Marshall Mizrahi is VP at Handcraft Manufacturing, one of the world’s leading providers in branded children’s underwear. He also serves on the boards of both SBH and Magen David Yeshivah, pursues stand-up comedy, playwriting, and apparently sleight-of-hand card tricks.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of having a dynamic personality in business, finding fulfillment, work-life balance, and what every entrepreneur must sell in order to succeed.
Enjoy!
Transcript:
Victor M. Braca: Welcome to Momentum, the show where we sit down with interesting and successful community members in order to have conversations that will inspire the next generation of our community’s leaders. I’m your host, Victor Braca, and today I got the pleasure to sit down with Marshall Mizrahi. Marshall is the vice president at Handcraft Manufacturing, one of the world’s leading providers in branded children’s underwear, and we had a great conversation. Marshall sits on the board of SBH and Magen David Yeshiva, he pursues many hobbies, and overall we had an amazing conversation. Can’t wait for you guys to listen. Enjoy. Marshall Mizrahi.
Marshall Mizrahi: That’s me.
Victor M. Braca: Thank you for coming on, great to have you. Thanks for opening your backyard to me, it’s really…
Marshall Mizrahi: Yeah, welcome to the studio, right?
Victor M. Braca: We were just saying actually that yeah, it’s weatherproof. You know, we leave this open the whole time. I mean we might swim right after this.
Marshall Mizrahi: Yeah, yeah, once the cameras are off, you know.
Victor M. Braca: But anyways, okay, so now I want to jump right into it. You’re involved in a lot of things. You’re on the board of SBH, you’re on the board of Magen David, obviously your vice president of Handcraft, which we’re going to talk about all this. You pursue stand-up comedy, photography, playwriting… just like, okay, this is a ton of things. It’s a lot to take in. Why so many things? Do you get bored of each one? Like what’s going on?
Marshall Mizrahi: I definitely think that we’re capable of accomplishing a lot in our lives. I definitely want to feel fulfilled for sure. It really started when I was much younger. I don’t think I had a ton of friends in elementary school. Like, at least that’s how I perceived myself. I felt picked on, I felt I was the only tall, skinny Marshall in the grade. Everyone else was short, dark, and Joey, you know what I mean? There’s Joey, David, Iky, and then there’s Marshall. So I just felt like I didn’t fit as it was, right? So you didn’t get invited to a lot of play dates, which gave me time to putter, to tinker, to try things. To say, I want to… I don’t know, I just always wanted to do anything. Anything was… I was game for anything, from going to horse camp, to learning how to take apart the camera no less take a picture, to climb the roof. Like let’s play on the roof today. I don’t know, like just anything that I felt was interesting.
As a kid, you’ll get made fun of for being interesting because they don’t use the word interesting, they’ll say, “That kid’s weird.” Yeah, but as an adult they go, “He’s so interesting, he’s so dynamic, he has so much depth.” So really I think everyone needs to have hobbies, things they’re passionate about, and realize that our time is limited. The clock’s limited, so what are you going to accomplish?
Victor M. Braca: It seems like you’re maximizing your time here. Meaning, like, put work aside, you know, volunteer, hobbies, skills that you build up. I love that, it’s great.
Marshall Mizrahi: So yeah, if you want to be successful at work in any job, you can’t just say, “I trained to be this business person, I trained my whole life to be a banker, a wholesaler, a retailer.” People want to chat with you, and it’s not just, “Oh, where’d you go on vacation last week? Oh, I also went there. You went there? Oh wow, we’re friends now.” They want to see that the person has a life, that he’s passionate about anything. That’s sales. That in itself is sales, when you’re able to hold a conversation with someone and say, “Yes, I love being in wholesale, but at night I write plays, I volunteer, I do comedy, I’m helping kids that need help,” whatever it might be. They’re going, “Wow, this is a great human. I want to do business with a great human.”
Victor M. Braca: And it doesn’t even need to be specifically selling a product or your service. Selling yourself into a conversation, into a relationship with somebody, you know?
Marshall Mizrahi: So I always tell everyone the number one rule in business, in any business, is to sell yourself. There’s three things you’re going to sell, this is the rule. Three things, every time, every meeting of your whole life. But number one is always sell yourself. Whether that means sell yourself to your co-workers to make sure things are getting done, or of course to your customer. So if I have an hour meeting, I’m going to spend a half hour at least, if not 45 minutes, selling myself. Being entertaining, being interesting, being likable, being memorable. One time I gave this speech and a young lady raised her hand. She goes, “I’m going to be a doctor.” I said, “Didn’t you ever hear of good bedside manner?” You know, like one doctor, he’s not nice at all, but he’s brilliant. But the other doctor writes down that he remembers that you have a dog and that you like mac and cheese. He’s like, “How’s your dog been?” You’re like, “Oh my God, he’s the best doctor,” right?
Victor M. Braca: Actually, I read something interesting about that. Just a little off topic, but I don’t know if you ever read “Blink” by Gladwell.
Marshall Mizrahi: It’s on my shelf.
Victor M. Braca: Yeah, but not read, right? So he studies like these… he calls it thin slicing, meaning like little moments that will… maybe 10, 15 second moments that’ll say a lot about a person, right? So they ran a study and they found that doctors with more negative attitudes towards the patients actually got sued on a higher frequency for malpractice, even though it had no correlation with actual malpractice.
Marshall Mizrahi: Probably brilliant, the ones that are not nice doctors. And this is not a general statement, but they’re usually brilliant, right? They don’t have the time, their brain doesn’t function like ours does, and they’re just like, whatever it is. But number one, sell yourself, right? Remember their dog’s name and talk about the charity work you do, and talk about that you’re so passionate about making this podcast and it’s not your only thing to be in banking or investing. And I love a lot of things. I love not just my kids—we all love our kids, right? Everyone who goes on Wheel of Fortune, “I have a beautiful wife and two lovely kids,” like no one ever says, “I have the worst wife and my kids are hideous,” you know? Okay, we got it, you’re nice, your family is nice. But what makes you memorable? Why do I want to do business with you? So that’s number one.
Victor M. Braca: Love it.
Marshall Mizrahi: Number two, then you sell your company. My company, 78 years old. I didn’t start it, my grandfather started it. But you talk about that rich history, what my grandfather did for 30, 40 years, what my father did for 30, 40 years, and how the next generation came in and changed it. And there’s this like… there’s people that worked there for 40 years, 50 years, 20 years. They are falling in love, they’re going, “Wow, Marshall’s a great guy and his company is fantastic.” And again, if you’re a doctor, you’re talking about how you have the most high-tech hospital. Whatever it is that your business is in, whatever company you’re at, you want them to fall in love with the company because number one, now they love you, that was step one. Number two, now they love your company. Step three is sell the product. I usually have about three minutes left for this.
Victor M. Braca: So you’re really thinking about this in each conversation now.
Marshall Mizrahi: At this point, I’m doing business for 25 years, it’s natural. I went to lunch two days ago with a buyer. Two hours, 0% business, 0% negotiating. Not one question.
Victor M. Braca: You know, you hear that a lot in stories about business. Like go out for dinner and you just, you’re haggling the whole time, you know? But okay, it sounds like it’s really…
Marshall Mizrahi: When you’re a kid you’re thinking, “I gotta get them to dinner, I gotta haggle because I gotta bring up business and then I’m going to negotiate, I’m going to close the deal at this dinner.” So it’s the wrong way to…
Victor M. Braca: Yeah, maybe when you watch movies that took place in the 80s and 90s, like that was how they negotiated and…
Marshall Mizrahi: But closing, I closed that dinner and high fives, right? ABC, always be closing. I’m not. Always be falling in love with me. For me ABC is always be charging. Whenever you’re in a meeting, charge your phone, meaning take it out of your pocket, make sure your phone doesn’t die. But let them fall in love with you. Let it be dating. You don’t go on a date, date, date, “Oh, nice to meet you, where are you from, where are you from… so I think we should get married.” So that’s what you just did. “Meet, meet, meet, want to buy some underwear?” Like, you can’t go there. As I left the restaurant with her, we had a two-minute walk as we headed towards our offices. She turns to me, she goes, “We gotta grow Q1 together.” I didn’t ask. But after two hours of selling myself—whether I was or wasn’t selling, I was genuine, I really did mean everything I had to say. I really do volunteer my time, I really do love rock climbing when I have the chance, you know, it’s not a lie. And I really do want to hear about her kid.
Victor M. Braca: Nice, I love it. Okay, wow, so you’re really trying to make a connection with the person.
Marshall Mizrahi: It’s like anytime you can make a connection, I mean, I might waste the whole meeting. I could have the president of Walt Disney in my office and I’m supposed to give him a presentation. As long as no one’s stopping me from entertaining, I will take up the whole hour to the extent where he goes, “This was awesome. Oh man, we didn’t get to talk about that thing.” I go, “I’ll Zoom you, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, today’s not the last day of the world.” Now if you needed something done that minute because it’s an emergency, I got you. No one’s telling you avoid hard topics. But they walk away going, “Wow, this Handcraft and Marshall and his team and what they make and the quality…” I talk about quality sometimes for the whole time, right? So I think it’s really important.
Victor M. Braca: So actually, I watched your Handcraft’s corporate video, and yeah, it’s one of the things, it’s the main thing that you focus on, your relationships. So the video starts off for anyone who doesn’t know, with longtime employees saying how long they’ve worked at the company for, right? So it gets like 40 years, 20 years, it’ll be my 50th year, you know, and um, yeah, just further feeding into those relationships. I love it.
Marshall Mizrahi: Again, it’s not just about conquering business. If you want to be successful, you can’t do it alone. Like no one has a one-man office, right? So I need to do it with my team, which is my extended family. They need to feel like they’re a part of something. They need to feel like they’re appreciated and that they’re going to grow and that they love whatever our next goal is. And that’s really an important topic that I bring up to young business people today, which is what I wanted to talk about.
Victor M. Braca: So yeah, go on. I don’t know what your question is, but a lot of the questions I get will be like one sentence that you can give to the young adults, you know?
Marshall Mizrahi: Right. When we were growing the business, my brother and I, and my father was with us at the time, in the beginning there was never a goal of “I need to make money.” Of course we needed to make money, we were desperate to pay the bills. The company was small at the time. For me, ’cause I was young, and you don’t care about money as much, the goal was I need to feel successful. However you define success. I need to feel accomplished. I need to feel proud. I want to make something that I’m proud of. If I’m really, really proud of it, and I could really stand behind its morals, its ethics, its values, its quality, of why it exists… whatever that product is, right? Whether it’s your bank investment idea or a pair of underwear, if you really believe it, someone’s going to buy into it. And when they start to buy in and you start to see this success, you’re going, “Oh my God, we did this. Like, we had this idea, we did this, we put that out in the market and it sold.”
As we were growing, we never stopped and were like, “Did we make money? How much money did we make? Is that big profit next year?” I don’t think we did that for 10 years. For 10 years we put our head down and we were like, “Go, go, go.” Oh my God, people want more. They want more, they want more. Just okay, what if we did this? What if we change the fabric? What if we change the bag? What if we change the packaging? Go, go, go, go, go. All of a sudden we stopped and looked up 10 years later. Wow, we built something. But the goal was never like, “I need to be making 3 million dollars a year, I need to be making 500,000, I need to be rich, I need a mansion.” That’s not the goals. Those are not your life goals. Again, write a play, do comedy, go mountain climbing, take up a hobby. No one goes, “My goal is to become a famous mountain climber.” My goal is to climb 20 feet, then 30 feet, and 50 feet. And suddenly you climb Kilimanjaro and you go, “Wow, I’m at the top. I can’t believe I did this.” No one gave you a check at the top, but there’s fulfillment in it. You need to treat your business with fulfillment, right? With being proud of your personal accomplishment. Not with “My bank account is the only thing that tells me if I accomplished or not.” It’s just look what I built, not look how much I made, you know? And if you build it and you’re super proud, I guarantee there’ll be some money in the bank, right?
Victor M. Braca: Awesome. Love it. So I tell you, two questions. One that I was going to ask, one that I’m going to actually revise it. I was going to ask you, do you think… actually you can answer both. Do you think that your nature of pursuing all these hobbies, these skills outside of work… you know, volunteering, all the rock climbing, mountain climbing, photography, playwriting, standup comedy. Do you think that these things helped your business life, number one? But I also like… what I wanted to change it to was, how do you think that helped your personal life? Right, because you seem like you’re pretty fulfilled with all the things that you do as of now. And I don’t want to focus only on business, even though it’s like one of the main themes of the podcast, really the whole point of the podcast is success, you know. So tell me about that.
Marshall Mizrahi: So you asked like 92 questions in your one.
Victor M. Braca: I did, yeah.
Marshall Mizrahi: So good luck with that. Yeah, so you asked about feeling fulfilled. Just so you know how I feel, I never feel fulfilled or accomplished. I constantly feel like I could have done more. That’s just my nature, I’m always pushing for more, more, more, right? I don’t sit well. So when there could be one night in the whole week where I finally have an hour, and people go, “What are you watching?” I’m like, “Maybe I’ll change the light bulbs.” Like, there’s gotta be something else that my brain is capable of. I don’t know why.
Victor M. Braca: No, but I think it’s just like this need to feel productive.
Marshall Mizrahi: I just need… I didn’t think that people liked me as a child, so you take on things to prove yourself and to go, “I want to be liked.” People like comedians, people like volunteers because you’re doing something for them for free. I’ll do those, you know? I don’t think I thought those like that, but now looking back, you know, it might have been a subconscious back then. And now look what it turned into, which I got it, so it was a blessing. But still till today, I’m going, “I gotta do more, there’s more that I could do.” And I think it’s still that drive from first grade of needing to feel like… so I don’t fully always feel fulfilled.
I’ll tell you, at a certain point two years ago was a rough year. I was writing a play, the Center asked me to write.
Victor M. Braca: Mhmm.
Marshall Mizrahi: So I’m working with the board of the Center and it’s hard. It’s a 90-minute play with 50 volunteers acting, and the band, and money, and investing, and fundraising. And at the same time, Magen David had gone through a massive transition and principals were leaving and changing, and teachers and kids. And I’m getting phone calls from two major boards. And it’s both happening at the same time. And you’re working, and I’m supposed to be working, which some days definitely were not as much work as I should have been doing. And the phone calls would go till midnight, and I’m like, definitely not speaking to my family as much as I should be, not balancing that work-life balance. Somewhere around midnight it’d get a little quiet, and instead of passing out, I don’t know why I did this, I signed up for a master class in card tricks at midnight. At midnight. And I felt I had to do this, and I felt that it was going to expire in the master class. And so here I was in the midst of like two massive turmoils that were really drowning my brain, and at midnight I would do a master class from 12:00 to 12:30.
Victor M. Braca: Wow, and I’m assuming that calmed you down a little bit, you know.
Marshall Mizrahi: It was for me, right? I mean, it wasn’t for anybody but for me. So sometimes I’ll do something selfishly.
Victor M. Braca: It also wasn’t for like… correct me if I’m wrong, but I can imagine it wasn’t to say like, “Oh yeah, I have this other skill now.” It was you just wanted to do something.
Marshall Mizrahi: I mean, I’m happy to show you some tricks, but after we shut off the cameras. Yeah, so I read something once that says that everyone should be a waiter at least for a few months in their life. It’ll train you for success in every business. It’s extremely high stress, high pace. You got 30 tables that are all asking you for something. You have to memorize what everybody wants. Even if you wrote it down, somebody was like, “I still need a straw, you forgot my glass, I need a new napkin,” right? There’s constant yelling, you go to the back, the chefs are wild, there’s food coming out like wild, there’s money coming at you, you got to make proper change, you got to make sure you didn’t lose his credit card and swap it with that one. You have to talk to people, you have to make sure your boss likes you, and the chef likes you so he makes your order first, and your patrons like you. It’s a lot.
Victor M. Braca: And you were a waiter?
Marshall Mizrahi: When I… I wasn’t really a waiter. Okay, maybe next year. I did wait for free. My friend and I at the Inkwell when it existed back in the day, we were there every night anyways during college. So when they would get overwhelmed I would just pop up and serve the tables. I was kidding. But nice, um, but the point is like, you need to do a lot of random jobs. From doing this and learning how to put this microphone here and setting it up to the laptop, right? To working in camp and not just being a counselor for young kids but trying to become the director of the first through fourth division or the soccer division. Plan a shabbaton. How do you do the rooming? Who goes with who? How do you do the budget? How much does it cost each kid? How do we pay a hotel? I’m just a kid, I’m just 17, how do I pay a hotel? Why do you need this experience? Every bit of this little experience, suddenly you grow your business and you feel confident in spending money, or making phone calls, or balancing a budget, or running a team. Just all these tiny experiences, you go to work one day, you’re like, “Wow, thank God I did that random thing when I was 16 or 18 or 19. I really feel like I know how to use Excel now,” or “I really feel like I know whatever your thing is.”
When I was 12, I went to horse camp the whole summer. I was in a camp, really thought you were going to ride horses. You had to learn how to bridle them, and brush their feet, comb their feet out and brush them, and saddle them, and then clean their stalls, and then ride them. You know? But you’re learning about manual labor, you’re learning about how parts of the country live. And now today you want to sell all of America. You understand New York, you understand Arkansas and Kentucky and Kansas now. I was in horse camp one summer. Do I fully understand? No, but I got a taste.
Victor M. Braca: Interesting. You got to get a little taste of everything. You’re going to do business with everybody and anyone. So it makes you well-rounded. I was going to ask, my previous question was, do you think these experiences, everything that you take part in helps your business? But you kind of just answered that, you know. Right, you know people from different places and you know how different places react to certain things.
Marshall Mizrahi: Right, I think it’s crucial. There’s no way you could just go, “This is the business I’m starting,” and have zero other life. It’s life experiences.
Victor M. Braca: Sounds like your small talk game is very good.
Marshall Mizrahi: You know, I could talk about anything, right? So when I was going to college and I was a photographer at the time, so most of my classes were surrounding photography, but my father was intimating that one day he wants me to come to work. I was doing a ton of theater, ton of photography, and I enjoyed learning in college. High school they told you what classes to take. College you can take whatever you want. And I thought that was the most exciting learning and growing.
Victor M. Braca: Before you continue, I’m guessing you took this, you took that, you tried this out, is that the case?
Marshall Mizrahi: Yeah, yeah, I was like… I remember signing up for college one day and she goes, “Yeah, you could pick two classes from this side of the page and two classes from that side,” meaning the ones you have to take and the ones that you can take yourself. Sure, I said, “Wait a second, I’m going to pay you money and somebody will teach me everything I want to know about this topic?” She goes, “I guess that’s what college is.” Yeah, fun way to put it. And like, my brain exploded. How do you make plastic? How do you make plastic water bottles? Okay. Dark room photography, I know that. But how do you make a negative? What is it made from? What is that… oh, there was a war in Fort Monmouth here. Why is it a fort? What was the Battle of Monmouth? Why is there Molly Pitcher? Somebody’s going to tell me? Yeah, I guess if you give us a thousand dollars. Okay, here’s… I want to learn that. Wow. And then I would learn that and go, “Oh my God, I have a million questions about X,” and then I would switch schools. I didn’t care about the degree anymore, I cared about the knowledge, right?
So I asked my father, “Let’s say someone’s applying to your business, and he didn’t have any jobs besides his camp and his waiter and his things, right? It’s his first job he’s trying to get. What if he was able to show you his class list?” You know, imagine on your resume it said, “These are the classes I took,” not just “I have an MBA.” Well, in what? What’d you take? What do you want the class list to look like? So my father told me personally, take as many random classes as you can. He says, “Marshall, you’re a salesman. You never know who you’re going to speak to in life. So you want to acquire a little bit of skill in every topic possible, just to be able to speak to any human about anything.” So I took astronomy and sign language and human anatomy and biology just because I felt like, what if I speak to someone and they want to speak about, I don’t know, sign language? Or what if their parent is going through an illness and my human anatomy class helped me respond to them?
Victor M. Braca: And you happen to enjoy these classes too. Learning this wasn’t… you learn for learning sake, right?
Marshall Mizrahi: Right. And I did well on the tests, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t like, “I need my degree and I need to get an A.” I sat in the front of the class like a child, like, “Oh my God, and then what happens when you cut open the esophagus?” Like, I just was… I was like watching YouTube, like I was just like, “Oh my God, this is so cool, then what happens, and then what happens?”
Victor M. Braca: Make it sound so interesting.
Marshall Mizrahi: Yeah, well, because when you want to learn it, when you want to take your magic class because it’s just for fun, then you’re like, “Wow, learning’s not so bad.”
Victor M. Braca: I find it interesting how it seems like if I ask you what was your favorite subject in school, you might say everything.
Marshall Mizrahi: Everything, yeah. Meeting random Jewish people, teachers, deaf people, actors, photographers… switching schools. So I went to a local school, then I went to University School, then I went to School of Visual Arts, then I applied to a master class in the International Center for Photography. Okay, do I learn the photography? Do I remember the photography tricks today that I learned from this master photographer? Not really. But I remember the class was in his apartment. He was very Buddhist. He made us read “Zen and the Art of Archery”, which is about being Zen. We would come into his apartment, he would greet us at the door, he’d make us take our shoes off. He gave everyone fresh socks. Not because your socks were dirty, but because nothing feels better than a fresh, warm pair of socks. We sat on bean bags and he’d ring a bell to clear the karma, and we would discuss photography. I don’t remember what we discussed, but I remember meeting this really interesting man, and really interesting people.
Victor M. Braca: Interesting. It was only one class?
Marshall Mizrahi: Yeah. You know, I think one of the greatest things that happened to me was… I took some classes in Brookdale. It was so fun, fairly simple school, right? I was in speech class and the speech teacher one day catches me outside. I’ll never forget, it was raining. And she goes, “I’d love for you to join the speech team.” She was in her car, I’m standing in the rain, so finally she goes, “Get in the car.” Right, today you’d probably be arrested for asking your child to get into your car. But I jump in the car. She goes, “You’re a natural speaker. Join the speech team, which is called forensics.” I don’t know why it’s called the forensics team. Speech and debate.
Victor M. Braca: Meaning speech and debate, right? I guess forensics is analyzing something, you know. Debate.
Marshall Mizrahi: So I had to learn parliamentary debate and she goes, “Look, you’re a comedian. I’ve seen your stand-up comedy. When we go as a speech team…” which was cool, it’s the first team I was ever on in my life, right? I was never on basketball, I wasn’t that guy. Like, I was in theater, that’s your team, but no one ever calls you a team, you’re a troupe, you know. Right. So now I’m on a team with a bunch of other weirdos and randoms that are going to be on the speech team. She goes, “You’re the comedy guy. He’s the poet, she’s the poet lady, he’s doing dramatic speaking. The two of you and the two of you are going to do debate.” Okay, so I write my comedy. You have to do two or three things at each meet. So I’m going to do comedy and poetry and debate, right? Sure. I asked one of my random friends that I made, his name is Bart Nickerson. Bart, if you’re watching, leave a comment… but uh, I still speak to Bart. Bart became a famous TV show writer today.
Victor M. Braca: Oh nice.
Marshall Mizrahi: And we both credit a lot to this class and our teacher, Barbara. So anyways, I said, “You know, you’re so dry, Bart.” You read the comedy, and he read my bit so dry and so flat that I thought it was the funniest thing. I said, “Keep it, keep it.” He says, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I’ll try the impromptu speaking, which is the other option.” Our first meet was local, but it was on Shabbat. So I begged my parents. I drove there on Friday. I still had to pack a bicycle, I stayed at some motel, my mom packed me matzah. I stayed at the motel and then I got on my bicycle, I had to ride to the university on a Saturday and lock my bike and hope that someone was going to give me water and lunch. Wow. And all for this stupid thing.
Okay, impromptu speaking, what is it? They would put a piece of paper down on the table. There’s a crowd, people, 30 people depending how big the place was. And when you turn the piece of paper over, which had a quote on it, a clock would start. You got one minute to get your speech together. So there’s a piece of paper and a pen. But it’s Shabbat, so I’m not going to write down my thoughts, I’m just gonna get my brain going. I am trained in improv comedy, this is fine. But the room starts whispering, they’re buzzing. “He’s blanking out, he’s not writing,” you know, they’ve watched this for years. You got one minute to get your thoughts together, then you have to give a 30-second intro. A 30-second intro that now intros your three main points, a minute on your three main points, a 30-second recap of your three main points, and then a 30-second recap of your whole five-minute speech. Someone in the back of the room gives you hand signals, there’s no clock. I start. I crushed the five minutes. People went wild because I didn’t write anything down. I became known as the guy who doesn’t write anything down. I got to sleep at NYU, I had to go to the Chabad of NYU and sleep there on Shabbat because the meet was on Saturday, right? We slept in Texas, we slept in North Carolina. Oh wow. We were winning. We got sent by the college to the finals in Paris. I got to meet people and hone my speaking skills.
Victor M. Braca: And this was in college, in undergrad?
Marshall Mizrahi: This was all in college. And your improvisational skills and what makes people tick and how much can you prepare for an impromptu speech, you know? How many tools can you have in your pocket, right? And how much is truly just made up on the spot? Probably one of the best things I ever was a part of, so I love it.
Victor M. Braca: But you didn’t take all these classes in order to… did you take the classes to make the friends, to learn the things?
Marshall Mizrahi: I was never there to make friends, but looking back I made these random, let’s not say friends, but these random interactions, right? “Where do you live that shaped you as a person? Yeah, this guy’s orphaned as a child. This one only has one parent. This one moved from Kentucky to live in New York for the big city.” Like really, why? I remember I lived in London for a year for school, and I’m talking to one girl from Seattle who also went to the same school. And she’s like, “Oh, let’s go eat here.” I said, “No, I can’t eat that. I’m kosher.” She goes, “What’s kosher?” I said, “Look, I understand if you don’t understand Judaism,” like, which is hard for us to understand that someone doesn’t get Judaism, they never met a Jew. That’s fine, I’m not upset. I couldn’t believe she didn’t ever hear the word “kosher.” This is not a Jewish word. It wasn’t like I used some sort of Syrian lingo on her. It’s… that’s who you’re doing business with though. You’re only going to do business with Syrians? Then fine, if that’s your business model, and it totally exists. We have a few lawyers in the community, we have a few people who sell food in the community, Syrian to Syrian. But the 95% of us, we’re doing business outside the community. So how are you going to get along with these people? How are you going to interact? How are you going to be successful?
Victor M. Braca: Love it, love it. Yeah, so one of the big things that you’re focused on is speaking to the youth. You know, you’ve given a bunch of talks through SBH, you know, you’ve gone to schools, and that’s one of the reasons why I thought you’d be a great guest for the podcast, because that’s the whole point of the podcast. So obviously listen, you’re passionate about our community, about empowering kids to, you know, become the best versions of themselves, but why do you speak so much to the youth and, you know, more than the average person?
Marshall Mizrahi: Look, I think I had good mentors around me. My father, people like Charles Anteby and Ricky… Ricky Cohen, back then was just Ricky back then. But you had these people, you’re like, “Wow, they made me feel something or think about something.” And I guess I wanted to be that, right? You know, so maybe you think I’m helping you, but privately I just want to be them, you know? And I enjoy being on stage and I do comedy shows all the time because I can, or because I want to be liked, or because I’m good at it, or I don’t know, because I like the challenge. I like that sweat for the five minutes before I get on stage going, “Am I going to bomb tonight?” That pit in my stomach. So yeah, I like that. But I do like giving the kids a push that every kid has much more value than they might think. “Want to go into cash advance? Okay, so people are making money, what’s your life’s goal? Are you really enjoying that? Is it really morally and ethically fulfilling you, and at night now you’re just going to go, ‘I’m rolling and I want to go out for dinner and I want to go to St. Tropez?’” Like, life is so fulfilling and there’s so much available. I just want people to be passionate about many things.
I got to volunteer on a bunch of boards ’cause people ask me to. I have a problem, I don’t say no. That’s my other thing. That’s something you get as a child when you want people to like you. You want to be liked, you say yes to everything, right? Okay, so I don’t say no enough. You texted me, I said yes right away, right?
Victor M. Braca: Yeah.
Marshall Mizrahi: But on the board, I get to be with amazing trustees. So maybe I’m volunteering my time, but I’m learning from Jeff Sutton, Harry Adjmi, Eli Gindi, V. Benheim, Alberto Sutton the lawyer, Morris Missry, Joey Jerome, Morris Bailey, Gladys Haddad. I’m in awe of some of these people. I sit in their offices or I listen to the way they hold a meeting, or listen to the way their brain thinks, and I try to learn a lot from them. And then sometimes I go, “Enough. I still want to be me, I still want to be different than them. I don’t want to be them, I just want to be enamored by them.” Gladys Haddad works 23 hours a day, sleeps one hour a day. I don’t fathom how she functions as a human. Always smiling, always balancing a thousand things at the same time while being the president of the school, while helping the Center, while running her household, two daughters, pregnant, one getting married, building a home… “Oh hey Marsh, how are you, what’s up, how’s you…” Mmm, I would be drowning. So I learned from all these trustees how to balance a life, how to be successful, how to think about business, how to grow, how to have connections, how to ask for help when you need it. How to admit that you don’t know something. I watched Jack Haddad, someone asked him a question, he goes, “That’s a great question, I’ll get back to you.” And I was like, mind blown. I don’t know something, you’ll see me ramble for about 30 seconds till something smart comes out, and it’s usually pretty good.
Victor M. Braca: I’m always impressed. That did sound good.
Marshall Mizrahi: But he was like, “Great question, I’ll get back to you.” I was like, “Wow, I didn’t know that was an option.” So yeah, volunteer because you’ll give back to the kids. Volunteer because you might get something amazing from a kid who asked you a great question or from a trustee who taught you something amazing.
Victor M. Braca: Love it. Make connections with these people. Love it. And so you’re… you do a lot of these speaking engagements. What are you telling the kids? I’m sure it’s a lot of what you’re telling me now, but have a kid in high school, you know, who maybe doesn’t have the inherent business success drive, right? They’re just a normal kid, you know. How do you push them in direction, ’cause you said you want to push them past their limits? What do you…
Marshall Mizrahi: There was a kid in one of the schools that was about to be thrown out of school. He had a bunch of issues. I knew the kid wasn’t a bad kid. Like, sometimes no one’s a bad kid, but someone’s like, gone too far, you know. He wasn’t bad, the school can’t decide. I said, “Do me a favor, can I have him for a day?” And like, “For what?” I’m like, “Just to spend time with him.” I took him to Target and we shopped Target.
Victor M. Braca: How old is he?
Marshall Mizrahi: He was a junior at the time, got it, end of junior year. So the school’s telling him maybe you’re not going to be a senior, right? So he’s like, nervous in the car on the ride to Target, and he’s rambling on about what he’s done wrong in the past few months. And I’m like, “It’s all right bud, we got to…” And I asked him to write an apology letter to the school for the things he’s done, and he hands it to me in the car, and we got to Target. And I said, “Target’s like, brighter than Walmart, no?” He says, “Yeah.” I said, “Explain it to me.” He says, “I don’t know, I never thought about it.” “It’s okay, we’re in Target. Like, how is it different than Walmart?” He’s like, “I don’t know, like the lights are brighter. Like the floor is brighter. Like you want to walk down the aisles in Target, like every aisle draws you. The branding. They did their own branding for all the food, like all the packaging.” So we went to underwear, which is my expertise, right? Which underwear is good, which one’s bad. He goes, “Oh, look at the packaging on this.” Now he starts to speak out packaging. He’s like, “This one presents well, this one looks like it’s falling apart.” So we do that around the store for about an hour.
So I said, “Okay, today you learned about perception. You perceived that this underwear pack was better than that underwear pack because of the packaging. We don’t know how the product was inside. You perceive that Target was better than Walmart because it was brightly lit. And yeah, it was, I don’t know if that made it better than Walmart, it’s just brighter than Walmart.” He says, “Yeah.” I said, “You wrote an apology letter to the school, handwritten. At a certain point he ran out of ink, so he switched pens. A certain point he didn’t finish the letter, so he switched pens again. He handed it in, it was two pages. Each piece of paper didn’t match. There was two different notebooks, three different pen colors. This is the ugliest letter I’ve ever seen. I told him my perception is that you don’t care about yourself. You fail class and you tell everyone, ‘I don’t care, I don’t even care about math, I don’t care about history, I’m not going to use history in my life.’ You’re putting that out there because the perception is, that’s my worth. My worth is two unmatched pieces of paper, three unmatched pens. I said if you tell everyone that you’re successful, if you tell everyone, ‘I’m going to be something,’ if you tell everyone, ‘Watch me get an A, I could do it if I wanted to,’ their perception of you will change and you will be treated differently.” Kid called me three months later, goes, “I got all A’s the next semester.”
Victor M. Braca: Wow.
Marshall Mizrahi: But he didn’t believe in his perception. I didn’t ask him to go volunteer, I didn’t say to try stand-up comedy, I didn’t say to do rock climbing. But you have to perceive your own value, and he valued himself low. I valued myself low in elementary school, but that drove me to try a million things. I still don’t value myself high. I still think there’s more I can do, I have more I can accomplish. But every kid, every young adult watching, every adult watching, what’s your value? What can you accomplish? What’s the perception that you’re putting out there? Because you’re worth more than you think you’re worth. We’re very talented individuals, we can accomplish a lot. I’m not asking everyone to have 27 hobbies like me, it’s 25 too many, right? But at least know your worth and try to live up to your worth.
Victor M. Braca: I love it. And I’m sure you instill these values into your kids as a parent.
Marshall Mizrahi: Um, I don’t know. I don’t know if I did. You know, I don’t know if I spoke to my kids the way I spoke to him.
Victor M. Braca: But it doesn’t have to be speaking to them, you know, it could be creating a certain environment, putting them into an environment that they’re forced to try new things, encouragement, whatever it is. You know, look, we love…
Marshall Mizrahi: People always ask, like, “Why do my kids hang out with me?” You know. Um, we have a lot of fun. We make up games at every dinner table. When we go on vacation, which we’re going God willing next week, they get to see the world. They get to learn how other cultures live. We always love to learn another culture. We’ll spend the day with a tour guide teaching us the culture of that city, from Scotland to Japan to I don’t care, to Italy. So Italy, big deal, let’s go rolling. No, I want to learn the culture, what’s the habits? Right. But then they’ll say the best part of the trip was going to dinner. Because at dinner we make up a game, we make up a card game, we make up a guessing game, and we laugh for the next two hours. And I’m just enjoying being with them, and they’re enjoying being with me. And I guess in that time they’re learning their worth, they’re learning that they’re valuable, they’re learning that they see how much I accomplish. I never asked them to do what I did. And I always wonder, did I take too much time away from them? Was I not home enough? Was I on the phone too much? And some people will say, “No, you showed them. You showed them that you should volunteer, that you could be something.” I’m still trying to balance that. I don’t know if I figured it out. I think it’s… I don’t know if any of you know. I don’t know if my father, I don’t know if any of my friends’ fathers figured that out. It’s a hard thing to figure out, you know, balance.
Victor M. Braca: I’m sure that, you know, over the years you’ve gotten a better understanding of where you stand in that picture, but it’s tough. It’s got to be tough.
Marshall Mizrahi: Balance is tough. Everyone always asks me, “Oh, talk to kids about balance. Make sure they tell the kids to volunteer and teach them about life balance.” And I always tell them, “I failed,” right? You know, you can’t volunteer for three boards, and then want to write a play, and then write stand-up comedy, and take a magic class, and say that you balanced it. I don’t think…
Victor M. Braca: I don’t think balance… you know, you say you failed, but I don’t know, I would second guess that because I don’t think balance has to mean, you know, everything in equal portions, right? It doesn’t have to mean that you’re just as equal just as much a parent as you are a worker, and just as much a volunteer as you are…
Marshall Mizrahi: You know, when I was a kid, my father always talked about priorities. I was like a kid, he meant wake up, wash your face, brush your teeth, get dressed, right? Like in order, like these are your priorities. And now you still need to prioritize. If you’ve chosen to get married God willing, and you’ve chosen to have multiple children God willing, right, and you’ve chosen a business, and then you choose volunteer and you choose hobbies. What’s the order? What’s the modus operandi? What’s the order of operations, right? What’s the values of each one? Are you giving your wife enough attention? No, I am not. I’m sorry, right. And she always reminds me, right, “Don’t forget you have a home. Don’t forget SBH Bikur Cholim starts in your home.” Visit your mom, visit your grandma, visit your sister, take care of your wife and children, and make sure you’re finding time to be the best version of yourself. That doesn’t mean just playing poker with your friends. You should always have a good time and enjoy life. Enjoy life, right? I lost my mother too soon. Like, enjoy the minutes. You don’t know when the minutes will come. But yeah, also take on a challenge. If reading a book’s a challenge, read a book. If you don’t walk enough, walk an extra mile this week. It doesn’t have to be “I learned to do stand-up comedy,” which is a unique talent, but take something on and go, “Wow. I wanted to walk a mile each week and I did it. Wonder if I could do two, or 10, or 100? Or wonder if I could learn to juggle this week?” Why? I’m not becoming a juggler, just because I did it. And you told your brain I could do it, or scroll. Endlessly scroll and just keep scrolling and learn nothing, right?
Victor M. Braca: Well yeah, it’s not a lot to take in, it’s not so deep, but it’s just all true. You know, it’s all things that we have to live by. I think it’s wrapping up everything we said today.
Marshall Mizrahi: Yeah, take on little goals, whether they’re business goals, personal goals, nonsense goals, and accomplish them. They always say, if you’re 300 pounds and you want to be on a diet, don’t go deleting all carbs and eating no sugars. After two days you’re going to go, “I just can’t keep up with this,” right? But I heard about a guy, he was 300 pounds and he used to put four lumps of sugar in his coffee every day, and he went down to one lump. So he cut out three lumps. He changed nothing else in his diet. He still was a “hoosh” and ate 800 pounds of chicken a day, but after a month he lost 2 pounds. And he saw that, and he’s like, “Oh my God, I wonder what other tiny thing I could change.” And now instead of a pound of pasta, it was three-quarters of a pound. Still too much for any human, but not enough that he noticed the dent when he was eating, right? And after three years, the guy lost 120 pounds and weighed 180. And he saw momentum. So yes, take on goals. I want to learn a little bit more about real estate? Take a little class on the side, see that little progress. See the progress, but see it in goals. The thing with a card trick is, you could learn it and you go, “Wow, that is interesting,” but you can’t do it right away. Your hands don’t move the way the magician moves. So it’s a lot of just stupid practice, and then finally one day you do it, and someone goes, “That was amazing.” And you’re going, “Wow, I accomplished something.”
Victor M. Braca: For sure. Something.
Marshall Mizrahi: So you need to learn to build momentum, especially as a young adult. Started a podcast, I had one viewer. Then seven, then 19, then 25. I don’t think your goal is 1 million views or 1 million dollars. Like I said an hour ago, your goal is “I hope people watch it and enjoy it. I hope they find success in it.” Because if they do, you’ll find you’re building and you’re going, “Oh, I did that. Now I can do this. Now I can get a studio. Now I can get four people in the room.” For sure. So I always think you gotta take on small goals, accomplish them, and then set new goals.
Victor M. Braca: Love it. So I want to ask you one final, really truly final question in your life. You know, you’re involved in so many things. What was your momentum moment? What was the moment where you saw what you were doing, you saw that whatever it was, it was working, I have to continue doing this? What was that for you?
Marshall Mizrahi: I was at work with my family and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there. I enjoyed it, but I thought I was a photographer and an actor. And one day I didn’t like the way certain things looked or the way they were being presented. So I told my father, I’m like, “Do you mind if I have my hand at it? Like, I went to art school, I know how to present as well,” you know. He’s like, “Yeah, get on it.” And I was able to suddenly infuse the little pieces of me that I had gathered over 18, 20 years of life, and put it into business. And then that thing was successful. And I was like, “Wow, I could use all of my skills from horse camp to photography to acting to stand-up comedy to presenting to connecting with people, and I could put that into whatever business.” And once I saw that that worked, I was like, “Oh my God, I love this. I have a million ideas, I could do a million more things.” It set me free. I want to try everything, and all my skills added up into that one moment. And I was like, “Wow, I’m using my own skills, seeing it work.” And then I just loved what I did. And my father and my brother and I, we set out like a plan, like a chessboard. Let’s start. If we do this, this will happen. If we do that, that will happen. Now in a game of chess, you might have your plan, but things move around on the other side too. Like, “Oh, I didn’t expect that. Now let’s move here, let’s try that.” It was really a lot of fun to be able to use all of our skills and set out this plan and see it come to fruition over many years.
Victor M. Braca: That’s great. Thank God. Okay. And yeah, look where you are now. Amazing. Okay, God yeah. Marshall, thank you for…
Marshall Mizrahi: Thanks for having me on this lovely podcast. I enjoyed all the lawnmowers in the background gardening, amazing. I’m getting ready for the swim here, so I’m looking forward. We have to push off the pool guys for an extra 10 minutes, yeah. Congratulations to you on finishing high school and getting accepted to college, and having a hobby and trying something new and trying to help everybody else that’s in your shoes. So congratulations to you.
Victor M. Braca: Thank you so much. All right, that’s a wrap. Amazing. Thank you for watching this episode of Momentum. I hope you enjoyed the conversation because I know I did. Please leave a comment below. I would really love to hear your feedback, and until next time.
Momentum 