Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - War Insurance, Spotting Profiteers and Making Big Things Happen with Jordan Fried

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Jordan Fried was fully living the entrepreneur life in Puerto Rico... until the attack in Israel happened on 10/7. Then, Jordan found himself chartering, and then boarding, a plane to deliver aid to Israel. To make an impact on the ground in Israel, Jordan and his cofounders started their nonprofit Israel Friends— and casually seeded it themselves with a couple million bucks. But as Jordan will tell you, you don’t need a million dollars to make a difference. Jordan walks through the strategy he used to build a network of helpers of all kinds, and how you can too. Before that, Jordan tells Nicole what it was like being in Israel in the wake of the attacks, and stories from the survivors he's met. To support Jordan's work, click here: https://www.israelfriends.us/

One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that

I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your

reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. I'll state the obvious. There are many advantages to having money. Money opens opportunities. For yourself, sure, but also for the causes you believe in. Take, for example, Jordan Fried,

my guest today. Jordan and his co-founders casually bankrolled their nonprofit, Israel Friends, with a couple million bucks to send aid to Israel. But as Jordan will tell you, you don't need a million bucks to make a difference. Jordan walks through the strategy he used to build a network of helpers of all kinds, and how you can too. Before that though, Jordan talks us through what he was able to accomplish in Israel by deploying his own network. And let me tell you, I was totally awestruck. Here he is. Jordan Fried, welcome to Money Rehab. Thanks for having me, Nicole. Just two weeks ago, you were living in the software entrepreneur paradise that is Puerto Rico focused on an online business.

And then the attacks happened on October 7th. What happened next for you? I got a phone call from a really close friend, a neighbor here in Puerto Rico, who is Israeli and served. And it was a distressed phone call to help get him and some friends back to Israel. He knew I had some contacts in the aviation industry. And next thing I knew, I was chartering an Airbus A330, filling it with 150 IDF reservists, civilians, Nicole, civilians. I mean, we had real estate agents on this flight, accountants, mothers, fathers who were living normal lives on October 6th and October 7th. Everything changed. And these people are going back. They're being called up to go

rejoin their units, get necessary training and defend the Jewish people in the state of Israel. So surreal experience with 17 tons of cargo on that plane. And I actually unexpectedly got on the plane as well and ended up spending all of last week in Israel, understanding the reality of the situation on the ground. And unfortunately, it's much worse than I ever could have expected. Can you tell us more about that and what it felt like to be there? This is probably the scariest time for Jewish people since 1948. I was in Kiryat Shmonan, the Lebanese border. Rockets were flying overhead. We were constantly in shelters. I was in Salem in the south on the Gaza Strip, 100 meters from the fence of the Gaza

Strip. Ashkelon, all of these towns, there's 22 towns surrounding the Gaza Strip were being attacked from the south. We are now being attacked from Iraq as well. Iraq is joining Hezbollah in this fight. And there's 2 million Arab Israelis inside of Israel that if even only 1% of them, Nicole, rise up against the Jewish people, it will be a number so great that would be over 20,000, it would be a number so great that it would overwhelm the Israeli National Police Force. And that's a war. How do you fight an internal war a war on the north the war from the east and a war from the south all at once this is an existential threat to the existence of our state to the existence of our people and frankly what's terrifying for I think every single Jewish

person and it should be for non-Jewish people in the world as well is we're only safe because Israel exists. That's the one thing that makes us safe. So it's a very vulnerable time. Were you scared? Was I scared? It's hard to be scared when you're standing next to a six-year-old who this is everyday life for her. I was with a mother, her name's Orit, and her two children in a shelter in Kiryat Shmona. I wanted to cry looking at them. I did. I tried to hide it. These girls are on bunk beds stacked three high. They spend 12 to 24 hours of the day down there.

They don't have toys. They don't have television. They're camped out in a bunker waiting for rockets to stop flying overhead, waiting for a signal that it's safe to go back to their homes. They have less than 10 seconds to get to the shelter in Kiryat Shmona. It's not like Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is luxurious. From the time the sirens go, you have 90 seconds to get to a bunker. So we were walking slowly when the sirens were going off in Tel Aviv, but still walking to the shelter. But you're there with women and children. And this is just normal. No six-year-old,

no four-year-old, no child should go through something like that. I couldn't let myself be scared in that moment because these are such incredibly strong people. I respect them and I love them for that. And I assume you've been to Israel before. Israel has this very special place in my heart. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the state of Israel. My grandfather fled Germany in 1933. He was three years old with his father. His entire family said, you're crazy. You're panicking. This will never get this bad. They were taken to the trains to Auschwitz and murdered. And thanks to my great grandfather who got my grandfather and his brother out, my family survived. And my grandmother's American, my Saba in Hebrew, grandfather Israeli.

For every Jewish person, whether they've been there or not, it's that comfort and safety of knowing that they will step in should never again happen again. When Jews started getting persecuted in Ethiopia, Operation Solomon were these holdout El Al airlines where we took the Ethiopian Jews from Israel. We have a massive African-Israeli population in Israel now. They're called the Lost Tribe of David, but Jewish people from Ethiopia who were persecuted who came over to Israel, the Israeli army stepped in to protect them. When the Jewish people of Ukraine were vulnerable during the Russian invasion, Israel opened up its doors. The Jews come back here. You can be safe here. We will protect you. It's an unbelievable comfort knowing that we have an army, we have a police force,

we have firefighters, we have people looking out for us. We're only 15 million people globally in a world where once again, we've become a hated minority. It's a place of comfort. Yeah, I agree. I am a dual citizen. And I think like if shit gets really crazy, I can always go home. And that's a real existential threat right now. I've been to Israel many times as well.

I've never felt scared there, despite this always being a part of life. I almost felt that people celebrated more because this idea of who knows if there's going to be tomorrow is always hanging over your head. I mean, have you ever felt anything like this in any of your past trips? I don't think Israel has ever been in the situation it's in right now. It is unbelievably complicated. If we go in and try to get the people who massacred 1,400 Jews on October 7th, we're facing an imminent invasion from the north. Are we ready for that? There are threats. The rhetoric is escalating on a daily basis that Iran will step in. There's Chinese warships coming into the

region. American warships are being attacked by Yemen, by Syria. Israel is preemptively taking out the runways in Aleppo and Damascus. We find ourselves caught in a center of a very complicated situation. As you said, three weeks ago, two weeks ago, I was living a normal life, and I don't have any credentials to be doing what I'm doing right now. I've never chartered an airplane of this size and done the logistics coordination of we're now over our second plane just landed. We've now brought over 150,000 pounds of gear and humanitarian aid, defensive gear, bulletproof vest, helmets. These are going to civilians. It's such a surreal thought. lot about the wrong type of aid, either people sending money to places that don't need it or worse, use the money against Israel or sending equipment and it's the wrong equipment. So how did you figure out what was needed? So there's some incredible people on planet Earth. First, like I just have to applaud. I think if we're looking for silver lining, because all of us

have been crying and all of us have been feeling really sad. And so many of us have friends and family that are affected by this. I had friends that were at the rave. I have cousins that we still haven't heard from that we likely will never hear from. It's a bad situation. And I think that the silver lining is I don't think I've ever seen our people ever united in the way that we are united right now. You know, field hospitals are being set up.

There's tactical gear that is really, we're just talking about, it's going to get cold in Israel. For anyone who's ever been Israel knows it gets a little bit chilly in the winter, even though it is in the desert and they just need thermal protective gear. Families have been evacuated from their homes and they have nowhere to stay. There's not enough hotels to put these people in. So there's so much need right now, but the effort has been really uncoordinated. One of the reasons I got on the plane to actually go to Israel was we wanted to be different. I wanted to ask first and make sure that the stuff we were going to give was going to get used and then give, right? What do

you actually need? What is the spec? Give us the actual requirement of what it would take to get this in the country so that we can work hand in hand with Meches, with customs, and actually get this stuff cleared and get in the country. Our organization actually started as WWF Worldwide Friends, which is the 501c3 parent organization. And we had our first mission as Ukraine. We were able to get over $30 million of humanitarian aid into Ukraine. But the great tragedy of Ukraine is if you look at the borders, there are still hundreds of tractor trailers filled with gear that was donated, supplies that is never going to get used because it wasn't properly processed. It wasn't sent in the proper ways or through the proper channels. It was just people blindly giving, but without going through

the normal channels and checking that this could go to a civilian or that was safe to be used, that the tourniquets met the medical standards set by the Ministry of Health. So for us, I think what separates Israel Friends is working closely with the government to understand what the actual need is, and then going to coordinate the effort to make sure that the equipment that we're getting there is in fact the right equipment, and then clearing it through customs within two to three days and getting it to people. So if you give today, we can have the thing that you gave in the hands of the person you're trying to give it to within 48 to 72 hours, which for me is it's urgent because I know these people and this is very personal for me, as I'm sure it is

for you. Let's go back to some of those nefarious money trails. We've seen some donation scams, fraud. I mean, I think there's a special place in hell for those people. What have you seen? Without naming any names, we were involved in a project just three days ago to try to get a certain type of vehicle over that is missing in Israel. The freight and the vehicle was already paid for, yet the company that was asking for the donation was double dipping was asking for more money to cover the freight when I had proof that the freight was paid for. This is what we're up against people are blindly giving when some people are trying to profit off of the war. Now perhaps they were trying to use the extra

money to buy more supplies themselves. I don't know. But I do know that they were trying to double charge for just basic shipment and shipping freight is very expensive with gas prices the way they are. To give you an idea, these airplane charters that we're doing cost close to a million dollars for each charter. That's one way, Nicole. That's just one way just to get a plane from LAX to Israel. So these aren't cheap. And unfortunately, there are some bad actors there. Why did you start your own organization rather than just work with one that already exists? I'm an entrepreneur.

I'm a startup guy. I have a distaste for sitting around talking and being theoretical. I don't want to deliberate on what I think will happen. I want to just figure out what the problem is today and solve it. So we operate like a startup, even though we're a non-for-profit.

When we get a million dollars, we spend a million dollars. And we we've raised millions so far. We're very fortunate. I seeded it with a couple of friends with a few million dollars of our own capital just to front it, to start chartering the first planes. And, you know, there's been a beautiful outpouring. But, Nicole, there's amazing Jewish organizations that I think, frankly, are in denial or somewhat delusional about how existential

this crisis is. Many of them are not on the ground. I'll tell you the hotel I stayed at in Israel, there were five rooms booked and we were three of them. There's no one there. The other two were CNN. There's nobody there. There's nobody there helping. We are first boots on the ground. And while I take pride in that, it also terrifies me at how few people are taking this particular conflict as seriously as I think we need to be taking it. Because I saw it myself, I was one kilometer away from it. They are preparing to enter northern Israel. They will be in the streets. There'll be bullets going by in the Roma cafe, my favorite coffee shop in Israel. This is what we're facing. We're going to lose a piece of our country if we do not come together and bring international

attention to this and help our fellow Jewish brothers and sisters, and not even Jewish brothers and sisters. I'm talking about Israelis, the Bedouin Israelis, the Arab Israelis. They don't want to live under a Hamas rule. They want to live in a democracy. They want freedom. And this is important for anyone that believes that terrorists are bad and democracy is good. This is an issue that I would hope they would care about. Let's talk about those planes. You said that no one was there. I imagine getting there is also an issue. How did you manage to organize these charters? It was not easy. Our flight was canceled three times. And when I finally realized why it was being canceled, it was actually the insurance providers. So first chartering an Airbus turns

out to be pretty similar to chartering a propeller plane. You call an airplane broker, they find an aircraft, they tell you the price and you agree to pay it. It's just a lot more zeros. We chartered a plane, but then they kept canceling our flight to which I realized it was not them. It was the insurance company that no longer wanted to land their aircraft in Israel. Understandably so. There's rockets flying overhead. We paid a one-time war insurance premium in the six-figure range just to land our aircraft there. It was over $100,000 just to land the airplane there.

But we couldn't put these reservists down in Amman or in Lebanon. Of course we can't, right? You see the situation that's happening right now. They're not going to be safe in any of these places. We had to put the plane down in Israel. We managed to do it. It was safe when we landed. Israeli air traffic control in the Iron Dome, it's a miracle. The Iron Dome is an absolute miracle. I was in the street watching it happen in real time. It took a massive team effort. I can't take all the credit for Nicole. There's an incredible group of volunteers behind me that dropped everything when this happened. And when I told them my crazy idea of like, hey, let's get this airplane. They all got behind me and said, okay, cool. I'll work on the cargo.

Okay, cool. I'll work on the passenger manifest. Our tickets were issued at LAX in the main passenger terminal. They were handwritten tickets. We got through TSA with handwritten tickets. It was incredible. And then once you got on the ground, how did you physically get all this equipment and stuff to the people who needed it? Again, a massive logistics group of volunteers that came out of nowhere. I've never cleared customs before with this much equipment. I didn't even know what a bill of lading was before this. A bill of what? A bill of lading, a document that goes on a shipment. It's a legal document that tells you what's in the shipment. It's legally

required to ship something. I didn't know what freight forwarding was or who a freight forwarder was. We learned all of this. What is that? It's somebody who actually coordinates getting freight on an aircraft and getting it through customs into the particular country that you need. You need a freight forwarder. They put the entire cargo man. If there's a cargo manifest and a passenger manifest, you basically have to have an itemized list of everything that's on the plane.

It's a value, right? How much does it worth? How much does it weigh? You have to put it together. There's an entire industry dedicated to this. We couldn't have done this without incredible people who just like came out of the woodwork in the Los Angeles area, in the San Francisco area, in the New York area. And then in Israel itself, just people who heard about what we were doing and helped.

They're like, you know, we will get this out of customs for you. We'll get this into a warehouse for you. We now have a warehouse in Los Angeles, in New York and in Israel. So we're operating in all three of those locations. If you saw the videos, there's hundreds of volunteers just picking and packing and palletizing, putting stuff in duffel bags. And it's teamwork. Teamwork makes the dream work. So my little dream was to help just one friend get back to Israel.

And it turned out to be thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of pounds of equipment. And I guess that was just the beginning. And now we continue to go. Teamwork makes the dream work for sure. But money also is required to make this dream work. It's certainly not free. And as you say, it's not cheap. So how have you been fundraising?

And what have you learned around best practices for convincing people, I guess, to give money? Because that can be a skill set that's used beyond even this. So there's a couple of things I'd say on this. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no

maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress.

Banking services and debit card provided by the Bank Corp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco

and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels

like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host, so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. And now for some more money rehab. First, I think it's a Mr. Rogers quote that when tragic things happen in the world, look for the helpers. And there are so many unbelievable people who are coming out of the woodwork who aren't even volunteering their time, but are just opening up their capital to us.

We've had several billionaire donors, some I can name. The CEO of Rockstar Energy, the founder, Russell Wiener, has been unbelievably generous and gave us a million dollar check just to help us get our first plane off the ground. The donors have been fantastic. We're in desperate need of more donations. Unlike some of the big agencies, we don't manage capital, Nicole. We don't have treasury bonds that we're earning interest on. We're not structured like an endowment. When we receive money, we spend the money. The war is now, right? There will be many phases of this war, but winning the war is the top priority. Restoring peace, making sure that land is secure and that people can return to their homes, that's priority number one.

There will be a whole other phase of rebuilding. That'll cost billions of dollars to rebuild Israel. You're talking about entire Kibbutzim burnt to the ground. The people that survived need new homes. We've been successfully raising a few hundred thousand dollars every single day, some days over a million, and we have immediate need for all of it. We have a couple of really big initiatives that we care about, but you're right. Money is the enabler that makes all of this possible. And fortunately, some of us and my co-founders, we are in fortunate situations having been successful entrepreneurs

that we could make the initial capital available to the organization to get it off the ground. Yeah. I've long said a dream without a plan is just a wish and wishes are awesome, but they don't pay the bills or send millions of dollars of aid to Israel. So thank you for doing that plan and creating essentially a pop-up charity and treating it like a startup to cut through a lot of this red tape and bullshit. I'm assuming that a lot of these organizations are dealing with. You've also partnered with key Israeli authorities. Is that right?

Including the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Health and IDF to deliver essential supplies. How did you get in touch with the government there? Turns out when you roll in on an Airbus 330 that you rented, people want to meet with you. So we didn't just land, we landed and there was press there. They greeted us. And my ask was, I wanted to actually see, I wanted to see the border. I wanted to see Gaza. I wanted to see the rave. Really painful to see those things, but I needed to know myself. I wanted to meet the people that were still living in fear i wanted to meet the mayors and then i wanted to meet the members of the cabinet because israel is known to have a very dysfunctional government over the last

couple years i think we've had four elections in five years we can't play politics right now this is not a time to point fingers we can do that after the war there's some people probably in the government who should be lined up and questioned very sternly and who likely will never work in politics ever again as a result of having this happen. But this is not the time for that. I don't care about bureaucracy. I don't care who the prime minister is. I don't care who the cabinet is. I need partners that can help me get stuff done. I need lists of requirements and tasks. Give us those missions and we will go do it. So fortunately, we have a much better understanding of the actual need on the ground. We have great partners in the cabinet. And the

Prime Minister himself is aware of our operation and what we're doing. And we're going to continue to do it. But we won't be stopped because it's not the government we're trying to help here. It's the Israeli people. It's our people. It's the Jewish people. And they depend on us right now. And call me naive, but I think we can save our people. I think it'll take every single one of us, Nicole. I think it'll take every single one of us to join together, to unify. And thank God people are coming together around that. Every person, every human being deserves to live a life of peace, to have safety and security for their family and their loved ones. And I know the Palestinian people want that. I know the Jewish people want that.

We need to rid the planet of terror organizations, period. And let's pray for a swift resolution. And what more do you think the business community could be doing? I mean, we've seen other mentions come out from Bill Ackman, Mark Rowan and beyond. Is there more that can and should be done? More people that should step up? Like can't Robert Kraft just buy a fucking island or something? The business community is stepping up, right? I mean, I think that people are learning a lesson in real time. I mean, the internet is incredible. This new Twitter handle, Stop Antisemitism, we in doing this in a lot of cases. There are some real problems that have to be solved economically. I'll tell you the biggest one right now, Nicole. Every single working, able-bodied young adult in Israel is in uniform on a military base to protect the state of Israel.

Their shops are closed. Their e-commerce stores are not operating. Their TikTok and Instagrams are not uploading new content with sponsors. Their podcasts are not working. It's an entire country that has paused itself, an entire economy. The Israeli shekel just has paused itself in defense of its land, in defense of its people. paused itself in defense of its land in defense of its people it is going to have the longer the war goes on a monumental impact on the israeli economy so as the business community is contemplating how to help we need to figure out how to help the israeli economy we need to figure out how to help the shekel is that you know a new israeli shekel on the blockchain is it a cryptocurrency is it a government-issued

war bond for us to fundraise and backstop the economy or fill in the gaps during this time? Is that a drive to buy Israeli goods like we do here, made in America? Are we going to start buying made in Israel? What can we do to help our family, to help that country that was attacked and is now facing imminent attack from hostile enemies on a tiny country the size of Puerto Rico, the size of New Jersey, situated between Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan. It's a very scary situation. And as a business community, there are things we can be doing. What do you think should happen to the shekel, of course, the currency of Israel, or should people be buying Israeli bonds right now? The shekel, the shekel is now four shekels to the US dollar. It's crashed quite a bit. There is

going to be almost imminently a recession, a massive slowdown in growth in Israel as a result of this. I mean, we're talking population decline. 1,400 Jews slaughtered in one day in Israel is the equivalent of 50,000 Americans dying in a terrorist attack in the U.S. I mean, that is a massive dent on a country's population. So I do think there needs to be a government bond that raises much needed capital. Keep in mind, there's no speaker of the House right now in the United States. So it's not like emergency funding is getting approved. You need a speaker of the House in America to propose a $10 billion aid package. So it's not like there's $10 billion in aid coming to Israel, like there was going to

Ukraine. They don't have that money coming right now. So Israel is all on its own. And if we could raise $10 billion as a Jewish people, great. That's what we need to do right now. And if someone has a way to issue that bond or Israel can issue that bond, we should be raising for that bond. We're proposing some of these things to the government directly. But these are the type of creative solutions. I do think there should be a version of the shekel on the blockchain to increase its utility, the ability to do cross-border payments with it to help with the economy. Israel is already a very digitized economy. I do believe in the solutions around Web3 and decentralization. That's sort of the world I came from before this. So I would love to

see some of those solutions implemented here, but we'd have to move quickly to do it. And perhaps for now, it'd be the old fashioned, just a bond. It doesn't have to be on the blockchain, but just a bond that could raise some capital. So if we can zoom out for a second, not everyone is going to have a Rolodex like yours who's listening. You casually said you just had some contacts in aviation, but anyone can build a network of powerful people and relationships in business are extremely important that this is not breaking news, but also important when you need help and during times like this. So for people who want to help, let's break it down for them. So if we continue to zoom out over your career, how have you thought about building your network? So I'm very fortunate. My mom started a 501c3

herself, and it definitely made an impact on me. I have always worked in the for-profit space. I've been a capitalist, maybe even accused of being a greedy capitalist. I've built businesses. I've tried to solve problems in a for-profit way. And I've done that successfully multiple times. But right now, I really do believe, I heard this great quote, it's, I think that the secret to living is giving. And I think that the best way to build a network and the way that I've been able to surround myself with incredible people who are much smarter, who have accomplished much more, who I learn from every single day is not by asking, but by giving, by figuring out what they need help with and being in a position to do that. And I think for anyone listening, changing the dynamic of how you're approaching people you

want to work with by saying, what can I do for you? And not being so commercial upfront of, hey, come sit on my board of directors, come invest in my next company. Those things I'll to work with by saying what can i do for you and not being so commercial up front of hey you know come sit on my board of directors come invest in my next company those things i'll get i never even look at those messages in my linkedin inbox or i never even look at those those emails it's when somebody is what is your biggest problem right now and how can i solve it for you and i'm not looking to get paid and i'll work for you for free i'm like hey that's an individual i want to meet that's someone i want to talk to i I see something in them. That's great. And for someone who's just starting or someone who's trying to build the network,

we're all humans. We're all in a post-COVID world where all of us are isolated, working at home, and we don't have this sort of human interactions we had before. It's such a beautiful thing to connect, to connect in any way, be it over coffee or at an event.

And I think it was important for me to go to Israel and do this face-to-face, thing to connect, to connect in any way, be it over coffee or at an event. And then, you know, I think it was important for me to go to Israel and do this face to face, but connecting with people, figuring out what their needs are and offering to help them for free with no expectation of anything in return. Don't be transactional with it. By the way, if you're transactional with it, it kills the giving, right? Hey, hey, I did that for you. You owe me something that kills. Give without the expectation of receiving. And I think that's the secret of living a beautiful life, right? And I think that is that is the best way of networking. To be clear, I'm not trying to network right now. But probably the last three

weeks is the best networking I've ever done. I never thought I'd be sitting in cabinet meetings in Israel. I've never entered Israel in a special way and gotten special clearance or met anyone significant in Israel. I've just a regular tourist going to hang out on the beach in a special way and gotten special clearance or met anyone significant in Israel. I'm just a regular tourist going to hang out on the beach in Tel Aviv and go to the wall in Jerusalem and go to the Dead Sea. So I think when you do something without an expectation of something in return, genuinely trying to help our people, it's amazing how many other incredible people we've gotten to meet in this process, donors and government dignitaries alike. Yeah, we've talked about that a lot on the network that you can always be of service, even people who think like, well, who the heck am I? I'm just, you know, a student who graduated or something like you can always come

to a connection from a place of service and think about building a network over the long haul versus networking, which feels transactional. It's a slight twist of phrase, but I think building that network over time, there's give and take, but it doesn't start as a quid pro quo. A hundred percent. You always remember who did what for you. Whether you realize you do or not, you do it subconsciously. I know who's been helpful to me and I know who hasn't.

And I'm more inclined to help the helpers, right? I want to help the helpers. And I think that's the case for everybody. So be a helper. And wow, is it soul cleansing. It feels good to help. We end our episodes by asking guests for a tip listeners can take straight to the bank. I suppose for this, what advice would you give someone who's trying to

figure out the best way to help Israel right now? We need balanced people more than ever, sort of to put your own oxygen mask on before assisting the person next to you. I think why I can be effective here is I've taken care of a lot of my boxes so I can be full-time focused on this right now. I'm in that sort of situation to do that. But for better, for worse, I think my advice would be put on your own oxygen mask before assisting the person next to you, you have to take care of yourself, you have to get yourself to stop crying, to get to a point of where do you want

to focus. And then once you've done that, then I think you can really put yourself in a position to help and it doesn't require money and doesn't require wealth and you don't have to be in the best shape and you don't have to join the front lines to fight. But it has to be something unique and spiritual and relevant to you. And some people are fighting the meme war online, fighting the spread of misinformation. Some people are answering phones and call centers. Some people are raising money from donors. Some people are packing pallets and boxes and other people like me are chartering airplanes. And I would value each of those things

equally, but we need it all and holistically and collectively together. I think that's going to lead to the successful outcome here. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in

yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.