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JULY 8, 2021 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 29, 2015 2015 || The The Jewish Jewish Home Home OCTOBER
Mind Y
ur Business
Country Yossi: “Create Yourself” By Yitzchok Saftlas
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his column features business insights from a recent “Mind Your Business with Yitzchok Saftlas” radio show. The weekly “Mind Your Business” show – broadcasting since 2015 – features interviews with Fortune 500 executives, business leaders and marketing gurus. Prominent guests include: John Sculley, former CEO of Apple and Pepsi; Dick Schulze, founder and Chairman Emeritus of Best Buy; Beth Comstock, former
Vice Chair of GE; among over 400+ senior-level executives and business celebrities. Yitzchok Saftlas, President of Bottom Line Marketing Group, hosts the weekly “Mind Your Business” show, which airs at 10pm every Sunday night on 710 WOR and throughout America on the iHeartRadio Network.
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n a recent 710 WOR “Mind Your Business” Broadcast, Yitzchok Saftlas spoke with noted musician, author, and entertainer Country Yossi. *
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Your stature begs the question, was there a moment in your childhood where you imagined what you would accomplish? The truth is, I never anticipated I’d have a career in radio and magazine publishing. By education, I’m a guidance counselor. I majored in psychology. When I graduated, there were no jobs in guidance counseling. There was a glut of guidance counselors at the time. I ended up being a diamond dealer on 47th Street for many, many years. And then I met Larry Gordon, currently the publisher of The Five Town Jewish Times. During this time, he was doing the morning show for many years on Upsala College, right before Na-
chum Segal. But he ended up interviewing me because we put out our Country Yossi album at that time. We did the interview and I said, “This is a nice way to make a living.” He said, “Would you want to sit in for me sometime?” I said, “Yeah, next time you want to take off, give me a call.” A few weeks later, he gave me a call. I sat in, and I did the show. We did it out of Smyrna Avenue in Staten Island at that time. And it was fun, but I was very subdued. “Hi, thank you for calling.” It wasn’t the persona I developed once I got more experience. “It’s gevaldig! Unbelievable! Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! You got it right! You win a prize! Junk from my trunk!” So that started my radio career. Then I started the magazine career because people said, “I don’t want to advertise on the radio. It’s not our thing.” A lot of chassidish people didn’t even listen to radio. I started the magazine, and baruch Hashem, that took off. Did that for 32 years. And one thing led to the other. I used to write parodies of coun-
try music. Johnny Cash was popular at that time. “Because I’m a Jew, I do that too.” So, I started writing that kind of stuff, but I didn’t do anything with it. I just had it in the drawer, and I saved them up. Over the years, I saved up a lot of songs. It was a fortuitous meeting with Heshy Walfish that was a turning point. He had an orchestra, the Messengers Orchestra, and I got friendly with him. He said, “Do you have any songs that you’ve written? Let’s hear them.” So, I got all my songs, I started playing them for him. He said, “This is great. We should make a record!” OK, what should we call it? We’ll call it Country Yossi and the Shteeble-Hoppers. We came up with the word Shteeble-Hoppers, and we put out that first album and it took off. It was amazing and popular among the heimishe oilam because they never heard the originals of all those songs. Matter of fact, years later, people would stop me in the street and say, “You know, Kenny Rogers stole your song. Johnny Cash
is recording your song. Do you know that?” I had to explain that it’s the other way around, “vinehapoch hu.” So that’s when the career started. I ended up leaving the diamond business because the radio show and the magazine took off. If a great idea comes to mind – a song, a concept, anything – what’s your recommendation to put the “genie in the bottle,” to capture it? Immediately, grab your cellphone and sing it into your voice memo. I’ve written songs right on the road; I’m in the car with no tape recorder. You’ve got to record it. What’s very important to realize is that not every song you write is great. Some people think that if they write a song, you have to record it. It’s going to be a hit, right? A lot of times I compose a song, spend hours working on it, only to listen to it the next day and say, “Not that great. Well, I wasted my time.” I think that’s a very important
