This past rainy Monday evening, I made a relatively rare work trip into Manhattan for a unique business and networking dinner at one of Manhattan’s newer high-end kosher restaurants, Bonito 47. (As I used to work in midtown for well over a decade, it’s amazing to me how infrequently I actually go into midtown today and especially for work. Growing up, midtown Manhattan was the center of the business universe). However, this wasn’t an ordinary dinner.

I went because I was personally invited to attend the first-ever mentor appreciation dinner sponsored by an organization that I am proud to be associated with as a mentor: The Jewish Entrepreneur (TJE). Begun over a decade ago and chaired by Isaac “Zevy” Wolman of Baltimore, TJE is a unique organization that stands out from the pantheon of so many special groups dedicated to helping our community. Their mission is laser-focused on providing quality mentors and mentoring services to aspiring and existing entrepreneurs; they have founded and run events such as Tribeworks, and also provide business education.

TJE came onto my radar screen when I met Robert and Jewel Safren of Fair Lawn about 10 years ago. Jewel was an early advertiser and columnist in our paper and I met her husband Robert when I learned that he was joining TJE as its executive director. Our paper was happy to report on this back in November 2017. The Safrens are a special couple who have lived in San Jose, West Orange, Livingston and Queens, before finally settling in Fair Lawn, where Robert is today the president of Cong. Ahavat Achim. The Safrens are also avid readers of the paper and about five years ago, Robert asked me if I would consider being a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs in the media space.

While I certainly don’t consider myself the world’s best business mind (quite far from it, in fact), I do feel that I have made enough mistakes in the Jewish media space and have learned so many hard lessons trying to recover and grow from the aforementioned errors that its possible I do know something about this field, or at least enough to know what to tell people not to do when they are starting out, which they will hopefully interpret positively as good advice and maybe even minor wisdom.

So I said yes to Robert on becoming a mentor. Of course, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn’t really know what being a business mentor was all about and I wasn’t sure what my exact role would be. Was I supposed to review my mentees’ business plans, critique their approaches and strategies, consider investing in them, or all of the above? All I knew was that I wanted to help these mentees to the best of my ability and hopefully, some good would come of it.

Well, after being a mentor to a few TJE mentees over the years, I can tell you that the experience has been both eye-opening and downright inspiring. My mentees—all younger entrepreneurs driven to succeed for themselves, their families and their communities—have become friends, partners and sounding boards for all kinds of issues relevant to our chosen space. I have advised on printing, editing, design, sales, budgets, you name it. Plus, as is usually the case with mentoring and teaching, they have taught me a lot about areas that I am not as fluent in.

Although not all of the mentoring experiences were long-term, I feel that even with my short-term mentee experiences, I was able to give over what I felt was quality advice and direction and I believe it was received positively. All of my mentor interactions have been quality, fulfilling and substantive experiences and I am proud of all of them.

While TJE was holding its first-ever dinner thanking its mentors, I went because I thought it was important to be there, to meet other mentors, and also to thank TJE’s leadership directly for the opportunity to be a mentor. Of course, I may have forgotten to thank Robert and Zevi properly or loudly enough on Monday night, so I do want to exercise my publisher’s privilege and thank them publicly in this space for giving me the opportunity to participate in their program.

The dinner was a complete joy to attend as I got to know and chatted with fellow mentors about my favorite subject mostly: The Jewish Link. After an introduction from TJE’s Zevi Wolman, we heard next from TJE executive board member and current CEO of Lazard Asset Management Evan “Yitzy” Russo, and Joseph Bohm, CEO of Dual Fuel. Each spoke a bit about themselves and shared concrete and deep ideas about mentorship, growth and business success, with a little Torah thrown in as well. Robert Safren also spoke about the growth of TJE from 50 active mentors to over 500 worldwide and TJE serving businesses with a combined revenue of almost $1B. And he noted that the satisfaction rating on TJE mentors contribution is nearly 90%. He thanked us, the mentors, for treating the mentees as if “they are paying clients.” He closed with the hope that both TJE and the mentors “should be able to continue this chesed for many years to come.”

I agree with Robert’s last thought and I hope he is correct, except I think for many of us mentors, we may have started off thinking we were doing chesed, but over time our mentor/mentee relationships have become something more. I say kein yirbu to Robert and Zevy and everyone involved in TJE.

To learn more about TJE and to consider being a mentor or mentee, I strongly encourage you to visit their site at tjenetwork.com or be in touch directly with their executive director Robert Safren at [email protected]. You won’t regret it.