Why Jews Are Entrepreneurs By Necessity

Harley Finkelstein (00:00):
All right, so for this next Big Shot short, which is really just a compilation of all our guests on a one particular topic, we're going to actually go deep into what makes Jewish entrepreneurs different.

David Segal (00:11):
Each guest had really, really interesting learnings around this, and they talk about how resilient we are, how we're people of action, how we're fiercely independent, how we don't take no for an answer.

Harley Finkelstein (00:23):
There's this theme of resiliency, where Jews have had to start over so many times and that's built this incredible... [00:00:30] I talk a lot about this idea of a surfboard, that some people see a tidal wave coming and they grab their surfboard and surf it, and other people see a tidal wave coming and they grab their towel and run for the beach. And I think Jewish entrepreneurs have this incredible, insatiable desire to grab their surfboard and figure out what's happening next. Maybe it's something in the DNA, or maybe it's just because of the experience from the Holocaust, being persecuted, it feels like there is this built in energy, maybe some anxiety too, about success.

David Segal (00:59):
And no one [00:01:00] was there to fix our problems.

Harley Finkelstein (01:01):
That's right. If we didn't do it, nobody else would.

David Segal (01:03):
You can't write an op-ed for the papers.

Harley Finkelstein (01:04):
That's right.

David Segal (01:05):
They won't let you train at hospitals, we'll build our own hospitals, and there's Mount Sinais in almost every city. Jewish entrepreneurship. We show up every single day, the best ones do, and decade after decade after decade, they build community, they build family, and they build these enormous businesses.

Harley Finkelstein (01:20):
Well, one of the things that actually comes through in all our interviews is that you've often said there are two ways that people decide to become entrepreneurs. One is through passion and one is through-

David Segal (01:30):
[00:01:30] Necessity.

Harley Finkelstein (01:30):
... necessity. Entrepreneurs by necessity. And when you look across our guests, you see a lot of these entrepreneurs by necessity. They had no choice. Nobody would give them a job, so they started their own company. Nobody would've let them into the golf club, they started their own golf courses. No one let them into the hospital, they created their own hospitals. And that type of DNA, that type of philosophy, there's something so unique about Jewish entrepreneurs, and you can't really put your finger on why that's the case, but I love that our guests go in and try to explain it.

David Segal (01:58):
In many ways, Big Shot is about [00:02:00] our stories. Our stories that we've grown up with that has shaped us, the people whose shoulders that we stand on when we grow these companies and how we maintain that motivation. And you look at a narrative that has been constant across Jewish entrepreneurs and in our culture, it's the idea that we've seen the worst. We've seen the worst. So what is there to fear when you've already seen the worst? And I think each one of these guests expresses that in their own way, and I think there's a lot to learn from that.

Harley Finkelstein (02:25):
But the other thing I think that's worthwhile mentioning is that Jews make up less [00:02:30] than 1% of the population. But if you look across business, if you look across Nobel Prizes, we have this disproportionate impact. And part of it's that we have this great ambition and this great desire and this drive, and I think that's what we should actually compile. That should be this compilation.

David Segal (02:46):
Absolutely.

David Segal (02:53):
Now we're going to hear from Charles Bronfman, who's best known for bringing the Montreal expos to Canada. His family started Seagram's, which is makers of Crown Royal. [00:03:00] And we're going to hear from him what makes Jewish entrepreneurs unique and how he believes there's something in the DNA.

Harley Finkelstein (03:08):
I want to talk and pick up on something you said, which is, someone said to you, "We need the money. We can't find it." You said, "Go find it." There is something deeply rooted in Jewish people, this entrepreneurship thing I think is so unique. And I'm curious. David and I are inspired, we're not just blowing smoke, we are inspired by watching you and [00:03:30] your father, and also your son. Steven is a mentor to me and to David as well. We really admire three generations of Bronfmans. But there is something unique about the Jewish people and how they approach entrepreneurship and business. And I'd be curious to know, you've been around for nine decades, what do you think is going on here? How did this happen?

Charles Bronfman (03:51):
It has to have gone back a hell of a long time. There is something in the DNA, I don't know what it is, one day they'll find out, [00:04:00] that sets us apart. Because it's not just in business. You take the legal profession, you take the music-

Harley Finkelstein (04:10):
Medicine.

Charles Bronfman (04:10):
... the conductors, the principle players, you take art, you take any discipline you want, there is a disproportionate amount of Jewish stars, shall we call it, and even people in the orchestra or in the art world who are Jewish.

Harley Finkelstein (04:30):
[00:04:30] It's unbelievable.

Charles Bronfman (04:31):
It's totally unbelievable. And I don't know where it is. If I took a look at my son and when he was 14, 15, 16, 17-

Harley Finkelstein (04:47):
This is Steven?

Charles Bronfman (04:49):
This is Steven. And I look at the man today, there is no relationship. They are not the same people. I would've lost a heavy bet that [00:05:00] Steven would turn out to be the way he is.

Harley Finkelstein (05:03):
That's unbelievable. I mean, one of the things obviously that I think is part of it is this inherent desire for survival. Dave and I talk about that.

David Segal (05:11):
Entrepreneurship by necessity.

Harley Finkelstein (05:13):
Entrepreneurship by necessity. I mean, we are fortunate. Shopify is a labor of love to me. It's a big company now. David's tea was a labor, but we started this because we were interested and we were curious, but our parents, our grandparents, your father did not start because he was curious. He did so because-

David Segal (05:28):
He needed money.

Harley Finkelstein (05:28):
... he needed money. It was survival. [00:05:30] And I think that survival aspect to entrepreneurship is embedded in the Jews that start those companies.

Charles Bronfman (05:38):
Also, who started other things. I forget his name. The guy who started what is now the Israel Philharmonic. He was a violin player, and when Hitler came in and they started weeding out the Jews from the symphony orchestras in Europe, he went around [00:06:00] and chose people to come to Palestine at the time and play in his orchestra. And the first concert was conducted by Arthur Rubinstein. Amazing. Just amazing. How do you do that? You take people and you're moving them to some... In the thirties. In the thirties. No air conditioning, diptheria, all [00:06:30] kinds of disease. Yet he did it.

David Segal (06:33):
There's a toughness to it, I think.

Charles Bronfman (06:34):
Yeah.

Harley Finkelstein (06:38):
Okay, now you're going to hear from Aldo Bensadoun, who's famous for starting ALDO Shoes, who's going to tell us what makes Jewish entrepreneurs unique and how it's really the antisemitism and the persecution and the unfairness that has played a huge role in that.

Harley Finkelstein (06:52):
Where does this uniqueness that Jewish entrepreneurs have, whether it's building big companies or creating great social impact, [00:07:00] where do you think that comes from?

Aldo Bensadoun (07:02):
Could it be because of antisemitism? Could it be because people criticize us so much that we want to prove to the rest of the world that on the contrary, we are there to have a big light torch that's shine and that's beautiful? [00:07:30] Maybe.

Harley Finkelstein (07:31):
There's sort of the survivalness-

Aldo Bensadoun (07:33):
Yes, maybe.

Harley Finkelstein (07:33):
... built inside of us that we have something to prove, but we also want to survive. And entrepreneurship, it feels almost like it's baked into our DNA in some ways-

Aldo Bensadoun (07:42):
Yeah, that's right.

Harley Finkelstein (07:43):
... which I find so fascinating. We also think a lot about-

Aldo Bensadoun (07:45):
And also maybe because of antisemitism, we want to create a bubble around us and create something like [00:08:00] maybe to dream, constantly to dream, and to keep dreaming and dreaming and dreaming, and then executing in our dream, maybe.

Harley Finkelstein (08:15):
I love that. I think that's right. I think the other part of it's because no one gave us anything, we had to do everything for ourself.

Aldo Bensadoun (08:25):
Yeah. That's right.

Harley Finkelstein (08:25):
We think a lot about, David mentioned this term earlier, but forced entrepreneurship, [00:08:30] as opposed to passion driven entrepreneurship. That there were very few things... My family are immigrants, and so for them, entrepreneurship, they didn't call it that. It was just surviving. It was put food on the table, put a roof over their heads.

Harley Finkelstein (08:44):
Okay, now we're going to hear from Eddie Sonshine from RioCan. And Eddie talks about how the Jewish DNA is just different, and he uses the example of how Jews created, and why they created Hollywood.

Ed Sonshine (08:57):
There's a lot of great things about us. Do we punch above our weight? [00:09:00] Without a doubt. I mean, it's a hard one what I'm about to say. You've got comedians like Russell Peters, Dave Chappelle [inaudible 00:09:10], "Jews control Hollywood." Well, we don't control Hollywood. Are we disproportionately represented there?

Harley Finkelstein (09:18):
Probably.

Ed Sonshine (09:19):
For sure. Guaranteed. In fact, I read a book once, and I'm sorry for wandering, but a great little book. Just a little book. It was called A World of Their Own: How the [00:09:30] Jews Invented Hollywood. Because if you go back to the 1920s and earlier, every studio was started by Jews. Warner Brothers, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Columbia. They're all started by Jews who were running away from New York because Edison had a patent on film, and the light was good out there. So they ran away, and they were all immigrants, some of them, or children of immigrants. And at one time, the Jews created Hollywood. They created [00:10:00] an America that didn't exist. The Andy Hardy movies. So that we do punch way above our weight. I mean, we own more basketball teams for capita, and yet in the United States, which is a much larger... Well, I don't know if you ever get asked. Periodically, I get asked, "How many Jews are there in Canada?" And when I give them the answer, "Give or take, 350,000," "Come on."

Harley Finkelstein (10:26):
It's less than 1%.

David Segal (10:28):
Of the global population.

Ed Sonshine (10:29):
They said, "That's not [00:10:30] possible."

Harley Finkelstein (10:30):
25% of Nobel Prize winners. 25%.

Ed Sonshine (10:34):
I said, "Look, there's only 15 million in the whole world." And they said, "What?" I go, "That's it." I said, "Guess what? We're finally back to where we were in 1938."

David Segal (10:47):
That's true.

Ed Sonshine (10:47):
World population is doubled in the meantime. So I said, "Ain't a lot of us." And of course nobody... So they look at us, and that's why there's... I think a lot of antisemitism is [00:11:00] envy. A lot of antisemitism is, "What are they doing that causes them to be disproportionately successful?"

David Segal (11:09):
What are we doing?

Ed Sonshine (11:11):
There's I think a real focus on education. I think a real focus on self-reliance. My generation, your generation, greatest thing is to go have your own business, be your own boss. Because of that [00:11:30] feeling of self-reliance, I'm not saying we don't do it, we do, but the sort of guy who comes into a low level and a big corporation and slowly works his way up, that's not us. There are occasions where that happens, but that's not a typical Jewish path. Typical Jewish path, go to work for a big corporation, figure out what the hell they do right-

Harley Finkelstein (11:51):
And then go do it [inaudible 00:11:52]-

Ed Sonshine (11:51):
... and then go do it yourself. So we're entrepreneurial by nature. And I think that comes from, and the self-reliance comes from, [00:12:00] not being able to trust that you're going to get a fair shake from the rest of the world.

David Segal (12:04):
Well, they wouldn't hire us, at one point.

Ed Sonshine (12:06):
Yeah. When I came out of law school... I mean, listen, I graduated 1970, a long time ago. So in 1969, I was going to look for articling positions. Well, it was well-known. There was the big seven or eight law firms who wouldn't hire Jews. The banks wouldn't hire Jews.

Harley Finkelstein (12:22):
Goodman's wasn't around at that point, I suppose.

Ed Sonshine (12:24):
Goodman's was around as Goodman & Goodman, but they hired Jews.

Harley Finkelstein (12:27):
They were the only one.

Ed Sonshine (12:27):
So we went to Goodman's... No, no, Foglers, [00:12:30] Goodman & Carr, Minden Gross. We created our own law firms. We created our own accounting firms.

Harley Finkelstein (12:37):
Our own golf clubs.

David Segal (12:38):
Our own hospitals.

Ed Sonshine (12:39):
Right. Well, in my speech at TMU, and I was trying to explain that, I said, "Look, you ever wonder why in every city, except for Montreal, where they called it Jewish General, there's a Mount Sinai hospital?"

Harley Finkelstein (12:50):
Right. Mount Sinai.

Ed Sonshine (12:51):
There's one in New York. There's one in Toronto. There used to be Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles. There's a big one in Miami. Did you ever wonder about that? [00:13:00] Well, let me explain why. Because for a long time, Jews couldn't get into medical school. Well, finally, they forced their way into being able to get into medical school. Well, great. Then they got out and they couldn't get privileges or get accredited at the hospitals. So what do we do, call The Daily Star and ask for an expose? We started our own hospital. That happened in every city throughout North America. We'd all lived through a world or seen a world where you lost [00:13:30] everything. So what's to be afraid of? What's going to happen? You got to start over again. I've done that already. So that's why some of the survivors, like our whole apartment building sector here, was primarily built by survivors that started apartment buildings.

Harley Finkelstein (13:45):
To be clear, Holocaust survivors.

Ed Sonshine (13:46):
Holocaust survivors, thank you. And they had no fear what was going to happen, and they could live cheaply. They used to live off the quarters from the washing machines.

Harley Finkelstein (13:56):
What do you mean by that?

Ed Sonshine (13:57):
Well, if you look at the apartment [00:14:00] buildings, still around today and people living them, that were being built in the fifties, and most of them date back to the fifties, sixties, pre-war, nobody built more than a fourplex. That's four stories high. Fifties, sixties, elevator technology got better, things got better. People started building apartment buildings. And CMHC encouraged it because we needed, just like now, rental housing. You had all these soldiers coming back, people having families. Couldn't build houses fast enough. [00:14:30] Too expensive. So you didn't put a washer dryer in every apartment. If you look in New York's like this, down in the basement, there was a room, the laundry room, and you'd put in washing machines and dryers, and they worked on coins. I know I have friends of my dad's, they used to play cards together. They'd show up with a bag of coins. They literally lived off the money that was coming in the washroom-

Harley Finkelstein (14:59):
Cuff [00:15:00] coin laundry.

Ed Sonshine (15:00):
Yeah. They didn't live very well, because all the money coming in would go to pay down the mortgages quickly. Because they used to finance this to 102%, and CMHC, you could do it then. But they knew you had to pay down debt, get rid of the debt. And some of the wealthiest people I know in Toronto are their kids, who are my age now. Their kids, because-

Harley Finkelstein (15:24):
They inherited these buildings-

David Segal (15:25):
They got the punishment of being handed [inaudible 00:15:27]-

Ed Sonshine (15:27):
They got the punishment of getting 8,000 apartment units [00:15:30] with no debt.

David Segal (15:31):
With no debt, no mortgage. They've already paid off 30 years ago.

Ed Sonshine (15:34):
You got it. No debt. I won't mention his name, and he's fairly active businessman. And I said, "You're in this deal. You're in that deal." I said, "What are you doing all these deals for?" He says, "Well, I got this cashflow." He said, "My dad left me 8,000 units."

Harley Finkelstein (15:52):
Wow.

Ed Sonshine (15:53):
He says, "You know what the cash flow is?"

Harley Finkelstein (15:54):
8,000 doors, 8,000 apartments we're talking about.

David Segal (15:55):
Amazing.

Ed Sonshine (15:57):
All in the GTA, in the city. [00:16:00] And I said, "I got a pretty good idea what the cash flow is." And I said, "No, about 50% has to go to cost because you're paying taxes, realty taxes, insurance, all that stuff, hydro." And he says, "So I got to invest it. I got to do this." I said, "Well, if you ever want to do a big deal, I guess you could put a mortgage on one of the buildings." Looks at me like I'm a lunatic. He said, "Eddie, the one thing my dad told me before he died, don't ever put mortgages on the money [00:16:30] tree." That's what he calls it, the money tree, because it keeps-

David Segal (16:34):
$8 million a month at [inaudible 00:16:36]-

Ed Sonshine (16:36):
... growing money.

David Segal (16:37):
And rent.

Harley Finkelstein (16:37):
And he already took the rap for this kid to be... I mean, he lived off coin laundry while he's paying his mortgage.

Ed Sonshine (16:44):
Literally. I remember they used to play cards at my house, and half the guys would walk in with a big... You know the Crown Royal bags?

Harley Finkelstein (16:50):
Mm-mm.

David Segal (16:50):
Yeah. The purple bags.

Ed Sonshine (16:52):
The purple bags filled with quarters that they... And if they ran out, they'd say, "I'll go visit my other building. I'll be back in a half an hour." [00:17:00] One of the things that worries me a little, because I really believe one of the reasons Jews were such great entrepreneurs and wanted is because they weren't afraid of risk. You can't be afraid of risk, otherwise you don't do anything. I've noticed when you're second, third generation and you're an heir, H-E-I-R, well, you are afraid of risk.

Harley Finkelstein (17:29):
You've got something [00:17:30] to lose all of a sudden.

Ed Sonshine (17:30):
Like my friend, who wouldn't put a mortgage on a money tree. You got something to lose. We had nothing to lose.

Harley Finkelstein (17:37):
I had nothing to lose. David had nothing to lose.

Ed Sonshine (17:39):
Right. Now, some of these young people from wealthy families work very hard. Most don't. I joined Oakdale, which I thought I had really arrived, in 1993 or '4. I didn't even play golf, but I thought it was really [00:18:00] cool that I could join Oakdale. And until I joined Oakdale, I never knew that there were Jews who didn't work. I'd meet a guy, and again, I don't want to mention his name, "What do you do?" "Well, play golf, and I go to Florida in the winter." I said, "You're 42 years old. What do you mean?" "Well, my dad left me this much money or buildings, this, that and..."

David Segal (18:30):
[00:18:30] Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.

Ed Sonshine (18:32):
No, they're terrified-

David Segal (18:34):
Of [inaudible 00:18:35]-

Ed Sonshine (18:35):
... of blowing the money, so they're afraid to take any risks. Because he told me, he said, "Well, I went into a business once and I lost $2 million. That's it, because I got to have enough. I got $10 million so I can't afford to lose any, so I'm going to do nothing and try to live off the income."

Harley Finkelstein (18:51):
I mean, part of the creation of diamonds comes from the pressure, and when you don't have the pressure, it's tougher [00:19:00] to make diamonds. Here's the good news. Part of this project is to inspire more people to take those risks, to become titans, to rethink entire industries. I mean, what you did in terms of the model of a real estate investment trust, what Izzy did with creating a brand new business model for how hotels will be owned property by one party, but managed by another party and create this-

Ed Sonshine (19:29):
It took him a while [00:19:30] to figure that part out, but he got there.

Harley Finkelstein (19:31):
It did. It did.

David Segal (19:31):
Multi decade overnight success. But not just that. I mean, I think what comes across in these interviews is just how much purpose you've found in these pursuits.

Ed Sonshine (19:42):
Oh, yeah.

Harley Finkelstein (19:43):
It's life's work stuff. I mean, part of the idea, your father never had the opportunity to do his life's work, because your father, like my father, like your father-

Ed Sonshine (19:51):
He had life interuptus.

Harley Finkelstein (19:52):
That's right. Their life's work, what do you mean? Putting food on the table, roof over their head. That is what we do. We were in survival mode, and [00:20:00] because they set a foundation for us, a minimum bar, we weren't then able to go and build these great companies. The key for us is to make sure we maintain that momentum, that we can actually build things that have never been built before with as much ambition and also as much humility as possible. But that makes the Jewish entrepreneurial DNA [00:20:30] so unique.