Mind Your Business

Mind Y ur Business

Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg: “Solve Pain Points in the Marketplace”

By Yitzchok Saftlas

This column features business insights from a recent “Mind Your Business with Yitzchok Saftlas” radio show. The weekly “Mind Your Business” show – broadcasting since 2015 – features interviews with Fortune 500 executives, business leaders and marketing gurus. Prominent guests include: John Sculley, former CEO of Apple and Pepsi; Dick Schulze, founder and Chairman Emeritus of Best Buy; Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair of GE; among over 400+ senior-level executives and business celebrities.

Yitzchok Saftlas, President of Bottom Line Marketing Group, hosts the weekly “Mind Your Business” show, which airs at 10pm every Sunday night on 710 WOR and throughout America on the iHeartRadio Network.

On a recent 710 WOR “Mind Your Business” broadcast, Yitzchok Saftlas (YS) spoke with guest Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg (IG), a well-known business strategist.

YS: Let’s jump in with a particular challenge that has crossed your desk along with the solution that you brought to the table.

IG: The goal when you start a business is not to make money. I know that sounds shocking – even in this period where coronavirus is concerned. Maybe your goal is to keep your clients happy or to generate new business. And then once these things pass, and they will pass, hopefully sooner rather than later, then at that point, your goal is to take advantage of the work you’ve done until now and to try to make money.

For example, instead of ordering a container from China and waiting for three months for it to arrive, if you ordered a smaller amount of goods and have it shipped by air – which will eat into your profit – ultimately, you’d be able to sell goods at cost or slightly more than cost, which would certainly be good. And instead of losing business – instead of risking a large amount of money for something that may end up not working out – what you end up doing first is that you have some amount of goods that you can sell further, develop a loyal client base, and then once you have the base, the next step is to figure out, OK, how do I make money off these clients? Do I now order a container from China? Do I source from someplace else?

But especially if you’re starting and trying to build a brand and so on and so forth, instead of trying to make money, try to find customers and eventually figure out how to make money as the next step as opposed to from the get-go.

There are many times when someone approaches us here at Bottom Line, and they have what we’ll call a seed that they could plant in the ground. It’s a great concept, but it’s a raw

concept. It needs to be fleshed

out. It needs to be thought through and it needs to be challenged as well. What happens when someone approaches you with an idea that they’ve thought of for perhaps months or years. What’s the approach that you take?

First of all, everyone thinks, as it should be, that their idea is the greatest thing since sliced bread, if not the wheel. You want to validate their idea that it’s a good one, assuming it actually isn’t the worst you’ve ever heard. But you want to gently guide them to a version of their idea that can actually work.

Sometimes the idea itself, as is, can work, as any famous entrepreneur can attest to from their initial idea to their initial startup to how they pivoted over the years, how they got to a level of success. But it took a lot of work. It wasn’t just the initial idea – boom and we’re done. It was actually massaging that idea, finessing that idea, and making that idea into something viable.

So, when someone comes to me with an idea, first thing I want to know after I hear the idea is why they want to do this idea. Do they want to because they think it’s a good, profitable idea or if they had tons of money would they do this idea because they think it’s something that people will find value in and they want to do it? The point is, if you had tons of money and you thought this was a good idea, would you be developing this idea even if it wouldn’t make you a penny just to make society a better place?

When someone comes with an idea, what you’re really trying to first figure out is where’s this idea coming from. Do they think it’s a trillion-dollar idea or do they think it’s an idea that’s going to change the world and hopefully they are also going to make money doing it?

Of course, we’re going to say the obvious: that a company exists and has to generate revenue to be financially viable. True. But really, a company exists to solve a pain point in the marketplace. The company exists in order to provide some type of service or product that doesn’t exist. Or maybe your product or service can be done in a way that provides a better level of service than the previous one. But if you just say, I’m launching this because it’s going to make a ton of money, and then you don’t follow all the mile markers properly and wind up putting out a second-rate product or cutting

corners simply because you want to make money, that’s definitely not a recipe for long term success.

Let’s say you’re going to be giving strategic direction to a company that wants to be out there and build this great organization. But they say to themselves: Listen, why do I need a consultant? At the end of the day, I have the idea. I have a vision for it. What do I gain? Why should I spend ultimately five, ten thousand dollars with a consultant when I have the idea already in my head?

First of all, there are many people who have opened businesses successfully, and they’ve done the grind and they’ve spent 20 years making a business go from zero to hero, really building a very successful business. And for some unusual reason, when the next business opportunity comes along, when they’re doing something new, they come to me. One particular example I’m thinking of is with a very wealthy man who is putting his son into business. He doesn’t want to have his son come into his business; his son is starting his own business. The father is helping him out. The father says, “When I started, I didn’t have the money to hire a consultant, somebody to guide me, somebody to be my partner without having to split the money with them. I need you to be in my ear and guide me properly. I don’t want you to have to sweat through what I sweated through.”

Perhaps now we can move to a very important topic, and that is managing expectations. At the end of the day, every company exists to solve a pain point in the marketplace. And, of course, you know, it has to turn a profit in order to be successful. Yet, at the same time, companies don’t become great success stories overnight. What’s your advice to companies out there on how they have to be realistic on managing expectations?

When your client pays you, they have a specific vision in their head, a specific picture or a specific video playing in their head. They say, “I’m paying this in exchange for this.” I’m going to be receiving something in exchange. The more you can paint that picture for your clients fairly and properly of what they’re going to receive, the happier they will be with what they purchased.

As an example, I fly a lot, or at least I did until recently. When you go on an airplane and you buy a ticket, you have an expectation of what you’re going to receive for this amount of money when you’re flying a short hop in Europe from one place to another, and you can’t take any luggage and you can’t even pick a seat without paying extra. But ultimately, you know that this airline for this amount of money is going to give me nothing except they’re going to help me get from point A to point B. I can usually know I’m on the local airlines, for example, when you get to the destination airport, you’re probably going to have to get off the plane on stairs and take a bus to the airport. So essentially, you know, you’re paying the low price. You’re getting a very basic service, and that’s fine.

But when I’m paying for a full-service flight, I expect them to have some kosher food served to me on the plane.

The managing expectations is something that I think is discussed in concept a whole lot. But essentially, if your customer is paying you a certain amount of money and then you over-deliver, what does over-delivery mean? If I’m flying on a local airline and they pull up till the airport and they have a sleeve connecting the plane to the airport, I’m so happy. I’m so excited in the sense that I feel I got even more value than I was expecting, which means they over-delivered.

Every business has to think about this. How much is my customer paying me? What do they think they’re getting for that money? Do they leave disappointed or do they leave basically happy or leave super-excited happy?

Rabbi, the time flies when we

do a show, especially with a great guest like you. We have only approximately two and a half minutes left. Whether it’s a business, whether it’s

a non-profit, or someone out

there who is ambitious and wants to be successful – what’s

a final takeaway that you

could share with them?

I know this may sound cliche, but people wait for the perfect idea or the perfect opportunity to launch. For example, I had a lifelong dream of having my own synagogue, essentially my own community synagogue. And I opened my synagogue here in Jerusalem three weeks before the coronavirus essentially shut down the entire world and here in Israel, as well as many other places, synagogues as well.

There never will be the perfect time to do something because there’s always different things going on in the world or locally or with your potential clients or other people having all kinds of plans, which you know nothing about which may affect your potential idea or business. People know from their past experiences in business or lack of experience in the business that they sort of get frozen and unable to move. You just have to take what you got and take the best shot using the amount of information you were able to put together. Do what you honestly feel is the right thing to do and just go for it.

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Forgotten Her es Cloaks & Daggers

By Avi Heiligman

Spies have intrigued people for millennium. From the spies in the times of the Moshe Rabbeinu to modern day high-tech super spies, there have always been special tools employed by spies. These gadgets make their operations go smoother and include some really interesting items that are worthy of discussion. During World War II, both the United States and Great Britain had special intelligence sections work on outfitting spies with the latest contraptions and instruments to ensure success behind enemy lines.

One of the skills spies, aircrew members and many other military personnel are taught is escape and evasion. If caught and held in enemy prisons, packages could sometimes be brought to a spy or soldier. Other times, the soldier or spy would find themselves in a predicament from which they needed to evacuate immediately. Ingenious ways to hide essential items were used, and this is evident in the way escape maps were obtained. Maps of the area of operation were also hidden in the spy’s clothing in case he or she felt the need for escape and evasion. During World War II, the Allies produced millions of maps on cloths such as silk and thin paper. These could be hidden inside flat items like Monopoly boards that were then sent to prison camps undetected by the Nazis and Japanese.

Secret compartments in places like gameboards, matchboxes, coins and buttons were ideal for hiding things that would be useful behind enemy lines. Microfilm could be hidden in hollowed-out coat buttons. This method was ingenious because if caught, Gestapo agents would turn the button looking for anything concealed. What they didn’t expect was that the OSS personnel would sew the button on using a left-hander. This way, the Nazis would only tighten the button if it was twisted.

The British officer from the MI9 office that was responsible for a lot of the equipment that helped tens of thousands of Allied personnel evade the enemy was Christopher “Clutty” Hutton. Using spy books from previous wars, Hutton was the mastermind behind the use of silk maps. Collaborating with a silk manufacturer who had written a book on prison escapes in World War I, Hutton got to work. He located a mapmaking company who waived their copyrights and let him produce their maps with cartographic data for the war effort. To prevent the ink from blurring, pectin was added, and to increase usefulness, both sides of the silk was used. The advantage of using silk was that the maps didn’t rustle or get torn when crammed inside small spaces like hollowed-out pencils. Maps were also produced on other fibers, tissue paper, handkerchiefs, and a card deck that had 52 pieces of the map hidden inside. The deck was a 52-piece puzzle that, when put together, formed a map of Germany.

In addition to his maps, Hutton also put compasses into buttons and cufflinks, placed rations into cigar boxes, and created a cigarette holder that doubled as a mini telescope. Paper clips were magnetized with a simple on-the-balance point that allowed it to be used as a compass. His escape boxes were flown into occupied countries and were used on countless occasions.

The OSS, the precursor to the CIA, also was heavily involved in manufacturing escape tools. Their maps weren’t as famous as their British counterparts, but they were known for gadgets like pens that concealed knives, spy cameras, and explosive devices like limpet mines and flash bang grenades.

Explosives were often needed by spies for sabotage, and the OSS found ingenious hiding places. Water canteens with false bottoms were produced to hold explosives as were hollowed out limps of coal.

Spies needed a cover story, and the OSS had a department to outfit them with a cover identity down to the minutest details. They went to great lengths to forge German papers that would allow their operatives to access different parts of occupied Europe.

The pen pistol was a onetime-use mechanism. Hiding a knife in a pen saved the life of at least one OSS agent. The story goes that the agent was captured and was sitting with his hands tied next to a Gestapo officer in the backseat of a vehicle. The driver stopped for minute at the side of a lonely road to go about his business while the Nazi in the back dozed off. The OSS agent had been searched earlier but the pen that had been in his pocket was not taken away as there was no reason to suspect that it contained a hidden knife. He carefully maneuvered his hands and removed the knife. Quickly, he cut the ropes binding his hands and slit the neck of the Gestapo officer. While he was running towards the nearby woods, he was shot at and hit in the leg. However, that did not stop him, and he made his way to freedom.

Inventors in the United States and Great Britain were given the green light to come up with as many useful tools and gadgets that would be helpful to those behind enemy lines. While some of the ideas like miniature blowpipe and darts were dropped, others like the biscuit tin radio were sent into occupied territories. These items increased the productivity and lifespan of a mission and saved the lives of countless operatives and soldiers.

Avi Heiligman is a weekly contributor to The Jewish Home. He welcomes your comments and suggestions for future columns and can be reached at aviheiligman@gmail.com. A map hidden inside a deck of cards

The OSS Stinger Pen Gun

A compass hidden inside a button