Mentoring on Purpose: stories by The Rabbi Who Got Rich on Sunday

In this podcast episode, which is the 47th from The Rabbi Who Got Rich on Sunday, it’s time for you to get an insider’s look at a mentor who helped as an intro to the series called “How to Master Mentoring!”

The reason why I want to share the story about my mentor is it was him who helped me reach success. There are also stories about some of those who I helped too.  

It is my hope that you find these examples how to master mentoring in both stories, which are inspiring and interesting, too!  

Each episode in the how to master mentoring series will follow the same format. It will begin with a story about one of the people who helped to mentor me and one of the people who benefited from me “paying it forward.”

Though many of these stories are distinctly personal and or Judaism-centric, there are always great business lessons to learn that will help most of the listeners or readers! 

These “how to master mentoring” moments are not just about acquiring wealth but about understanding the deeper principles that guide success in any area of life.

I’m Rabbi Dave, and every week we dive deeply into the challenges and triumphs of running a successful home business or side hustle. In this podcast series, we look at How to Master Mentoring.

Mentorship Mastery Story #1: Insight into When To Take Risks

My Grandpa Richard was born December 08, 1911, in Kusel, Germany, which is near Frankfort. He was one of 4 brothers and also had a sister.  

As a family, though proud to be Jewish, they were not overly religious. Growing up on a farm made Grandpa Richard very strong, and he told me proudly how, as a very young boy, he would defend his siblings and would stand up to the bullies who attacked them for being Jewish. 

His penchant for standing up to bullies didn’t have a bad ending because he won respect in the neighborhood. Some called him the “good” Jew because of his strength and left him alone. 

As he grew up, he realized that Germany was not a good place for a Jewish family. On October 29, 1927, at the age of 15, he took a big risk and was passenger number 329 in 3rd class along with his single Aunt Pauline on a ship that landed in NY.  Quite a life change!

In Germany, the family raised cattle as well as fruit trees and were butchers. He became a certified master butcher, so when he landed in NY, he risked lying about his age and got a job as a butcher in Newburg, NY. Then he used his income to bring over his parents and siblings as well as cousins and other relatives!

Fortunately, he was able to accomplish this goal before the immigration laws became prohibitive. 

My grandpa started a Butcher business and took many of his relatives into the business with him. He was known for being good to his word, and his handshake was his contract. 

He married my grandmother Fay on June 19, 1938, and their only child was my father, Jerry. I spent a lot of time with my grandpa Richard and he was my first mentor. 

He turned his butcher store into a chain of butcher stores called Butcher Boy (an innovation in the days before franchises).  He learned the hard way that you couldn’t duplicate yourself and run each store personally, and whenever he was not in a store,  the cashier would skim money, so he gave up on that dream and went on to the next.

He had the idea to create a vacation bungalow colony in the mountains of New York with his siblings called the White Rock in Monticello before it became the most popular summer destination of the time. He invested in the stock market and learned some very successful investing principles among the not-always-successful picks. He never gave up and exemplified consistent insight into calculated risk-taking.  

Sometimes, his ventures did not succeed, and sometimes, they were great successes.  Whenever he had a big win, he would treat my grandma like a queen, and they would take great vacations together and enjoy life together.  A great lesson in the importance of celebrating success. 

He would always buy me baseball cards, which became my first home business.  He taught me to analyze stocks and bought me shares in IBM for my bar mitzvah. He made such an impression on me that I used my other bar mitzvah money to buy two of his favorite utility stocks. The dividends of all of these stock investments were reinvestment so each investment would grow faster and on its own, which I learned from him. 

I held onto those stocks for many years until finally cashing them in to help buy our dream home in Israel without a mortgage! 

He taught me to bowl, pick winning horses (although my grandma Fay’s method of betting my birthday always seemed to do best), and not to be afraid to risk losing if it could mean winning as an entrepreneur and in life. 

He also taught me the importance of family and working out arguments because blood is thicker than water, and he proudly called me the best peacemaker he had ever met. 

His fingers were as thick as tree branches, his arms were tree trunks, and even as he got older and I got bigger, he had no trouble lifting me off the ground in a big hug as if I was a side of beef in the butcher shop. I learned a lot from my mentor Grandpa Richard and throughout my career, I have innovated new ways of doing things, taken calculated risks when the potential rewards were worthwhile, and because of that, had some big failures but many spectacular successes as well!

Mentorship Mastery Story #2: Mentoring by Accident

Some of my most successful mentees were totally not on purpose.  As you’ll learn through this series, I’ve been privileged to have many master mentors who have taught me to be a great mentor.  Oftentimes, you do your best when you don’t even realize what you are doing.

Let me share with you my mentoring story about Yisroel.  

Yisroel was a very engaging study partner of mine at Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore. We both didn’t fit the mold of a typical Rabbinical student.  He was from Mexico, had broken English, came from a proud and traditional Jewish family without a lot of Jewish knowledge, had to support himself with whatever odd jobs he could find, and had a fire for Judaism that burned so bright you could see him from a mile away.  

Except for the broken English and Yisroel’s need to support himself, we were like brothers separated at birth (although we look nothing alike)! 

I was a local with all the connections, and he was a foreigner who was lost without a map.  Regardless, we have remained the best of friends throughout all these years, and today he is considered one of the premier Jewish Rabbinical Speakers throughout the world in both Spanish and English.  

He made his career in the same organization as I did, but how did he get there?

Well, I was in charge of identifying talented staff to work for the Atlantic Seaboard Region of NCSY (a Jewish Youth group based in Baltimore), and I hired Yisroel.  I’d like to say I hired him for his great rabbinical potential, but, as a former chef, I hired him to be kitchen staff!

The kitchen staff usually hung out by themselves and only interacted with the participating teenagers when serving the meals. It was unheard of for them to actually interact with them.  

Nobody told Yisroel that the kitchen staff should keep to themselves, so you can imagine my surprise when he followed behind me and started dancing to and singing Jewish songs with the teens during the meal when he was supposed to be serving food!!  

My boss was furious and asked me to fire him, so instead I made him one of the advisory staff and convinced my boss he could do both!  

He was very quickly one of the most popular staff members with the teen participants and went on to a long and successful full-time career working with them throughout the world and is still a valued scholar in residence on all their big events and trips 35 years later! A mentoring tip to take from this accidental mentoring story is that people will do what you do, not what you say, so make sure to lead by example!

Recap and Weekly Podcast Challenge

I hope you enjoyed the first episode in the miniseries “The Rabbi Who Got Rich on Sunday Shares Mentorship Mastery” This week’s challenge is to think about people who have mentored you or you have mentored in your life and business journey and share with me through social media using our dedicated hashtag #richrabbichallenge, or email me — I’d love to hear from you!

If you’re looking for a mentor and are ready to take your personal growth seriously and see how it can transform your business, I’d love to help you on that journey. Send me an email to set up a free consultation. Let’s unlock your full potential together.

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