Finding The Life + Business You Really Want with Chris LoCurto
Chris:
www.ChrisLoCurto.com
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life, and
discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show,
folks. I am so excited about today's interview. You have heard me talk about
Rabbi Daniel Lapin before. For those of you that have been with me for a long
time, you've heard the interviews that I've had with Rabbi. He's just not only of
my favorite people to interview, but also a huge influence in my life. I am so glad
to have him on. Rabbi is known worldwide as America's Rabbi. He's got a great
saying that "Everybody needs a Rabbi, even you Christians." He's noted as a
rabbinic scholar, bestselling author, phenomenal books. Thou Shall Prosper is
just incredible. He's got the Rabbi Daniel Lapin Show. In 2007, Newsweek
Magazine included him in its list of America's 50 Most Influential Rabbis.
Before he came to the US in 1973, Rabbi Lapin studied the Torah, physics,
economics, and mathematics in Johannesburg, London and Jerusalem. I know
this seems like, "Wow! What a crazy group of things to be studying," but this
formed the bedrock of his conviction that no conflict exists between the physical
and spiritual, virtue and strength, or faith and wealth. We're going to be diving
into a lot of that stuff today as we talk about is brand new book. If you would do
me a huge favor, welcome to the show, Rabbi Daniel Lapin. Rabbi, thank you so
much for coming on.
Daniel:
I'd be looking forward to it, Chris.
Chris:
It has always been an honor for me to hang out with you and just talk about
stuff.
Daniel:
Likewise. Great.
Chris:
Our interviews are always fantastic, great, long, wonderful. I got so many
questions, as I've been working through this, I had to delete questions down to
20, which there's no way we're going to be able to get that today, so I'm going to
pick and choose as we go through, because your new book, Business Secrets
from the Bible, is just phenomenal. No surprise. Before we get into that, I do
have to say I believe you're taking a very nice trip here starting very soon.
Daniel:
That's right.
Chris:
The spoils of working hard and being successful.
Daniel:
Thank you. Yes, indeed.
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Chris:
That is so much of what you teach us. Before we dig in, I would love for you to
tell us why did you decide to write this book.
Daniel:
It was interesting. The first book was Thou Shall Prosper: The Ten
Commandments for Making Money. That was the result of many years of
research, doing something that nobody but an authorized Jewish rabbi could
have done without being accused of bigotry, which was basically ask the
question of why do Jews prosper, so does proportionately financially, which is
not to say there are no poor Jews. Of course there are, but, overwhelmingly,
Jews do well, so much so that the famous list of the 400 Wealthiest Americans
that Forbes Magazine publishes every year never has fewer than 60 Jews on it.
Nearly every year, it has about 100 Jews on it, which is really remarkable, but if
you measure the demographic proportion of the country, there really ought to
be about 8 or 9 Jews on it max. Yet it's like usually 10 times that. It's really
unmistakable. We're a much smaller population than Sri Lankans are, and yet
you don't find this amongst Sri Lankans or any other group at all.
My big question was I needed to find out what was it that was responsible for
Jewish financial success? Number two, just as importantly, did it depend on
religion, did it depend on being circumcised - not to be frivolous about it - or was
it instead a vast body of strategy, of tips, of tools and techniques derived from
ancient Jewish wisdom that anybody could employ? After I had diligently
researched and also exploring unpleasant options such as maybe Jews just
routinely rip everybody off and they're just dishonest in business, and that gives
them a certain advantage, which it does, of course, because, honesty is only the
best policy if you're in it for the long term. If you're a hit and run businessman
then total moral flexibility is by far and away the best thing. I was quite relieved
to discover that Jews are not more dishonest than anybody else.
We've got our bad apples, just like everybody else does, but, overwhelmingly,
the hundreds and hundreds of Christians I interviewed who had years and years
and years and, in some cases, a lifetime of partnerships with Jewish associates
could not speak more highly. In fact, many of them spoke about apprenticing
their children - sons and daughters - to Jewish colleagues because they want
them to pick up some of these things. I knew I was on to something. Years and
years later, I'd finished my work, which was identifying the places in the Hebrew
scriptures that taught the key things one needs to know to financially prosper. I
presented it to the publishers and they really were uneasy about so much
biblical stuff about so much stuff about God. They wanted a lot of that
expurgated and excised from the book, which I did.
Chris:
Which would mean there'd be no book.
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Daniel:
There was, and it was a very successful book, Thou Shall Prosper. Very
successful. They came to me afterwards and said, "We had no idea we had a
bestseller on our hands. Your book just keeps selling and selling and selling. The
word of mouth spreads. It just keeps selling more. It's been out for a few years
now. What we'd like to do is talk to you about doing a second book, where you
could put in all the stuff we stupidly had you take out in the first place."
Chris:
Oh, Lord.
Daniel:
That became Business Secrets from the Bible. It's very, very close to my heart. It
spells out 40 spiritual strategies that literally have as their primary focus financial
abundance. I say financial abundance because sometimes people say, "I'm rich.
I've got a lovely family and I enjoy my life." Yeah, okay. That's all wonderful and
God bless you, but we're actually now talking about money in the bank. We're
not talking about reducing debt because there are people out there like Dave
Ramsey, and nobody does it better. We're not talking about how to invest the
money you've got. There are plenty of books for that, but that presupposes that
you have enough discretionary money in order to do those investment. We're
talking about increasing your revenue. Then, later on, you invest at something
else. All we're focused on is increasing the amount of income that you generate
every year.
Chris:
The reason why I love this so much, the last time we talked, the last time we
interviewed, you pointed out something that, for me, I was trying to say, "Okay, I
need you to help explain to people the importance of tithing in business." My
whole life growing up in Christian churches, the thing that I always heard is when
you tithe, God is going to bless you, but it doesn't mean that he's going to bless
you financially. It means that he's going to give you what he has for you. You
said, "No, Chris. That's not correct," that actually the word has double meaning,
and one of the meanings is he will bless you financially. In that moment, it was
so funny because I remember sitting in the studio just going, "Dang it." How is it
that we have been telling people forever ... And I've heard it in 20 different
churches. I've heard it in so many different times, people preaching that, saying,
in not knowing the secret, the translation of, no, it is a double meaning.
Daniel:
Look, to be perfectly candid, I find it depressing the number of times I speak ...
You know I speak at 30, 40 churches every year.
Chris:
Oh, yeah. Christian churches.
Daniel:
Yeah, Christian churches. I find it depressing how many of them I come to and I
can tell the minute I arrive that the church believes that making money is
somehow antithetical to being godly because I see deferred maintenance and
light bulbs not replaced, a paint needed here and there, and I see stress lines on
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the pastor's wife's face because I know she's not managing to pay the bills. It
hurts me. That really is where I see my ministry is trying my best to correct
biblical misimpressions when it comes to God's plan for human economic
interaction.
Chris:
I love the way you just said that because, truthfully, if we take those people that
are leading that church that way or the church is believing that, it's a
misimpression. It's not a correct understanding. That's, again, why I love this is
because these are secrets. There are things that we, the common person, just
hasn't understood. Starting with that, I want to get into secret number one,
which is a mantra for us here, me and my business here. It's a huge part of what
we do. It's a huge part because of your influence in my life, personally. My team
here, it's big for us. If you would talk about secret number one and its
importance.
Daniel:
This is it. In a nutshell, we've got to ask ourselves what is God's intention for the
relationship between us and money. At the same time, we know that the love of
money is not a good thing, it's not a healthy thing. What exactly is going on
here? The answer is shocking in its breathtaking simplicity. That is you're not
supposed to focus on money; you're supposed to focus on doing everything you
can to fulfill the needs and desires of God's other children, the money will follow
in itself. That shouldn't surprise you, that a good and loving God wants to reward
you for taking care of his other children. You'll never find a Jewish concept, you
won't find any Jewish writing or Jewish literature or Jewish conduct where
people say, "Please, God, send me another thousand dollars." Come on. "Give
me the law of attraction. I want to attract another thousand dollars," or some
other type of nonsense. That's not how it works. It's, "God, open my eyes to
ways in which I can serve more of your other children," period. The money
follows by itself.
Chris:
Two things in there. One, you said a loving God. So many people are not coming
from a place of understanding that there is nobody who's going to love them any
more than God, that we do have a great, loving God, because, again, they're
coming from bad backgrounds and not really understanding that. It's a very
distinct God, it's an angry, hurtful God, but the truth is he is a phenomenally
loving God. That's important. The second thing is - you have a term for this become obsessively preoccupied with the needs of others.
Daniel:
Yes.
Chris:
How did you arrive at that term?
Daniel:
I didn't arrive at anything. Frankly, all I'm doing is translating 2,000 years of
ancient Jewish wisdom and probably about 5,000 pages of densely-packed
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Hebrew text, this formulation we just hear again and again and again, which is
just focus on the needs and desires of God's other children.
Chris:
In order to do this, correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the biggest things that has
to do with this in my mind is dependence on other people. It's not an
interdependence on other people, but there is so much out there today that is
going against that concept - be independent, do it yourself. How much greater
advantage do you have not being dependent but interdependent on people?
Daniel:
Right. Let me just say something which I was weighing up whether it's okay to
say on your show or not. I decided that, at the risk of offending, which I hope I
won't do, but I know that your dedication is to your audience getting the truth,
your audience getting information that is transformational, that literally has the
ability to help them to transform their lives, I'm going to tell the truth, and that is
you have to ask yourself a big question, which is who has done more for more of
God's children? Mother Theresa or Bill Gates? It sounds like a provocative
question. On the surface of it, your instincts are to answer, "Mother Theresa a
saintly lady, but Bill Gates is just a greedy richest man in the world." That's not
how I phrase it because only God peers into the souls of human beings. We only
have the capacity to judge actions not thoughts. We don't know one another's
thoughts. Half the time I'm not sure of my own motivations. I certainly don't
know yours. It's just sheer arrogance for me to presume that I know someone
else's motivations, but I do know other people's actions.
Who has done more for more people? Mother Theresa or Bill Gates? God bless
the Saint of Calcutta, but the number of people she could have helped in her life,
I don't know the exact number, but it's not hard to figure out a range. She
helped a thousand people in the slums of Calcutta? Yeah, most likely. Has she
helped a million? That's pushing it, but maybe. How about 10 million? I think we
can all agree there was no way. If she would have lived another hundred years,
she still wouldn't have helped 10 million people. It's not possible. Somewhere in
the range of she helped a thousand people to 10 million people, I'm willing to
say. How many people has Bill Gates helped? At a minimum, the half a billion
people, the 500 million people who have bought Windows. Now they did that
voluntarily because if they didn't want to, they could have bought Linux or Apple
or any other operating systems. They bought Windows because it improves their
lives. That's what they did. They felt the exchange was fair, the amount of money
they gave Bill Gates in exchange for Windows was worth it because they made
more money or found their lives more satisfying by using the computer than not.
Bill Gates has helped at least 50 times more people. Not surprisingly, he's made
a lot of money. That is the definition.
That's why one of the most destructive phrases that we employ is when we tell
people find a career doing what you love doing. What a selfish way of doing it. I
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don't think God blesses that one little bit. Find out what you want to do and then
try and make a living at it? All I know is I love boating and I've yet to find anyone
to pay me to go boating. It doesn't work that way. No. The right thing to do is to
find what people in your community, in your neighborhood, in your circle, in
your social media, or whatever it is, find out what people need, find out ways in
which you can improve their lives, and then learn to love doing that because that
will be rewarding in the utmost. God measures what you do for other people,
not what you feel like doing.
Chris:
Right. The most rewarding is helping people with what you do. If you can find a
way to love it, powerful. That's a great thing.
Daniel:
We do learn to love it. Most of us do learn to love what we end up being
professional at, what we end up being good at, what we end up serving people
at, what we end up gaining people's appreciation, and, yes, gaining their dollar,
which turns out bottom line in their profits. When you spoke about
interdependency, this is really all part of it because one of the things that ...
Perhaps one of the most effective triggers for good human interaction is
business. Countries and individuals that are trading with one another usually do
not hurt one another. In fact, we pray for one another's welfare. Let's imagine
that there are 5 of us in this tiny village and each of us takes care of our own
needs. We'll grow our own wheat and corn, we grown our own sheep for wool,
and we grow our own cotton for clothing, and we grow our own cows for dairy
products, and we're each independent. We look at each other as lifelong
competitors. We're competing for the same grass and the same oxygen and the
same water so our crops can grow. That kind of independence does nothing,
does not make God smile. God rewards us for becoming dependent on each
other. It's called specialization.
That's why it is that at the end of the Book of Genesis, when Jacob gathered his
sons around him, he spends a chapter, 30 verses giving a separate, distinct,
specialized blessing to each son. You would have thought that he would have
just said, "Boys, I'm 147 years old. It's been a rough life. Frankly, some of you
have been a real pain in the neck. Goodbye. Take care of each other. God bless
you. I'm gone."
Chris:
Is that not what he said?
Daniel:
Yeah. Instead of that, what's the idea? Because he wanted to make his sons all
interdependent on each other. He turned each one into a specialist. The one that
was good in teaching knew that he'd have to buy shoes from another one and
the one that was good at trading would need to hire the teaching one to educate
his children and so on and so forth. They would all be unified in a cocoon of
interdependency and interconnectivity and trust and friendship and warmth and
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caring. That is the entire spirit. Not surprisingly, God rewards in a way that Adam
Smith didn't really discover until the late 18th Century. Jews have always
understood that we make much more money if we do what we do best and hire
other people to fill in for us. The last thing I'm going to do is waste my time doing
my books and doing my taxes when I can hire an accountant who do a much
better job than I could and free me up to do what I do best.
I love motor cars. When I was a kid, I used to love working on my cars. They
didn't used to have fuel injection systems, they didn't have computers in cars in
those days. You strip your carburetor, cleaned it in gasoline, fix the worn parts,
put it back, and your car will run. You didn't have to be an electronic engineer in
order to fix a car. These days, even though I probably enjoy doing it, I don't do it.
I don't do that because it doesn't make sense. I must practice the blessing of
specialization and build economic interaction. That's why I do a better job
serving the people who want me to help them build their business plans and
consult their business development. The people who work for me do a much
better job of the things I need doing that I possibly could have done myself.
Chris:
This is so ingrained in the Jewish culture, so much so that way back when or even
still to this day ... I don't know, probably not to this day, but you used to be
named by what you did. You could find somebody by their last name would line
up with the specialization that they had.
Daniel:
Oh, very much so. Yes. People's names revealed whether they were in the
jewelry business, they were in the water business, they were in the printing
business, they were in the bedding and linen business, and names. Today it still
remains with names like Smith or sometimes Blacksmith, Goldsmith, Silversmith.
These are all Hebrew names, originally.
Chris:
The power of specialization and exchange is something that I don't think a lot of
people get. It's something that I learned a long time ago, when I moved from
California to the south, I had an old pickup truck and I rebuilt the engine and put
it back in and moved out. I had time, I was a kid. It was fun. I can't take time to
change the oil in my car nowadays. It would be stupid if I did.
Daniel:
It would be really dumb of you to do that.
Chris:
Yeah, irresponsible with what God's given me and [what he's allowed me 21:47]
but, instead, and so many people trying to accomplish everything. Whenever I'm
teaching a bunch of entrepreneurs, I'll usually have the group in and I'll say,
"How many have your house cleaned? Did you have a housekeeper?" You'll see
some guys' hands up and you'll see some of the gals' hands go up. It's like, "How
many of you ladies feel guilty about that? You're running a big business. How
many feel guilty about it?" You could just see, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe this
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that I do this." I ask the question of, "Those of you that have housekeepers, how
many will clean the house the first few times before they came over?" Every
single timeDaniel:
Quite right. Exactly.
Chris:
They came to a place of understanding. There's no possible way. There is a way,
but it would be destructive for them to run a business and continue to do those
things. Along the side of specializing in what I do best, which is the concept, be
great at what you do. The exchange side of it also creates more of God's
economy, correct?
Daniel:
Very much so. Even on an individual level, by the way, which is why the
overwhelming majority of successful businesses were started by 2 people, not by
1 person, because it's very unlikely that one guy is a very good inside guy and a
good outside guy. It's very unusual for one guy to be really good at writing code
and, at the same time, excellent at schmoozing and chatting and marketing and
selling, no. There was a reason that, in the early days, it was Bill Gates and Paul
Allen. It wasn't just Bill Gates. Similarly, Google was more than one person. There
are exceptions, particularly in the outlying area of high tech. Overwhelmingly,
specialization even works at a business entrepreneurial level, at a business
startup level.
In addition to that, you also have the cumulative effect of 2 human beings
functioning with each other. It's like if you throw 2 dice and each one has 6
possibilities then the way the possibilities line up is 36 different ways that 2 dice
can fall. In the same way, if 1 human being, let's just say for a moment, has a
capacity of 10 good ideas a day, which is low, if you meet up and you partner
with somebody else, that doesn't mean you end up with 20 good ideas a day, but
it means you end up with 100 good ideas a day between you. Connection with
other people is another vital aspect of Business Secrets from the Bible.
Chris:
Now let me ask this question because I ask this jokingly, but I'm also serious as
well because the question is does the specialization exchange only apply to
things that you don't like doing? The reason I ask that question is there are a lot
of leaders and entrepreneurs that listen to me that send in saying, "Hey, I listen
to you while riding my lawnmower," "I listen to you when I'm doing this chore,"
"I listen to you when I'm doing this thing." I do know, for some people, that's a
stress-reliever, a release, whatever. What are your thoughts on that? Does
specialization and exchange only apply to things that you don't like doing, or
does it need to apply to things that you even might like doing, or it's just stressrelief?
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No. One of the secrets of financial success from the Bible revolves around selfdiscipline. Now everybody knows that self-discipline is important. You'll read it
everywhere, but only in the Bible do we find not only that self-discipline is
important, but the techniques of how to strengthen our self-discipline. It
becomes very important because in order to succeed, you are going to end up
doing things you don't like doing and you're going to have to move out of your
comfort zone. Now the great thing is about the way the good Lord created us is
that once you do those things, they start becoming a lot less terrifying. They are
no longer like frightening monsters lurking in the dark. You've conquered them
and you've beaten them. For instance, connecting with other people, obviously,
is very important. Now many people are bad at it or uncomfortable doing it.
Many people sometimes say to me, "Look, I'm sorry, I'm just an introverted
person. I'm a shy person. I don't like connecting up with people. I'm really happy
just sitting down in a corner by myself and reading a book." Okay, fine. You've
got to decide now do you want to be much more economically successful, do
you want to have more money, and, while we're at it, more friends, or would
you rather be lonely and poor? Without pushing the point too far, that's the
choice. That means you've got to get out of your comfort zone because the
answer is obvious. There are people who sound just horrible at numbers,
"Anyway, Rabbi Lapin, you told us to hire an accountant." Yeah, I did tell you to
hire an accountant, but guess what? I also told you to learn how to read financial
statements. "Oh, no. I hate numbers." Okay, fine. Let me tell you you're going to
have to hire somebody to teach you because you're, obviously, not a person
who's capable of making yourself learn it from a book. Pay somebody to teach
you how to read numbers.
At the end of the day, you're going to be excited, you're going to like it, and
you're going to take pride in being able to examine your numbers and the
numbers ... Who knows? You might want to do a joint venture with another
entrepreneur some time. Wouldn't you like to be able to really know the truth
about his business from his numbers, instead of just listening to what he tells
you? You will have to get out of your comfort zone in one area or another in
order to successfully deploy Jewish strategies for financial abundance.
Chris:
I had to just stop myself from busting out laughing. That was awesome. I like it.
"You honestly can't teach yourself from a book." Gosh, it's a long way around
this, but you talk about God's offerings to us.
Daniel:
We're doing great. Out of the 40 strategies in the book, we've touched on about
a tenth of one and I think about 5% of two others. We're moving along well.
Chris:
We're moving along. [crosstalk 28:29].
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Daniel:
Look, if the whole thing could be captured in a one hour conversation-
Chris:
Oh, gosh.
Daniel:
I'd have considerable cheek charging $25 for the book, wouldn't I?
Chris:
Like I say, I had to stop writing down things that I wanted to ask you and then I
had to go back through and delete a bunch of stuff because it's like there's no
way I'm going to get to this. What we touched on in this time frame is, gosh, it's
minuscule compared to all the amazing stuff that you put in the book. I'm trying
to pick the things that I feel like my audience listening is going, "Oh, gosh. I
needed to know that. I needed to hear that." One of those things is God's
offering to us. For me, when I left Dave Ramsey's and started my own business, it
was a very difficult and painful time for Dave and I. It was something that I had
heard God telling me that I was going to be doing, which I wrestled with God
with because I didn't believe in it. I thought that wasn't it. Everything that was
going on there was great, fantastic direction until I really felt like God said, "No,
you're going. You have to do this." Sharing that with Dave and walking through
that process, it was painful. We shed a lot of tears. It was very difficult, but Dave
was very much, "No. You can't go," but I knew what I heard God telling me to do.
Even to the point ... And, Rabbi, I've never shared this publicly, but one week
before we started our conversations about that, I felt like God very strongly said
to me, "You will leave," because I kept denying it for the longest time. It scared
the daylights out of me. That's when I said, "Okay, that's it. I got to go." I held on
to that for the longest time, not understanding, until this business where we've
done so many phenomenal things, amazing stuff. It's been an incredible blessing.
God has continued to blow it up at an incredible rate. Then, one day, sitting here,
I was talking with one of my guys, Keith, about Hebrews and understanding
children of Israel, going to the land of Canaan, and denying, denying, denying.
Then God's like, "Forget it. Then you're not going to get in." I really felt in that
moment God was speaking to me, saying that was this. If I didn't follow the
offering that he had for me, this would not exist and people wouldn't be getting
their lives changed through what we do now. Thoughts on that, explain to us
God's offering to us, and just that whole concept.
Daniel:
There, obviously, is also a danger in that because of the potential for subjectivity,
the danger and, in your case, the results prove the authenticity of the process.
For many of us, we begin to think we hear God telling us to do what deep in our
hearts we want to do anyway. Then when it doesn't work well, we blame it on
God. I've seen that happen a whole lot of times as well. I've seen people in good
jobs, I've seen pastors in good churches who tell me, "I heard God told me to
pick up and leave and to start a new business or a new church." I say, "If you're
sure, go ahead. You ask me for my opinion, my opinion is you're not there yet.
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You need a little bit more in the bank. You need a little more experience. You
need just a little bit more background before you do what you're thinking of
doing." I will say that for every case that worked out badly, I also know cases that
worked out well, like yours. I'm just saying that there needs to be some caution
there because I list 40 specific, clear biblical principles in the book that are totally
non-subjective. These are not things you can be imagining. These are not things
that you hear a voice in the night. These are very, very real things that you can
and should be doing.
I would say that, for the majority of people, the abundance in God's blessing is
I've created a limitless world, pay no heed to those who frighten you with
fantasies of shortage. Put out of your mind the idea that we're running out of
anything. We're not. We live in a world where there was a time where England
believed it was running out of coal, and so they decided that the only thing to do
was dial back their industry and cut working hours so the people wouldn't use so
much coal. England still is burning coal, nowhere near running out of it. There
was a time where America said, really, colonial days, they said, "Turn off your
lanterns at 9:00 at night by law because we're running out of whale oil." The
truth was they were, but it didn't matter because while they were having the
stupid debate about running out of whale oil, which is how American or, should I
say, colonial houses were lit at night - that's why there was such a whale industry
out of Nantucket and out of New England - while they were arguing about
running out of whale oil, right then, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, oil was being
discovered in the ground, an absolutely bonanza of oil that has still to run out. It
didn't matter that we were running out of whale oil because nobody was going
to be using it much longer.
So it is. There was a big scare that we were running out of copper. This was back
in the '80s when fax machines started becoming popular. A lot of people did the
calculation. 6 billion people in the world. If everybody wants 2 copper wires, one
for their phone and one for their fax machine, there is not enough copper in the
world. Oh, woe is us! We're in shortage. Nobody thought that within a few short
years, we'll be carrying electronic messages in gloss, which, buy the way, is made
out of sand. If you visited a desert lately, we're in no danger of running out of
that. In many parts of the world, they've skipped copper wire and gone straight
to cellular. Most of Africa today is on cell phone. Don't buy the idea of shortage.
Absorb the message of abundance, but not in terms of the prosperity gospel.
This isn't sitting down and praying to God for a Ferrari, because if you do that, I
promise you, God will hear your prayer and I promise you his answer will be,
"No. What have you done for anybody else?"
Chris:
No Ferraris if you haven't helped people out.
Daniel:
Yes, if you have-
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Chris:
That's a biblical secret that I just came up with right there.
Daniel:
It's absolutely right. Money is a certificate of good performance. Money in your
pocket means you pleased other children of God. It has to be. There's one
exception, unless you defrauded other people to get it, or you held up a
convenience store at the point of a gun and you got the money that way. If
people voluntarily gave you money because you pleased them to a greater
extent than the value of the money they gave you.
Chris:
Absolutely. All right, I want to go back a little bit. Jump ahead, but also combine
in this community concept. I've always told people I believe the strongest
community on the planet is the Jewish community. It's phenomenal when you
can take a look inside and see how well people work together, why they work
together. I've had the honor of coaching some Jewish leaders, and it has been
phenomenal when it comes to how their business operates from the community
aspect, that everybody has to be a part of God's economy. Why is that so
powerful inside the Jewish community? Was is it that Jews have discovered as
far as the communities? Not just the interdependence, but the whole
community aspect.
Daniel:
Look, it's very simple. We understand that early in Genesis, when God says, "It's
not good for men to be alone," that's not just a prescription for Adam's
matrimonial prospects, that's not just part of the narrative of the story of the
Garden of Eden, no. That is God's statement for all people at all time: not good
for you to be alone, because if you are, your life ... And Thomas Hobbes said this
just even better, if you do decide that you want to be alone, your life will be
painful, short, and poor.
Chris:
Obviously. Again, as we talked about in the beginning of this, that is not how the
Jewish community operates, [and successful 37:43].
Daniel:
We always just understood. Not good for man to be alone means you need to be
connected with everybody. You've got to. There are all kinds of Jewish structures
that make this possible. For instance, we need a minimum of 10 men for a prayer
service. Now any ideas you might have had about being a lonely guy, you don't
like other people, you just want to hang out by yourself. Yeah, you pray to God
every day just by yourself. Sorry, loser, that's not how it works. You've got to get
together with 9 other guys whether you like it or not, every morning. Pretty
soon, you'll discover you do like it, particularly when you discover that you end
up doing business with the guys you pray with, which is exactly how God likes it.
Chris:
That's something that I'm always trying to say. Isolation is so horrible in any
capacity. It's not good, it's not healthy for you. I'm going to move into the
employer-employee discussion inside the book, where you used an analogy of a
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rental car, which I thought was brilliant with who is your customer? Why is it
that we don't treat the person that signs our paycheck the same way we treat
the customers of the business? Can you explain? Because it's an aspect I don't
think many people at all have ever really thought about.
Daniel:
I'll tell you this that in part of my research a few years ago, I remember
interviewing the deans of 4 of the leading business schools in the country. The
main question I asked them was, "Could you define a business?" I must tell you I
ended up with 4 long paragraphs, each one of which was completely
incompatible with the other 3. Each of the heads of 4 of the country's top
business schools had their own idea of what their definition of a business was.
None of them agreed with each other. I thought, "Remind me to tell folks don't
waste your money sending your kids to business schools. It's not necessary." It's
just not necessary because the definition of business is really, really simple, and
that is if you have customers. Anybody that has customers is in business, period.
That's not hard to understand. Customers mean that there are other human
beings, other children of God whom you serve and whose lives you bring such
value that they hand over some certificates of performance, little green strips of
paper, that acknowledge what you've done for them. That's beautiful, that's
God's system.
Chris:
That means that the people that are working inside of a business have a
customer, which would be that person who's handing over those green
certificates.
Daniel:
Absolutely, yeah. Certainly. You might be an employee of a bus company, but and this is, again, a big, very important Jewish secret, and in Business Secrets
from the Bible, I explained how to go about doing this - you've got to start seeing
yourself as being in business for yourself. You've got to stop seeing yourself as an
employee. Right now you are in the transportation business and, at the moment,
you only have one customer. You're in the business of selling your time and skill
and you happen to have one customer who is the bus company. You work 6-hour
shifts, which means that you've got at least another 4 or 5 hours of good
productive time every day that you could use. Do not waste it sitting in front of
the television set. The television set is your enemy of prosperity. No. Since you
are in the transportation business, start driving for Uber or start an airport
transport service. There's going to be enough people in your neighborhood who
do not want to leave their cars at the airport. Drive them. Whatever it is, grapple
with finding ways to serve God's other children. That's all you got to do.
If you are now getting ready to start out, you want to do something, you want to
break free, all you got to do is start seeing yourself as an independent business
person. That means you are the CEO of your company, your spouse or a close
friend should be brought in as the chairman of the board, maybe your children
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even are shareholders. You've got to start focusing on ways you can help other
people. You've got to follow one of the strategies in Business Secrets from the
Bible to improve your ability to articulate fluently, so as you can be persuasive.
You've got to employ the strategies of the book in order to expand your circle of
acquaintances, and you have to nurture those acquaintances into people who
know you and like you and trust you. You've got to get out the right word of how
it is you serve other people, what you do to improve their lives, and you're in
business. You don't need business school. You're in business already.
Chris:
I've never asked you this question, I don't think I have, but everything that you're
just saying right now just made me think about, for me, I hate a rank and file
mentality. I go to work, I get my 2 15-minute breaks, I get my lunch. I don't even
know what those are. For me, it is do everything I can to help people as much as
possible. There are so many people that live on this 40-hour work week. I don't
have a problem with that, if that's what you're choosing to do. I haven't seen a
40-hour work week in probably 2 decades, and I'm not telling people be
overworked, but there's an element of if you want to be successful, you got to
change the way you look at what you're doing, just like you just explained. If
you're a bus driver somewhere and you can pick up some more hours by using
your own car to do Uber, that's smart. You're moving in the direction of creating
revenue, you're moving in the direction of not bogging yourself down by
watching TV and wasting that time; you're doing something productive. With
that, what is your thoughts on, "I work 40 hours a week, that's it. The rest of the
time is my time to do what I want to do"?
Daniel:
It's welcome to the wonderful world of slavery, and I hope you enjoy it, because
that's what you'll be. I'm not as nice as you because you said if somebody wants
to work the 40-hour week, you don't criticize it. I do. Why would you want to be
a loser? Who says you should only ... Who [does 44:45] 40 hours a week? I guess
if you move to France, you become a 30-hour-a-week person because, in France,
they only work 30 hours a week. If you move to Greece, it's even better. You'll
become a 15-hour-a-week guy.
Chris:
You get paid by the Germans.
Daniel:
Yes, that's right. Exactly. All those folks building Mercedes and BMWs will pay
you, right? No, not for long. Not for long at all. No, this 40-hour week is complete
nonsense. Obviously, faith life is important, family life is important, developing
and improving your self is important, and I teach how to divide up your time
among those 4 things. I also speak about how to involve your family in your
enterprise so they don't feel that you are away from them and cut off from them
while you're focusing on your business, no. Make everybody involved, so
everybody is excited by the challenge and that engagement in the business
makes you closer as a family, not more fragmented.
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Chris:
That's my favorite answer. I love it. That is awesome. I'm going to steal a lot of
that.
Daniel:
You agree, right? Don't you?
Chris:
Oh, absolutely.
Daniel:
I've heard enough of you to know that I haven't said a single thing you would say
wrong.
Chris:
Oh, gosh, no. Absolutely. The thing I do love, when you say, "If you want to be a
loser," now, obviously, there's 2 sides to that, but the main focus is you're losing
out in opportunity.
Daniel:
Exactly.
Chris:
You're losing out on success. The literal sense of-
Daniel:
By the way, just one other thing. We must stress that the focus is not you're
losing out on opportunity as much as you're losing out the chance to serve more
people.
Chris:
There you go.
Daniel:
That's what we got to focus on.
Chris:
Absolutely.
Daniel:
Always, always, always think in terms of helping other people, like you.
Chris:
Yeah. That is what this whole business is built on, and it is succeeding. I'm very
happy about that. Which elements of business drive us? Again, the definite
business that you gave us, which is phenomenal, which means that the
receptionist should be considering her job as being self-employed technically.
Daniel:
Absolutely. I want to evaluate her in those terms because she's critically
important. She's very often the first face of my business that's outside the [seat
47:11]. Of course, I want her to be part of it, I want her to be incentivized to do
absolutely the best possible job she can because it's hers. The same way, like we
said, people look after their own house better than they do rented houses. They
look after their own car better than they do a rental car. Look after my business
as if it was yours. I can show you how to do that because that's what will make
you more successful.
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Chris:
For all of you entrepreneurs out there listening, hear what Rabbi just said. You
should be looking at your team members as self-employed as well and
evaluating them on that. That means that you also need to be giving culture,
teaching culture of helping them to see that themselves. Don't just expect to get
in.
Daniel:
It's not enough to just design incentive-laden compensation packages. That's
obviously a part of it, but, as you said, you've got to share the culture with every
associate that you're engaged with.
Chris:
Absolutely. Gosh, we're so short on time. Okay. Which elements of business
drive us closer to God and which elements separate us from him? I know it's a
crazy question.
Daniel:
Offhand, I can't think of a single area of business that separates us from God.
Business says take care of your vendors, take care of your customers, take care
of your employees because your entire success is dependent upon all of those
people. That would seem to be godly. Is it possible to tip over into the area of
excess in terms of neglecting other parts of your life, even whether it's your own
health, your own spiritual welfare? Yes, but that would be the same mistake as
trying to run your business without ever looking at the books. There are a lot of
mistakes, but if one does it right, and right is almost synonymous with success,
are there the occasional rotten human beings who do well in business? Sure, the
exception always proves the rule. In terms of if you measure, if you actually go
and look at the figures of the percentage of doctors who've lost their licenses
because of bad treatment of patients. The number is easily obtainable. If you
look at the percentage of teachers who have been stripped of their ability to
teach, very often it's almost impossible to fire unionized teachers. Many, many
school districts have teachers on the book who are not allowed to teach because
they've been convicted of sexual offenses, but other kinds of problems,
whatever it is.
Again, look at the percentage of teachers who have not served their customers
well. You'll notice that those figures are far higher than the number of business
professionals who've been indicted. There's so many millions of business
professionals in this country, and, overwhelmingly, they are better and more
honest people than doctors and teachers are. That's because god designed the
system of human economic interaction in such a way that you are blessed with
abundance for treating other people right.
Chris:
Yeah, absolutely. Gosh. All right, you're bringing up so many questions that I
want to ask, but I don't think that we have time to go there. Let me just throw
this one out there because this is something I love that you do talk about in the
book. You compare ... We get so up in arms about a business person making a lot
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of money, we get so up in arms of, "Oh, my gosh. That CEO is making a hundred
times more than the receptionist," or whatever. You do a phenomenal job of
comparing, especially some of the people that are complaining would be
Hollywood, complaining about these people that have worked their tails off to
get to a place of making money and then, yet, we've got a football players that
makes hundreds of times more than the janitor and we've got actors and
actresses that, in a month or two, can make millions of dollars more than the
person doing the catering.
Daniel:
Yes.
Chris:
Why are we so jacked up? We're happy to give them all that money. Why is it
that we don't want to give the business person the money?
Daniel:
It's really very interesting that the focus of ire on the part of popular
entertainment and on the part of politicians, it's the unreasonably high salaries
of who? Not film stars, not sports stars, not NFL heroes, as you say, but always
business professionals. The reason, I think, is because everybody looks at an NFL
player and I say, "You know what? I can do a lot of things, but I'll tell you one
thing, there's no way I could get a ball that far up the field that fast. I could never
do it," or else I look at an actor and I say, "Even in spite of a healthy and robust
ego, I've got to admit he's better looking than me. What's more? He can actually
act. I can't." Everybody knows as soon as I'm telling a lie and actors get up and
professionally tell lies from morning to night. They're good.
Chris:
We pay them off for it.
Daniel:
And we pay them well. I say, "Look, I really do understand it." I really get it
because I know that I couldn't do what they do. I couldn't. They're good. The fact
that they make a lot of money doesn't surprise me. Because we deliberately and I think it's deliberate - deprive young people of any form of economic
education, children can get out of high school with no understanding whatsoever
of money isn't where it comes from, which is why you're here. I don't do it much
anymore, I just don't enjoy it, but I used to speak to high school classes. One of
my questions was if everybody is entitled to proper housing and a good job and
medical care as well as education, who should pay for all of that? The answer is
always the same. You know who should pay for everything? The government.
They have no idea, literally no idea at all, that the government isn't capable of
making any money. The government can only move money around. They don't
know that.
As a result of that, people grow into adulthood truly not understanding what a
Warren Buffett brings to a Lehman Brothers, or what any top CEO brings, why
he's worth ... They don't understand why he's the equivalent of an NFL star. They
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don't understand that the entire success of the enterprise depends on this man's
credibility, on his skill, on his judgment, on the confidence he inspires, and
creditors and banks. They don't understand that. Nobody understands how
money works. Obviously, they understand how football plays and that he does
something you couldn't do and they understand movie stars; they don't
understand the guy who's got the corner office on the top floor.
Chris:
Yeah, it just blows me away. We complain about that person that busting their
backsides just as hard as that NFL player, that has worked really hard to get to
that place, but, yeah, they're evil and business is evil.
Daniel:
Yes.
Chris:
Last thing - gees, if I can get these 2 in - the Hebrew word for wealth.
Daniel:
Yes.
Chris:
It has 2 meanings. I'm sorry. So many times Hebrew words going one direction
mean one thing, going the other direction has an opposite meaning, and they're
related. The Hebrew word for wealth, if you could talk about that.
Daniel:
Sure. The Hebrew word for wealth ... And I wasn't sure whether you wanted me
to talk about the fact that it's related to tithing and charity, but that's another
whole area that I cover, which is that regardless of the virtue of giving charity,
there's actually an economic benefit in giving money away. I cover that
extensively.
Chris:
I was thinking of-
Daniel:
But you're on to something very, very interesting, which is the forward-backward
principle in the Lord's language. If you reverse the Hebrew word for money, like
many words in Hebrew, unlike English ... Like in English, it would be amazing if EV-I-L spelled evil and E-V-I-L in reverse spells good. It doesn't happen like that in
English, but it does in Hebrew. The reverse of the Hebrew word for wealth is evil;
it's bad. Right there, you've got this basic idea that poverty is not a good thing.
It's terrible how many good, good people ... and I will tell you in my personal
experience, it's much more prevalent among Christians and among Jews who
think that poverty is equivalent to virtue, that somehow if you're struggling
financially, this just proves how devoted to God you are. I'm afraid nothing could
be further from the truth.
Chris:
Right, which, obviously, for us, Christians, if we take a look at the Parable of the
Talents, it explains that so greatly. If you are choosing not to continue to work
towards wealth, you are actually working against it.
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Daniel:
You are hurting other people. It's not a case of what you're doing for yourself,
instead you're not doing things for other people.
Chris:
Correct. Absolutely. All right, last question. I know you've got to go. I pushed you
to the limit of the time, and we've got to have you back in the show.
Daniel:
I would love that. Thank you.
Chris:
Last question. It's funny, I've been anticipating what your answer might be, and I
ask this at the end of my interviews. If you could go back in time to a very young
Daniel Lapin, what would you say to him?
Daniel:
I'd say follow God's rules more diligently than you did.
Chris:
Powerful, powerful stuff.
Daniel:
No, seriously. I'm horrified sometimes when I think back to mistakes I've made. I
read my books and I say, "You knew this stuff. Are you a moron? What's the
matter with you? What were you thinking, that you could outsmart God? What
did you think?"
Chris:
It took one of your own books to get there.
Daniel:
Fortunately, I wised up, but I certainly made my own share of mistakes. Like
everybody else, it's really easy to find the name of the guy who's done you more
harm than anyone else. In my case, his name is Daniel Lapin.
Chris:
Right, absolutely. Rabbi, thank you so much. This is such great information.
Again, we barely scratched the surface on this book. Literally, folks, I'm telling
you we barely scratched the surface. How can people get the book and get more
of you?
Daniel:
It's called Business Secrets from the Bible. You can get it at a very advantageous
price on my website. I can tell you my website in a way that you'll never forget,
it's really easy to remember, and that is youneedarabbi.com, because, like you
said, I do say everyone needs a rabbi regardless of faith. Youneedarabbi.com. On
my website, you can look for Business Secrets from the Bible. Even better than
that, for free, you can get my weekly e-mail thought tools, which I know you see
from time to time.
Chris:
Wow!
Daniel:
That's easy to do. You can do that. Then, of course, if it works better for you,
some people have Amazon Prime, so you obviously want to buy on Amazon
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rather than on my website. It makes no difference. The key thing is get this into
your arsenal and start putting it to work. It's not a get rich quick scheme, it's not
going to give you a lot of money by the end of next week; it's not how it works,
but it's still enough time to make this year a far more successful year than last
year. In other words, there's enough of this year left to be able to employ these
strategies and have this year turn out to be a top year. Go ahead. I urge you to
do it. I beg you to send me letters of testimony, like the thousands I get. I truly
derive so much encouragement and so much joy reading the results that people
have experienced in their own lives as they've transformed their own financial
destinies.
Chris:
I am absolutely a testimony. I follow these principles, have followed them for a
very long time, and I've been very successful. God has blessed me as I have
helped his kids and worshiped him in the process. Also, folks, get on the e-mail
list. People ask great questions to Rabbi. Those are in the thought tools, so you
want to make sure that you get that as well. Also, you've got the Rabbi Daniel
Lapin Show. You'll want to listen to that as well. Once again, Rabbi, thank you so
much. We'll get connected and get you back on the show again.
Daniel:
Wonderful. Thank you very much indeed. God bless and lots of success to all the
listeners. Stay in touch.
Chris:
Thank you and have a great boat trip.
Daniel:
Thank you very much indeed. We're off tomorrow, yes.
Chris:
As always, we hope this helps. We hope that you take this information, change
your leadership, change your business, change your life. Join us on the next
episode.
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