Five Lessons My Father Taught Me in Business

Two years after his passing, my father's wisdom still guides how I work, lead, and live.

I was standing on 54th Street in Manhattan, about to turn the corner onto Sixth Avenue for what was then the most important job interview of my life. I was an engineer trying to break into Wall Street, and I badly wanted this position. Before walking into the building, I called my father and told him I was nervous.

What he said in that phone call has stayed with me ever since.

This week marks the second anniversary of my father's passing. He was a talmid chacham, a serious Torah scholar, and an entrepreneur; my teacher in Torah and my mentor in business. Most remarkably, he lived the conviction that Torah is not something you merely study. It is something you do and live. The Shema instructs us to speak words of Torah "when you sit in your home and when you walk on the road." For my father, Torah extended beyond the walls of the study hall into the office, the factory, even the hospital ward. These are five of the lessons he taught me.

1. Know Where Your Paycheck Comes From

On that street corner, my father put me at ease with a single verse. He told me to “remember, noten lechem lechol basar, ki le'olam chasdo,” “He gives bread to all flesh, for His kindness endures forever” (Psalms 136:25). Your income comes from G-d, not from your employer.

I walked into that interview calm. My fate was in the hands of G-d, not my interviewer. Thank G-d, I landed the position, and it launched my career on Wall Street.

2. After G-d, You Are the Most Powerful Person in Someone's Life

Eighteen years later I sat on the other side of the desk, as the CEO of a small company. My father reminded me to treat the position with reverence. "Remember," he would say, "after G-d, you are the most powerful person in an employee's life." When I sat in a room with employees, and especially with job candidates, his voice echoed in my ears and shaped the way I treated them.

3. Say Humbug and Move On

Business, like life, has wins and losses. Behavioral economics teaches that losses hurt far more than gains feel good; Daniel Kahneman found that people typically demand an upside of two to two and a half times the potential loss before accepting an even bet. Left unchecked, that instinct keeps us replaying every setback.

The traditional Jewish response is gam zu letovah, "this too is for the best." My father compressed it into a single word: "Humbug." It is okay to be frustrated. It is not okay for the frustration to stay with you. Say humbug and move on.

He had an especially poignant version for people who had lived through tragedy. He would remind them of the command G-d gave Lot and his family as they fled Sodom: "Do not look back." There are times in life when looking back turns you into a pillar of salt. It paralyzes you. The way through life's greatest hardships is not to look back. It is to move forward.

4. The Greatest Gift Is Freedom

The Torah teaches that G-d freed the Jewish people so that they could serve Him, and it looks with disappointment on the Hebrew servant who chooses to remain in servitude. The Sages put it sharply: Avadai hem, velo avadim la'avadim, "They are My servants, and not servants of servants." Our job is to serve G-d, not to be beholden to anyone else.

This principle guided how my father led his business. More important to him than financial success were personal and economic freedom. When large companies approached him with sales opportunities that would have eclipsed his existing business, he turned them down. Selling to them would make him beholden to them, and over time it would cost him his independence; they would become too important to lose. When customers demanded exceptionally long payment terms, he was willing to walk away. When a customer owes you too much money, the leverage belongs to them.

5. Your Mission Is La'asot: To Do, To Create

People often imagine that when G-d placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, paradise meant a beach chair and rest. The Torah is explicit that it did not. G-d placed Adam in Eden le'ovdah uleshomrah, "to work it and to guard it" (Genesis 2:15). Work was man's mission from the beginning.

Eating from the forbidden fruit changed the terms, not the mission: "By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread." The curse was not the need to work. It was the need to rely on work for sustenance, and that nature itself would now resist us with thorns and thistles, so that success would require overcoming nature rather than working with it.

My father often quoted the Torah's closing words about Creation: asher bara Elokim la'asot, "which G-d created to do" (Genesis 2:3). The world was created for doing, for building, for creating. A manufacturer his entire professional life, he saw in his work a G-dly mission: to take part in creation and move the world forward.

The Final Lesson

The most remarkable thing I observed in my father was how he grew through life's challenges. The Mishna teaches that Abraham was tested with ten trials. He was not handed the tenth test first; each earlier test transformed him and prepared him for the next, another step on a staircase of growth (or… should we say, stairway to heaven 😊).

My father climbed the same staircase, including two bouts of cancer. The first, thank G-d, he survived. The second took him. He always loved life, but after the first cancer he described every day as a gift, and he never let the gift become mundane. Most of us are shaken into focus by a close call, until the daily grind pulls us back. My father was different. His love of life grew every day. His positivity was contagious. He made sure others knew that in spite of life's challenges, we are all having an amazing day, because we are alive.

Before his first cancer surgery, the surgeon told him he had to go into the operation with enthusiasm. My father thought he was joking. He was not. "Your mental framework matters. Go in with enthusiasm, excitement, and a positive mindset." My father did exactly that: positive with the nurses, positive with the doctors, positive about his prognosis. Afterward, when he met other cancer patients, he passed the lesson on.

He also taught us to use humor to defuse the hardest moments. The most powerful example came at the end. We stood in the hospital by his bed, the family and the doctors discussing a deteriorating situation, while I cried. We knew the end was near. My father looked at his children and the doctors and said, "You know, at my funeral everyone will be crying, but there is one person who won't be crying. Do you know who that is? Me." We all cracked up, and we understood. The sorrow was ours. He had accepted his fate.

To this day, when my children complain that something is not fair, I ask them where it says that life is supposed to be fair. My father taught us to accept life as it comes and never bemoan our fate. We each get our lot. Our mission is to be partners with G-d in creation, to be productive, to leave the world a better place, and to do it with a bit of humor.

Le'iluy nishmas Harav Yaakov Elchanan ben Moshe Yehuda, in loving memory of my father.