Mind Your Business

Mind Y ur Business

Country Yossi: “Create Yourself”

By Yitzchok Saftlas

This 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.

On a recent 710 WOR “Mind Your Business” Broadcast, Yitzchok Saftlas spoke with noted musician, author, and entertainer Country Yossi.

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 Nachum 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 country 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

point, not to rush into things. You have to let things chill. Any business decision, think it over overnight, discuss it with people, don’t rush.

What are some questions that you get asked all the time throughout the years?

Well, people want to know where the name Country Yossi come from. What does it mean? “Why did you call yourself Country Yossi?” And the truth is, it’s because I’m up in the country, and we did a radio show up there for many, many years. Besides the country parodies which I used.

Could you give a tip that will give encouragement to people out there who have talent and want to express it?

You have to create yourself. Don’t let anybody try to mold you into something that they want you to be. You have to be what you are intended to be, what Hashem wanted you to be. And of course, that’s to fulfill your entire potential as you grow up. But you have to have “shtultz,” and a strong backbone. Keep trying for it. Don’t give up. No matter how many failures. You’re not a failure till you don’t get up. You can get knocked down many times in a fight. But if you get up, you’re still in the fight, still in the battle. You’ve got to keep trying.

I was trying to sell radio in the beginning. That didn’t work, so I switched to a magazine. You’ve got to be flexible. You’ve got to maneuver around. Then the radio picked up, because the magazines started getting popular. So, one thing feeds off the other. You have to be willing to try new things and not to be afraid.

What are some other tips you would recommend to someone that has talent? How not to give up, to express it? To “grab that guitar.”

People pick up the guitar and try to learn guitar. Then it hurts their fingers, so they give up. You have to get past that initial discomfort in a new endeavor. Eventually you’re going to get calluses on your fingers, and you won’t feel anything. Everybody who plays guitar has calluses on their fingertips, and that’s how you learn how to play guitar. So, yes, it’s going to hurt in the beginning, but don’t give up. That’s the key. Learning how to play guitar is a life-changer. You have that talent, suddenly you’re the center of attention. You’re the life of the party. All you have to learn is three chords because you could play a hundred Carlebach songs with three chords. And everybody has different talents. Not everything is musical talent. Not everything is radio talCountry, it’s been now roughly a year, close to a year, since the pandemic began. For some, it was devastating. For others, they had time to think and reflect. Do you have some reflection on the past year?

Well, with all the time now available with people locked up in their homes, I suggest people pick up a creative endeavor. Now’s a good time to learn how to play piano. A good time to learn how to play guitar. I’ve been spending time listening to a lot of shiurim on Torah Anytime. I’m listening to Rav

“Don’t let anybody try to mold you into something that they want you to be.”

ent. Everybody has their own talent that they have to nurture, figure out what it is, and use it to improve themselves.

You were producing some amazing Country Yossi albums. I’m sure they sold tens of thousands, and then you expanded the horizon to include children’s albums. Can you talk about that moment when you decided to expand into that?

We had the Country Yossi albums, which were big successes. And then one night I said, “Why don’t we make a CD with songs for kids?” And I bounced it off Heshy and he said, “That’s a great idea. Let’s do it.” So, I sat down with a legal pad and I started writing Kivi and Tuki songs and the dialogue started developing. And once you get the characters going, then it just writes itself, just, where should I take it? But the hard part is getting over that initial hump. Who are these characters? We introduce Kaili, the little girl into it. So, you keep adding things. We’re working on another Kivi and Tuki album now. Moshe Meir Weiss. I have time for writing the new Kivi and Tuki album and spending a lot of time trying to improve my musical abilities. I told you I’m not a professional musician, but I’m working on it. There’s a lot of chords out there I still can’t play. But now that we’re locked up in the house like many other people, you can’t get away. I usually have parties to go to and all kinds of simchas, baruch Hashem. But now that they’re minimizing participation in those things, it’s a good time to work on yourself.

Were you ever surprised on the type of feedback and reach that you’ve had?

We were on the air on Tuesday nights many, many years ago. I was taking phone calls and we were blowing the phone lines. We got a call from the phone company – really, it was in The New York Post the next day – we got a call from the phone company that I have to limit the calls to a certain geographic area because they were overloading the lines and people were losing telephone service. So, I started taking phone calls from men only for one hour, then women only for the other hour, then children only for the third hour. And in that way, we were able to keep the service going on Staten Island and the surrounding environs.

We have this new feature where each guest shares a great tip that has to do with their initials. Now, in your case, “C.Y.” stands for Country Yossi. I’ll leave it to your creativity.

Well, like I said before, C.Y. was “create yourself.” You got to look deep inside yourself. Be true to yourself. Like Reb Shlomo said, “To thine own self be true.” Find out what your strengths are and pursue your goal without hesitation. Don’t get weak. Just keep going for it because every Yid is imbued by Hakodosh Baruch Hu with a certain talent. You have to find out what it is and when you find it out, exploit it and use it. And use it for what? Not just to make money and not just to become famous. It’s going to be the little kinderlach, not the rich man, the famous man, the wealthy man. Kinderlach are going to bring Moshiach with learning Torah. A lot of the songs I write are funny, but my favorite songs are the ones that I call the mussar songs. “Tick Tock.” “It’s Only Make Believe.” Songs about the essence of Yiddishkeit, what it means to be a Yid and to be a successful Yid at that. By success, I don’t mean monetarily or financially, I mean being all you can be, “ruchniysdik.”