Jeff Swartz  

I'm Jeff Swartz and I'm an unemployed boot salesman. I'm a recent immigrant to the land of my dreams. I am a grandfather. And I am the volunteer chairman of Maoz. And my core value is a deep, true belief and redemptive possibility of the human race.

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Michael Eisenberg  

It is a pleasure to introduce to Invested my friend Jeff Swartz, the former president and CEO of Timberland, and as he likes to say, an unemployed boot salesman, today. Jeff Swartz is also co-founder and chairman of Maoz. He served 15 years as the CEO of Timberland, a global brand of footwear and apparel, some of you may have heard of, and hopefully you wore. While at Timberland, Jeff incorporated a social agenda within the business agenda. He led public and private partnerships with several social change organizations, including City Year, where he served as chair for 10 years, Share Our Strength, the Harlem Children's Zone, and The Climate Group. In 2011, Jeff led the sale of Timberland to the VF Corporation. Since then, he invests all of his energies to advance sustainable socioeconomic change, and I'll add human change, aimed to have a real impact in Israel and the United States. Jeff holds an MBA from Dartmouth University, and a BA in comparative literature from Brown University. Jeff lives now in Jerusalem, where he moved a few years ago, from Boston. He is married to Debbie, who I can attest to is, can I say, the strong partner here. And they have three married sons and a growing number of beloved grandchildren, we lovingly call Jeff “Zeidi,” which is the Yiddish word for grandpa. If you'd like to follow Jeff on social media, you're outta luck. He doesn't have any social media accounts. And we'll get to talk more about that soon. If you want to actually follow Jeff, take a couple of energy bars in the morning and keep running because it's really hard to keep up. And with that, I try to remember, you know, the team setting up the podcast asked me, how do we know each other? And I think I remember, but I'm not 100% sure. So how do we know each other?

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Jeff Swartz 

I remember when I met you the first time, you showed up in like a station wagon in the “shetach” [fields] way up north.

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Michael Eisenberg  

The “shetach” is like, you know, the hills, the badlands. 

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Jeff Swartz  

Yeah, like, exactly, not the city. And I remember horses. This is a terror of mine. There were horses. It was Hashomer Hachadash [The New Guardians] day. And Yoel Zilberman, who is the founder of this organization, was doing his thing. And it involved me getting on a horse. And I remember you were the only one that would speak to me in English, which I was grateful for. But that was it. It was like hi, nice to meet you. And then you climbed on the horse like you were born on a horse.

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Michael Eisenberg  

I was not born on a horse, I promise you, just ask my children. 

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Jeff Swartz  

Well, you pulled it off and I'm still recovering from the trauma, not physically. But emotionally. That was not a good day for me.

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Michael Eisenberg  

All right, so we met out in the fields on horses. And that was a day where we were both at a volunteer organization, which I know you spent a lot of your time doing. We'll come to that in a second. But before we get there, how does your day start? I know it starts somewhere in the early morning, middle of the night, but take me through your day.

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Jeff Swartz 

I like getting up early because – 

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Michael Eisenberg

What time is early? 

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Jeff Swartz  

So like, you know, if it's much before four, I get some stick from the boss, but I am kind of out of bed around four and the reason is, it used to be before all the technology stuff, it used to be an hour or two where honestly, it wasn't self indulgent to not be connected, you just weren't. Timberland’s business was all around the world. So it wasn't that folks weren’t awake. But you needed a telephone, like a landline. And so - eventually with those blackberries and it got less lovely. But from four to six was the kind of time where you could learn quietly, which was something really precious to me. And then like, I used to do my workout when I was a younger human being earlier in the morning because it just felt like you were not alone, but you weren't on the clock. It was like a time to breathe and think a little bit so I get up here in Jerusalem. I sort of follow the same routine, I learn. And then I work out and then I you know, pray and go to work.

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Michael Eisenberg  

And what do you learn/study at four o'clock in the morning?

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Jeff Swartz   

I'm a sacred text guy. I'm a self taught fellow. I didn't grow up in that formal tradition. But when I was in my 30s, which is right around when electricity was invented, I ran the New York Marathon, that was a long time ago. And I don't want to bore you.

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Michael Eisenberg  

I watched the New York Marathon, for what it’s worth, a few times because I grew up across the park from the New York Marathon. Yeah.

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Jeff Swartz  

I was - I don't know why that was just like a goal that needed to be achieved. I don't know why. So I ran. And when I got to the end, Debbie said to me, the equivalent of like, I know the way you do it, you invest in this outcome. It's the most precious thing on earth. And then the instant you achieve it, it's like it never existed before. And you're looking out for what comes next. And she said, Why don't you try something that doesn't have a terminus? Why don't you think about this idea of learning? And I was a pretty good learner, like, in classical, work hard, take a test, get a grade. But that's not what she was talking about. She was saying, like, what if you actually opened yourself up to something that is differently delimited. And so, she can't explain why to this day, she gave me this box full of books, which included a medieval commentator on the Torah, the ‘Rambam’ in English. And I took a look at it. I was a literature major, as you said. And I was always interested in things written. And I could not believe honestly could not believe that the text – I'd read the Bible, right? Because hasn’t every Western kid read the Bible? So I'd read it in English. But he wanted to stop and look at the words and think about why this word and not that word. And I was, I had studied James Joyce that way, in university, but no one had ever even suggested to me that this wasn't a flat text, that this was a rich text. And I fell into, what do you want to call it, another galaxy? And so since then, 1991, I sort of started every day learning.

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Michael Eisenberg

For how many hours?

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Jeff Swartz 

It depends. On a day when I'm visiting with you, I tighten it down, because I said to myself, I gotta be on time. I gotta continue my learning with Michael in a different way. 

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Michael Eisenberg  

Oh, no. And so you moved to Israel, two or so or three years ago now, at the height of the pandemic. And we talked about it when you were moving. Why did you move?

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Jeff Swartz  

I came to Israel in 1974, when I was 14 years old, with my parents, who were and are Zionists. In the sense where that term used to be a term of pride, not a term of fear, and not a term of politics even. It was an ideology, it was a big deal to them. I grew up in a house where mom lit candles on Friday night, and dad opened this big black book to one page and sang a song. And we took, he did take a sip of very sweet wine that was kept in the refrigerator because nobody ever wanted it.

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Michael Eisenberg  

It would've gone bad anyway, it has so many preservatives in it. 

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Jeff Swartz 

Exactly. Right. It was nuclear.

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Michael Eisenberg  

That's like the kiddush ceremony at Jewish Friday night dinner tables.

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Jeff Swartz  

That wine is like spent nuclear reactor fuels - they'll never decompose. But then we would do whatever we did. And so was it a Jewish household? In that sense, it was. But Mom dragging me to it like Israel Independence Day marches when I was a little kid, that's the last time I've gone to any kind of outside protest. I gotta learn from that. But anyways, mom dragged me to that. And then in 1974, we came here. And so, you and I've talked about this before, there's what do you know? And how do you know? And I don't know what I knew. But I know how I knew. That there was a question, a real one, which is, what does it mean to be at home? And at 14 years old, I didn't have the language for that. But in a place where it didn't speak a single word, where I couldn't read the alphabet where I couldn't have not fit in less, I was home. And I knew that in 1974. And I've been coming home since then. And, along the way, I'd made a deal with my dad, I'd work with him in business because he wanted to run Timberland. After he finished, we bought the other half of the business from his brother. They had been 50-50 partners. And dad wanted to run the business and I was his son. I didn't care about business, but I care about my dad. So sure, yeah. How about five years? And then I go to Israel? He said, sure. Great. 30 years later, you know.

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Michael Eisenberg  

There he came. 

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Jeff Swartz 

There he came. 

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Michael Eisenberg  

You know, today, I actually tweeted, which you wouldn't have seen because you're not on social media. – 

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Jeff Swartz

Correct – 

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Michael Eisenberg  

What are some experiences, things that we can't find words to describe? And I have an increasing feeling that with all the words people are saying out there, you know, people are talking way too much in social media and saying things they don't think about. There's actually a growing number of experiences that we've lost words or can't find words for. I feel like I must have read this some time by William Safire in his On Language column in the New York Times, which as a kid I read pretty religiously. So you were the CEO of Timberland. It was a family business, you took over as CEO and did it for 15 years. It was started by your Grandfather, Nathan Swartz, a shoemaker from the Ukraine. I guess he was never unemployed. Be a shoemaker from the Ukraine, until he had to emigrate to the United States. And then he was unemployed. 

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Jeff Swartz 

Correct – 

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Michael Eisenberg  

 – Right. So he founded what became this company that you sold ultimately for $2 billion. Take me through, like it's a family business. How was that decision to sell the company and, why’d you sell it at the end of the day?

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Jeff Swartz  

That’s a great question. I used to drive home. In the days where car phones were like take two hands slipped through the receiver 

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Michael Eisenberg 

– breaks. – 

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Jeff Swartz 

Exactly right. And I used to call my nana, Ruth. That was Papa Nathan's widow. They, came to my high school graduation, in 1978 And I won't bore you with the story, but -

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Michael Eisenberg  

- At least we know you've graduated.

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Jeff Swartz  

They came to celebrate that, this is the first one in the generations, they had like that. And on the way back to Florida, David, my brother and I drove them. My dad and my uncle bought them a new car, Buick, something or other and we drove it to New York, we stayed in Harlem at a Holiday Inn. And the next morning we drove to Crystal City, to put them in the Otter train, David and I got them to there. We had breakfast together, gave them a hug and a kiss, got on the plane and flew back to Boston and my dad was waiting at the plane, which is unusual because mom should have been at the plane. It's a workday. He had a suitcase. I said what’s the matter, he said ah, a little bit of an automobile accident. I'm sure everything's okay. So a drunk driver crossed over at 10 o'clock in the morning and wiped him out. And so my grandfather was in the hospital. And I said to Dad, I want to come. He said, No, no, he doesn't want you to come. He doesn't want you to see him like this. He's okay. He's gonna be fine. And so for my graduation present at 18 years old, I was going to Israel to tremp for the summer to hitchhike around the country. So I came, and I spoke to my grandfather. My father held the phone, he couldn't speak. He says Yeah, he's got like a tube or two it's no big deal. And my dad's, with me, very straight. So I believed him. And he believed what he's telling me. And then I came here, a completely secular guy. Hitchhiking around the country, when I came up to Jerusalem. I went - funny story and Friday night, blah, blah, blah. But on Sunday, we had made a deal that I call home every second Sunday. So I went to the post office in Jerusalem, and you know, you place your order for the phone call, and it went straight through and I thought oy yoyoy, it's like five o'clock in the morning. I had gotten there, because I figured it takes two hours to get the call and it went straight through. And my mother answers on the second ring. And I was like, Hi. She said dad needs to talk to you. And she said, he said to me, we've been trying to find you. We can't hold the funeral any longer. Your uncle says it's tomorrow morning. And I said dad it's like, you know, it's noon here and the - What am I supposed to do? He said, Do the best you can. So my stuff was in the hostel in the city and locked. So I sat down. I don't know if it's okay to say but just you and me talking right? I sat down on the seat, like on the sidewalk. Outside Sha’ar Yafo. And I started to cry. And some Mishmar Gvul kid said to me - 

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Michael Eisenberg

- border police. 

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Jeff Swartz 

Sorry, sorry, it's the border police guys said to me what’s the matter? And I said my grandfather died. And he said, okay. So, bekitzur [in short] he got the hospital to open so I could get my passport. They put me in a jeep. They drove me on the Route One, this is 1978. Right? It wasn't open. We drove out onto the tarmac, they held the ELAl flight. And so we drove. And this young guy took his gun off, handed it to the driver and he came up the stairs with me onto the plane. And they had two seats for us. And we sat there together. And we flew to Boston - to New York, and only the Land of Israel would take some nobody they didn't know who it was. It wasn't - it didn't matter. Like this kid's got to get home for his grandfather's funeral. And so they did - they got me home when I got to New York, I had a run to get the connection to go to Boston, and I said, Will you tell me your name? And he said, No. I said no, but I need to know your name. He said, why? I said because how can I write you like a note to say thank you. And he said, I don't need a note. And he turned away. And I'm not as powerful as you are. But okay, connections. I can't find this guy doesn't want to be found, which is, it's just -

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Michael Eisenberg   

in Jerusalem, they would say it was Elijah the prophet who turned up to come find you. There's truth to that, my friend. Well, that's quite a story. Why did you sell the company?

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Jeff Swartz   

So when I -

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Michael Eisenberg  

That's, by the way, that's an astounding story. It's an astounding story. It puts into words or descriptive story, things you can't figure out about national culture. And, you know, we met, as you said before the Hashomer Hahadash, the new Guardians in the field, you know, on the back of all their shirts and jackets, it says, I am my brother's keeper. And it's a thing you can't actually put into words, what it means to be your brother's keeper. And that, you know, you have mutual responsibility for just another person who was crying on a stoop outside of the Jaffa Gate.

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Jeff Swartz 

Just another person and - 

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Michael Eisenberg

You're not just another person who me but at the time to him, you were

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Jeff Swartz  

I was just another person, not even to me. And the truth is, that was-  the kids talk to me, the little kids talk to me about like they learn what is the kindness of truth. And they say the kindness of truth Hesed Shalem, that you can only do for the dead. Very nice, religious notion because there's no recompense. Right. But this was Hesed Shalem. This was national Hesed Shalem. I don't know how it happened that the plane was, I don't know how we got to drive on there. I have no idea. And I, as my friend Springsteen would say, I got debts, no honest man could pay. But as a consequence, I went to work for my dad. And so then we were doing our thing. But the deal was five years and come on, I want to go to Israel. And I don't know what I want to do. I just want to be in Israel. So then we got involved in - because all our family's net worth. And people kept coming to say, let's buy the company and dad said, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. In the early, the mid 90s. He decided he was ready to retire. I don't know if, in fact he was but he said he was and so he went to Florida, and I fell for it, I shouldn't have. But through time, it became a source of pain for both of us. Because dad spent most of the time in my office when he wasn't running the world. And now he wasn't in my office. So it didn't have him interrupting the vital work I was doing, but also missed the heck out of him. But then I realized I couldn't talk to him about business. Because every time I talked to him about business, I was making him anxious. He wasn't here to fix it. He was in Florida with my mother driving him crazy, or vice versa. And so I realized I shouldn't talk to him about it. And so I started to get differently lonely. And so I talked to him about it quietly when at the barbecue in Florida. And he said, you know, he's a practical man, Michael, he said, like, well, there has to be a fair price. Yeah, I get all that. So and then they called and I called him up. And I said, Do you want me to have the conversation? And he said, Well, as long as it's a fair price. No, no, I'm asking a Jeff and dad question. And he said, grab it. And I was like, okay, so we negotiated for a long time. And when it came time to actually make the sale, the day of this transition, we had this Timberland service event. And he said to me, he said to me, I spent 50 years of my life here. And I had no idea what this meant to me. Until sort of now. And, more importantly, I had no idea what this family meant to the company. He said, I think we've done the right thing. But I don't think this is simple. And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, You'll figure it out. You'll see what happens. And I think he's right. I think a family business is different. There's good things, and bad things about it. But he was there saying some of the good that comes from being a family enterprise is going to end now, and he was right.

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Michael Eisenberg  

And so that's how your dad felt in almost a rational way understanding that the power of family animates the values of the business. But how did you feel the next day?

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Jeff Swartz  

It's a very powerful question. I felt as I always do, which is a little scared. At least, because I am. I learned from my dad, debt is a bad thing. You don't want to be in arrears. 

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Michael Eisenberg  

My grandfather taught me the same thing. 

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Jeff Swartz:

Really? 

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Michael Eisenberg 

Yeah.

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Jeff Swartz  

Yeah, and the biggest mistake, I made a Timberland and the whole time I ran the place, is I got us into a debt crisis in the mid 90s. I almost lost the business. So good experience of not the euphemism of a balance sheet, but like one that hits you in the head for 18 months. But so I- 

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Michael Eisenberg   

Word to the wise in a higher interest rate environment that we're living through right now.

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Jeff Swartz  

I'd never met a debt I wouldn't like to pay, but dad used to carry his checkbook to the mailbox, and he would be writing checks as he walked back for the bills, hysterical. AT&T, my dad's name is Sydney. But AT&T transposed it so his account was Disney Swartz. It was awesome. He was ready to get a Disney Swartz check once a month AT&T and taking care of business. 

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So the morning after I woke up in fear, like what can I do with the resources that are lent to me in order to justify my space on Earth? And that was a good feeling because it was too easy inside the environment of the business to know this is what you're supposed to be doing. On Monday morning, when you're not sure what you're supposed to be doing. You're like, oh my gosh, not what am I supposed to be doing? But who am I supposed to be, which is why I knew I had to come here, because this is a place about doing. But it's also a place that is about being.

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Michael Eisenberg  

So Timberland was known as a socially conscious business. The company wrote, we strive to create a culture built on giving back and building relationships with our communities, which I know is a big value of your family as well. And it doesn't seem to me - and I know you're pretty well - that you've actually codified these values, in any way. And so, how did they persist in the business? And how did you think about the relationship with your own personal values to those of the company?

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Jeff Swartz  

Those are great questions. I was learning how to understand the system of Halacha, of -

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Michael Eisenberg

Jewish law.

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Jeff Swartz

- of Jewish law. Of boundary conditions and vision. And so really, my first real experiment with that in an external way was in this context of how does our enterprise be accountable for our social impact? And so I tried boundary conditions. One of the things that we believed in was the idea that we are a productive force in the communities that we live and work in. And so we can share our strength, and so 1000 manifestations, but President Bush asked the question, a lot of other CEOs ask the question: what are the rules about community service at Timberland? And I said, no religion, no politics, those are the boundary conditions, go. And they said, well, but don't you tell people what to do? And I said no, we create boundary conditions, and we trust that people have the instinct, this is important and passionate to me. 

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We did talk about values humanity, humility, integrity, and excellence. And people used to say those fight each other? And I said, Yep, right. That's sort of a Jewish Rabbi Soloveichik, not dialectic, that gets synchronized in a nice tonic Donek music thing like, Tada. No, living the tension of humanity and excellence, those fight each other. 

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Michael Eisenberg  

- And just to interject for a second, the references to Rabbi Joseph Dove Soloveichik’s monumental work called The Lonely Man of Faith where he describes Adam one and Adam two from chapter one and chapter two of the book of Genesis. Adam one is someone who exercises dominion, and creative spirits and creativity and Adam two lives alone in the abyss of the world and kind of a metaphysical way. That's the reference. 

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Jeff Swartz  

That's the reference, but you do it. Wow. Where were you when I was trying to read the book? All these Greek words, what is he doing? You are special. You are.

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Michael Eisenberg   

But you're going on? So how did the family values and your personal values guide you there and make the business better? Or did it not make the business better?

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Jeff Swartz  

First it did. There's just this. You know,  I'm not going to be able to prove it with a regression. But I can tell you, like, in the deepest form of conviction, we made boots. 

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And so the cost of the most important product we made, the single SKU, that was sort of the basis of all our revenues, whatever, it was over a billion dollars in revenues and a big part of the profit and revenue came from this one boot that my grandfather, originally designed with my dad. 

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On a good day, that boot was landed, finished, all cost about 30 bucks. And when we sold the boot out the door at round 200 bucks, there was a lot of margin for the wholesaler that was Timberland and the retailer- it could have been us, it could have been Nordstrom, it could have been somebody else. And there was a lot of margin and a lot of sustained margin. But if you try to understand what that sustained margin came from, some of its brand, right? It does matter if you’re just making a utility argument, I can sell you a $30 boot for 40 bucks. If you're making a brilliant brand argument you can make 30 be 120 even 140 in our space right? Four times landed cost, there's room for that and if you look across most of the brands - the great brands that you know and recognize, in that crappy industry that I grew up in, 4X on landed’s pretty good but we were 6X on landed and so where did that come from? I believe there was a boot and it was a brand and there was belief. I believe that-

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Michael Eisenberg  

That's great BBB. Built back better is now boot, brand, and there was belief.  

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Jeff Swartz 

I love that but we live in Boot, brand, and belief-

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Michael Eisenberg 

A BBB is much better. 

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Jeff Swartz  

-but that’s a separate story. I got the T-shirts. They're almost as old as the president. But that's a separate point, right? It's true. And the truth is the T shirts have done better over time but that's a separate point. But boot brand and belief is something that we talked about a Timberland. And so you want to do the very best you could with a boot. But when you say, well what do you mean by the very best? Well, it's made out of leather. Okay, but can you make that leather point to and drive the question of belief? And we did. It's not - leather has a - there's a reason - 

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Michael Eisenberg  

What did you want people to believe in?

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Jeff Swartz  

I wanted - We said that we exist in order to help people make their difference in the world. That was our business mission to help people make the difference in the world, and I used to say, in brand terms, if you notice Timberland, when you're out hiking, we failed. We don't want to be present to your experience in the outdoors, we want you to be present to your experience in the outdoors, whether you're a firefighter, or whether you're hiking with your children or your grandchildren, like, be outdoors and breathe, stretch your imagination, but you'll want to have a pair of boots that don't disappoint you and a backpack that works, etc, etc. And so we wanted the boot to be connected to this experience of the outdoors. We wanted this experience of the outdoors to challenge your view of what's possible because the outdoors exists in Manhattan, and it exists in Montana. And we knew, we invented that truth. But we knew that when people were in that truth, they were more themselves. They were more powerful, if you, and we believed. And I still do that, if, in this one narrow sense I'm a Jeffersonian. He argued that if we provide sufficient information, the Yeoman farmer will make the right decision. And I believe that. I believe that this is B'Selim Elokim. Note that there's a spark of godliness, it's inside people. And if we get the big words and the big noise out of the way, and call on the goodness in people, they'll see a kid crying on the sidewalk and say, How can I help? I believe that. 

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Michael Eisenberg  

Yeah, I think the world actually divides into people who fundamentally believe people are good, and people who fundamentally believe people are bad. And therefore, unfortunately, we create a lot of regulation around thinking that people are bad, but in fact, 99% of the people in the world are actually good people, and if we bring out the best, and then they'll do amazing work. I want to come back to this point, I think, the way you describe so passionately, what happened at Timberland, it was very, very aligned with the business model, which is: I sold boots that gave you - and backpacks - that gave you a great outdoor experience, and I believed in you to be empowered to go do your best work by kind of embracing this kind of outdoorsiness and nature. There's a lot of corporate social responsibility today, which is - excuse the term I’ll pollute here and plant trees there. Or, you know, I'll do damage to people by giving them diabetes over here. And you know, then I contribute to the National Kidney Foundation over here. And that's got this fancy name called CSR, corporate social responsibility. I have some other choice three letter algorithms to think about it, CYA might be one of them. So how do you think about corporate social, social responsibility, kind of writ large. And, you know, and what it's become, you know, Larry Fink's built the kind of largest money management tool on the planet, come into play at BlackRock, you know, they got behind this ESG thing, which has now become Bonton. And nobody can even measure ESG. You have these outrageous, ridiculous metrics for ESG. And no one knows what the hell it is. So how do you think about corporate social responsibility? ESG? CYA?

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Jeff Swartz  

I had an executive here in Israel, a woman that I respect a lot, runs a big business. And she said- I really appreciate the - she's Israel - family business. She said, I really appreciate the regulatory kind of paroxysms that come. You look at this industry, and you don't trust us, you think we're all bad corporate people. And so you pass all these laws, and you think it's going to make it easier and fair. And actually, she said, If I wasn't a good person, I'd simply laugh out loud, because I have a very big legal department. And so when you pass all these lovely regulations, ESG, ABC, PDQ, CYA, I can comply, the little guy who's actually trying to run a productive business, the small and  medium sized businesses, they don't have big legal departments, they don’t have workarounds. And so these kinds of draped overlays of self righteous stuff to me it's like dropping a rag on the fire. It stifles the creativity. I don't. There was in our industry, very famous, powerful guy, and he created a foundation for his company, and people would ask me about it like why don't you do that? I said there will never be a foundation at Timberland. Never, because that is not the job of a for profit CEO. My job is to deliver sustainable proud profits every quarter for my shareholders. And so we are investing in Cydia because we are convinced that that is going to make our brand more relevant and more valuable to our employees, to our investors, and to our consumers. Even our customers. Our customers, by the way are the hardest - the retailers in the middle -

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Michael Eisenberg  

They had a little connection.

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Jeff Swartz  

But like on 9/11, mamash, on the day of 9/11 we were in Manhattan, and we came out of the fancy hotel and the security team called me and said, you know, we want you get out of Manhattan, and that's good I was going to the Bronx anyways. So we went to P.S.11. In the Bronx, The Clara Barton school, it's now closed in Ritchie Torres’s district. And- 

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Michael Eisenberg  

Richard Torres is a democratic congressman from the Bronx.

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Jeff Swartz  

From the poorest district in the United States - 

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Michael Eisenberg 

And a wonderful guy- 

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Jeff Swartz 

A wonderful guy. Congressman Torres probably wasn’t even born then he’s so young, but who knows. We were there serving at P.S.11. There was 15-20 Timberland people, and around 15-20 retailers, local retailers, and we watched the towers fall. And we told those kids that there are two kinds of grownups, there's the grownups that want to destroy the world, as you said before, and you're right. There's grownups that want to destroy the world, and there’s grownups who want to build the world. I told us kids we would come back every 9/11 until they graduated, me and the retailers. And we did, we went back every single year, but that those retailers knew that their business was better, because they weren't selling stuff. They were actually - my dad used to say this when we’d go into restaurants, he'd walk in and go *sniff*, this is not going to be a good meal. I said why? He said the owner is not here, I said how can you tell? He says you can smell it. I said Dad, how do you know? He said, he doesn't - there's no belief here, this is like a place to get - I can get a hamburger at home! I want a place where the guy wants to make me a hamburger. It's his hamburger. And so I think that the question of values is, it's self interested. It's not self-executing. Because I agree with you. I pollute over here and I appease over there. I don't believe in that - carbon offsets? It's like, oy, it's like, didn't we have like a revolution with Martin Luther about this idea of buying forgiveness? Yeah. As opposed to earning it.

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

So you and I together invested in a company called Rise Up Alepth and Swartz enterprises or the Swartz family or Jeff Inc. Right, Rise Up, for our listeners, is a company that promotes financial efficacy. They started in Israel, because as you've all seen, that the founder and former Chief Product Officer of Klarna, the Swedish payments juggernaut. Like to say, I grew up poor. In Israel, I came to solve that problem of financial self efficacy, in Israel, first, and now it's expanding, of course, to the UK and to Spain and Holland. I think Yuval is, today, actually in London. 

‍

Jeff Swartz 

Wow!

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

Yeah, with our first set of customers there. So, RiseUp is a cash flow management tool that initially appears in your Whatsapp, you connect your credit card and your bank account and it, using AI learns to tell you how much money you have to spend until the end of the month. It just reminds you. Now, this is a tool to your point. It's utility. It's like a good boot. 

‍

Jeff Swartz 

Yep. 

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

But at the same time, this massive community of 10s of 1000s people have formed around this almost such that it's a movement to enable people to become financially independent, go from debtors to savers, and then investors and 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of Israeli families have already come out of debt due to Rise Up. What attracted you to Rise Up? And why do you think it's such an important company in Israel and globally, at this point?

‍

Jeff Swartz  

So one thing you taught me, one of the many things you taught me, is it's about who not about what. And so, the first thing that attracted me to Rise up was you the second thing that attracted me-

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

I don’t even work there!

‍

Jeff Swartz 

No, but the second thing that attracted me to RiseUp was Yuval, and it had a weird name. It wasn't Rise Up, it was like some weird thing. Some techie thing -

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

Yeah, it was a bad name. 

‍

Jeff Swartz 

It was a bad name. Like the dude is focused on -

‍

Michael Eisenberg

Israelis don't roll out of bed and like, preach branding. It's not very Israeli - 

‍

Jeff Swartz  

Some are missing from the culture, but okay, we'll get there someday. But the story of- we talked about single moms, we talked about what it takes to make it in the world as a single mom, and he was talking - his, thank god, his family, he has a relationship with both of his parents, he loves them both. And so he has a mom and a dad. But he knows this story, he knows this narrative experience of what it's like to be a marginalized player in the world of finance, and what does that mean? And so the question of agency sounds very intellectual. But when the day is done, what you said before is right. For profit, the profit instinct is amoral. It's not immoral, nor is it moral, it's amoral. It's buy low, sell high. There's a mechanism, a generative mechanism of the marketplace. That the regulation of that sits in two places, right? It sits in regulatory frameworks, at which, as you point out, are developed too slowly. They are sclerotic on their best days. They are political on their worst days. And so the net effect of them is they neither regulate nor incubate or accelerate, they simply obstruct. They don't create the moral cast that you wish the marketplace would adopt. And so that pretty squarely leads it back to you as the operator, you sit there, and you ask yourself, what do I do? Yuval told stories in the formation of this idea about people rising up now, to me, that's not noble. That's exactly what I told you about. He wants people to make their difference in the world. He's not telling you how to spend your money. He's not telling you, he's not preaching at you. He's saying, let me put you in a place where you can make moral choices. And you know what, at the end of the day, if we can put you in a position where you can make a broader selection of choices, the world's going to be a better place. Is it a FinTech company? I guess so. But to me, it's actually - it is a releasing of - back to its core value. It's a path to redemption and the path of redemption doesn't lie through me, it lies through us-

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

Human potential, believing the human beings ability to write themselves, you just got to give him the cues.

‍

Jeff Swartz  

Correct. I think if you give people the opportunity to do the right thing for themselves, and for their family, in general, that will lead to redemption. 

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Michael Eisenberg  

I think, by the way, the interesting thing about RiseUp in this case is that people pay upfront for financial service. They pay a subscription fee, people subscribe to their own betterment, to their own improvement. And then this community forms around this of 10s and 10s of 10s of 1000s of people, that's rapid. And they kind of come together not so much to make a change for themselves, but to make a change for other people and welcome them into that community in order to make the ongoing change. Do you see that in multiple businesses or is this too generous?

‍

Jeff Swartz  

I think the question that you raised is profound. At Timberland, we negotiated a license with you, because we sold you one pair of boots, maybe a pair of shoes, we had - the only - it was a license, you gave me 180 or $200 for a pair of boots, and I gave you a guarantee for life. And so if you found something through time that disappointed you, you would find that I stood behind it. But I didn't have regular intercourse with you. You bought your pair of boots, you're off into the world, I made them, hopefully so you didn't need to come back, I don't want you to come back and tell me something didn't work. And so I had a site license. He has a bolder vision. He has a vision of subscription. And the notion of subscription has built into it a different accountability. When I was involved in the political world in America, not politically, but when Timberland was doing social change things, I got in - I ended up dancing with the government, you can't not. They're interested in democracy as a license. You vote for me once every four years. See you later, goodbye. Subscriptions are different. At Timberland, the cash register tells you every six hours, what trust you have and don't have - what you have or haven't earned with the consumer, the Rise Up power, he's fundamentally talking about trust as a subscription. When when he says please pay me

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

-Empowerment is also a subscription right? 

‍

Jeff Swartz  

That’s exactly right. That's why it's such a big winner, Michael, because it's both things. He's saying, please trust me, if I disappoint you, you will cut me off. Then he says, look to your left and look to your right, there's another citizen who's in a similar circumstance, trust them too. Wow, that is a brilliant business strategy, because he's actually syndicating trust, not just between the enterprise and him, but across a community. And a community has more strength than an enterprise.

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

So I have this thesis as you know that values create economic value, they create value. And some people have accused it of being kind of social mumbo jumbo in the private sector. But here are two examples and there are more I'm sure we can point to, of where real values create dollar value, and more profit. But it leaves you open to the saying that this is kind of virtue signaling. And I'm sure you know, Timberland, when you were doing sustainability, people said, I don't really believe in that they're manufacturing these boots, but that's virtue signaling. How do you respond to that? We really do work on the environment, they're really tied to the business or was it just some-?

‍

Jeff Swartz   

So, I believe - Here's an interesting fact. So when does the United States require by law that food companies disclose ingredients and calories and all that stuff? I would have guessed this was like 1927 but it isn't. It's more like 2001 or 2002 before the FDA says you have to do this. So now I look like the lunatic that I truly am because when I decided I was going to put a nutritional label on Timberland boots in 2008, I think, I thought I was against a tradition that was 100 years old. Goes to show what an idiot I am. It was like brand new. And so the woman who is Timberlands General Counselwoman in my office, she goes, if you put a nutrition label on Timberland boots showing, you know sustainable energy, child labor, she said, you're gonna go to jail. And I looked and I said, why? She said, because you can't prove this and the data sources are incomplete. I said Dannette, come on,  breathe. She said, I'm telling you, you're going to jail. And I said, you're frustrated, because you're the General Counsel that's gonna go on your resume. CEO goes to jail. It's probably not good for you. She said, yeah. I said, my view is it wouldn't be a bad thing. And she said, why? I said, I think Debbie  and the kids would be very pleased if I was out of circulation for a little bit. I want kosher food and my G’mara, leave me alone. And she said, does that mean we're going to do this? I said, I don't mean to break it to you. But it's already happening. So I literally put a first - I was respectful Michael -I went to our competitors and I said, let's do an industry label. They said, No. I went to the FDA and they said, What are you nuts? You want us to regulate this? And then I went to our customers and said, I just want you to know, I'm going to do it. And they said, why? And I said, because I believe that if the customer, the consumer has the information, they will create a pull. So the problem with virtue signaling is it takes advantage of a laziness thing. If I pile data at you, I think, yeah. But I tried, I tried to form a question, does this matter to you? And I remember, there was a guy who was a Nordstrom family member who called me up. And he says, you're creating a problem, and I want it solved. So what's the problem? He said, you know, the rule at Nordstrom is that when you come into the men's shoe department, you sit down, you say, I'd like a pair of hiking boots. The sales associate brings you, of course, what you want to see, but he has to bring you an alternative to like a pair of sneakers, because they want to make two sales. They're the best - they used to be the best in the space. He said, so now what's happening is the guy sitting on the sitting stool, he's got the Timberland box, he got the boot on, and he's like, why isn't there a label on the Nike box? He says, you are creating a problem. And I said, I feel like that's a good thing. And he said, I'm glad you do. I want you to feel like that's a bad thing. Because I'm your customer. And I'm mad at you. I said, Okay. virtue signaling. It shakes me and makes me - my hands want to shake. When we-

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

The difference is you took a risk with your own money, right? There's a lot of urgency. And it does take a risk - take a risk with other people's money, correct projects, your values and somebody else's money. You took a risk with your own money here.

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Jeff Swartz  

I wanted people to say, look what the label said that 6% of the energy used to make a Timberland boot is renewable. That means 94% is not. And so - but that's just the fact it was true. And by the way, that’s never gonna change until the consumer says - the consumer, not the government. The government says you got to do this, like Britain did this battery thing the other day, it's like, Obama did another battery thing. When governments do battery things, bad things happen to batteries,

‍

Michael Eisenberg   

Tesla brought electrification, Timberland brought disclosure.

‍

Jeff Swartz

Correct. 

‍

Michael Eisenberg

That's not virtue signaling because they take the risk of their own money on it. 

‍

Jeff Swartz 

That's correct. 

Michael Eienberg

All these organizations on the side that then scream green and scream this, they don't count. 

‍

Jeff Swartz

They got no skin in the game.

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

No skin in the game. So ultimately, differentiated virtue signaling and values creating value is - do you have financial skin in the game? 

‍

Jeff Swartz 

Correct. I believe that I do too. 

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

And what do you say to all these yellers? All these people on the side saying, you know, green, this green that but have no skin in the game? Or, you know, are they willing to get in place, go do something about it. I know, you went to Haiti after the earthquake, and the horrible earthquake in Haiti and became a real integrated part of that community. And you had real skin in the game for that. So how do you deal with the noisemakers on the side who are coming in the name of values, but they create actually negative financial value?

‍

Jeff Swartz  

I think that's the right question. And I wish I knew the answer. I was doing one of those around the world trips. And I landed in London. 

‍

Michael Eisenberg

I never did one. So I wouldn't know.

‍

Jeff Swartz 

Good. Don't I urge you not to do it. I think I'd come from Tokyo. It was early days when the British Airways had just been able to fly across what was then this former Soviet Union. Now it's the present Soviet Union, God knows what it is now. So I got to London on BA 215 to Boston. That was my flight, man. I'm going home to see my kids. But I stopped off because I was supposed to make a speech about the environment to business CEOs. And it's just not enough sleep. Not enough food, not enough nothing. And then Vice President Gore was speaking before me and I knew him and I liked him. And I respected him and he made the speech. And it was like, the end is coming. We're all going to die. You know, that's like, doom and gloom and green and uch -

‍

Michael Eisenberg

My favorite. 

‍

Jeff Swartz 

Yeah. And he finished - and he's a great speaker - and the audience is there slumped down in the seat, which is how I felt before I started, and I think I could smell myself and I smell like an airplane. And I came on the stage tonight. The Vice President's I'm sure he's - it didn't even cross my mind. So I walked out there and I thought, and I said, Okay, so that's - that was inspiring. No, actually, that wasn't inspiring. It was terribly depressing. I know I'm going to die. I don't need to be reminded. I know the environment’s coming to an end. What am I supposed to do about that? And so I did something very impromptu, Michael. I looked at the room and I said: question: anybody here running a real business that doesn't want a cash on cash, capital investment return in a year? Anybody here doesn't want one, raise your hand, and then be prepared to explain yourself. So they look at me, because it was not very corporate. And I said, so I can keep the short which is good for you and good for me, change the effing light bulb. And they probably sort of stretched up the adjective a little bit longer than I might have. I don't think I said effing, but I think I actually said a bad word - I was just overtired and I realized it’s a British audience, too. And they looked at me like what? And I said, let me just tell you the story of the lighting at the Timberland headquarters. We took low ballasts, sodium, overhead lights, we switched them out for high LED baba, baba ba the quality of light, blah, blah, blah. Look, it is a fact that we just took 16 trillion tons of crap out of the earth. Interesting. But I'm telling you in electricity, savings, cash and cash, this is an annuity in my ceiling. 

‍

And so I don't know if the world's coming to an end. I love the Vice President. That's over my paygrade, what I'm charged with is to earn a return from my shareholders - change the damn light bulbs! And I walked off after a 10 minute speech. And here's a problem. It was a 10 minute speech. It was supposed to be like 45 minutes, I walked off into the wings and I run into a Secret Service agent. But I thought, Oh, no. He says to me, that was passionate. Yes, sir. Nice to see you, sir. Oh, my God, let me kill myself. But that was a conversation. What I want to say to the yellers is, we're talking about the wrong thing. Like, what can I do? What's the agency that's in my hands? And that was a Cydia lesson, right? That's the famous starfish story. The little girl was on the beach with her grandfather. All the starfish get washed in, she bends down, she tosses one back. He says the sun is out sweetie. They're all gonna die. She said not that one. Not that one. I put that one back in and I - So we did 15 things about the environment 13 of which were probably shoveling the tide with the spoon. It was important to do it. We changed the way the industry thought about it. And look, you taught me this again. This is the world of technology, which I didn't and still don't understand, which is that open source is a powerful thing. The reason Timberland was successful with solar energy was because the nasty people at Patagonia came to laugh at us. Literally the guy came in the front door. The CEO, not Yvon Chouinard, who was a tough guy in his own right. This guy was currently the CEO and he said, you know, how come there's no solar here. I said, we're in New Hampshire, handsome. And I said, it's like the sun is two days a year. And he says rawr, but now he was embarrassed. So he said well, in Ventura, which is where they're headquartered, we have the California Program of blah blah blah, and the Timberland guys are watching. They see Jeff like sort of smiling. And so as soon as Mr. Self Righteous hit the highway, I said to guys, what's this government program in California. And so we had a giant warehouse in City of Industry; they may still have one there, as far as I know. And when you fly into City of Industry, which has its own airport, you can see nothing but white roof as far as your eye can go, except you could always find the Timberland warehouse in the early days, because it was literally a giant solar collector, paid for, by the way, by the Republic of California taxpayers, the Socialist Republic of California. But as a CEO, I got solar energy to power my thing. Great grace of Pasadena, like I’ll take it thank you very much. And I got to meet Governor Schwarzenegger. That was cool sort of -

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

Federalism at its best. 

‍

Jeff Swartz 48:39

Bidiuk [exactly]! But there was an example of open sourced. We were out in the world. And I'll say one last word about that. We did publish a CSR report. But I was really, I was learning Gemara, in these days - 

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

Talmud

‍

Jeff Swartz

Talmud in those days. So I had now understood something I didn't know about printing about folio, about recto and verso, about - there's an amood, there's an amood - I don't know what the right word is. A move here and then a move there -

‍

Michael Eisenberg    

A page here and a page there makes one, two sided page.

‍

Jeff Swartz  

Which is a coherent unit. Right? So I told the Timberland team, we're doing our social responsibility report, like the Babylonian Talmud. And they're like, that makes about as much sense as anything you say, so can you tell us what to do? I said, Yes. I want you to print the right hand side and leave the left hand side blank. And they said, that's a waste of paper. I said, No, no, no, no, I meant you don't write the left hand side, I want you to - whatever is the issue on the right hand side, environmental stuff, corporate volunteerism. I want you to go find somebody who is a competitor or a critic and give them the other page. And my rule is simple. If they say things that are not fair or that are not factual, we'll leave it blank. We'll say this place is intentionally blank because we couldn't get an honest critique. But I want to Chouinard at Patagonia, the founder, Chouinard, and I said, I know you don't think we do enough for the environment. Here's what I'm writing on my side of the page about what Timberland did, the left hand side of the page is yours. 

‍

Michael Eisenberg

Wow, that's amazing. 

‍

Jeff Swartz    

He said, You're out of your mind. He's a tough guy. And I said, just if you say things that aren't true, I won't print it. And he said, Oh, no, I'll stay way inside of true. And so he did. And you know, the reaction the consumer had? Shame on you for not doing these things we said, and, and my reaction was, you're making your difference in the world. Like, you got to hold us accountable for a higher standard of environmentalism like, you know, organic cotton. We weren't using organic cotton. Yvon said, you heathen you destroyer of the universe. Okay, so we blended in some organic cotton. Then I went down to Walmart and pitched David Glass on why he ought to use organic cotton. And they did. That was the power of inviting the business. Stop yelling, come talk to me if you got a suggestion, like, give it a shot, because I have self interest to listen.

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

I love that. You coined the phrase, you told it to me, doing some work I was doing, market caps close social gaps. So you got finished with Timberland. And you started investing. And you've made some successful investments. What are some of them?

‍

Jeff Swartz   

I hope Rise Up is one of them.

‍

Michael Eisenberg   

I hope Rise Up is one of them too.

‍

Jeff Swartz  

Amen. Look, I, you know, not saying that you don't know, I follow you.

‍

Michael Eisenberg   

Oh, come on. You were a good investor before you met me. And I've only taken you down since then.

‍

Jeff Swartz 

I was in a single stock for 30 years. That's not a very sophisticated investor.

‍

Michael Eisenberg   

But you're a man of belief. 

‍

Jeff Swartz

Yeah. 

‍

Michael Eisenberg

So do you invest behind this notion of market caps close social gaps? 

‍

Jeff Swartz  

Yeah, I believe that every single dollar of our wealth we should be deploying that way - market - against companies whose mission is to create massive market caps. And as in through the process of creating market caps, they will close social gaps.

‍

Michael Eisenberg   

So you've been in the Oval Office, you've been in rooms with politicians and powerful people. You've seen how the sausage is made, to use Churchill's famous line. You've also hung around the horses and the social entrepreneurs. Jeff from Harlem and City Year and Yoel Zilberman from the Shomer Hahadash. Where do you feel more comfortable? 

‍

Jeff Swartz  

t's about human beings who believe that the generative force of the marketplace can cure human pain and suffering. Can create redemptive possibility. Those are the people that I want to be with. 

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

And how does it make you feel to be in the Oval Office? Or the prime minister's office or -

‍

Jeff Swartz   

My fears and insecurities are so profound, it's funny. You know, like, how long can you go without breathing? Oh, the oval office visit. The President clip was pretty funny. He got me to like - President Bush was, I mean all due respect, a better host in the sense of like it was just easier to be with the guy. And I think he was a genuinely, genuinely good guy. Mr. President Reagan I met in the Oval he was - I was a little kid, he was pretty intimidating. President Bush I, relatively patrician, but I knew him as he got older. My favorite president in a narrow sense was President Bush the second because with President Bush the second, you could actually think you were having a conversation. And President Clinton you just had to hold your breath because he's a polymath. And so, you just don't talk. Try to avoid being called on by a question. But how do you feel there? I feel there. I told you this. I have this like one second thought, like, what is Nathan Swartz’s grandson doing here, now? What? Like, who made me queen? What am I doing here? And it scares the heck out of me. Because I don't believe you're there by coincidence. I believe you’re there somehow it's related to this mission of the redemptive challenge of the human race and like, so you want to take a picture, put it on your mantle? No, it's like, you better take a shot. You better take a shot. It's like-

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

I love that. Don't take a picture. Take a shot on goal. I love that. In an era where everyone's taking selfies to show you were in there-

‍

Jeff Swartz    

I was in there. Yeah. Great. 

‍

Michael Eisenberg

Take a shot on goal. I love that. 

‍

Jeff Swartz    

Yep.

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

I  kinda think that's what investing is like, which is you get a bunch of shots on goal. Some of them work out some of them don't, most of them don't in my business, but you at least take the shot. It’s from the play of Hamilton also, right? It's true. I don't know how to see it. Well, but well, you want me to sing it, right? They want me to sing it. I’ll embarrass myself. 

‍

Jeff Swartz  

I won’t miss that shot.

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

I'm not gonna not take that shot or something like that. Yeah, I can't sing, I'm totally tone deaf - talk about insecurities. Oh, man, that’s a big one. I would give anything to be able to sing something.

‍

Jeff Swartz 

You're a good davenor. 

‍

Michael Eisenberg

Yeah I know. A yeller. My kids get a good laugh every Friday night when we sing songs around the table. It's the entertainment. It's not because of the song. It's because of an off keyed ad.

‍

Jeff Swartz  

That's how you keep them engaged.

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

Maybe. That might be one way to say it. So you wrote an article in the Sapir Journal called Philanthropy is Not Enough. It is a fantastic piece. Anyone listening to this, go look it up. Philanthropy is Not Enough. And so what's the difference between philanthropy in which lots of families, foundations, trusts are engaged in, in the Hebrew word sedaka? Which is the Jewish form, kind of, but not of philanthropy? What's the difference?

‍

Jeff Swartz   

To me, it's as simple as this: philanthropy feels to me, with all its goodness, as a self-driven notion, and stock is commanded. And the fundamental difference is, you could imagine that it's yours, as a philanthropist, and you can't imagine it's yours in the context of sedaka. At least, that's how I frame it in my mind. I- we use language in our family of: this is lent to us and we owe on this, we owe return on this. It's not ours. And my grandfather used to say this, he said money - he used to say - he didn't have any money. He went bust twice. He was- my mother she was like a “shetachist” whose feet on the ground - never. There was no illusions for my grandfather - money is a tool 

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

Boots on the street.

‍

Boots on streets. He says use money as a tool for good. It's a piece of paper, or it can be novel, it's not yours. It's specie. How do you use it? So, very nice. And I learned that from him. So sedaka to me is a religious imperative. 

‍

Michael Eisenberg 

Is it a human imperative or religious imperative?

‍

Jeff Swartz 

Tough one. I looked at the Rambam, last week-

‍

Michael Eisenberg  

Nachmanides, a Jewish scholar from Spain.

‍

Jeff Swartz  

And he says that when the Jews have finished crossing the Sea of Reeds, they gotta move on. And they move on to a spot where they don't find what they need in terms of water. And Moses, his job is to make the water better, early desalination in the land of Israel. Cool. The desert. And so, there's an ambiguous phrase, hard to understand phrase, what went on there, and the Rambam - Nachmanides says that God told Moses to give people a moral and civic framework to operate in. And he makes the argument that even before sacred text is revealed, even before the Torah is revealed to the Jews, they're told that you need to operate with a moral compass. And on its face, that can be disconcerting. It was at first very disconcerting to me. And a friend made it simple for me. He said, your moral compass isn't a human invention. It's a - That is b'tselem Elokim, that's the godly spark that's given to you, that you have a moral compass. And so, if you get in your own way and you can distort it you can overwhelm its magnetic field. So I think sedaka is a religious, and a human, but I don't think those are separate points.

‍

Michael Eisenberg   

You also wrote in the article that sdaka comes from the word tzedek which means justice, and there's a commandment tzedek tzedek, terdof. Justice, justice, you shall run after, you should pursue. Right? And, is there a difference between philanthropy that is based on giving, almost voluntary giving and the need to pursue justice?

‍

Jeff Swartz  

Yeah, because- I'm over my paygrade, so you can laugh. But I think the fact that the verse says pursue justice has a built in - it has an amazing message because it doesn't say achieve justice. It's telling you, that's divine. Human is to pursue, it's not yours to give, it's not yours to solve, it's yours to pursue. There is an insistence in the framework of the pursuit of justice, that it's not a gentle humility, it's a fundamental humility, you don't have truth, you're the richest guy in town, you're the you have all these funds that you can just bestow out of your goodness, please do that. Better that you do that, than you don't do that. But that is very different than second yourself to a system of justice. Because the system of justice is not yours to control. A philanthropist can. That's the golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rules. And we see an organized Jewish life, we see an organized communal life all over the world, that moral authority correlates too often in social power, to who's rich and who's not rich. And that's just - that's intellectually, not a consistent point.

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Michael Eisenberg  

If you have $10 million to invest in sedaka, or in a for-profit enterprise, where market caps, close social gaps, where are you putting the money?

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Jeff Swartz 

It's a hard one. In our family, we talk about two imperatives. One is to serve and the other is to pursue solutions. Because my dad's a big believer in please don't talk to me about solutions. He's hungry, give him a sandwich. That is not a solution, but that is a human moral imperative. Feed him. And I say, okay, so we have to bifurcate or we have to allocate between serve and solve. My passion, without fail. In the narrow sense, I'm embarrassed by this, is to pursue solution. So I would vastly prefer, vastly prefer to invest in a for profit company, whose market cap will close the social gap. Why I’m embarrassed by that is because there is something magnificently humble, magnificently human, fundamental - I've seen you do it and I'm not trying to embarrass you, when you answer the door and you give the hungry person something-

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Michael Eisenberg  

Yeah but that- I’m asking you something - to allocate $10 million as an investor, s’daka guy, we'll call you a philanthropist because I know you hate that. 

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Jeff Swartz

Thank you. 

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Michael Eisenberg  

You can only allocate it to one spot, where are you allocating it?

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Jeff Swartz  

I want to invest in a CEO who is going to fix the food chain, and feed the hungry as a result and make it scalable. Fix the food chain, the most broken value chain on earth. 50% of all the food that's grown in the world is thrown away and people are hungry. You don't have enough money as a philanthropist or even as a ba’al sedaka. You can't feed the hungry by reallocating the crumbs at the edge of the society. You build me a 100 million-100 billion dollar market cap company that converts food waste into food to feed the hungry, hungry people will be fed. And you and I can go to the Riviera, which neither of us want to do.

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Michael Eisenberg 

Right, for anybody listening by the way, there's a $10 million check waiting for anyone who can solve the food chain problem and get all that food in a for-profit way back in hungry people's mouths - by the way we should point out that Roland Fryer our mutual friend has an investment in a company called Forage, which has kind of digitized the ability to accept food stamps. You know, digital - more than feeding the hungry even in that case, he’s attaching them to the digital economy, which is spectacular. So I want to move to a rapid fire question. But before I get there, it was the Notorious BIG once said: Tim's from my hooligans in Brooklyn. Is it a line from some rap song which I wouldn't know because I’m both tone deaf and don't listen to music. Especially not rap. So Tupac apparently wore Timberland. Do you have any idea how you got these guys to work? Timberlands?

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Jeff Swartz  

No

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Michael Eisenberg 

Come on, you must!

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Jeff Swartz 

Honest and truthfully, this was the original conversation in our space or in our industry called cross over. Now, that is post facto rationalization. What it really means is you did not understand nor show respect to consumers who weren't your target audience. So we weren't making - If you, he asked me, what are we doing? Who do we have as an avatar for Timberland? Like who are you building this product for? We did. Is it a 16 year old kid in New York City? I would have said no. And yet, if you had been maybe making fewer speeches, Jeff, and paying more attention to the marketplace, you would have, seen not a trend, you'd have seen a relative explosion of consumer demand that correlates rap music and rap music consumer with Timberland boots, and you know, shame on you, Mr. Brand Builder that you had no clue it was going on until long after it was going on. 

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Michael Eisenberg  

You had no idea how cool you are. 

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Jeff Swartz   

Which is - that's an argument that circles. I had no idea because I wasn't and I ain't and I never got to be cool. But, that was a colossal failure of arrogance on my part. I lost track. I didn't lose track. I didn't have my finger on the consumer the way I should have.

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Michael Eisenberg 

How does it feel when you see Timberland ads now? 

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Jeff Swartz 

It kills me to be honest.

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Michael Eisenberg  

Makes you nostalgic at all or no?

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Jeff Swartz 

No, it makes me - Today, there was an earthquake tumbler rumbler thing at one of these big buildings. And so everyone running. I wasn't smart enough. But I took the elevator down -it was it at Azrieli, and I came outside with my middle son who is a forester. And he-  it's a rainy day here in Tel Aviv, which is an unusual circumstance. And so there was a fair amount of Timberland on the street. And Sam said to me, what do you think? And I said, I'm trying not to see it? And he said no, but it's kind of cool. And I said, it's like Robert Frost Two Roads Diverged in a Wood and I can barely keep my feet on the path that I'm on. And when I look at that one, I have fear like, did I do the right thing? Did I? 

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Michael Eisenberg   

Do you have FOMO? 

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Jeff Swartz 

Is it fear of missing out? It's fear of - no I have different initials. It’s fear of not doing what you're supposed to do. What does that turn into, photo? 

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Michael Eisenberg  

Speaking of that, by the way, you're not on social media. Why not?

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Jeff Swartz  

I was on social media. Like when Twitter was invented, I had 10,000 followers from my Twitter account and that was like the bee's knees because they were all environmentalists that - and we wrote funny things. And I did a tweet from the Obama White House that almost got me thrown into a ditch.

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Michael Eisenberg   

You like to run into Secret Service people a hundred miles an hour. Nice job.

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Jeff Swartz   

I came out of the men's room in the Eisenhower office building. Okay, I have to tell the truth. Because you could find it, I suppose because nothing can be hidden. We're having this conversation. It was two nuclear power guys, Valerie Jarrett, me, and some reasonably lunatic guy from the very fringe left. And we're talking about the climate legislation that the Obama administration was going to pursue. And I was so frustrated, because we've seen the sausage being made. This is over my paygrade. So I took my suit and my Blackberry to the men's room, not in defiance, but in you know, the exigency was real. And I'm standing there and we were just having this big debate about admissions and so this was not Howard Schultz’s fifth floor. At Starbucks in the corporate headquarters we have those waterless urinals because Starbucks is worried about water. This is one where, okay, you hear this sound like a jet engine, and you think the Potomac just fell by four inches. And so I tweeted from the men's room of the Eisenhower Executive building, working on climate change in the Obama administration, and they think I just emptied out the Potomac. And so the poor woman who was the person - when I came out of that meeting. She's like, give me your device. Give me your device. And I said, what is - what am I supposed to do? She said, no, no, I've got a job, I’ve got children to feed, get going. So I did. I had a-

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Michael Eisenberg   

Donald Trump wasn't the first guy to have his phone taken away from the White House. That's hysterical. Oh, yeah. So why aren't you on social media? You’re so good at it!

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Jeff Swartz   

Oh, yeah. I hear I expressed my - one of my many weaknesses. I fear that - I believe in this notion of accountability. And I think that participating on social media platforms, when you can point to things like young teenage girls suicide rates changing because of technology. I have granddaughters, I don't know what to do about that. So I don't want to be one of the yellers because I don't know what to do about that. And I don't believe Meta cares that I don't have a Facebook account or an Instagram. I don't think they care. They're so big that my starfish, I'm not on Facebook doesn't change their stock price. And so I don't yell about it because I don't know what to do about it, but I can't at the same time-

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Michael Eisenberg   

You don't want to be a participant? You think it's not good. 

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Jeff Swartz  

I do think it's not good.

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Michael Eisenberg 

Okay. I hear that.

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Jeff Swartz  

I don't know if it's true. I just- 

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Michael Eisenberg   

I don't either. I think we'll only know in 100 years. 

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Jeff Swartz 

Yeah, that scares me too.

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Michael Eisenberg   

So having said that, my assumption is that the problem the world you most want to fix is actually hunger. Is that fair? Or is there something bigger? Like, what's the problem most want to fix? I shouldn't put words in your mouth. 

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Jeff Swartz   

That's a really hard question. 

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Michael Eisenberg   

I will change the incentive structure around it to go fix it.

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Jeff Swartz  

Yeah. I think I could be safe in that one. I don't know. 

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Michael Eisenberg    

Okay, so now stay out of your safe zone. 

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Jeff Swartz    

So yeah, that's, you're going to try and push me to be a better man than I am. I think maybe this will surprise nobody but me. I actually think that the thing that worries me the most is that people aren't equipped to make their difference. And I think that is, that people don't know how to learn anymore. I think that, and I can personalize that and say we live in an age where there's more information that's ever been Jewishly in the world. And there's never been more an illiterate Jewish generation than this one, but that sounds particularly standard, that may even sound like - 

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Michael Eisenberg   

You go to other universities people haven't read the classic texts and the kind of important foundations of democracy and capitalism.

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Jeff Swartz   

And they don't know how to learn. You know how to do this. And I still don't and some of it is language skill. But this this famous notion of an unseen, where you put a kid, a student, a young learner in front of a text, a Talmudic text, and that he's not seen before, and you open up to this page, and it's a subject matter that he's not versed in. And he knows or she knows how to look at the text and operate the tools that are on the page, they look like two dimensional squiggles if you don't know how to use them. But they know how, methodologically, to unpack an unknown. And we live in an age where the unknowns are spreading out faster than the knowns. Meaning, isn't it cool that we know how to do this? Yes, but we're about to go to Mars. And isn't it cool that we're - the Hubble telescope can show us things we haven't seen before? Yes, but what are you going to do with that? And why do we need to know how to cope with unknowns? Because the - back to this point about the delamination, the social delamination, we know how to pass a law from 100 years ago, but we don't know how to regulate technology. And I don't mean in a handcuff way. We can't have a conversation about it. And, because we don't know how to learn, I think we've lost - you said this before. We're losing the ability to have a conversation. And that to me is, it's ancient point. It's erchin. Right? A generation that can't give rebuke, a generation that can't take rebuke, okay, then, what is the generation - how is the generation gonna have a conversation, if we’ve lost the ability to learn, and we don't have the ability to create a language of learning, that is anti redemptive.

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Michael Eisenberg   

I love that by the way. I think one of the things about being a venture capitalist is exactly that, which is I'm forced to learn a new thing every couple of years, because the world of technology changes so quickly, I think one of the powers of technology is it forces everybody out of their comfort zone, some choose to kind of be pulled along. But if you can actually grasp it, or spend the time finding the language, developing the language. I found a saying that I have to learn the 10 most important words in each new area of technology, and then I can have a conversation with an expert who can kind of escalate my learning curve. Get me there faster. I think that's foundational. And I agree with you. This is a big worry. I think, perhaps part of the kind of arm wrestle politics we're in now is because people can't learn new things, to have new conversations on different fields to try to solve problems. I want to ask you a couple of hard questions, which is what we do at the end of this podcast, this is not kind of for the, you know, the frivolous? How do you want to be remembered at the end of your life after 120 as they say here?

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Jeff Swartz   

I think I want - I haven't thought about that. I would love for Debbie and our kids and their kids. However that spreads out in time, however much time God gives me to create relationships, but I would like them - I would like my kids - I would like my family to know that I love them. That's how I'd like to be remembered as the guy that loved them.

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Michael Eisenberg   

And by the world. You don't care.

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Jeff Swartz   

No. 

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Michael Eisenberg   

So in 100 years, somebody's going to write a biography of Jeff Swartz. What should the title be? What are you laughing about? I think this is actually gonna happen. It might happen before 100 years - 

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Jeff Swartz   

To write a biography. Too many words, lots of dreams, and a question mark, like, you know, and so? So what? I don't know, too many words, I talked too damn much. Lots of dreams. I do dream hard. And, you know, what's that amount to? Who knows? And in a narrow sense, who cares? The much larger point is like, and you taught me this, who do you love and who loves you back? That's the biggest force multiplier that could ever be. And if you believe in the redemptive possibility, my job is to fertilize the redemptive possibility.

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Michael Eisenberg   

So just to finish, the title of the podcast is called Invested. What are you most invested in? 

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Jeff Swartz   

The very few people that I love? 

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Michael Eisenberg  

That’s Great

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Jeff Swartz   

Including you. 

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Michael Eisenberg   

I bought it. 

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Jeff Swartz 

It's true. 

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Michael Eisenberg  

I bought it and I’m touched and I'm going to tear up

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Jeff Swartz   

Don't, I’m telling you the truth and you knew it.

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Michael Eisenberg   

Jeff, thanks for agreeing to do this. I know it's not easy for you to agree to come through this. I really appreciate your doing this for me. And to our listeners, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please rate us five stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And we need help with distribution of this podcast because Jeff is not on social media. So thanks for coming.

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