Building Business, Brand, and Work/Life Balance with Lesley Kaplan

You are listening to the Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast with Debbie Sassen, episode number 188.

Hello my friends and welcome back to the podcast and welcome to the new like season, not season of the podcast, but the last two episodes that I released of the podcast were connected with the Jewish Holidays with Roosh Hashanah, with Yom Kippur. And since then we have celebrated the holiday of Sukkot.

We were also blessed that 20 of our living hostages came back, really praised God for He is good ho.

And some of our dead hostages, the murdered hostages have been returned also. And we pray that the rest of the bodies do come home so that their families can have proper burials and proper closure for their loved ones. But there is such a beautiful shift and beautiful change, and as we go into the end of the calendar year and as we move into like a six month period of time where we can really dig into our business.

I am so excited to share with you Leslie Kaplan, who is another business coach, and on the podcast we're also going to be speaking about an upcoming business conference that's happening in Jerusalem. This podcast interview is all about. Business, business, business because hey, that is what we're here for.

So let me briefly introduce Leslie Kaplan with her little official bio before we jump into the interview. And Leslie is passionate about life and enhancing people and their businesses and their processes. She's a business strategy and brand and coach. She's also an author, a consultant, and a trainer.

She has advised and trained hundreds of business owners. And nonprofits worldwide, and we're gonna talk about that today, exactly who she serves, how she serves it, how she, and how she serves her clients. Leslie is the founder of the Israel Networking Hub for business owners and nonprofits, and she helps people to build relationships and network and promote their services.

Leslie and I have known each other for at least 15 years. I dunno exactly. When we first met, she's been doing business strategy and consulting longer than I have, and I have learned so much from her over the years. And we share that a little bit in today's episode. And Leslie is the author of two books on Building Your Business.

We're gonna share that in the show notes. And I was, very honored to have my story even shared in one of her books, power Talks with Women Entrepreneurs. So we have a lot of juicy content. To dig into and without further ado, welcome to the interview and welcome to the podcast, Leslie Kaplan.

Thank you so much for tuning into our episode today. There was such fabulous information about building your business, and if I had to really distill. Two main takeaways. Let's say three main takeaways. Number one is allowing yourself to evolve in your business. We start out with one thing, as we talked about, Leslie started out in retail and the product business.

I started out as a financial planner when I left my government job. Then moved into the freelance work that I was doing, and we have both shifted and transitioned and we still continue to grow. Even thinking about this podcast. Right. I wasn't doing a podcast back in the day, and this has been a new endeavor, which I have added to my business in the last four years.

So wherever you are in your business, just allow yourself to be where you are, enjoy what you're doing. The second takeaway is work hard, play hard. As a mom of many, I feel like I am always working hard. And we talked about that how both of us, how we are balancing the sandwich generation, our parents, our kids, our grandkids.

And I really believe that you can have a full life. You can have a big life as both a mom and a wife, and a grandmother, mother, and also as a business owner. So go out there, do your thing, evolve, do your. Go out there, do your thing, evolve, serve your clients, and work hard, play hard. And the third takeaway, for those of you in Israel, or those of you, so many people I know are visiting Israel in November, make sure that you join us in person at the Jerusalem Business Conference.

On November 19th, we're going to put a link in the show notes. Make sure that you get your ticket before the end of October, because after October, the price goes up. And hey, you wanna be smart about money? Get your ticket today. Don't delay. Don't put it off until tomorrow. I know about that, procrastinating thing.

Don't put it off and join us at the business conference, and I look forward to seeing you next week on the Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Bye-bye for now.

 Leslie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Debbie. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, I'm so, so happy to have you here. And you and I have known each other for at least 15 years. We travel in the same spaces. We live in the same country. We do similar things. And as I was preparing for this podcast, I really thought, well, like with your business, with your conferences, you do swag, you do real estate, coaching, like you do so many things.

I said, you know, Leslie is like the jack of all trades, but you're the master of all of them. It's not just like you're the master of none. Like the phrase goes. So like, take us back a little bit to how you got into the space. I mean, like me, we're both. knew Olem we're always like olem, right?

 we moved to Israel? I'm from the us you're from South Africa, right? So, but tell us, how did you even get started in this space? Okay, sure. Actually, firstly, to go back to what you said about, you know, jack of all trades, master of none. No. All you're master of all of them take the credit. Right? Exactly.

Exactly. But the saying is, the saying goes is that, you know, we all talk about, and I'll get into what you said. Now we all talk about finding your niche and sticking to your niche and everything. Yeah. And it's actually very simple in one simple box, what I do. With different divisions that it all fits into that.

So as a business strategy coach and consultant, I work with smb, small to medium sized businesses. Mm-hmm. And nonprofits in the building, the business strategy and the branding. So I have basically two departments. The one is the building, the business and strategy. And the other is the branding, which is the branded promotional product.

So it's very easy when you see it in two different boxes, not as being a little bit of this little bit of that. So in the business building and strategy is my business coaching, my one-on-one, my different networking groups, including the Israel Networking Hub, which I have to assist and guide, and to.

Get people's names, exposure out for businesses in Israel. So that's all under the one box. Okay. And then on the upside is the branded promotional products, which assists businesses, not just with the strategy and helping them see what best fits their best, fits their target market, but actually implementing it and doing it.

Mm-hmm. So what you mentioned, the real estate coaching, the coaching, everything fits under the bold and the brand. Okay. And like When I think when I look at my business where I do mindset and I do copywriting, like I help my clients with their copywriting, their personal brand more than like swag for the branding, but that's the swag is part of how you get your message across, how you share.

Who you are and what you do if it's a pen with your name on it or something. Something else. Right. So, and we all need to share who we are and what we do, because otherwise, like nobody knows about us, we're the best kept secrets. So, yeah. I haven't really thought about it as two different divisions, but you just have, you have like specialties with the smaller businesses, the real estate businesses and different types of businesses, I think.

Right. Right, exactly. So that's also where the two divisions, the strategy and the coaching and the groups are more for small to medium sized businesses, conferences that are run. Mm-hmm. And the swag. We do, actually, I don't take on small orders for that. We do medium to larger sizes so that we work with larger companies, banks, insurance companies.

So they're literally two different divisions managed separately. But there is a small overlap. Nice. Nice. And how did you get started? How long have you, let's start even, how long have you been in Israel? Okay, so I've been in Israel 35 years and I've been in business close on 30 years now, three decades.

Wow. I was in business, not as my own business owner. Before I met Aliya. I was working as a career consultant, but also doing, interviewing, recruiting. So I guess I was already touching on a little bit of what I do. But it's a little bit different now, but actually when I worked with a lot of real estate officers, I was also assisting them with recruiting and doing that stage.

So it was tying everything together as well as the coaching. So it's been, as I say, 35 years, 30 years, running my own business. And, I can honestly say loving most of these years, as we all know, you can either love and or hate your business or a little bit of both. Mm-hmm. Or something in between, right?

So, most of the years I've loved what I've done. however, what I can say is that when I've been unhappy with a certain area or not wanted to continue. With a certain area. I'll give you an example. I used to work in the very beginning. I also worked a lot with retail outlets. In terms of the branding, I was more product oriented and then shifted a lot to service.

Okay. Service and products. But in the beginning, my business actually started off a lot with products and actually producing products for the retail market. I did that for close on 20 years while I was also building up other stuff. And then I no longer was passionate about working with the retail market.

For various reasons. Okay. and I managed to cut that out after 20 years, but I kept the same company name, kept the same image, but just shifted into new niches and new areas, which I was passionate about. And passion, as we know, is one of the most important things for a business owner to have. So if you're not passionate about it, you're not gonna succeed or you like, you're not gonna succeed.

Yeah. And I think that's so smart and it, what it also shows is that we get to evolve. your business doesn't have to be the same today as it was certainly 30 years ago, but even. Two years ago, or five years ago. Right. I started out doing financial planning when I jumped into the business world, and I still do a little bit.

In fact, right after we record this interview, I'm going to meet one-on-one with my, one of my financial planning clients. And I always say that I have to really like you to do financial planning. Nice. but I joke, but I also. See that there is a great need in the market for women, women in midlife in particular, to do financial planning because women don't have that money education.

And so I do help women, I do help women with their inheritances and their investments and things like that, but helping people get out of debt is not something I, that I do anymore, is financial planning. But I love the investment side. So I love what you said about like, we can let go of what we once loved, what we once.

Enjoyed and we get to evolve and do new things. Exactly. that's important, by the way, that's important for us to know because number one, as we said, and as you said, you're not the same. I'm not the same 30-year-old that's started after I just turned 60 recently.

So not the same personality, and we're growing all the time and we are our businesses. So as we grow. And develop and evolve as individuals. So it's likely that our businesses will too, and which we should drop things that we're no longer interested in, and then pick up on other elements that interest us.

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. So you came to Israel? I came to Israel even 38 years ago. so I've been here a little bit longer, but I started mm-hmm. As a government employee, which I did for many years. But when you came here, you were also a mom. I know. You and I share the fact that we are the sandwich generation.

We your parents live in Israel, if I'm not mistaken, right? No, actually not. my father made about, almost 20 years ago. My father lives here. Actually 10 minutes away from me. Nice. my mom sadly passed away when I was in my fifties, which I'll just share with you that this is a lot about what my why and who I am that I believe, and I do talk about this.

 like for example, in the YouTube that I recorded on my 60th birthday, one of the things that motivates me, we all need to know what our why is in order to succeed and in order to service our clients. And one of the big things behind my My Wow. Is, live your dream now and go after what you want now.

Mm-hmm. And that I was always motivated, I was always an achiever. But when my mom passed away very young, it made me realize, as I was getting older and as, or should I say mature, more mature. And as I got into my fifties, like this was the age my mom passed away and it was a civil son. and that's what actually.

 what helped to boost my move, my husband and I from Jerusalem to naan because I'd always seen, I'd wanted to live by the coast. I love the water. I call myself a water baby. I'd always seen myself as one day moving to the coast, but then when one day. It was getting very close that like my mom was this age when she passed away.

Like, let's do it now. So it wasn't spontaneous. We'd spoken about it for a while, but I believe that it helps a lot when you have a very strong why, why you want to do something. Whether you made it motivated by pain or by pleasure. As we know, we are motivated usually by one of those two things, right?

And when it's strong enough, then that's what motivates us to do something. And yeah, that's a lot of what drives me now. I love that. By the way, I grew up in Los Angeles. I'm a water baby. I even have a book called The Water Babies. Oh wow. So when we see each other, November, if I can remember, I'll have to bring it with me to show you.

Yeah. But this is a book that my mom gave me, mom. It's interesting 'cause my mom passed away. My dad is still alive. My mom passed away at almost just a month, a month shy of her 75th birthday. And, yeah, she was such a supporter of me and what I did. And I love what you talk about living your why. And really doing what you're, you know, go back to passion.

So, so I love that.and I love the fact that you live by the beach. I would love to, my husband's from England, he doesn't love the beach and you know, in marriage sometimes we, we have to compromise. So we live in between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, so I can get there. So you not off, but not often enough. I'm still so connected to Jerusalem.

 I consider myself. A half you can say the Hebrew works not so much the English half, jerusalemite half, in fact, ma still has my Jerusalem address. and I always make a joke, you know, if you look at the Hebrew letters that I moved from Yum to Yum, youth slash to Yo J Oh, I love it. Yeah, I love that.

So yeah, I'm totally involved in Jerusalem. In fact, as you know, and if I can mention this now, and you're, I'm delighted and we're delighted to have you as one of our speakers. I'm the man organized behind the Jerusalem Business Conference coming up, so I'm still in November. And you're what? We are delighted to have you on our panel, you know, which is on podcasting and media.

So I'm still very, very involved in the scene. I go to events in Jerusalem. I go to events in the me. So I really feel like I have the both the best worlds. You do a lot of traveling actually for your, I'm looking. So forward to the business conference. I missed it last year because we, we can talk about being grandmothers, mothers, grandmothers, right.

I was, I had four of my daughters were due to give birth, three of them gave birth in November and December, and then this year we're praying that she chooses a different day from the conference, but she and my other daughters due November. Yes. But, but yeah, that's also something that we manage, you know, as the sando generation, our parents, our children, our grandchildren do get invited to like the first grade parties and the end of gone parties.

Like we go, I know you're an amazing grandmother. You do a summer camp for your grandkids in the summer. Right. Yeah. I see you follow my posts. Yeah, I do. I do. I'm very, I'm very hands on. it's very important to me and I love, being hands on as a mother and young, I like to say young grandmother, obviously we can't be everywhere at every given time.

Especially that I also have em a 90-year-old father. Yes. Who we have some assistance, but I'm also his primary caregiver. Mm-hmm. So it's me that's going to all the, taking him to all the appointments and dealing with all the major things. So, that's not always easy. And I say work hard.

 one of my sayings, besides live your dream and live your dream now is work hard, play hard. Yeah. And that's exactly what I do, is that I work hard. Often into the long hours of the evening. Mm-hmm. If it means that I can take off time during the day to be with my kids, my grandkids do and deal with things with my father, but it's important for me, that they feel that I'm hands-on, even though I would love to be able to do more at any given time.

 I hear you on that. And right now as we're recording, my 87-year-old father is here in town with my stepmom, and we just made Shabbat self catered for 37 people, including my dad and stepmom. And so I was also the like CEO, the event planner, making sure that this one made the chicken and my other daughter made the vegetables and someone made the potato kugels, and someone made the chala then.

Putting it all together and setting the tables. And my parents, I call my dad and my stepmom, my parents. 'cause my mom passed away. So my, parents, they, I think appreciated so much the togetherness of the family, that it wasn't just catered. They loved seeing the kids in action together and the grandchildren of course on all of their riding toys together and playing together and yeah.

I love what you said about work hard, play hard. We can do the coordination and the family. We can figure out what is the main thing in our life and make that our focus. And listen, there's a lot of stuff that we just don't need to do. We don't need to perfect. We don't need to be in all the places and all the time.

 but still, I feel like your business is doing so many things all the time. So that's my perspective from the outside. It's, and I'll say one of the things that I've been privileged to do is that, besides if I'm running an in-house event mm-hmm. An in-person event. I can literally be anywhere in the world and my business can still continue.

And that's something that I've really, you know, COVID, I can thank, we all had the difficult elements of COVID, but I can also thank COVID on the one hand for starting that. And also with the start of the war, how as time went on, I was able to literally implement a lot of the stuff and be wherever I want, as long as I have a good internet connection.

And that's something that over the time I tried to cut what really kept me that I had to be in one place and take on things that were more hybrid. And I think it obviously depends on the nature of one's business, but it gives us a lot more flexibility and the ability to actually have more of a balance in work life, even though I will say that is one of my challenges, work life balance, because I do work long hours.

You know, often into the evening, but that's more just on the admin and other stuff. I don't take, I'm quite strict. I don't do coaching meetings or anything in the evening. in fact, I seldom attend even, evening online events. Occasionally I will, but it's often working just on admin stuff and that kind of thing.

 if I've taken off time to, be with the family earlier. I agree. I agree with you. I don't take any calls, even coaching calls. I made the mistake once many years ago. This was during COVID and my business grew because I was already online. My business actually did really well in the beginning of COVID and continued, thank God.

But I signed up for something online and it was on the west coast in the us. Mm-hmm. It was Thursday night at. I don't know. I think, I don't remember if it was 11 or midnight hour time in Israel. And I am, you know how we work from Sundays till Thursdays, occasionally I'll do something on Fridays, but I'm shot by Thursday night.

So like you said, admin, yes. You want me to do my bookkeeping? I could do that, but, or whatever, right? But not actually calls or I'll occasionally host networking group things in the evening, but it's mostly in the morning or in person events. I think look, we have to know also our personalities and what works for us.

Mm-hmm. And that's the nice thing about the flexibility of running our businesses is that on the one hand, yeah, work kind of dictates, but on the other hand, we determine how it dictates. It doesn't really dictate. we need to be strong enough. And that comes with maturity. Because in the beginning I'm sure you had the same thing.

As you say in the beginning, I was taking calls at all hours of the night. Yes. And this was a mistake. I know that. And I had a US number, so of course people didn't always know that they weren't calling the US and I quickly put a stop to it after a year or. I think in the beginning also, you do whatever you can, you just put a lot of grit and a lot of work into it, and you get your name out there.

So I also did the calls at all hours of the night and hey, we were a little bit younger then, but what I found is like really understanding your. Body rhythms. I've always been a night owl since I was in school. When, back in the day, quite a long time ago. I'm a night owl. My dad's a night owl.

My husband is an early bird, but I rarely start my calls like I have clients even now in Australia. So occasionally I will do a 9:00 AM call here in Israel time. But mostly I don't like to schedule anything before 10 30 to 11. I like to push it a little bit because I'll do my exercising. I'll get up and do in, I'll pray and I do the me stuff.

And I remember years ago I had a coach who taught me about miracle mornings, get up at five and do your journaling and do your, this, that, and she's like, Debbie. Do it for you sometime during the day. And also I had more kids at home. Now all of my kids are outta the house. My three unmarried children are in dorms, so they come home, now, but they're not always home.

So I really have my day all to myself, which is nice, but it also means. You don't have a deadline. So this is where your personal, like self-leadership is so important. 'cause otherwise your deadline can be at three in the afternoon. It can be by the end of the week, it can be next month, and it can just, drag out.

So it, it's nice to Right. Absolutely. I'm very similar to you that I'm also an at al, I'm not a 6:00 AM in the morning person. No, not at all. That's not me. Like I just have to be somewhere out of town or whatever. that's not me. But, no, lately, my average night is between, say, 12 and one, I would say.

Mm-hmm. Between midnight and one, 1:00 PM 1:00 AM Should I say? I'll tell you a little secret of something that I actually did. and I know people often say this is a no-no, but I don't do it during the day, like it's off right now and when I'm concentrating that I don't do it. But when it was the Olympic Games at last July Uhhuh, uh, I didn't wanna have to, we had a TV in the other room.

I needed to be able to work. And also there were certain sports that I wanted to watch it, so we actually had a. Spare TV in the, that was my father's that he wasn't using. So I said, yah, I wanna put it in the office. So, whereas a lot of people have two screens in their office, one, and both of them are computer screens.

I have one computer screen and I have a TV screen, which in the evening when I'm doing some of my light work, and I can do that at the same time and then watch some of the cooking shows or music shows or whatever. But during the day, it's never on unless there's something like major that's that I wanna, that I wanted to see.

So for me, that's actually partial enjoyment. The disadvantage to see, I could go watch it in another room and be lying down, but this way I feel I can kill two birds with the same stone. I think that you have to find what works for you. I know also from early on, like when I was in college, I had a roommate who loved having music playing in the background.

Mm-hmm. I can't listen to music while I'm working. People love it, but my brain follows the melodies and the harmonies.I just, I can't do it. my brain gets so distracted. There is alpha wave music. This is. Actually works for me very well. 'cause my brain is easily distractible. YouTube has alpha wave music that goes on for like three hours or something like that, and it's free.

So I will put my headphones on with this music and it's not music with harmonies and melodies and things like that, it's just kind of, you'd have to look it up and see what it is, but it's actually music, which helps me to concentrate and get my work done. And if I have my headphones in. I'm also blocking out all the noises around me, and that's something that does work for me.

But if your cooking shows work for you when you're doing your admin. Go for it. I would probably sit there and leave my ugly the, and I'll say too, singer, you mentioned music, is that I love music and one of the things people that know me well, know about me is that I hum to myself all day long. Yes. So a lot of the time when I'm working, I'm actually humming, which means that any other music probably distract me.

And it's good that I have my own office 'cause no one else hears me. And I don't have to keep quiet. I can hum as long as I want. As loud as I want. I didn't know about that, about you we're so similar in so many ways. I'm always humming. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Anyone that knows me well, they say that I hum, and when I get tired, the humming gets louder.

I love it. Love that I've been told. And I have a song for everything, all the songs, all the, the jingles, all the television commercials that I heard when I was younger. They're all in my brain and there's always a song for everything. So I love that. so tell me a little bit about money.

'cause I love to talk about money as you know, especially as a money and business coach, your. Relationship with money as a business owner, like when we go in, feet first into our businesses and we work the long hours, how did you learn about money and develop and change your relationship with money over time?

Okay. That's a very good question. I truly believe that as we evolve as people and like we discussed earlier, and we've become more mature in our business, I think we look at money in a different way to the way we looked at it in the very beginning. Mm-hmm. I remember when I started my business.

 I took out a 10,000 shareholder business loan and I felt like the whole world was on top of my head, like 10,000 shareholders. I mean, I'm not saying it's a small amount of money, but obviously if you're a business owner, like it becomes a smaller amount compared to bigger numbers that you're dealing with.

And I remember thinking like, oh, the bank manager is gonna think this, that 10,000 shekel. And today, like I wouldn't even. Think twice about that amount of money because, you know, I'm dealing with much bigger numbers today. Yeah. So I think it's firstly our mindset in terms of how much value and what actual value, particular money, amount of money holds to us, towards us.

Mm-hmm. And then what are we going to do with that money and how are we going to use it correctly and adequately, that it works for us. And I've listened to many of your podcasts and the way you talk about money and your mindset and everything, and I love your podcast, by the way. Thank you. I listen to most of them.

So, I think it's totally about our mindset and how we see it, but as we evolve, money evolves, in different stages in our lives and in our business. So I'll give you a couple of examples. firstly, many, entrepreneurs or at independent business owners say, well, being an independent business owner is not a secure wayto be.

You know, they feel this insecurity like no work, no. But then that's where passive income and all these other things come in that you often speak about and that we know about. Yeah. Okay. And many people are able to create passive income and others have not yet created it. And it totally depends on one's profession.

Mm-hmm. But besides the issue of that kind of thing in terms of the security or lack of security, when you're an independent, when you're a independent one employee. Okay. Mm-hmm. Your time is not yours, but you're getting your permanent paycheck at the end of the month. Okay? Right. That being said, okay.

Do you really have, and I think you may have spoken about this too, do you really have job security? Because at any given day, somebody could say to you, bye-bye. Thank you so much for your service. Yeah. we're, you know, having tocutting down, we're closing the business, whatever. So actually, I think it's part of the mindset for independent business owners or entrepreneurs to realize that they actually have more security as an independent or as their own business owner.

Because your actions and your non-action can really determine fully your success and what you do. A hundred percent. Okay. Now, I'm not saying that all business owners are successful, sadly, we know that not all are, and if we have to analyze many of the negatives or the reasons why certain businesses fails, there's a bunch of different reasons.

We don't have to go into it now, but it doesn't mean that the opportunity, couldn't, or the venture couldn't have succeeded. In other words, there is that security and it depends on how we look at it. And it depends a lot on, there's a couple of different elements. The way we plan our systems, working smarter, not harder, which is also totally related to money.

 our credit control. I can honestly say thank God in for 30 years in being in business close on 30 years. The only bad debt that I had was in my first year of business with a measly sum of under 400 shekels. Good for you. Which is a joke. When I was working with one or two stores on consignment, and after six months, I realized I was issuing invoices, but some I did on consignment.

No, consignment is no longer the way to go. They want my products, they'll take it. They don't want it, they don't do it. But I can honestly say that I don't have any bad deaths. Why? Because for most of my services. And also products, including the branded products. I take payment upfront. Good for you. And I know that's not all businesses can do that.

But I've actually turned down clients and some people could say it's a mistake, but each one has their own business model. Mm-hmm. I've turned down clients who don't want to work that way. And I'm okay with it. I'm with it. Good for you. Good for you. Good for you. I love it. And there's certain organizations, companies, whatever that I have an arrangement with, but especially if it's somebody I'm working with for the first time, so.

So that is something in terms of money and managing our money that we can all do not to be afraid. To number one, charge a certain amount. and 'cause we know what value we providing and we need to recognize the service and the good in what we are providing. And number two, if somebody doesn't wanna work with us because of either the price or because of our pricing strategy or when payment is whatever, that's okay.

So sometimes I may show flexibility depending on the situation, but that is my general business model. And personally, I sleep better at night that way, and I'd rather sleep better at night than provide a service and have to run after the money. And that's one of the things, by the way, that I hated about working with retail outlets, besides the fact that I was tired off to 20 years of doing it, was that they pay, what they're saying Hebrew 60 days or 90 days minimum after you in, after you invoice them.

Exactly. so I think we, we have to work with the money mindset that works for us. I love that and I do say there are 8 billion people in the world, at least half of them speak English. Like you can't possibly serve all the people in the world. So if you wanna get paid upfront, there are enough potential clients for you.

Whatever you're doing. That you can get paid upfront and you can have a successful business. You don't have to have the business model where you're gonna get paid 90 days after you issue the invoice. It doesn't have to be that way. If, even if it's the industry standard, you could change the standard or you could just decide, I'm not working that way and go find a different way of working.

But I wanna concentrate on the first thing that you said. Mm-hmm. First of all, the 10,000 shekel business loan that you took back in the day. In today's terms would be way more, I don't know how to, do the numbers in my head to figure out, maybe it's today worth 30,000 shekels. Maybe the 10,000 shekels is $10,000, whatever it is.

But so many business owners, and I find this more with women than with men, I have to say, they are afraid of business debt. And this is especially true with service-based business owners. We will have to talk about if you also find that with your clients, if you are going to have a retail store, you have to go and find yourself a space.

You have to rent it, renovate, hook up the gate, the electricity of the water. You have to buy your products even if you're paying 90 days after the invoice. But you have to actually pay for the inventory. Hire salespeople, unless you're gonna do it all yourself. The advertising, there's a huge investment of capital.

Before you sell the first item, the first shirt, the first coffee mug, the first whatever. But with service-based business owners, they're like, oh my gosh, I can't take on debt. Debt is horrible. I can't do it. And they try to bootstrap their business and I really think it slows so many people down that could otherwise be so successful.

So how did you know that? Borrowing money to get your business going was, I don't wanna say it's the right way. There are people who bootstrap their businesses and they're successful, but why was it the right way for you to start your business? Okay. Very, very good question. So firstly, the difference between, as you mentioned with product and service businesses, I was starting in the beginning, a product based business.

Obviously I was servicing the clients, but it was product based, so I needed that cash upfront. To actually manufacture the products. I was creating products myself, so I needed it for the graphics, for the products, for the materials, the everything. And then I was getting products into the retail, different retail outlets.

So I had expenses based around that. So I think I per personally think with products, a lot of people could justify an inverted commas, the cost more because the idea of taking a loan more because you've got these actual costs. That are sitting there that you know that you're gonna be facing, right?

Whereas when you start a service business, it doesn't mean that you don't have costs, but in many cases you have less costs. Because you don't have the cost of producing goods, right? Yes. You still have branding, you have business cards, you have social media today, which we didn't have in those days.

Mm-hmm. It makes us sound old when I say that actually. Yeah. Okay. But there's so many things we didn't have, but I think for the product based business there are obviously a lot more costs. Yes. I didn't have to rent to space 'cause we, I had an area that I was keeping it, but still I didn't wanna take from my family debt.

 or update from my family income at the time and from my family. any savings. let's call it that, young family. I had was three kids at the time. I think I had just given birth to my fourth kid. Mm-hmm. When I actually started the business. And this was a decision that my husband at the time, and I took that, I was gonna take a bank loan, opened a separate bank account, and took the loan.

And at the time I thought it was a huge amount of money. Once again, it's not a small amount. Right. But today, 10,000 shekels is considered relatively small. especially for a business, it's like a minimal investment. Mm-hmm. so it was just a decision that we took. As I said, it was a scary decision.

Likewise, I remember people were just starting to get cell phones at the time and I remember him saying to me, why do you need a cell phone? I was saying, 'cause I need a number, business number and where people can get hold of me. I mean, now no one says, why do you need a cell phone? Right. Right. Like, that's one of the business expenses that, just everybody has exactly.

Yeah. So it was, it was a mutual decision and it something that I've, you know, never, Never looked back at all. And what do you see with your clients today who are in service-based businesses? 'cause you've said you've pivoted or to working with service-based businesses.

How do your clients feel about borrowing money to get their business going or even to scale their business? Right. What kind of discussions do you have with your clients? Okay. So it's interesting too, depending on the area of expertise and where they work, what they work in and if they the primary, income owner, if they're a single parent or if they have a husband that's earning a good salary.

But I'll share with you, an interesting thing is that with, realtors for example, who is one aspect of clients that I coach of the small to medium sized businesses, many realtors. Who are I? If you are a realtor today, in order to be able to close a sale, close the deal and issue invoices, you have to be an EC more share.

You have to have a proper registered business. Of course, like anyone should have a proper registered business, but you can't be an ec. You need to be able to. Have a proper, legitimate business plus man, and so many of I've trained and coached literally hundreds of realtors, and I've seen over the years those that took the leap and took a business loan in the beginning.

It made them more committed. In other words, they were committed that we say, are you interested in succeeding or you committed to succeeding? Yes. Those that were interested in succeeding, but were not obviously fully committed, were the ones that didn't take the business loans. And the ones that were one foot in, one foot out, they were dabbling with real estate and also working in something else on the side because they were nervous to give up what they call this secure, income.

To go fully into real estate and we could have a whole big discussion or debate on it. But those that gave it up and knew that there was not going to be food on the table, if they did not work hard to close the any deals or to get new exclusives, exclusivity, those are the ones that succeeded. Those are the ones that took business loans or whether it was apparent lending their money or whatever it was that they gave up their other jobs and dealt with it a hundred percent.

In other words, facing the insecure, the unknown, or the secure and the whatever can be known as, however we can word it. Yeah, so this, you just go all in, you make that decision and, I like to say, burn the boats. Right? you're not going back. you taken the leap. Yeah, and I think it's the same with any profession.

 a lot of people say, well, I'm going to try be a something or mm-hmm. I'll see how it works out. If you've got that attitude. I'm not saying don't go for it. I'm saying look at yourself clearly in the mirror and say to yourself, how much do you wanna do it? What? What is your why? Why do you wanna do it?

How committed to the business are you? And if you are not totally committed. Ask yourself again whether you should be doing it, and that involves, are you prepared to take a business loan if you need it, and many other steps that are involved in the process. Right? Having that exit plan means you're always sort of dancing between two worlds.

You're like, well, I can go here, I can go there. I do have to say though, some of my clients, and this is particularly true, like with my, the coaches and healers that I work with, they do. Either having a job, a part-time job, like there is something that's giving them cash flow might not be something that they love.

It might be a soul-sucking job, for some of them. I mean, I did this when I took the leap into entrepreneurship is I got a job. In an area of, in financial planning where I had it was 4,000 shekel a month, it certainly didn't replace my government job. By the way. My government job was actually a real job that I could not have been fired from unless I did something like horrible.

'cause it was from the government. I was a. A tenured employee. So I was one of the few people that did have pretty much 100% job security. But my husband's, company, when there was the.com crash back in 2000, his company, made everybody move from a five day to a four day work week. And his income was cut by 20% and then ultimately they were able to reinstate the five day work week, but he kept his job.

Many people, 'cause his company is in the kind of startup industries. Many people have been cut from his company over the years and he only suffered as it were. a little bit of a loss. but yeah, I think having that mindset that I'm in, I'm all committed. And if you take a job. Be a taxi driver, go serve coffee at a coffee shop, a job that you don't love, but gives you cash flow so that you're not in financial scarcity for your family.

I think that's something good, but if you're like, oh, maybe I could do this, or maybe I could do that, your head is taken up with other things and it's really hard for you to be 100% in your business. No, absolutely. Look, definitely, I'm absolutely not judging anyone. If they're running a small business on the one side and if they've got another job because they have to for their family support.

I'm not judging them at all, and each family has their own situation. What I am saying that I've seen is that we all know that we have limited time and limited hours. Mm-hmm. That we. Spend on whatever we're doing. And we've always gotta ask ourself at any given time, what is the best use of my, at any given moment?

What is the best use of my time right now? So if we're spending time on a bringing three or 4,000 check a month, is it possible that if I spent more time on B, that my rate per hour without working as many hours, could be a lot higher? And that way I can have an easier quality of life and build my business.

 it's a balance. It's a scale that we're always having to balance ourselves. and I also just would like to move into something just when I mentioned about at any given time and our time management, that's also something that is so important in making a difference to our profits and how our business succeeds in how we are managing time and.

Yeah, that is a super thing. Like some people say, I'm so busy. You are busy, but what are you doing? Are you spending time on the correct things? And I've spoken about it in workshops and in my book, I actually mentioned it to that there's three different categories of activities. There's direct activities that we need to do.

I'll give examples now. Okay, there's indirect activities and there's. the third, which is admin slash support activities. Mm-hmm. so many people are wasting, I don't wanna say wasting, let's say spending a lot of time on admin support work, which is great, that they should be spending more time on the direct activities, at least 70 to 75% of the time.

Then indirect, say 15 to 20, and only about 10 to 15%. On their admin support. So if I give an example, let's say in something that I do or what you do? Mm-hmm. Okay. So as a business or money coach, or any type of coach. And when we're giving the actual session, whether it's a group, whether it's the direct one-on-one, or running a direct event that's paid, so that's the direct activity.

So you are actually getting paid for that time. Mm-hmm. The indirect activity is the preparation, the social media, getting the speakers together, everything around that, and the admin and the support is everything else that we have to do. the billing, the financing, any kind of things.

I mean, there's also the newsletters. Anything that's indirect. Mm-hmm. So just make sure we're doing activities in the correct order in order that we're maximizing our options. To earn a profit and to make our businesses financially successful. Yeah, I agree with you. I might divide it a little bit differently.

I call them, the income generating activities and then they're the more the foundational, the structural, like your website and I just divide it into two categories. 'cause also the billing and everything. But yeah, so I call it the high dollar, the low dollar and the $0 and the no dollar or zero.

I love it directly. Directly. And yeah, that's how I call it. I love it, but the income generating is marketing and selling. See, even the newsletter, I call that as part of a marketing activity because reaching people and sharing with them and sharing value is part of how you keep your name out there in the world.

But whether you're putting your name on a billboard or you're recording a podcast, social media I call, is also income generating. It's oftentimes the runway to but it's indirect. In other words. The actual doing the activities, the direct it absolutely, it totally can be income generating. However, the way I see it is it's indirect.

'cause you're not actually, unless you are, engaging and communicating with people directly. Mm-hmm. through chat. it's indirect, which leads to, that direct. But it can absolutely, you could consider it income generating. Right. It's just a different level to if you are earning X amount per hour.

Right. and I think most. Companies, small businesses that I've worked with where they, and I think really this is probably one of the main concerns of most businesses is the marketing, the advertising, the lead generation. Even if you have an existing business, the size of Coca-Cola, let's say right in Coca-Cola, and Pepsi will have their, each one has.

Their loyal clients. But unless Coca-Cola and or Pepsi keep themselves front and center of people's minds, there's gonna be another soft drink, another carbonated sweet beverage that's going to, chip away at their market share. I mean, they pay a fortune every year. On Super Bowl Sunday in order to have a 32nd flash in front of everybody's eyes so that they get remembered by their current customers.

So marketing and lead gen is something that we always have to be working on. Totally. Totally. And I use the words, but it's exactly what you said, top of mind. Mm-hmm. And that's exactly what I say about staying top of mind. Yeah.via being somewhere in person, whether it's going to networking or to business events.

Whether it's on social media or even with the branding, that's what I say to my clients for promotional branded products, you wanna stay top of mind that people, when they sit at their desk, they open up and they see your logo in front of them. there'sthat indirect thing or the subconscious thought that you want them, and we don't even, as we know, there's so much that's been said about advertising and subliminal advertising.

Yeah. And everything. But sometimes it's just for a few seconds that it just, it passes you by, but they've seen the branding. So we need to be smart about that. And we also, on that note, I'd just like to say too, it's very important for us, and one of the most important things initially when you start your business, but to look at it on an ongoing basis, is your target markets.

Mm-hmm. Who is your target market? Because when we wanting to state off of mind, you wanna make sure that you're reaching number one, your primary client, your main target market. Correct. We also have secondary clients. Who the one are the ones that may tell the primary client about our business, oh, we, oh, I saw that this person does this or that.

So you wanna stay top of mind with the right kind of people. Who are the people that are going to be getting value from using your services or your products. I love that. and speaking of top of mind, I'm gonna share a little story. This one goes back. 15 years, maybe more. I have to think of my kids who were like in their ages at that time.

But I had an in-person event where I was going to be speaking at the A A CI. The conferences in Neish, Benefic ended the a CI. It's just Neish Benefic, the business conference. The conference coming up on November 19th. it's a Neish benefic in collaboration with myself, with a CI and ne Benefic.

Right. Okay. So many years ago, I used to do a lot of speaking at the A A CI, the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel. Right. I had you there too. Remember you spoke at my professional ages ago. Ages. Ages ago. Yeah. Yeah. That's, we've known each other for a long time. That's she's 15 years ago.

Right. And at that time. We were having some, issues with some of our kids, like as moms of whether we have one or many, your kids, they have ups and downs and they need a little bit of therapy. They need tutoring, they need whatever they need. And I had an event scheduled at the A CI and very close to the event my husband.

Asked me to be at home more. I pulled back. There was a time I pulled back in my business. I was less available Even now, like you go to networking events and in the last year, I have really not gone to a lot of networking events because of going overseas to be with my parents and my girls, thank God, who are just having babies all the time.

It's wonderful. Hashem, right? Bar Hashem. So I haven't been going to so many in-person events, but my husband asked me. To be at home more, and I canceled an event that was scheduled and I sent emails out to tell people that it wasn't happening. But I also had in my mind that I'm still top of mind, like you said, because people have seen me advertise the event and nobody knows that I've canceled it.

For anybody who's thinking of running a webinar or a masterclass and you've got these little gremlins in your mind, what if nobody comes? What if this? What if that? You know what? The marketing opportunity, you're in people's awareness. It's top of mind and nobody who didn't show up. That's a double negative.

That's a brain twister. Right? But anybody who didn't show up has no idea if the event happened or didn't happen, or if it happened or not, and how he showed up. Absolutely. Exactly. So I tell my clients schedule exact same thing. The exact same thing. Do the event, the exact same thing you, your name is being out there all on social media.

People have seen about the event, no one sees exactly how many people came. And it's the same with people that are asked to give speaking engagements. And you've done it many times. Mm-hmm. Where they're not being paid for the engagement. Right. But they're getting so much exposure and their name is getting all out there at the same time.

And if in the case, for example, you wrote a book, and I think that's where I bought your book from as well, it's also an opportunity to tell people about your book and about your other activities. Exactly. So, I say that to people. Be cautious about saying no, doesn't mean to say yes to everything.

Obviously if it's to your target market into people that you can find, that you find it can be of value, go for it. Stay top of mind. You wanna get your name out there. A hundred percent. So, Leslie, let's close up by sharing with people the upcoming conference on November 19th in Jerusalem, a business conference.

I wanna know a little bit about how you decided to move into the conference. Arena, right? You said we organize the professional women's network at the a CI. You're still, every Monday morning you're doing things and you're organizing events in Natanya. You are very active player out there in the Israeli world of small businesses and medium sized businesses.

So tell us a little bit how you got started and then why everybody should come on Jerusalem to Jerusalem on November 19th and join us at the conference. Right. Absolutely. Thank you. So before I start talking about the conference, you mentioned about Monday mornings, I just wanted to say that my podcast, the Monday Motivation Spotlight was actually started after October 7th.

It started about 10 days after October 7th, with the aim of giving us the, inspiration and motivation that every single one of us needed. And with the aim to. Of giving exposure to so many business owners and nonprofits that were taking a hit because of the war situation. That's one of my passions in terms of, giving exposure to business owners, helping other business owners, guiding other business owners and nonprofits.

So that's what actually, I was about to start another podcast, which maybe I'll do one day, but it's not at the top of my list right now. This happened and I decided I even had the graphical designed everything, uh, and then I decided, no, I wanted to take it in a different direction. I don't think there's anyone that October 7th did not have an impact on, and since then, thank God for two years.

Every single Monday I focus and, besides when it's a hug, I give exposure and spotlight a different, Israeli business owner slash or nonprofit. So that was the whole idea behind it. 30 minutes of inspiration where they get to share what they do, and it gets to inspire us. I love that. So just that you should know something on the side.

And that was, it was all, as I said, after October 7th, I was also in the middle of finishing two books where actually one you were featured in. I was happy to. to feature you. And I think you still haven't got your copy, if I'm not mistaken. So don't forget to get it at the November. November, okay?

When you come, please remind me. 'cause I'll be busy running around. So remind me, there'll be a copy there for you. So that's when I also, I've been written two business books, small business, in fact, I'll show it up even though I know that not everyone is gonna be seeing this Small business Success toolbox, and guide.

Love it. How to build and brand your business. And the second one is power talks with one entrepreneurs. And if you look carefully, those that can view this, they will see here Debbie on the cover. Thatum Thatum, yours truly. Alright, so that being said, as I was creating events for many years, some were online, some in person.

For three years I had been, creating the main organizer behind the a CI. ne Neish Benefic business Conference. The first year, Neish Benefic was not involved. We did it at a CI and from the second year, we brought in Neish Benefic. And I'm happy to say that this is the fourth year now we're doing it.

 we have an amazing lineup of speakers. Our topic is Own your voice building business and community. Which is great because it's a combination of business and as I say, community and your voice. It's not political. A lot of people could think it's political. It's not political. Especially if you look at some of the speakers, people may think that there's a political side.

Nope, it's not. It's more about. Owning up, seeing who we are, standing up for who we are and how we develop our own voice, whether it's in our businesses with podcasting, with anything that we stand for. We've got a great panel discussion on podcasts and media, which has said that you are in panel, which we're delighted, which is gonna be moderated by the lovely Heather Dean.

We've got super speakers. We've got a great networking session. We've got a fireside chat with Joseph Ler of Ed Israel. He's wonderful and we can learn a lot about how and what he's done and we can learn from every single one of the speakers. And of course it's gonna be a fabulous, just not only the networking, but a get together time to have fun, delicious food, muffin boutique.

You can come and have your healthier food as well as the muffins, and it's the place that you wanna be. I love it. On Wednesday, November 19th, we have exactly one month to go. Amazing. Okay, so wait, and who should come because is this for small businesses? If you would say in terms of people's revenue, their income, how much how big their business is.

Is this for multimillion dollar businesses or multimillion shekel businesses? Is it smaller? who I would we know our target market would say it's more for S and SMBs, small to medium sized businesses, solopreneurs. Companies. We do have some companies there, but the majority of the people that are there are small to medium sized businesses.

Some do have certain employees and of course nonprofits. That'll be, from the networking. Anyone can take value and can be interested in what the speakers have to say in terms of the actual networking. There'll be more benefit if you're an SMB, a small to medium sized business. I love it. Or even if you're not in business and you're just interested in the topic and you love meeting people, you're welcome to come too.

It's open to men and women every single age. I will say at the end of the month, ticket prices do go up to the last minute ticket price. Okay? So if somebody is seeing this as a money and a business podcast, if you wanna save money. You know that it's something that you wanna come to. You should go your ticket, your tickets before the end of October, even though the tickets will be open.

And we are gonna give out great swag bags. There's a lovely surprise waiting for you. Nice prizes. $500, prize. In fact, the first,travel prize, in fact, one of the first people that won it. was someone that would come through from Ananya group to came, who came through and she was the newest that had actually been there.

Wow. How fabulous. Which was really great. So it's basically a day of fun development, growth and just, getting out there. It's event is from nine to five 30. You can stay for as long as you want and I guarantee you're gonna have a great time. It's gonna be amazing. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking for like new energy and I feel that now that all of our living hostages have come home, there's obviously a lot of healing.

We're still waiting for some of our not living hostages to come home and we're after the Haem, we're about to have ish. It's about to be Ashman. It's about to be a time where we have from now until pe like with a little bit of, you know. Purum thrown in and Hanukkah thrown in. But this is the time of year where people get to focus on their business much more than during, like the other six months of the year.

So where there's summer holidays and all of our beautiful Jewish holidays. so it's a great time. People say like a lot of things, this is it. This is it. Yeah. Yeah. And I would just like to add 1, 1, 1 more thought is that, one of the things that I believe in is that. Goals and being passionate about following our goal, whether it's a personal goal or a business goal, is not limited to certain ages, at any age, whether you are 10 years old or you, we can still have goals and passion and things that want to fire us to do things.

So, firstly, I think that's super important for anyone to know that, we should all not say, oh, for somebody to say, well, I'm listening to this and I'm retired and, well, I'm not sure what I wanna do today. Find something that interests you. And it's, ongoing growth and development at every single age, I believe is important.

And with that in mind, as I now enter my world of my sixties, for a long time I've been very interested in the idea and passionate about nonprofit and actually serving people. I'm not saying instead of for-profit, but stay tuned. I'm gonna be launching something new, a new idea at the conference. Mm-hmm.

Which, very few people know about right now, but stay tuned because it's something that brings all my worlds together also, in terms of advancing and guiding and empowering business owners, and also in terms of serving the different community. So stay tuned for that. Leslie, you're a genius and you keep being creative and you keep adding more to the world and your heart is huge.

All of the service and the focus and the Monday morning inspirations, everything you do is with. With so much heart and so much love, and so much behind this. Sometimes I say, Leslie, just slow down. Stop. You don't have to do it. No, no, no. But you know what? Like for any business owner, entrepreneur that has passion to do something.

 if 10 years came by and I didn't do it. I have to see how it evolves, but I would be sorry that I didn't do wanna do it or that I didn't do it. So, you know, I'm like that you wanna do something, you do it. You make a way of, of making it happen. Figure that. So I'm looking forward, I'm looking forward to your big reveal at the conference.

And for anybody who's listening, who's in Israel, or you can fly into Israel, actually know something. One of my, one of my former clients could be here at that time, as they, that's already signed up from abroad. She's coming for the second year in a row. I love it. I love it. Okay. And I look forward to seeing you and thank you so much.

And we're gonna share conference details, we're gonna share your links where people can find you. And for all of our listeners, I look forward to seeing you next week on the Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. Bye-bye for now. Thank you. Bye-bye.