Abie Rosow is the founder of Rosow Elite Performance, a basketball training company which runs clinics in multiple cities and works with thousands of kids every year.
In this episode, he opens up about the struggles of scaling a company that delivers individualized service, what he’s learned from his time in business, and the #1 thing you need to succeed.
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Transcript
Victor M. Braca: We’ve coached thousands of kids. You’re set to coach over 500 this summer.
Abie Rosow: I remember I would be biking around to different people’s houses, basketball in the backpack, working with the kids. Heading into the summer, we’ll have about 25 coaches. I was very behind on collecting money, like months and months on collecting money. Then I realized like I got to hire somebody or else like I’m just going to lose the money. One piece of advice I try to think about sometimes is…
Victor M. Braca: When Abie Rosow was in high school, he was biking from house to house with a basketball in his backpack, training kids for a few bucks here and there just because he loved the game. He didn’t know it yet, but that hustle would soon turn into one of the biggest youth basketball training companies in the tri-state area.
Today, Abie’s company, REP—Rosow Elite Performance—coaches hundreds of kids per year, runs programs across Brooklyn, Deal, New Jersey, and the Five Towns and more, and employs a team of up to 25 coaches. But what really sets REP apart is the mindset it builds in kids. Abie doesn’t just teach basketball, he teaches confidence, work ethic, discipline. He’s simultaneously coaching the game and instilling the principles behind a successful life.
And honestly, that same focus on values shows up in how Abie runs the business. Even the way he talks about his longtime assistant, Rachel, it says it all in my opinion. He tells me she’s been by his side for years, handling everything from daily logistics to big picture strategy thinking, and making the whole REP experience feel seamless. I mean, it’s clear that Abie doesn’t just build great athletes; he builds a great team of people around him.
In this episode, we talk about how he built REP from the ground up, how he scaled from one coach to 25 while staying deeply involved in every kid’s growth, and how he overcame the fear of hiring his first full-time employee when the numbers just didn’t seem to add up. We also dive into how a last-minute trip to the Five Towns turned into a potential Nike partnership and the story behind Abie’s motto, “Let’s get better.”
I’m Victor Braca and Momentum is where I dive deep with exceptional leaders to uncover the key decisions, defining moments, and lessons that propel them to success and how those insights can inspire your journey forward. If you’re building something from scratch, if you’ve ever doubted your path, or if you just need one final push to just start, it’s all in here. Let’s get into it. This episode is sponsored by the Hedaya Capital Group.
Abie Rosow—Rosow Elite Performance. Welcome to Momentum.
Abie Rosow: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Victor M. Braca: Thank you for being here. We’ll jump right into it. You’ve coached thousands of kids. You’re set to coach over 500 this summer. I want to use that as a starting point to who you are. Abie, when you meet someone for the first time, how do you explain to them what you do?
Abie Rosow: So, we run a basketball training program focused on individual skill development, giving kids confidence in their individual skills, and also teaching them how to play within a team setting so that they can reach their goal. If they want to try to play on a team, if they want to try to get more minutes on a team, if they want to just be able to play on Saturday in the backyard with their friends—whatever goal they’re trying to reach, we’re able to cater to them.
Victor M. Braca: What I love about you and about your approach is that you don’t just say, “We’re a basketball training program and we teach basketball,” but you teach life skills. You instill kids and really anybody who goes through your programs with the skills they need and the mindsets they need to succeed in life, which I love. And we’re going to get to that and we’re going to get to your business life and your giving back, which are really one and the same, right? Because you’re inspiring thousands of kids, which is just unbelievable. But I want to go back to your early days. Were you always entrepreneurial?
Abie Rosow: Yeah. I remember like when I was in school, I was selling sodas and waters and things like that.
Victor M. Braca: Me too. Me too. I love it.
Abie Rosow: Yeah, I always found myself doing different things like that. Always interested in business and always looking to learn and grow in different ways.
Victor M. Braca: Love it. So you started Rosow Elite Performance when you were 17. Like, it wasn’t an official thing; you just started training kids. But can you tell me a little bit about that?
Abie Rosow: Yeah. So, I was pretty good in high school. And then some people heard about me and I just started training some of my mom’s friends’ kids. Started working with them a little bit and then it just became word of mouth. I remember before I had a license—maybe when I had a license but I didn’t have my own car—I would be biking around to different people’s houses, basketball in the backpack, working with the kids. And then it just became word of mouth and it kind of grew that way.
Victor M. Braca: When I think back to high school, most high school students are thinking about their history midterm next week. Why start a business?
Abie Rosow: Well, I didn’t really think of it as a business. I just thought of it as an opportunity to do what I like to do, make a little bit of money. I remember I was in high school and then I was coaching a travel team at the Center. So I was doing that. And maybe that’s my first year of college. So while I was playing, I was starting to find different ways to love the game in different ways. I love the game as a player, but then I slowly started to realize like I really love teaching the kids just as much and now even more so than playing.
Victor M. Braca: That’s so cool. I mean, do you have to learn coaching separately from learning how to play?
Abie Rosow: For sure. So, I think I learned a lot about coaching from playing. And I think I learned a lot about coaching from playing at different levels—playing in college, playing Maccabi USA and different things like that. But I also had different coaches that were and still are my mentors that I’ve learned just from watching them coach and being around them. For sure.
Victor M. Braca: Amazing. And they’re probably so proud of you looking at where you are now, coaching so many kids, inspiring so many people. Looking back at “He used to be one of my players” is probably such a good moment for them.
Abie Rosow: Sure.
Victor M. Braca: Love it. So, take me into graduating high school. Did you go straight to college? Did you go to work? Tell me about your journey after, and did you see yourself going into a traditional job or did you always know that you wanted to have a coaching business or just do something untraditional?
Abie Rosow: No, I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do. I knew that when I was in high school, all I wanted to do when I was growing up—since I was like 10 years old—all I wanted to do was play in the NBA. Really, that’s all I wanted to do. That was my only goal. Everybody knew it and everybody would tell me it’s not possible and I said I’m going to do it.
I was in high school and then I started to realize: in order to get to the NBA, you have to play in college first. So I started going to different camps and clinics and trying to be seen by different coaches. There’s different levels to college basketball. The highest level that I had the opportunity to go to would be a walk-on at a Division 2 school, but I had other Division 3 options and I realized… I started working with some kids while I was in high school. I enjoyed doing it.
So I ended up staying local, figured giving myself a chance to play in college and I figured if I’m good enough, then I’ll try to transfer to a higher level. But right now, let me still have a chance to play and still be able to be local and work with the kids. I went to Hunter College. So I went there and then from there I really started to work with more kids. I was in the city; I was working with kids in the city. I had my programs in Brooklyn; in the summer, I had programs in Deal.
I started working with kids and while I started to play, the more I started to train, my time became limited. The more I started to realize, “Okay, I really enjoy and really love coaching and training and I’m really not enjoying playing as much.” Six days a week, if you don’t really commit to it, it’s very difficult. So after two years of playing—I still graduated college—but after two years of playing, I decided to stop playing and focus on college.
Now, I had a bunch of different [doubts]… a lot of people, like even my family, of course they supported me, but: “Are you going to be able to make a living just training and coaching basketball?” So I did a bunch of different things. I had an internship in a real estate firm. I had an accounting internship. I graduated with an accounting degree. And I taught SAFE at Magen David Elementary School and Yeshiva Prep High School. I was a gym teacher at Magen David. I was a gym teacher at Flatbush High School. So, I tried all these different things until I was able to realize like I’m able to really commit full-time to my business, and eventually that happened. But I’m glad because I even tried working with my parents for a little bit. I’m glad that I tried all these different things because now I know I didn’t enjoy it as much and now that I really enjoy this, I’m going to push all the way forward.
Victor M. Braca: How did those experiences tell you what you like, what you don’t like, what career you want to go into? How was that foundational for you?
Abie Rosow: It’s a hard question. A lot of experiences also. I was always good at math, but I realized accounting is a lot more than just math. It’s totally different. And I didn’t really enjoy sitting at a desk—even though now a lot of my day is sitting at a desk with preparation of workouts and different things like that—but I really didn’t enjoy doing something traditional like that. I enjoy opportunity for growth based on how I do, being able to grow that way. Sitting in an accounting firm just wasn’t for me, working for a certain amount of years and then trying to get to the next level. I want to be able to grow a little bit quicker. To me personally, I try to every single year add something. So if I’m coaching this many teams this year, I’m trying to add another team next year. I’m trying to get to another level next year. Trying to grow that way. Trying to add another program, another location.
Victor M. Braca: The entrepreneurial way. Love it. Like always growing, always moving, always expanding. What I love about you is that you had the dream of going to the NBA when you were little, right? And you went to college and like—yes, follow your dreams, follow your passion—but like that’s something that you really can’t control. You can control if you’re successful. You can’t control if you get into the NBA.
Abie Rosow: So yeah, to me I always think that because I set the bar so high, I was able to get to where I am now. And if I didn’t set it that high, I don’t think I would be where I am right now. So, I still have a lot more room to grow, too.
Victor M. Braca: And you took basketball as a business. One way basketball could be a business is the NBA and playing professionally, but you took that and you made it into a very realistic and very doable for you experience of making basketball into a business, which is coaching and starting a business out of it. So kids who like basketball and who want to go into basketball—yeah, they could want to go into the NBA—but it doesn’t just have to be “get into the NBA or relinquish my dreams.” You went into basketball and it being coaching. You’re still in the field. You’re still playing the sport and doing the sport, but you’re doing it in a way that works for you. That’s my favorite part about you, your company, and your journey: you made something that’s far out of reach for so many people and you made it doable for yourself. You know what I mean?
Abie Rosow: Sure.
Victor M. Braca: I love that. It sounds like a big jump from training kids on the side of high school and college to now running summer programs and after-school programs and clinics and training camps and coaching thousands of students. Tell me a little bit about the growth stages of your business. So you’re running the business during college and when did it really start to grow?
Abie Rosow: It’s a good question. So I was in college, I was training kids in the city, and then when the season was over, I moved back to Brooklyn and I had my programs in Brooklyn. So I couldn’t be in two places at once. I realized we started to hire a staff at my group trainings because we pride ourselves on player-to-coach ratio. Give everybody enough individualized attention. So and then saying, “Well, if we’re going to… if I can’t be two places at once and I’m running a session now and someone wants a session at the same time, how do we expand?” So, having these coaches be an extension of me and trusting in them to work with our kids.
Victor M. Braca: Nice. And did you have to overcome that hurdle in terms of your business REP as a business relies so much on you? You know, you have to be there to do the coaching. It’s your personality, it’s your energy that people are attracted to and that people pay for at the end of the day. So when you tell somebody, “Oh yeah, I’m going to coach your kid, but it’s going to be one of my guys,” or it’s going to be part of this other program that you might not personally be directly involved in, did you face that as a challenge?
Abie Rosow: So look, first of all, I’m directly involved in all of our programs. So it was definitely a challenge. But to me the most important thing is preparation. So any workout, any clinic, any practice that I walk into or my coaches walk into, we come prepared. You know who’s in the program; when we split the groups up, the groups are split up from beforehand; what needs to be worked on; everything is planned minute to minute.
So as long as I’m preparing the workout and helping our coaches prepare the workout and guiding our coaches and the follow-up… you know, it’s very important following up with parents about how the kids are growing. Very important following up with coaches, especially when you’re not there, to understand exactly how the sessions went and what needs to be built on for the next one.
But yeah, of course, anything that you do that’s new, it’s going to take some time. At the beginning, it’s hard for people to understand: “What do you mean? I’m used to working with Abie but it’s someone else?” No, but you have to explain the process and then you have to make it work. You only have one shot. First impressions are the most important thing. You have one time with somebody’s first impression. So if I send a coach to work with you and it doesn’t work out, that person now is going to have a bad impression of my company. So it’s very important that I worked at it where I’m sending coaches that, number one, I trust; number two, have worked with me in group sessions before and know what I’m expecting; and that I’m communicating with them about what needs to be worked on with each kid. So thank God, as big as our program is, I know about each kid and what the kids need to work on. So we’re able to make sure they get what they need.
Victor M. Braca: Even when I mentioned my siblings to you, you knew them by name, by face, you knew what age they were. I mean, it’s impressive. I think what you do—a lot of people just delegate and they struggle with delegating because you have to dump responsibilities onto other people. Which I think, just based on what you’re saying…
Abie Rosow: I think it’s a blessing and a curse. It’s hard for me sometimes to let go. I’m very involved in everything. I need to delegate more in the backend part of the business, but I think because it’s very difficult for me to delegate, I always need to be involved in everything. I think that it helps me with this part where I’m not just going to be like, “Okay, just run the workout and whatever happens happens.” It’s never like that. I’m always knowing exactly what’s going on with the kids.
Victor M. Braca: So it sounds like you delegate and you prepare. Delegation and preparation is like the killer combo for you because with just delegation, then the quality would be diminished and you wouldn’t have the REP experience. And with just preparation, you’re doing all the stuff yourself. But if you delegate and prepare for the workouts and the programs that you’re running, then people get the same quality and you get to run the business. People say a phrase which is “working on the business, not in the business”—working on growing and expanding and innovating in the business. And then there’s working in your business, which is sort of like a lot of entrepreneurs when they start a company, they don’t start a business, they don’t own a company, they own a job, is what I read in a book. Did you ever feel like you own the job as opposed to owning a business?
Abie Rosow: Yeah. I hear that stuff all the time. I used to feel it all the time. I feel it not as often, but you feel it. When you’re starting something, you’re doing everything. So you’re up at 4:00 in the morning, you’re sleeping ridiculous hours, you’re missing out on things. But with anything, if you want to be great at something, it takes sacrifice. So for sure, I definitely felt that before. But then eventually as you grow, now we have a team of people helping me out, thank God. And so I’m able to delegate more. But there’s always those days where you do feel like it, but at the end of the day, it’s always worth it. It’s really always worth it. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything. For sure.
Victor M. Braca: Is there such thing as work-life balance in your business?
Abie Rosow: Yeah. No, for sure. I mean, work-life balance is important for sure. Something I could surely work on a little bit more.
Victor M. Braca: Like we all can.
Abie Rosow: Yeah. But yeah, it’s hard. With my business, we work with kids and the kids are in school and in camp. So programs are always at night or on the weekends, things like that. And it’s not like during the day we’re doing nothing. There’s work during the day, too. So you’re working, preparing, doing different things, and then you work with them at night. So yeah, it’s difficult. But as you grow and as you’re able to delegate more and more, then it frees up a little bit more of my time for sure.
Victor M. Braca: And I think you enjoy it. If you’re working all day and a lot of the night, then you have to enjoy it. I think that’s a lot of what keeps you going is that you enjoy what you’re doing and you find fulfillment in it.
Abie Rosow: Yeah, for sure.
Victor M. Braca: We touched on this a little bit, but I want to go deeper into scaling your operation. How big is your team now?
Abie Rosow: So, we have three full-time people that work for us. And then as far as our coaching staff, depending on the time of the year—like right now, heading into the summer—we’ll have about 25 coaches.
Victor M. Braca: Oh, wow. That’s a big operation. How did you get from only Abie as the coach to 25 coaches?
Abie Rosow: I mean, look, it took a lot of time. Like you said, started working with kids when I was 17. Now I’m 26. So it takes time. A lot of it was really word of mouth and just really investing in what we do. It’s not just the hour that you work with the kid. A lot goes into it: it’s the preparation of the workout, it’s communicating with the parents, it’s understanding who you’re working with, understanding what they need and everything like that.
The more effort you put into it… and with a business or job or anything, it’s not just about going in and leaving and making the money and that’s it. It’s about: you got to do it because you love it and you got to do it even if there’s no reward. And once you do that, then the reward ends up coming when you don’t even realize it. 100%. So that’s the most important thing. You can’t only do something because you’re going to get something out of it.
Especially when you’re starting out, when you’re younger, you got to take… the most important thing is you got to take every opportunity. Every opportunity that comes. Now I’ll call up one of my mentors. I’m like, “Hey, I have an opportunity to coach this team and that team.”
He goes, “Why don’t you coach two more college teams?” He makes fun of me all the time like that.
But it’s really like… to me it’s like: how am I going to say no to an opportunity, right? What’s going to happen? I think like that a lot. You got to take every opportunity and sometimes it’s not the best and you learn from it, and sometimes it’s like: “Wow, imagine I would have passed on this.”
So right now, if I asked you for every hat that you wore this past month in your business, between your coaching, tell me everything.
Abie Rosow: This past month, well, it wasn’t as crazy with the holidays and everything, but like two months ago when it was championship season… yeah, but it’s great. Assistant coach at Yeshiva University. My role there is player development. So working with the guys there, working out with them a couple times a week in the morning. And then we had the playoffs and we won the Skyline Championship. So that was awesome. We went to the tournament. went to the Division 3 national tournament. That was really awesome. And then we won two championships with Magen David, fifth and sixth grade.
Victor M. Braca: I mean, as a Flatbush guy, I’m legally obliged to say that I’m not a fan of Magen David winning the championships, but…
Abie Rosow: Look, but when I was coaching at Flatbush before that, we won two championships there also.
Victor M. Braca: All right. Okay, we got it. Good. It’s all love to everybody. It’s great. I love it.
Abie Rosow: So won two championships this past year with fifth and sixth grade Magen David, Skyline Championship with Yeshiva University, and then still running my program. Yeah, that’s a lot of hats.
Victor M. Braca: A lot of hats. Just further feeds into the work-life balance. Was there… did you ever feel like you were growing too fast or did you ever feel like you needed to learn more about business and business management as you were growing your team?
Abie Rosow: So, look, I think I’m one of those guys that really tries to learn from any person I speak to. I remember going to a clinic once and we’re running through a shooting drill and I went over to the coach after. I’m like, “Hey, how’s my form?”
He goes, “Just be confident. You’re doing good.”
Sometimes you got to just… of course you always want to learn, but sometimes you learn so much by just doing. I learned the most by doing and failing and figuring out, “Okay, I messed up in this situation. How am I going to learn and figure it out for the next time?” And I think that’s really the best way to learn. Of course, I always have… if there’s any problem, you name it, I thank God I’m able to call somebody and be like, “Hey, how do I deal with this? How do I deal with that?” It really does take a village, as they say.
Victor M. Braca: How has your network of mentors and the people that you look up to for counsel shaped your business?
Abie Rosow: They really have. My parents, with their business and their business acumen and everything and their understanding of me, they’ve helped me tremendously. Then you have different basketball people that have helped me—different basketball coaches—and then there’s guys that help me with the basketball coaching side of it and the basketball skill development side, but then there’s also the business management side. Like the management of the people that work full-time that aren’t coaches, but there’s also the management of the coaches and understanding different people’s personalities. The same way you have a kid you can talk to in a certain way, or you can motivate a kid in a certain way, the same thing with coaches. Certain coaches you could talk to in a certain way, and others you have to talk to in another way and motivate in different ways. So it’s really… you’re always learning about how to manage and work with different people.
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You told me about learning from setbacks and failures. It seems like it’s very important to you. So, what has been one of the biggest mistakes you made or the biggest setbacks you’ve experienced and what did you take from that?
Abie Rosow: It’s a tough question. There’s definitely a bunch of different mistakes and failures. Everybody has that. You just got to bounce back from them. But something like with my business… I’ve always wanted to grow and hire people to help me with, you know, backend work and things like that. It came to a point, I think it was three years ago, before I had anybody, it was just me. And I looked and… I kept pushing it: “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll do it tomorrow night. I’ll wake up early one day and do it.”
And I never collected. I was very behind on collecting money. Like months and months on collecting money. And then I realized: I got to hire somebody or else I’m just going to lose the money. May as well hire somebody. So I guess like a lesson to people… I don’t know if it’s about a failure so much but like a lesson is: I always sometimes I drive myself crazy. “I got to grow. I got to grow. You got to do something. You got to take the [leap].”
I always thought about hiring somebody to help me for years before it actually just clicked: “Now’s the time.” So sometimes you have it in your mind and you want to do something, but sometimes you got to just wait till it’s the right opportunity. When it’s the right opportunity, you know. So I guess it became… look, you got to do it. And it just forced me to do it.
I guess that’s a bad example, but even with other things… like we always wanted to expand. Every year we would go to Deal in the summer and we would work with the kids in the summer. Kids from Brooklyn would come. We worked with a handful of kids from Deal and only worked with them for eight weeks in the summer, and it grew. It grew from let’s say 10 kids to 20 kids to 30. And every summer we would go back to Brooklyn and I’d be like, “Why are we not working with these kids year-round?” And I would be banging myself in the head: “Why are we not doing it?”
All of a sudden this past year, thank God, we had a great full year-round program in Deal. And I’m like to myself, it’s partly because you always wanted to do it and it’s partly because also now’s the right time. You finally grew it to a point. This spring, we have a Five Towns program. We have over 30 kids in the Five Towns working weekly now in the spring and it’s because we kept at it. We kept at it, and eventually we broke through. Now is the right time. It just happens to be. So sometimes you got to be a little patient. Don’t drive yourself too crazy and thank God everything works out.
Victor M. Braca: I love hearing about your expansion and how you struggle with it. It’s so real. People who run service-based businesses—which is really what you’re doing—it’s so tough to expand. And you’ve successfully branched out into multiple locations: out of state for the whole year into another city, another town. I mean, that’s very, very impressive. Was it nerve-wracking for you to take somebody on full-time? Because paying coaches by the hour or for the project, there’s less risk in that than paying somebody a yearly salary when they get paid whether or not you get players that year.
Abie Rosow: 100%. So that was the hardest part before we hired anybody. Like you said: you have a lesson, you pay a coach. You don’t have a lesson, you don’t pay. That was the hardest part. It just came to a point where we’re just going to… and you know something my mom taught me: let’s just say for math purposes the salary is $12,000 for the year, which is not a normal salary just for math. You break it down into months. So you hire somebody, it’s $1,000 for the month. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, then it’s done. You don’t have to think about the full-year salary. You break it down. You got to give it a month; you give it time and okay, if not, it’s a learning experience that you paid x amount of dollars for the month. You don’t have to think like: “Oh my God, I lost the full [amount].” You paid for a learning experience.
Victor M. Braca: Like you paid to go to college.
Abie Rosow: Exactly. You’re just paying… and it’s just like any business where you sign up, you go to a conference and you’re trying to expand and learn; it’s the same thing. You’re investing in your company. Sometimes I get stuck where it’s like: I don’t want to put money into something unless I know exactly when I’m going to get out of it. But if you hire somebody to work for you, it doesn’t mean that it’s different. They’re not training a kid, so you don’t make money off of them necessarily right there. But it frees up your time. Now my head’s clearer and now I can think about growing the business instead of sitting at an Excel sheet trying to figure out who’s paying me, who I have to pay, and all these different things which I was focused on the entire time. So I feel like it’s really, really difficult. It’s a great point. It’s very, very difficult to hire somebody that you know you have to pay no matter what happens. But it’s part of responsibility and if you really want to expand, that’s the only way to do it. And you try it and if it doesn’t work, okay then maybe you’re a one-man operation for a little bit longer, then you try again. Thank God it was the right time, we tried and we kept pushing and it’s good.
Victor M. Braca: You know a lot about business. I know a lot is you learned on the job from growing your own business, but did you take a lot of business knowledge from school?
Abie Rosow: It’s a good question. So I went to Hunter College. They didn’t have a business major; I majored in accounting. I was always very active in trying to figure out what to do, so I connected with the business office over there. And they put me in touch… we had this great program, an entrepreneurial program. And what they did was they paired you up with a Hunter alumni and you’re supposed to have an internship. Every week you would have a call with your mentor and update them on how the internship was.
I reached out to them and I said, “Listen, I can’t take an internship in the summer. Let me do my own business as an internship.” I begged them to do it and they accepted. Basically, I had a mentor and his assistant—now they’re not part of the community, they’re just great business people who make tons of money and they’re giving back their time. So I was able to open up my entire business: how much money I’m making, how much money I’m paying out, who I’m hiring, what the problems are… every week opening up to them. And I had access to these people and they would give me work: “Don’t show up to the next meeting until you prepare.” So I was preparing business plans, what my five-year plan is from now. This is when I was in college at 20 years old.
Victor M. Braca: That’s awesome.
Abie Rosow: So I had this access to these guys and still to this day, I meet with them. I meet with them once a year and we just… thank God it’s like: “Remember you were talking about this problem and look at what you have.” It’s just crazy to see when you stick to something and you know what you can do. It’s really great.
Victor M. Braca: That’s great. It goes to show you also that the saying “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” definitely helps you. Not just because your connections can get you far in life and can hook you up with other people, but it’s because of what people can teach you from their experience. How do you go about networking and meeting people? This was a sort of an arranged thing with the college, but if you’re networking on your own and you’re trying to find a new mentor or solve a specific problem and you want to call on the advice of somebody, how do you meet new people?
Abie Rosow: So it’s like I said before: taking every opportunity. Whether it be going to… like for example, I was somewhere with my friends a couple years ago and I saw Isaiah Whitehead. He was an NBA player for the Nets. I would not know him, but he played in China—ex-NBA guy from Coney Island. I saw him out with his guy, his agent. So I went up to him and I said, “Hey, I’m a trainer. Love to train you, work you out for free, whatever.”
He told me talk to his agent. Talked to his agent, got his agent’s number, invited me out. I never ended up training him, but he invited me out to Coney Island and watching Isaiah Whitehead’s tournament. You had all these guys in Coney Island behind the fence and they couldn’t get in, and I got right onto the court. Lance Stephenson was there.
Victor M. Braca: Because you asked, also.
Abie Rosow: Yeah. You just got to take every shot that you can. Another connection opportunity is… sometimes it’s because you got your way and you try to do something, but sometimes it happens because you do a good job. I was coaching in the Maccabi games last year and one of the coaches of another team was just watching the game, came over to me and said, “You know, I really love how you coach your guys. You guys were awesome.”
And I built a relationship with him. He coaches in Miami and he coached one of the Jewish teams in Miami. He was coming to a tournament in the Five Towns at HAFTR. He said, “Hey, I’m coming down for the weekend. Would love to connect. Would love for you to come and give a speech to my guys.”
So I said, “All right, I’ll try to make it.” I finished practice at Magen David and it’s like nine o’clock. It’s like: I don’t really want to go over there. But this guy invited me. He’s twice my age. Wants me to come speak to his guys. You can’t pass up an opportunity like that.
I go out there, speak to his guys, meet with him. Get home at 11:00, whatever. But all of a sudden, he calls me up. He goes, “Hey, I run basketball clinics for Nike and I would love for you to come run a clinic.”
So now I’m going out to Florida middle of June and I’m going to help him run a camp for Nike. And it’s just… he thought I was a great coach and contacted me. But if I didn’t go make the effort and go meet with him, maybe he wouldn’t have asked me to do that. Now all of a sudden I have the connection. I’m going to go out to Florida, work with different kids and different community and work with different types of coaches. It’s all college coaches that are there. It’s just really taking any opportunity you can, but also trying to create opportunities for yourself. If there’s nothing there, there’s no such thing as nothing there. You can always do something. You can always create something.
Victor M. Braca: I love that. And almost I could say confidently that the majority of people would have said, “I’m not going to go. I’m too tired.”
Abie Rosow: Yeah, I would have said, “I’m not going to go. I’m too tired.” But you took the effort. You went to go meet with him. He invited you. Look what it turned into.
Victor M. Braca: Amazing. What do you see for the future of REP? Is it like a franchising model? Is it scaling as large as you can?
Abie Rosow: It’s a great question. Everybody always asks me that question. It’s always great to know exactly what you want, but sometimes it’s fun to try to figure it out, too. I think that there’s opportunity for growth within the community for sure. I think there’s opportunity to grow within the surrounding Jewish communities. Now we’re in the Five Towns, now we’re in Jersey. During COVID we had a very big following in Great Neck. So tapping back into that market. We even have kids traveling from Great Neck now to the Five Towns to work with us.
Victor M. Braca: Really? That’s great.
Abie Rosow: So just different things like that. I think trying to grow our travel teams… for me, a big part of when I was growing up is I always played in the community but I always wanted to go on the outside and play against different types of competition. In order to do that, there wasn’t really an opportunity within the community. I always had to go out and play different types of people. And religious observance has always gotten in the way or the tournaments got in the way of religious observance, whichever way you want to look at it. So I tried my best to make it work.
But now, giving the kids an opportunity in our community who are good enough to play… sometimes they think they’re not, but they are good enough. So getting a group of kids that are good enough to play and then going out and playing in these tournaments and showing them what it means to be Jewish and to go play against these other people in different communities is really special. So I want to try to grow that as much as we can and try to build our teams also. So yeah, there’s a bunch of different things we’re trying to work on.
Victor M. Braca: Well, I want to shift into giving back and your coaching philosophy, because I think they’re so meshed and interwoven. Your business is really just inspiring kids on the court, off the court, and in their lives. So let’s start with your motto, your slogan: “Let’s get better.” Tell me a little bit about that. How did that come to be?
Abie Rosow: It’s a good one. Just always trying to be positive about everything that we do. Just put your head down. Let’s get better. Just continue to work, you know?
Victor M. Braca: I love it. Plain and simple: “Let’s get better.” It’s great. What does that speak to your coaching philosophy on the court, but also in every other aspect of your life that’s not sports?
Abie Rosow: Yeah. No, I mean it goes for everything. You don’t do well on a test, you gotta pick yourself up, let’s get better. You ask a girl, she says “no,” all right. Let’s get better. You move on.
Victor M. Braca: I like what I love about you is that you’re inspiring the kids. What motivates you to inspire kids? I just watched your promotional video and maybe 50% of it was about basketball, and the other 50% was about: “Abie pushes me, the work ethic that I’ve built up in the training program applies to my school and doing well on tests and interacting with my friends and family.” Tell me a little bit about that.
Abie Rosow: No, I mean that’s the whole point. All the kids that are coming to us—maybe they want to play in the NBA, maybe they don’t—but it’s not about that. It’s about building confidence through sports. I for sure built confidence through sports just from going after something, working hard, getting knocked down, and persevering by being able to do that in basketball. If I could do that in basketball, I could do that in anything else.
Like you said, you can’t control exactly how skilled you are in something. So you work your butt off in basketball, something you’re not so good at, and you work hard and you get to a certain point. Now all of a sudden you take where you’re naturally gifted—whatever it is—and you put that same work ethic… I mean the sky’s the limit.
So it’s really, really important. And what I really love is being able to see how you can impact somebody and show them… a kid might think they have a certain limit or they’re nervous or they’re scared about something and really being able to motivate them to be like, “Look, there’s nothing to be afraid of. You could do it.” And all of a sudden they do it. It’s the greatest joy in the world. Nothing better.
I love that. You could do it for yourself, but when you could do it and then you see them being so happy and you know that you’re a small part of that—it’s crazy. So, so fulfilling.
Victor M. Braca: I want to encourage everybody listening to check out your Instagram. You have amazing clips there. In the game, you have a videographer and you’re miked up and we can hear you coaching the kids, how you motivate them. You’re telling one of the guys, “You’re the best player on this court. You could do it.” I mean, that’s great. And they happen to get millions of views. People love this stuff.
But it’s really cool, and the fact that they get millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes is that it strikes a chord with people to see somebody who is not just a coach. You’re coaching the kids for life. And you maintain connection with your players when they get off the court, right?
Abie Rosow: For sure. I was just in Israel visiting my brother; he had a baby. I went to go watch the team playing a game in Israel and it was guys that I’ve been coaching since they were in sixth grade. So it always comes full circle and it’s really cool that you’re building relationships for life for sure.
Victor M. Braca: That’s great. I love it for you. And within your personal life and your business, you’re constantly giving back—free clinics, charity events, mentoring kids. What’s your “why” behind that?
Abie Rosow: I think that so many people have done it for me. You can count the hours of phone calls with coaches or teachers, mentors, family, friends helping me with things that I needed, and I haven’t paid for it. So to be able to then be in a position where people look up to you in that way… it’s like: “Hey, my son didn’t make the team. Can I talk to you?” And we’re talking for an hour. Or: “Hey, a certain organization, we want to do an auction, can you donate?”
You can’t—same way you can’t say no to any opportunity for business—you can’t say no to any opportunity like that. Somebody texted me about something like that and some people would get upset like, “Oh, why they asking me for money?” To me it’s like: thank you Hashem that I have the opportunity to, that someone’s reaching out to me. It’s all about the mindset.
Victor M. Braca: What a mindset.
Abie Rosow: But it’s not easy. It’s not easy for sure. It’s not easy to have that mindset but they’re just like you and it’s cool and people appreciate it and it always comes back around.
Victor M. Braca: For young adults who are worried about their future—we’re in such a fast-moving environment nowadays where you finish high school, go to college, do this, do that, get a job at the bank, the law firm, or the accounting firm… there’s just such a rush nowadays. What do you say to young adults who are worried about their future, who feel pressured to just move as quickly as possible?
Abie Rosow: No, I think it makes sense. They should understand that a lot of people feel like that. I used to feel like that. I still probably feel like that. But it makes sense, but just understand: you want to try to put yourself in a spot where you can enjoy what you’re doing. So if it is the track that you said—get to the job, get to a high position in a certain firm—do that. I thought it was maybe for me, too. But then all of a sudden you try to find something that you’re passionate about.
And I think doing something that you’re passionate about more than trying to find something that’s going to make you money is probably the better way to go. But it depends. Depends where you are and what stage of life. If you’re 20 years old and you’re married, it’s hard to just do whatever you want. So everybody’s in a different stage.
But wherever you are, try to… even if you’re at a job that pays well but you’re not enjoying it so much, maybe on your own free time try to do something. And even if it doesn’t pay you the same way you would want it to, but at least it’s something that you enjoy doing. Then you have the best of both worlds: you have a job, you make money for your family, and you’re still able to do something that you enjoy doing. And who knows, maybe you follow that passion and all of a sudden that will eventually later on become your full-time thing. You don’t have to choose one extreme.
Victor M. Braca: I mean, you’ve been able to turn your passion into a full-fledged business. Going back to when your parents and your family members and friends said like, “Wait, you’re seriously going to go into coaching? How are you gonna make money?” What made you really want to power through? Most people would have just said, “You know what? You’re right. I probably won’t be able to make money. I’m going to go be an accountant.” Why did you try?
Abie Rosow: Just the belief. The belief in myself that you can do anything you put your mind to. It sounds easy, but it’s not. It’s hard. There are definitely days where I’m like, “It sounds cool to maybe work with my parents, to try to…” when you have friends that are making money a little bit quicker when you’re younger and they have certain jobs and certain salaries. Or even going through COVID where the schools are telling you like: “You can’t send your kid to a program. You have to be in a pod.” Like, what are you going to do there?
I could have said, “All right, well, forget my business.” But sticking to it because I really believed in what I do. But at the same time, I didn’t just sit around and do nothing when there was no programming. I took on other jobs. I tried other things while still keeping this. And it ended up just pushing and pushing and pushing both at the same time and seeing what was working and what I was leaning towards. Staying with what I was passionate with ended up working out. And if it doesn’t work out the way it worked out for me right now, it doesn’t mean that it’s a failure. It just means that you could still do it. If I wasn’t doing what I do full-time, I would still coach 100%.
Victor M. Braca: That’s great. And a lot of people do that and it’s awesome. You have sometimes you can think about it as being easier. You have a regular job and all of a sudden you get to do what you love to do for fun, coaching basketball. It’s different than what I do. Sometimes you can look at it as like, “Oh, it’s a little bit more difficult. You’re doing basketball the whole day and then do basketball at night.” So you can look at it in different ways.
You told me earlier that you had so many coaches in your early years that really made an impact on you and shaped your mindset. What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten from a coach?
Abie Rosow: One piece of advice I try to think about sometimes is: nobody cares. Like, nobody cares. Just got to work harder. Like right now, it’s really cool you called me to come and do this and everybody’s going to watch this and they’re going to see it’s all positive, but nobody sees what it takes to get there. And nobody cares. When you’re doing really well, they see that and that’s great. And if you don’t do well, then they see that and it’s not great. You got to be able to be thick-skinned and just be able to take it. Everybody has people that they’re close to that do care, that you could talk to about what you’re going through, and it’s hard pushing through. But at the end of the day, there’s no excuse. You can’t have a bad session; you cannot give it [less than] all to the kids. It’s not their problem. You got to show up every day. You got to go to work. You got to do it. So I think that’s one piece of advice: “Nobody cares.”
To me, because I’ve been around so many different people and mentors, I think being able to be around so many different mindsets and terminology and different things… being able to create your own out of it is really important. So my coaching style is a little bit of this guy, a little bit of that guy, a little bit from when I was a player… and now it became mine because I learned from so many different people.
Victor M. Braca: I like that. I remember what I wanted to say before, which was that we were talking about failures in business and if you come out of a business, it’s not really a failure because at worst you paid for a learning experience. I think everybody is willing to pay for college, but almost nobody is willing to start a business, be okay with failing, and put in an investment of time and some money, and then come out of that with a great story and a learning experience. No one is willing to do that, and that’s arguably a way better learning experience than going to college because you’re learning on the job and you’re learning by doing, just like you did.
I heard this in a podcast or a book somewhere… there was actually another podcaster, one of the biggest in the world, Tim Ferriss. And I would highly recommend his podcast. What he did for a couple years of his life was… he was deciding whether or not he should do an MBA program at some fancy college. Let’s say it would cost him 250 grand. He said, “Should I spend 250 grand on the MBA program? Or should I take 50 grand and invest it into five different companies? Start working for the companies as a startup adviser—how much more would I learn from that?”
And then if I lose my investment, I lose my 50 grand per company. But if one of them takes off, then I had a great monetary investment and I learned so much. I think one of them ended up being Spotify or something crazy like that. I just love that story and that mindset, which is just: invest in learning experiences that you might fail in, but that are real-life business experiences if you’re so willing to go to college. And I think people should be so willing to start a business in that same way. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re like that. I can see that in you. Yes, there were times where you were scared that you were going to fail when you were hiring your first employee—they get paid whether or not you get clients—but you ultimately did it. And if it worked out, thank God. But if it didn’t work out, then you paid for a learning experience. That’s just part of the mind frame that I love for business.
So looking back on your journey from 17 years old, a high school student running a business without even knowing you were running a business, to now hundreds of students—I mean, you’ve coached thousands and you have, thank God, a thriving business—can you pinpoint a specific Momentum Moment? The moment where things really started to take off for you?
Abie Rosow: Yeah, I mean I think there’s probably a bunch of different moments. There’s not one for sure, and hopefully there’ll be more. But I think when I first started to grow the business beyond myself as far as having other coaches working with me and realizing that this could be a business… because you know when I was I forgot how old, I would sit and just try to fill out my calendar and understand: if I work all these hours, you make this money… it just doesn’t work full-time. Like you have to be able to scale. So just realizing once I started to scale and realizing, “Wow, this is working,” then that was for sure a Momentum Moment.
Other moments: hiring the first full-time person, having somebody there every single day to bounce ideas off of, not having to call my mom in the middle of her work and bothering her. I have my own work to do, you know what I mean? Having somebody that’s there for you helping you out with everything that you need was really cool.
Yeah, different things like that. I mean, this could be a moment—having somebody like you calling me and saying, “Hey, not everybody gets to be on the show. You calling me and asking me to do this,” like that’s pretty cool. Some I mentioned, like when the guy called me to go to the camp in Florida or coaching a university, being a college basketball coach.
Victor M. Braca: I love how you see the Momentum Moments in everyday life. You don’t just have one or two, but every day or month is another turning point for you, which I love.
A lot of people, myself included… there’s always a big movement in the community to give back. But for young people who are just getting started in business, and especially young entrepreneurs who don’t have much time on their hands, a lot of people feel like they have to decide between “doing good” and “doing well.” You’ve managed to do this very well, but I want to hear a little bit more from you. How do you mesh giving back and doing business in a way that keeps you and your business sustained while also helping other people?
Abie Rosow: So my brother, he’s in Kollel, and he’ll always remind me that what you’re doing every day is you’re helping people. And if you think about that—even if you’re making money and parnasa and your business and your life—but if you think that you’re helping people and you just constantly think about that, it goes a long way.
That’s just in general. But having the opportunity to work with different organizations like CAIR or the Eva Do School or even doing a tournament last summer for the Jack’s Lemonade Stand… yeah, first of all you don’t make money obviously in those situations, and second, you know you lose money. But you don’t think about it as losing money. It’s just a way to use my platform. If I didn’t have this business, I wouldn’t be able to do this. Not everyone’s able to do this, not everyone’s asked to do this, not everyone has the bandwidth to do this.
So to be able to be asked to do these things… or SBH asked me to put something in an auction. Yeah, I mean it’s for business purposes, you know, when someone texts you like, “Hey, I just won an auction, I get a free lesson.” It’s not necessarily so fun to give someone a free lesson. But first of all, it’s a cool opportunity to do it, and second, like you said, indirectly that person is usually a phone number that I didn’t have in my contacts; now it’s a new client. So everything ends up coming back to you in a positive way. It’s positive just to be able to give back, but also in business it works out too.
Victor M. Braca: Amazing. I love it. I just love how you were able to mesh the two so well. Abie, thank you for coming, for sharing your experience. You’re a younger guy, you’re 26. One of the youngest guests on the podcast so far. And what I love is that you’re going through it. I’ve interviewed people who are more established in business, and both types of guests are really amazing because you get to build off the experience and the wisdom of people who have been in business for a while. But for guys like you, I get to go down in the trenches, so to speak, and hear what you’re going through—how you’re struggling to grow and how you’re overcoming that struggle. I hope the audience will share in appreciating what you had to say tonight. But really, thank you so much.
Abie Rosow: For sure. Thank you.
Victor M. Braca: Thank you so much for listening until the end. I really hope you enjoy this episode. I personally loved how Abie was just so genuine in this conversation. He shared what sets him apart, what he’s not so great at, and his plan for expansion in the future.
Here are my top three takeaways from my conversation with Abie Rosow.
First: you don’t need to wait for the perfect plan. Abie started training kids before he had a license, before he had a car, and before he even thought of it as a business. He just started biking from house to house with a basketball in his bag. That one step turned into everything. Too many people get stuck waiting until they’re ready. This point has been echoed by guests time and time again on this podcast. From small business owners to billionaires, getting started is the best thing you can do. You will never be 100% ready.
Number two: growth isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing things differently. Abie hit a ceiling when it was just him. He could only coach so many kids. But when he started delegating with structure and preparedness and trust, he built something way bigger than himself. His process for scaling REP without losing quality is a blueprint for any service-based business.
And number three: the goal isn’t just to win; the goal is to build people. That’s what sets REP apart. Abie’s entire philosophy is about using basketball as a tool to build confidence, discipline, and resilience in kids. That’s what Abie’s all about. He’s coaching for life, not just for the court. And that kind of impact, that’s what really lasts.
Guys, if you enjoyed this episode, you’re going to love my conversation with Ness Mugrabi. When Ness was just 22 years old, he became the youngest NFL agent in history. He landed a life-changing internship at age 16, turned it into a career, and today he’s negotiated over a hundred million in contracts for some of the top NFL players. This guy is a total hustler. His story is unbelievable. To listen to that episode, just search “Momentum Ness Mugrabi”—that’s M-U-G-R-A-B-I—on any platform or click the link in the show notes.
With that said guys, thank you so much for listening and for watching. Please be sure to subscribe wherever you’re tuning in. Rate the show five stars and share with a friend. Until next time.
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