i i cannot start my day without your positive you know your gratitude list so it's great that it inspires people but the truth is i'm being totally honest and transparent i started it for me to really you know bring more positivity to myself and internal positivity uh but yeah it's become i'm somewhat ocd with my routines in case you haven't noticed so once i start doing something i do it and then gratitude is something i started and um about featuring people that's actually an interesting thing and it's a good segue to like my entire career because the reason i started doing these features uh is because pre-covered i would meet people and i would take a selfie and post a nice post about them and who they are and then covet hit and i'm like i'm not i'm not having meetings anymore so i'm going to start i'm going to stop empowering stop you know elevating other people i like doing that right and so i said so i'll just do features i have you know 3 000 meetings that i've had over the past 10 years i'll just take a selfie of that you know and share it with the people and again there was no strategy here there was no like but you you cannot imagine i've literally gotten hundreds of messages from people saying how much does it cost to be featured i'm like i'm featuring friends like i'm not people like the other day i was at a microsoft event someone came over to me and said could take a picture i'd love you to feature me i'm like i feature people that i know so you know a lot of these things happened kind of for selfish reasons and they've kind of got i guess escalated into something to a new thing and i'm having a good time with it what people don't know will get into this is you built a career not sure how you monetize it out of helping people making connections with no commission with nothing interested which seems to me again to be your entire path is how can you help people with no expectation of anything in return and ultimately you get the most in return by having help people but go back to the gratitude list for a moment because it is contagious i think it's inspired a lot of other people and and i i'm when i see your list i may not write it i mean i post it but i stop for a moment and say hey i'm either grateful for the same things or what am i grateful for how do you avoid just repeating the same thing because i've tried gratitude lists in my life there are countless apps for for posting or maintaining your gratitude journal but you end up falling to the same i'm great i'm grateful to be alive i'm grateful i have my family grateful for a roof over my head how do you change to be able to keep it fresh and new so the truth is there are some things that are on every one of my lists you know a good night's sleep a cup of coffee that's always on the list right uh the ability to open my eyes in the morning it's relative i would say it's on 99 of the lists but i do try to mix it up i do try to think about you know what do i have today right who am i meeting today i'm grateful to be meeting this person or i'm grateful for a new you know business collaboration so there are consistent kind of uh items on this list but i try to mix it up and you know what again like remember let's not forget the context here i did this for myself and so if it's the same list two days in a row okay what damage is done it's what i'm grateful for it's authentic and if it's the same thing so be it any secrets to maintaining this high energy do you get a certain amount of sleep do you drink red bull and coffee three times a day is it natural is it something that you do to sustain it where do you get this energy first of all yes i do drink a lot of coffee and red bull uh not red bull is really the israeli version of red bull excel it's called it's garbage uh no but jokes aside um you know and and i apologize that this is a cliche but i'm sure i'm 100 sure that this resonates with you when you do what you love but like really what you love not you know this is a good lucrative business like when you do what you genuinely love you know you're passionate right and so i i have like massive imposter syndrome every day of my life because i don't feel like i'm never working i feel like i'm playing in a i'm a kid in a candy store right and so you know funny story i got to tell you real quick uh i just read a story that someone was at some party with celebrities and he's standing on the side of the room thinking to himself what am i doing here like these are top celebrities i'm nobody what am i doing here and there's a man standing next to him he look turns to then he says listen i don't know what i'm doing here and the guy says to him i don't know what i'm doing here either like these are amazing celebrities like what am i doing here any guy he goes well what's your name he goes neil armstrong [Laughter] like everyone is imposter syndrome you know so i i have mass imposter syndrome but i do what i love and what i've learned over and over and over again for the last 15 years is and again pardon the cliche but things become a cliche because they're true when you do good it always comes back sometimes it comes back in the form of money sometimes it comes back in the form of just good just goodness in the in the universe i mean you know i do we have time for a quick story it's this is amazing yeah we're all yours it's an amazing amazing story about 10 years ago give or take i get an email from an entrepreneur hi my name is so-and-so i'm a 19 year old entrepreneur i have this idea for a startup i'm told you're my guy i said okay um how can i help what's you know what does that mean he says i want to meet you i said all right context like what are we meeting about what do you need help with he says i need help with introductions to investors i said great send me your presentation your deck investor's deck and i'll send it to to investors we don't have to meet for that you don't have to waste your time or money buying me coffee like i'm happy to help he goes no i want to meet you i'm like listen i'm happy to help you really don't have to wait no i want to meet you okay i go meet him in tel aviv bright kid a kid right he had an idea clueless about business and so i made 20 to 30 introductions to investors obviously not for money i don't take money we'll talk about that later um and i just i helped and that was the end of that and later at a later point he calls me up and he says we sold the company i said wow incredible mazel tov he says to me my dad wants to meet you i said excuse me he says my dad wants to meet the guy who helped his son without asking for anything in return i said okay that's an interesting thing who's your dad he tells me the name of his dad his dad is a world renowned cancer research expert so i said to him wow your dad seems fascinating i'd love to meet him i meet him in a restaurant in new york the guy's telling me about all these treatments and cures of cancer that were all developed in israel it was a it was a remarkable meeting but thank god nothing tackles right i don't you wouldn't want something talk to this person like that right and that was the end of that and over the years he sends me a whatsapp here and there have a good job it's like nothing we weren't in touch a few months ago at my parents house in jerusalem my mom gets a phone call and she turns white i'm sitting on the couch i see this i said what's going on a childhood friend of theirs was diagnosed with very bad cancer so i said listen i know this guy she says oh my god please please write him so i'm sitting on my parents casting slime and i what's up this guy and i said listen a friend of the family before i could even write you know can you help the guy sends me ten names of the top cancer research and that specific cancer their email addresses and their phone numbers i was like wow i take that information i give it to the patient and the guy writes back he says that is so nice thank you so much is there any way peter would be willing to speak to me directly i said i'll ask i write peter and i said peter can you speak them directly yeah this guy's a busy guy he says give him my number so i give him the number and i say you know good luck i hope it can help and fine i backed out that was the end of that i thought that was the end of that a couple weeks later i get an email from the patient he says to me who is this peter guy i said what do you mean he says the guy is bringing me to hospitals introducing me the world's top experts opening doors for me he won't leave my side and i said to him peter you don't even know me why are you helping me like this and he said what hillary did for my son 10 years ago whatever you need i'm here now do you think when i met this entrepreneur 10 years ago which by the way i almost didn't meet but i took the meeting because he wanted to meet me and i tried to be a mensch do you think in my wildest dreams i thought that maybe one day hashem this guy will say this meeting will save someone's life so even if it doesn't come back in the form of money it always always comes back always so there's so much to unpack here so much more to talk about first of all you're the farthest thing from an imposter if an imposter you know has been featured on cnbc forbes inc entrepreneur techcrunch has collaborations with the most famous brands around the world help startups turn into businesses if that's an entre a imposter that you're going to possibly be the farthest and growing the pasta but i you know i do want to pause because i want our listeners to hear i also suffered i don't know if i've ever said this publicly but i every day think any day now my high school's going to ask for my diploma back smikha is going to say you didn't take that or you know you're not really out there the world's going to realize like i'm just trying to figure it out every day and keep it together and you know it's not and and i live with that every day and and i share that not as like some false humility or asking friend with sympathy but if someone out there is suffering with that too know that even the people that you watch listen to read or you think they've made it we all live with that we live in that in this world that we we wait for that other shoe to drop or that person to rescind whatever degree or accolade that we have and we just we wake up and we don't believe we have it so i think we all live with that insecurity or vulnerability and i would say it's a good thing the day that we don't the day we act or the over confidence i think we've arrived is the day that we're arrogant and that's when i think we're in the most trouble so um you're the farthest thing from an imposter but i i understand and i even admire and identify with the fact that you feel that because i feel that a little bit uh too but but you definitely have broken through but this other message of put good things into the universe and the universe rewards you do good things and good things come back and that's not the agenda or the motive it's the way the world works and you know i know i've young rabbis who ask for for for russia's or help or share and i always say to them just take it don't don't quote don't attribute it like the more i think we share the more hashem gives and the more we're generous with what he provides in your case it's contacts and business and opportunity in my case maybe it's it's you know content or stories or jokes but the more you share it the more it streams to you the more he provides and you just have to have that generous mentality and you see it you see it you told that story you've got hundreds or thousands more of them i'm sure and that's just an attitude and an approach to the universe so so how did you build this career how did you carve this space where you're consulting from major brands and companies you are an advisor to startups you're this tech expert you're writing and publishing in major places you know and it's not and you'll excuse me you didn't necessarily build a fortune for 400 business yourself and and now you go and consult you originated in the consulting space and yet you have enormous credibility and a great history how'd that happen so first of all before i address that question i have to say something funny how many times have you heard people quote the omer dover shame oh my god everyone quotes that right no one quotes the mocker though who said that how's that for irony anyway okay so um yeah so it really is an interesting story and i do want to give a little bit of a disclaimer in that and that is that i wanna i wanna be very clear like karma does play a role here okay when you do good for the world yes it comes back in the form of karma but you don't pay for groceries with karma right and so i found that actually when you help others win in business it's good business forget karma it's good business and i'll explain to you how that manifests so 15 years ago first i moved to israel i was 15 in the middle of high school i was an mta in ninth grade and corey even 10th grade not an easy age by any means uh did high school went to karen biavna hez there went to the army it was an artillery studied political science in barilan met my wife there who's from l.a by the way uh talk about kibbutzkolios i meet my wife from l.a i'm from new york we meet in israel uh by the way i have to interrupt you for one second in karen biavna you are the big brother brother of the movie of my brother-in-law who happens to be the fact-checker of this program and michelle but anyway keep going get out of here wow that's right that is amazing i had no idea i love that wow unbelievable so yeah those were good years in canary anyway so i always had a very deep passion for technology like well before it was cool to love technology and it was clear to me that i was going to work in the technology sector but i'm not an engineer and i do not have a brain of an engineer so it was clear to me that that was not my way in i didn't know how i was going to get into it so i have a degree in political science and after i finished my degree i had no clue no clue no direction and someone said to me listen you know you have english you like writing and you love technology go be a technical writer i did not know what that was but i said it sounds good i took a course in technical writing only to discover that it's the guys who write the user guides you get with your iphone that no one ever reads and that was my first job and as you can imagine not a very optimized career choice for someone with adhd like myself and so i'm sitting at my job bored out of my mind and i'm like this is not what i should be doing with my life and i literally opened up a web browser started to write my thoughts on tech did not call it a blog because it wasn't a word did not have a business model did not care who was reading it literally as far as i was concerned a diary and i'd come to work every day make a cup of coffee and write my thoughts on technology within about three to four months i start getting inbound emails from top entrepreneurs in israel this is 15 years ago saying hi hello we read your article i'd love to meet you and i'm like what like why i'm i'm some random guy writing on a keyboard you're the ceo of waze like what do you want from me but if you want to meet i'm happy to meet and so i meet with these entrepreneurs and i'd be like what do you what do you do what does your company do and they'd say we've developed an algorithm that i don't like stop it no one cares about your algorithm what do you do not what do you build what what do you do and they could not communicate and i'm like this is fascinating these are guys that are brilliant at building technology and building products but when it comes to building a business market research communication you know competitive anal nothing and so i'm like and again i love text i knew about this stuff already just intuitively so i'd sit with them and i'd say here's your pitch right and then i'd say who are your competitors and they'd say we have none i'm like you're a fool like of course your competitors here are your competitors so i would help them no money and i would connect them to investors the investor would invest millions of dollars the startup would come back to me and say this your support is 15 million dollars here's your five percent and i said listen i just sent an email right i sent an email to this investor this investor just got a great deal you just got your money i lost nothing i sent an email i refused to take five percent from your pocket because i sent an email you know we all know you know in the jewish world the analogy of the candle candle gives its fire it loses nothing another quick story i'm a storyteller i can't help it a funny story i told that analogy to a guy named kristoff who worked at ibm ventures i said kristoff business is like a candle you give your fire to another candle you lose nothing you just create more fire and he says yeah but hillary goes deeper than that i said what do you mean he says if you don't give your fire you end up burning out kristoff you should be a khasir shabba anyway so that's my so basically what ended up happening is i hope these guys didn't take a dime and the truth is in israel as i'm sure you're familiar being what they call an israel friar which is doing something for free is like the worst thing you can do so people start to ask me like you're bringing millions of dollars what's wrong with you take money now that's a valid question it's a legitimate question i didn't have a sophisticated answer it just didn't feel right to me now fast forward 15 years over the last 15 years companies have come back to me and said listen we know what you did for us early on you didn't ask for a dime but now we're worth billions of dollars we want to work with you name your terms right and so what ended up happening is i built this kind of group of companies that i helped grow so that could include pr you know strategy on social media not tweeting for the company but what you should be doing on social media right content what kind of content to write or video or audio whatever it may be uh business development and i'll tell you how i'm able to do these things in a second but you know and so these companies came back to me and said we want to work with you and then you know then i i built this portfolio and that's how i that's my principle that's how i make money working with companies on marketing and they pay me a retainer but 99 of the companies that i meet with that you see me meeting with every day don't pay me a dime and even when they come to give me here you you introduced us take i don't take your money but when a company comes back to me after i deliver it after they know what i can do for them and they say to me we need you now now it's a different ballgame now i have the leverage now i define the terms now you need me i don't need you everyone else is saying pay me and i'll do something i'm like let me do something you think it's valuable to you let's talk money but if not great and so that's why it flies in the face and today everybody wants instant gratification and on demand and they're unwilling to invest in the future and say let me prove my possibility proof of concept and then i'll be rewarded even more when you know you know i've seen that when when you know whether it's rabbis or youth directors other people like that too and i say you know they wanna they want the five year ten year contract they said you're making a mistake take the shorter contract prove who you are and when you come back you'll be in the position that says you can't imagine without me so now nobody in our show should fear that that's what i did i'm not uh whatever but that that that's the the ability to to invest for the future and not have to get it on demand in the present is is a refreshingly different there's more uh there's an author named ryan holiday who uh invented a strategy he calls the canvas strategy and uh regulars right he says the way to do business in 2022 is to build a canvas for other people to create masterpieces on he says if you in every meeting that you have if you think you could help the other person what ends up happening is you build relationships you learn how to overcome diverse challenges because you're always helping people you you establish a reputation for being indispensable and you have a bank of favor to call upon down the road and he says this is like this is like music to my ears he says everyone around you is obsessed with credit and respect he says you forget credit let other people take credit and here's the sentence that is mamish i'm telling you it's like poetry he says listen this is very profound he says let other people take credit on credit while you defer and are an interest the principle he says everyone's like pay me and i'll do something i'm like don't pay me on credit let me do something first and then after you come to me now now there's credit you know now there's already ribbons as we say right it's a very interesting concept but that's my whole my whole model and so just to kind of summarize what's going on today so that's kind of my first hat is startups right the second hat is content this all started from content and so today i write like you mentioned i write for basically every technology publication in the world and it's easy natural win-win they get content i get 100 million readers like what could be better than that right so they're happy i'm happy i do a lot of video content interviewing the founders and ceos in israel because when i was in silicon valley everyone was talking about israel everyone knows ways everyone knows wix but not a single person that i asked could name one name of an israeli founder you know you know ways do you know the name of the founder of waze i don't need to put you on the spot but i'm sure you don't nobody does but you know the founder of facebook and you're the founder of tesla why don't you know the name avishai rahami the founder of wix nobody knows these names i said to myself i'm meeting these people anyway i'm going to come with a camera and start interviewing people so i started this video blog it's been a lot of fun obviously colby put a little bit of a damper in there but we're going to start again soon i do a podcast so second hat content a lot of content third thing is public speaking you know i speak locally globally about israeli tech about my hush about my philosophy you could be a mentioned business and it's not a zero-sum game uh right a lot of public speaking and then the final hat is i started to get in speaking of imposter syndrome i started to get emails from google and from microsoft and from oracle say you know we have this program uh you know google developer experts oracle startup advisory board microsoft brand ambassador whatever they'll call it something else we'd love you to be part of that program and i'm like you sure you mean me all right so i work with these guys and you know really i'm i'm a kid in a candy store none of it makes any sense and i like you said before i wake up every morning thinking today is the day that everyone else is gonna realize and i'm full of garbage play along no no you're having a great time in the meantime and they won't because it's real so so the full family strong zionist family you mentioned you were 15 years old mta made aliyah you know i don't want to say ordinary family from queens but went to the same camp same schools and yet your family proud strong and and paid the ultimate price for that zionism your brother who i knew came to our community fairly frequently who who was that lion his picture hangs in our sukkah every year that poster that was made after his murder and our family knows him admires him and paid that great price we'll get to hari and his legacy hashem you come demo in a moment um but i'm curious you're not shy on social media i i know you reserve it it's occasional it's not often but you'll weigh in and you'll weigh in with fairly right-wing politics you're you're strong and lean to the right politically on israel has that ever gotten in the way of this career are there tech companies who say look hello we love you and what you could bring us but you know we've seen in social media your your footprint and you sometimes take a right-wing position in israel that doesn't work in the liberal progressive technology world we live in and therefore we can't work with you anymore do you hesitate to write that post or stand up in that way because maybe it means you're done being published an inc or entrepreneur or working with microsoft or apple right so the answer is no that's never happened that someone would say i'm not going to work with you but just last week i wrote about something i'm not going to mention what it was but something about you know political and i got a whatsapp pretty much instantly from a very big investor who was actually a harvard can i said it was a member of knesset uh he's no longer american he's back in the tech world writing he wrote me on whatsapp and he said why are you spreading fake news i said this is not fake news he said it is fake news it's it's propaganda i sent him a link you know verifying what i was saying he said that's propaganda i said that's like a main you know mainstream media that's not like he says prop so you know for the next couple of weeks we went back and forth back and forth but at the end of the day honestly like we're friends we respect each other we don't go you know at each other's throats we don't call each other names we respect each other we have very differing opinions but i got to tell you that something happened to me a few years ago that just i don't i think it might be the most amazing thing that ever happened on the internet i i was having one of my heated debates about politics and some very left-wing i didn't know who he was at the time was commenting and i got worked up and that happens i guess to all of us and i wrote something along the lines of you know you're not the first self-hating jew in history something along those lines and uh that was the end of the debate and that was it and i forgot about it a couple of days later i walk into a startup's office that i was working with they're on the phone with a journalist pitching the journalist the story so i come in they're like oh hello's here he'll take the phone i get on the phone i'm talking to this journalist pitching the story he goes yeah great story i'm going to write it and i was about to hang up he goes by the way hello i'm the guy who called the self-hating joe on facebook yesterday i was like oh my god i was like listen i am so sorry i get worked up i'm really sorry i truly apologize of course i didn't mean it of course i know you came from a pure place and i apologize and i meant it authentically two days later i get an email the guy dropped dead wow yeah i had a chance i had a chance to fix what i did it was unbelievable unbelievable but you know again we're all i know i can speak for all i'm guilty i get i get angry but it's not from a place of anger it's a place of passion and love for this for this state this country this this nation and so i do get worked up sometimes but the answer is of course my colleagues are all very left you know very liberal and so they don't agree with the things that i say rarely do they but um but i think it's i think it's a place of respect mostly there are some you know very i you know there's an investor that i love again very close friend who who literally said to me in a meeting we should not be in israel we should be in uganda like how do you even respond to that you know so there are some super super extreme left and we just don't go there but i i don't i have not come to ever to a point that someone said to me i will not work with you because you're political minions that's never happened thank god what about israel in general um you know the bds movement continues to to try and thank god we continue to watch them suffer losses whether it was the arrival of 50 cent to israel this week or whether it was ben and jerry's parent company unilever um saying that we're no longer boycotting the settlements bds has failed after fail and please god they should fail to oblivion and to disappear but has that infiltrated the tech world are there tech companies that say as much as israel has to offer as much as we could gain by partnering you know we're just in this politically correct or progressive world we can't work with israel do you see bds making inroads in technology or is technology in fact the answer to pds i remember an apac conference years ago bibi was speaking and he got up and he said keep fighting bds you can't dismiss them but don't worry they'll never win and the answer is we have too much to offer the world that the world would never boycott because they'll only hurt themselves without the medicine the technology the breakthrough so is was bb right or is there any boycott in the tech world so you don't have to look too far the funniest i literally laugh out loud when i see this when i see bds websites powered by wix an israeli company and this is a real thing that i've seen not once or not twice so bb was right you cannot like you literally cannot boycott israel forget waze i mean are you using iphone or android iphone built here when you unlock your iphone this is really technology prime sense apple acquired them right when you use facebook half of it's built here oculus built here google when you type in google and you make a mistake and it says did you mean this that's built here microsoft everything is built here so good luck you can't you literally cannot use a single electronic device without some sort of israeli component in it so it's impossible uh having said that having said that you know the tech world is extremely liberal and you know there are several just to give an example there's there's one one of the biggest investors in silicon valley one of the most recognized most well-respected really big name in silicon valley i'm gonna leave his name out right now um he has blocked everyone jewish on twitter so he disguises it and says oh it's anti-zionism but what does michael eisenberg have to do with anti-zionism he's just jewish he's an investor just like you what are you blocking him for right so there there's a lot of anti-anti-semitism and and i have to tell you that on yomasi caron every year uh memorial day in israel i get a really really sick amount of vile vile disgusting hatred um pictures of ari and whatever so you know you know i learned to block it but i'm not gonna pretend that it doesn't you know infiltrate and penetrate my heart it does it's a problem i i should learn how to have thicker skin but there's a lot of anti-semitism i have to tell you that the the former ceo of twitter jack dorsey personally wrote me and said personally i will deal i see what's what you're what you're going through on twitter i see all the abuse and i will handle it and he didn't do a thing but you know it's a lot of abuse and because i guess elon musk i'm very i'm very i'm not the fort i'm one of the most i guess vocal jews observant religious jews that's proud of their judaism and i have to tell you that a lot of people ask me you know it's your keep uh an obstacle and not only is it not an obstacle but it has actually become part of my brand and what do i mean by that i mean you know i sign off every shabbos and i give it vartora i have people today someone came over to me the stories someone wrote me on instagram and said i haven't lit shabbos candles in 40 years and your shabbos post made me start again like unbelievable things truly unbelievable things and you know at the end of the day people respect it when you own something you're not embarrassed by it my last trip to silicon valley this is a remarkable story my last trip to silicon valley years ago i was going to meet a guy named bradley horowitz not jewish actually who's senior senior product guy at google like doesn't get more senior than him and it was a it was a social meeting there's no business it was just meeting and so i walk into his office and i see a massive platter of sushi on his desk i said bradley what's that and he said i know you're strictly kosher and there's no kosher food in silicon valley so i got this brought from outside of silicon valley for you i was like this is a senior product i googled people respect you when you own it whatever it may be in my case it's judaism when you own it you don't shy away from it you're not embarrassed by it people respect you for it that's that's been my experience i agree we have to get out of this defensive apologetic posture and and be principled with kindness and with and with compassion and with sensitivity and with respect for other people but also principled and not apologizing anymore for for who we are and what we stand for and and what we believe um let's talk about ari and i i don't want to take to a painful episode we could talk about his legacy in terms of a positive sense he paid the ultimate price yeah he he was that very very public person i i don't know whether he ever worried your parents ever worried his family worried that being so adamant and and he took the fight right to the front lines physically he did it in the army put his life on the line and was a hero in the israeli army and he did it in the online world which um maybe not as turned out to be as physically dangerous but but is emotionally in every other which way was a target of a lot of hate and a lot of animosity and and i don't know whether there's ever been a link between his murder and his online persona whether he was just uh nothing is random of course in this world but he was in the wrong place or specifically was was a target but he was trained for that and and seemed at least to be prepared when he came to our community that the level of of commitment of devotion that energy that dynamism that we see in you and in the full family he had that passion for israel for the jewish people and he also had that quality he could disagree vociferously he could argue israeli politics they can give you the biggest bear hog and love you as a jewish brother sister and and not let those differences divide or get in between that also like the world is telling us like you're not allowed to disagree on the other end the people who disagree don't know how to disagree agreeably and give that hug afterwards he was able to do both and what a beautiful legacy so what do you think is the most powerful legacy that he leaves so i have to tell you something and i don't know if you've heard this before if you have i'm sure many of your uh listeners and viewers have not it's it is listen i'm a rambam jew what i mean by that is i'm not into the voodoo okay i'm a little bit pete on the ground like you know you know pretty rational guy but what i'm about to tell you it just there's no way to explain this rationally so ari ari uh when he was born my parents called him ari not arya but ari and ari wasn't a very common name arya was a nickname for arya but his name was actually ari and so when people ask my parents why'd you name amari they said i don't know we liked the name they didn't much of it fast forward the guy grows up becomes who he was he comes to israel himself before we did by himself middle of his life just comes to israel volunteers for the army climbs up the ranks in the army and he was momish you know people use the word hero really old school warrior the guy conquered this land okay that is what he was about that's one characteristic moving on i would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and i'd see ari on facebook arguing with some anti-semite i see him ari it's four o'clock in the morning go to sleep what's wrong with you the guy's not even listening to you he said it's not about that guy it's about the other people that are watching this debate they need to know the truth the guy did not sleep i i i don't know when he slept not kidding the guy did not sleep that's the second characteristic third he was a fourth degree black belt and when many of us when we dive and we shuckle he stood put himself in tai chi and meditation he was like a brick wall his telo is different than the rest of ours i mean again i can speak for myself his tuba was unbelievable he was extremely extremely passionate about fila about dominating about prayer specifically the prayer of i don't know why i i don't know where he got that passion for but you see videos on facebook of him with a megaphone in the muslim quarter yelling shmi sorella and you knew ari he was a pretty normative guy like he wasn't that kind of that's not his that's just that wasn't characteristic of him so he had a big passion for shema and finally sitsis again we all we're sitting the guy was incredibly fire passionate about citizens he had an ongoing debate with the reverend salah about he was obsessed with citizens okay so listen to this you ready hold on to your chair after the murder my parents said to themselves where did we actually get this name ari like why do we name amari and so they open the torah and i'm i'm opening my phone now to read the tsukim to you because i don't want to make any mistake and what you're about to hear you you know there are some things in life that at least for me i can't not believe in god when i hear these things and the word ahri appears twice in the torah and i have to read this because it is just remarkable and i'm work you know this you know these puking you know these rashes so you know that i mean word for word but anybody else wants to verify this go look it up twice in the entire torah the word ahri appears you ready here we go they crouch they lie down like a lion ari like the king of beasts ari means lion who who dare arouse them blessed are they who bless you cursed are they who curse you that's what the pussic says what does rashi say rashi explains what an ari is what is a lion now rabbi if i'd ask you to define a lion you would say the king of beasts you say many things here's what rashi says here's what rashi says karashakari kitargumo like uncles who's a commentary on the torah you ready for this they will settle the land with strength and might that is what ari is that is a word for word that is like that is not how i would define line but wait it gets it gets infinitely better the second time the word ari appears this is mind blowing pain i'm killing low of people that rise like a lion leaps up like the king of beasts ari ready for this lo yishkaba yoga tariff they don't sleep until they consume their prey lions don't sleep now the rashi ready for this this is just absolutely crazy when they wake up in the morning for chakras for the morning he meet gabriel they overcome kill aviva hari like a lion they grab the mitzvos and what bits was this rashi name the entire torah twice in the entire torah and that is ari's autobiography when i heard that i was like what is going on here this and i gotta tell you something recently someone else said to me what is your name he says this person said to me what is your name i said hello they said okay what do you like doing in life i said i like empowering others i like elevating others that's what gets me you know going i feel alive when i help others and he said so so what does it make you feel i said it makes me feel alive they said okay what else does it make you feel like honestly it makes me feel it completes me makes me feel whole i really feel like if i'm not promoting others i don't feel whole and this person said to me what is your name i said hello they said hello what pillow pillow means to praise chaim is to live is shalene complete when i praise i feel alive and full and again i'm so not that jew but holy cow that is undeniable blew my mind that's why yeah a rabbis say that parents have a level of prophecy when they give a name a name is not just a label it's a description and when parents give that name that's why we're so careful that's why it's so important who we name after what that name why we chose that name when we choose that name because the name is is a description it's a trajectory for that person it's not just the lasik i mean but again like what i just i mean is this even like debatable is there any way around this like literally that's what she says i didn't make it up it's crazy so ari's legacy in one word is truth truth right it's so simple it's so simple and yet in today's world as we all know it is so not simple right so not trivial today you know yes he had his political opinions but i think the argument that he argued most often is stop with that false narrative there was never an arab palestinian state tell me when this so-called our palestinian state that we occupied tell me when it was established please tell me the national anthem what was the currency who was the prime minister it never existed so stop making things up and saying we occupied an arab palestinian land because it never existed and you're telling me that the terrorist attacks are because of settlements so you're saying before 1967 when there were the beginning of the settlements there was no arab terror well that's not true 1929 chevron massacre right so you take away the cause the quote-unquote cause of the terror the terror should have stopped but it didn't so his whole kind of message to the world is open your eyes you have a brain you use it right there's truth and there's lies okay we can debate from now till we're blue in the face about the conflict there's there's a lot to debate but let's at least start from a foundation of truth you cannot change history okay there was no palestinian arab state palestine was israel there we didn't occupy anything and the terror didn't start then and the the poverty and the oppression quote unquote of the the arabs in gaza is not what causes it because ahri's terrorist murder was an affluent living a very good life he did not lack money many other terrorists did not lack money so let's let's just we could debate let's debate but let's debate with the foundation of truth that was ari's i think most important legacy is truth and again so trivial to me and you but today no truth in our society honesty is a lonely word um i think part of his legacy not obviously you're his brother but but somebody who knew him very peripherally but but watched um his legacy is even the way that he died and i thought that's where you're going when you read that puzzle about the lion who refuses to lie down without eating or they're taking down their prey was was also ari that you know he's stabbed and superhuman and i read people who reported doctors who said what he did was impossible to get up and to pursue and to take a gun and to shoot and to neutralize terrorists he didn't get up he never fell he didn't he had a guy got him in a main artery he was he was clinically scientifically dead he had no blood in his veins he ran after the guy 50 meters jumped over a wall and shot him when the guy was inches away from killing his next victim who by the way minutes before sold him a falafel she had a falafel stand he bought a falafel murdered ahri went back to murder her and already shot him inches away since then she's become a part of the family obviously but he he got you know he is a national hero in the state of israel which you know i i can't help but think my grandmother in auschwitz said you told her that her grandson would be a national hero of the state of israel what would she even do with that information she would not be able to like digest it so you got to take a step back and i got to say something else and that is that yes we paid the ultimate price um and and beyond the you know personal family tragedy every person that's killed you know in in the state of israel in wars or in terrorism taxes is an entire world and a horrible horrible tragedy and that will never be belittled however something my father likes to say which is it is just unbelievable there has never been listen carefully there has never been a 74-year period since the destruction of the second temple in which so few jews have been killed listen let me repeat that every person that dies it's horrible it's a whole world it's horrible but you have to look at the big picture here the big picture is that there was always something there was the spanish inquisition there were the pogroms there was the holocaust there was always something there has never been a 74-year period in the history of the jewish people since supporting ice that so few jews have been killed and that is perspective and coming from my father it's an amazing institution i never heard that that is you need to sometimes zoom out the lens in order to appreciate where you are we're so focused we're so zoomed in if you zoom out and to come from you and a family who did pay that price where every life is an entire world and who knew what aria had yet to accomplish to advocate to fight for to change to transform opinions about it is an enormous loss but it's also what a what a perspective thank you for sharing that so i i want to i want to pivot for a moment and again thank you so much for your time we don't have that much left time left um but i want to pivot to take your expertise right you're not an apostle your expertise and apply it to religious jewish communal life religious entrepreneurship shul entrepreneurship rabbinic entrepreneurship this is something that speaks very very much to me it resonates deeply with me you know my father was in business i don't come from a line of rabbis um i have this tremendous urge or instinct and i have this inside me this appetite for business that i expressed through the rabbinic world and trying to be sort of a religious entrepreneur trying new things and utilizing platforms and technology and of course understanding that responsibilities of robonus of being a rabbi begin locally and at home and offline but also utilizing what insights do you have from what you've seen and what you've learned what are the the critical parts to being a successful entrepreneur that you can apply to religious life sure life jewish communal life so first of all i don't even make that distinction for me judaism is the best manuscript for building a company for building a business i you know when i give my divorie tour on facebook on friday you know they're all business oriented every single partial it's unbelievable i started this years ago thinking okay i'll try to maybe find some maybe some lesson in the parsha for business i thought may be able to do it for a week or two like i'm not able to find it for every single partial i've been doing this for two years every single parsha in the torah has lessons for entrepreneurship without exception you know whether it's korach and ego every single one of them it's and the fact that we're we're human beings with limitations you know the every single power has something for entrepreneurs which is remarkable to me and so i i don't even make the distinction between judaism and entrepreneurship i think they're one and the same uh having said that you know in terms of characteristics that i find entrepreneurs need um is the most important by far is resilience right because you know we all glorify you know the companies that are raising 100 million dollars and selling for billions what people don't know is that roller coaster that led there and anybody who thinks that there was not a roller coaster has simply never been an entrepreneur there is no such thing as a company that just started and went straight to you know so that resilience be able to fail and get up again and fail and get up again and see your northern star know where you're going know the mission and be able to execute on that mission is something that without that an entrepreneur will never be successful and i think that's true for judaism i think that's true for you know like you said community for abundance you have to be able to you know learn from your failures i want to tell you something that obviously i'm going to i'm going to leave out the name but a very very very popular rabbi who went through a very serious personal crisis and i was very very close with him he was not shiva whatever i don't give disclose too much information but i called him one time i said how did you emotionally how did you go from being this to what you are now and again he went through a really big big challenge he said something to me that i found to be and this is probably like for you probably this is so obvious to you but it wasn't to me he said who do we call exotic in the torah who is the one person we call it sadiq yosef yosef yosef was a sonic yosef was the the biggest ivan as a kid he was trolling his hair and playing with his hair looking in the mirror and with asia's potiphar we could debate whether he did it or he didn't do it but he was surely not innocent what was he doing in the room alone with this woman and again at best he didn't do it but it wasn't innocent and he surely was not exotic why do we call him exotic and the answer is exactly because of those weaknesses and the fact that he overcame those weaknesses right what happens when when paro says solve my my most my dreams what does he say it's not me it's god all of a sudden where's where's his where is the the yosef used to look in the mirror until all of a sudden he overcame his biggest challenge he overcame it and that's what makes him exotic he might have done something bad but he got up and he got up he was resilient and he learned from his mistakes and he got up and he moved forward and that's what makes him exotic i love that personally and very much resonated with me and so resilience is everything in entrepreneurship and business and it's it's everything in life you know of course there's the element of grit and hustle and you got to work hard and it's not a fun you know i would never recommend anyone be an entrepreneur because there's no such thing as nine to five you're working 24 25 seven you know um or six but um it's hard work and you know either you here's another thing either you are or you aren't i wrote an article last week i said someone comes to me and says i want to be an entrepreneur you're not an entrepreneur like i could tell forget don't even waste your time if you want to be an entrepreneur you're not an entrepreneur because if you are an entrepreneur you cannot work a nine-to-five you won't be able to like you be on your kishkas i have to create i have to create i have to innovate and so i think that's true also i think certain people are are born for leadership and i'm not not to say that a person can't work hard and attain greatness that's not what i'm saying but when you're a leader you're a leader and that's true again in the business world in the rabbinic world you have leadership qualities you just have to know how to tap into them to leverage them to do you know phenomenal and remarkable things and impact lives that's what it's about it's an itch it's an itch that you have that you just need to scratch it's relentlessly itching you can never fully scratch it and you don't get a degree in it you can't go to a seminar or a conference in it you can't learn it and i think that's that's well said you know that sad that you spoke about our tradition also teaches that shiva tipo that that's to have fallen down seven times and gotten up you're not cold at sadiq unless you fell in your experience to most of these entrepreneurs do they have failures before their breakout success i'll say even more than that not only do they have failures but they celebrate those failures especially in israel by the way because there's obviously there's a lot of literature and discussion about how israel this tiny little country became a super power in the world of technology across all sectors and verticals um and i think that one of the explanations among many is that you know that resilience to not only fail and get up actually to celebrate failure because if you fail and you learn from your failure then it's not a failure right and so you get into a taxi here in tel aviv and you you say to the taxi driver oh how long you've been a taxi driver he says i'm not a taxi driver i haven't i have a startup this is a my side gig and everyone has startups and everyone has two and three and four startups and again it's like a notch in your belt it's not something where she i had two failed startups the amount of lessons that i've learned from those two failures is exponentially more than i've learned from any of my success so i think in general entrepreneurs embrace failure but it's specifically in israel it's not only embracing it's actually celebrated you got to fail forward instead of instead of backward so a lot of technology by the way rabbi rabbi let me say one more thing i apologize for interrupting you because i because this is going to resonate with you ninth grade robert kerner was my rebbe in mta right i'm sure you know by conor sure i i don't remember many things from ninth grade but i do remember and this was i don't know how i remember this but it's unbelievable he said you you open the door it's like unbelievable i remember certain things stick with you you open the door like you catch a football how do you catch a football you play football yeah how do you catch a football you look back you put your head hands like this you look back over your shoulder that's the open door it sticks to me i don't know until today and so this is just something i wanted to share with you about you know thinking of other people and and help you know it's just it's such a simple concept but again it stuck with me since ninth grade so i have to share that with you you gotta go forward so a lot of entrepreneurship a lot of the technology today that's coming out is for productivity and efficiency tell us what are the best tools that are out there maybe we know about them already maybe they're up and coming those we don't really know about yet what app do you say is a must-have on your tech device in your life that'll make you more efficient more productive okay so what i'm about to tell you and i'm not exaggerating when i say the following thing if implemented will change your life will change your life and it's not even an app it's the phone you have in your pocket and listen carefully what i'm saying because this i'm not a rabbi this will change your life okay have you ever heard of a feature on the iphone called text replacement yes you put like uh three o's and it writes a sentence do you use it infrequently not enough okay i have about 400 shortcuts on my phone for those that are watching might not know what it is you could put in a shortcut it could be a letter two letters four letters whatever and it could fill in an entire paragraph or an entire page now what happens we all have things we write many times throughout the day our email addresses our phone numbers our home address in my case an entrepreneur reaches out to me and says hey i wanna now i need to ask that entrepreneur why they wanna meet me now i know no if it's in a relevant topic they want to meet that then i don't want to waste their time or my time but i have to ask that question without sounding like uh you know i want to be a mensch but i have to ask that question writing that paragraph of happy to meet you please provide context do you want to meet me as a blogger do you want to meet me you know it takes me whatever let's say six minutes to write that paragraph 20 times a day okay my email address like 300 times a day now each time it takes me four seconds but 300 times a day that's hours wasted right anything that i write more than once throughout the day i set up a shortcut for it and i kid you not i have hundreds of shortcuts anything from you know what i just described what's the context to okay let's meet at nine o'clock tomorrow morning kindly send me a calendar invite include the context of the meeting here's my email address 30 seconds it takes to write that but i write it 100 times a day or my bio right you asked me for my bio for the show right you know how i sent you think i went and i copied it from one no i didn't i wrote the word updated bio on my phone and it filled in the entire paragraph how do you remember how do you remember the shortcuts so it's a good question you do it once you do it twice you start remembering but i got to tell you that this is this is my secret i'm not kidding out of every 30 emails that i write 29 of them i didn't write it was a shortcut i save hours i'm not ex hours every single day on this and if you do this if a person who's watching this implements this just set up 20 shortcuts things that you know you're going to write more than once the amount of time that you'll save on communication by the way to be clear i'm not you know i'm not saying that communication should be shortcuts if you're talking to someone give them the attention they deserve but there are things that are repetitive and they're unnecessary they're inefficient so just if you use the shortcuts then you'll have more time when you're giving the attention to the people for what they need they don't need your attention to when you type your email address need your attention when you're with them not looking at your phone buzzing like crazy that is fantastic give us another hack okay i'll give you one more and this is again something that i've done and has saved me i don't i can't even imagine hundreds of hours so there are things that happen throughout my workflow you know an entrepreneur might do something and i have to explain to them that they did not do that right and here's what you should have done and so i explained to them i write this paragraph it takes me seven minutes to write and then i do it again in an hour and again in an hour so shortcuts aside i write i write for publications but it doesn't matter if you write for publications or your own blog it doesn't matter where you write it but if you find yourself telling people things repetitively twice just write an article write yourself a little note and you just send them that article send that link instead of explaining to them every time so here's the secret out of the i think 190 something articles that i've written on ink magazine probably 80 percent of them were based on mistakes that i experienced in my workflow that instead of explaining to the person what the mistake is and i'll give you an example just give you one example oftentimes someone will make an introduction now they'll make an introduction without speaking to me or to the other person first and so neither of us know the context so someone made an introduction to a big executive of one of the big tech companies in israel i assume that the executive knew what we were talking about the executive assumed i knew what we were talking about get on the phone i say hello she says hello i say how can i help she's like how can i help i'm like what are we talking about she says i have no idea all right goodbye super waste of time super awkward right so now i need to explain to this this entrepreneur this person who made the introduction listen i appreciate the introduction but kindly speak to both sides before give us the context so i wrote an article how to make an introduction and i just send that link to people a hundred times a day so that's another hack instead of writing things just send people a link write the article once send people the link and by the way i have 300 more hacks but those are two that save me a lot of time those two are amazing those two alone are going to have a big big impact last question now hello is you're on social media obviously your life is your living is is participating social media i try to utilize the best of social media to promote values torah classes and so on which one's on its way down is there one we haven't heard of that's on its way up these things work in cycles it feels like facebook is slipping away it feels like you know i don't know the future of twitter is it already peaked and who knows what elon musk will do with it and whether it will come back by the way it's not going through in the end okay and i don't want you to trash any of the social media because that's not good for your business so i'll ask you a different question which is as a rabbi as somebody who wants to be towards the beginning of the next platform to reach people what have we not heard of what's the next big thing that people should be looking out for you promise you're not going to edit this part out i won't edit this out you ready sitting down yeah that's it tick tock tick tock really tick tock is one of the few apps to ever reach three and a half billion downloads the growth of tick tock today is like no other platform has ever experienced um and it's early days so still when i say tick tock you probably think you know little girls dancing or whatever every single brand is already on tick tock now and there's absolutely no expert in the world that will debate what i'm saying right now and that is that tick tock is going to completely dominate the social media landscape there's a reason that every single one of these platforms including facebook and wanted to buy tick tock of course they did not get they did not get aquarius didn't agree to be acquired but everything you see on instagram now the story everything's copied from tiktok and i gotta tell you i've been on tiktok as a consumer of tiktok for years and why is tick that so brilliant because unlike other platforms the algorithm of tik tok actually works what do i mean by that i mean that if my daughter goes into tick-tock she'll see girls dancing when i go into tik-tok it knows what i like and so i only see israel business you know uh judaism nba supercars food these are my these are my loves and passions it knows that and so i literally i'm not exaggerating i i do not ever see non-theist non-modest videos on tick-tock ever it doesn't show up because why does tic-tac have the reputation as being some schmutz dick place that if i would go or somebody would try to teach torah there right and everything had that reputation at first i you know when i was in on facebook you just said it so it's until that person breaks through and say this is a legitimate place to be found and to teach i'll tell you why i'll tell you i listen snapchat probably still has that in in your world but snapchat's gone completely mainstream there's literally no such thing as a tech company or a company or any brand coca-cola that's not on snapchat everyone's on snapchat but when it came out in the beginning oh it's schmidt but that's that's human nature human nature is you know you you remember i remember when we said a cell phone why do i want to be accessible all the time are you nuts i don't want that social media why do i want to give people information about myself what the internet what we said about everything everything i'm not talking about 50 years ago i'm talking about 20 years we all remember i'm sure you remember before we had cell phones right sure you know we said it all we why do i want to share my location why do i you know why do i want to buy things on the internet to get my credit card on the internet that's crazy who doesn't buy so we're afraid of change that's just human nature and tick tock is a change it's not your typical facebook stupid feed and it's it's it's different you know you have to be creative and truth is i got you know i'll admit right now publicly that i have a real problem because i love tik tok consuming tik tok but i i know that as a content creator as a marketer i need to i need to produce content but i'm not 18 and it's very hard for me to use the platform you really have to get the platform so i literally have an agency that posts my content on tick tock for me because i know i have to be there and it's hard for me to do it i'm probably going to end up doing it myself at some point get the courage but the reality is if you want to know what the next big thing is it's not not even next anymore it's now it's tick tock meta facebook is it going downhill yeah their numbers are you know 2.3 billion daily users not two and a half it's not going anywhere so soon but uh but yeah tick tock is definitely definitely the platform to pay attention to nowadays yeah you know it's an interesting question we're out of time but my personal opinion is would i prefer to live in a world that didn't have the social media i think the downside actually beats the upside of it not the internet and technology as a whole but social media when you look at mental illness among young people and you look at the competitiveness and you and i have been the victims of of trolls and and hatred and unfair uh leveling unfair uh statements against you i think the downside actually overwhelms the upside i wish we lived in a world without it my question is but we don't we live in a world with it and if that's ba that's where people are so there are people not coming to my classes in person they're not going to hear my torah they're not going to hear anyone else's torah so that's where they live and that's where they're being influenced by influencers so should torah be an influence and be the influencer where people are and that may be a concession but it's a reality and and you've seen the world adjust right hello you'll appreciate this you know when i started posting on facebook or twitter take twitter it was krum and social media and how could you and i won't tell you which enormous what are considered radio right-wing organizations all twitter handles all post on twitter their executives are all on twitter which mainstream more yeshivish publications yeshivas organizations institutions now they're all on there because they've realized bashar sham if you want to be of influence and if you want to raise money and if you want to make a difference move the needle that's where you've got to be so you know have we reached that place yet with tick-tock it's an interesting question so you know people say when you're when you're doing a talk you should always have a little controversy so so i'm going to create a little controversy and say i fundamentally disagree with you that there's more bad than good i think i suspected you would exponentially more good than bad in my experience but not to be little the bad there's a lot of bad don't get me wrong but but i've not experienced that at all uh by the way i was in uh i was in london uh two months ago for mizrahi shabbas uh for the shabbos of inspiration whatever and i gotta spend a lot of time with shawnee terrigan who is i there are no words in the english dictionary for me to describe how inspiring this woman is um and i was talking to her in the airport walking through the airport i'm talking to her about social media she's like no i'm not on social media i'm like i'm like your torah reaches a thousand two thousand five ten thousand your your torah can reach millions of people i'm not telling you to go you know open facebook and spend all day on social media you have to do your tough kid in this world but hire someone to do it i think i think i sold her on it i'm not sure she's done it yet but i'm working on it but i but i guarantee you listen you can reach impact people like it's just i'm nobody i'm i'm just a tech guy i can tell you stories of people and how their lives changed i met a guy by the way i met a guy this morning from guy from totally from guy and he says to me yeah i love your your ceo pictures in the morning you guys i just got to tell you that a couple of weeks ago i forgot to dive in chakras and then your post reminded me so i put on film i almost missed the day of song that's amazing i got a woman in la who have never spoken to in my life writes me and she says you know i'm a completely unaffiliated jew never kept shabbos in my life your she writes your faith posts that you call your faith posts have inspired me so much that this weekend our family kept shabbat for the first time and we were all crying like babies wow you can't accomplish that in a world without social media so while there are downsides and again we have been the victim of downsides to me the impact you can have on people's lives is just it's just unparalleled and and unprecedented and so for me it is an unbelievable platform but let's let's leave it someplace which we both agree which i think is we need to do a better job of educating our children and practicing ourselves some regulations restrictions a better approach right because it kind of just happened to us but who do you follow when do you post what do you respond to what do you consume how do you choose because that word is very telling influencer and the goal of an influencer is to have influence so who do we want our children or ourselves influenced by and how do we want to influence we should be much more intentional and mindful about that conversation i i dropped my daughter off this morning for camp and i'm standing by gotch all right i'm sure you're good friends with gotch you didn't right we were standing safe so our daughters are good friends we're going to camp and i i said goodbye to my daughter and i gave her a rakha and i said to her i just said three words i said these this just remember this lead don't follow let other people follow you be a leader right so that's the lesson that i want to give my kids and you know in general i think it's an important lesson and that is true about social media it's true offline too you know be a leader be a leader go after what you believe in and let other people follow you don't follow and so i think that that's uh like you said a good way to end the conversation but i think that that's a very global message again offline and online be a leader it's a perfect place to leave at hillfold we can talk literally for hours and please god we will we'll follow up with future parts of this i learned a lot it was a great conversation a lot to think about i can't wait to apply these hacks and to learn more but i want to thank you for your time for all that you do you are a leader forget in the tech industry where you are a leader not an imposter but for israel the full family who your family are the difference that you make um not only through ari's legacy but you each of the folds and your family hashem should continue to give you that strength and that wisdom to lead in every which way to stand up for the jewish people and for israel to make that difference and uh thank you for giving us your time we really appreciate it thank you for having me i'm looking forward to coming to visit you in boca i haven't been there in years can't wait can't wait anytime we'd love to i hope you found that conversation as inspiring and as impactful as i did there's so many things to reflect upon whether it's the imposter syndrome uh that we all suffer from a certain degree or whether it is that notion of karma and even strategically putting good things in the universe that we punish on the almighty the energy of the universe rewards us and sends it back it's in our best interest the notion of gratitude and living with a sense of gratitude and waking up and keeping a gratitude list there so much and the hacks i can't wait to put these hacks into play and to save so much time so i'm really grateful and i hope you got a lot out of that conversation as well we've got a great lineup of guests who are coming as always feel free to rate and review and share who you'd like to see thank you for tuning in and until next time stay happy