Rabbi Irwin Katsof, a protégé of Rav Noach Weinberg at Aish HaTorah, is no stranger to the world of publishing. In 1998, he coauthored Powerful Prayers: Conversations on Faith, Hope and the Human Spirit with Today’s Most Provocative People with Larry King. According to Publishers Weekly, it was ranked the tenth best-selling religious book of the year. However, his memoir, Living Dangerously: My Struggle to Get Rich Without Losing My Soul, may be his most important work to date. In this recently published book, he describes his trajectory from nonprofits to the world of finance, and how he almost lost his soul in the process.
I recently spoke to Rabbi Katsof about his book and what others can learn from his experiences.
You had been working as a fundraiser in the non-profit world for many years before you started “living dangerously.”
That’s correct. In 2005, after fundraising for Aish HaTorah for 25 years, I looked at myself and, in my innocence, I said, “I’m a smart guy, and I’m very driven.” I would get up at 5:00 in the morning and work until 10:00 at night. “I’m going to go into business. I’ll make $10 million and give $1 million away to Jewish causes. Why not? If other people can do it, I can do it too.” One of our supporters always told me, “You know, there are lots of ways to help the Jewish people. One way is to raise money, and another way is to make a lot of money and give money to charity.” Although I was living very frugally, I had been working with the elite of the elite, the one-percenters, and I said, “I’d like to be like them.”
I went to consult my mentor, Reb Noach Weinberg, and he saw that I was pretty gung-ho about it. He said, “You’ve given 25 years of your life to fight for the Jewish people, so you have the right to go off at this point. It’s not right for me to keep you back if that’s what you want to do. But I want you to make a commitment: that every night you will sit down on the floor and commiserate with the pain of the Almighty’s children, and you will always give maaser. If you will do that, you have my blessing to move forward.”
What business did you select?
I decided that I wanted to become an investment banker. I saw that bankers were the elite of Wall Street. I tried to do deals, but everything I attempted fell apart. I had very little money, so I took out a home equity line of credit and started living off that and racking up credit card debt.
Oy vey. That’s a no-no.
Definitely. One of the things I learned was to always make sure you have enough capital to survive for at least a year. We say that “revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is reality.” A good idea won’t survive if you run out of money. You have to know your numbers, monitor your burn rate, control your expenses and ensure consistent cash flow—I didn’t do any of those things. I was a little bit reckless. It didn’t work, and the money was slowly being depleted every month.
How did you support yourself?
It was clear to me that G-d was teaching me a lesson. “You think you’re the one who’s going to succeed on your own? Well, I’m not going to let you if you think it’s all about you.” Everything I tried to do went bad, but then out of left field things that I had nothing to do with started coming to me and making money. It was G-d Who sent them.
What kind of things?
For example, a group of oligarchs from Ukraine and Russia hired me to assist them with business introductions in the United States. I was introduced to them by a friend, and after doing their research, they saw that I knew a lot of major business leaders. They wanted those relationships, and they were prepared to pay me to make those connections. It was nothing that I imagined myself doing, and it wasn’t what I went into business to do, but it allowed me to start to make some money.
Then I realized that I had to get trained and certified, so I went to school to get a Series 7 license—that’s the SEC test you have to pass in order to be paid a commission. It’s a very complex exam that covers all aspects of the securities industry. After someone passes this test, he is qualified for the solicitation, purchase and sale of all securities products, including corporate securities.
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