John wrote that nothing about my route required Hickory. I built it in anyway.

This time we had dinner among the vines at Rayson Vinyards, stopped at The Downbeat, and swung by Carolina Pedal Works. John also pointed out that we spent some of the time on our phones, perfectly comfortable in each other’s company. He called that “the tell, not the flaw.” I loved that he noticed.

My favorite friendships are like that. The special part isn’t always what we’re doing. Sometimes we’re having a great conversation. Sometimes we’re doing our own things in the same room. Either way, I’m happy just to be there with them.

I’m lucky to have a few friendships like that in my life, and they’re the ones that mean the most to me. John and Shannon are among those dear friends. We share a lot of history, including the work John and I did building a company together, but I keep coming through Hickory because I value the time we spend together now.

I talk a lot about Return on Relationship. In business, it’s easy to hear the word return and think of what a relationship might produce. But some of the most valuable returns have nothing to do with business. They’re the ease of an old friendship, the joy of another visit, and knowing you can just be yourself in someone’s company.

John, I meant what I said in my comment: I value our friendship more than you know. And Shannon, I’m grateful that your home has become part of my journey in both directions.

The most important RETURN ON RELATIONSHIP is FRIENDSHIP. Sometimes, the detour is the whole point. 🙏🏻💞🙏🏻

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He isn’t afraid to say what he believes, challenge powerful interests, or have difficult conversations. In a political environment where too many leaders seem to spend their time testing the winds before deciding where they stand, I find that authenticity refreshing. But conviction alone isn’t enough. Leadership eventually has to translate into action.

Mamdani campaigned largely around one very simple idea: New York City has become unaffordable for too many of the people who make it work. Housing, childcare, transportation, groceries and the basic costs of raising a family have increasingly pushed working people to the edge. You can debate his solutions. We should. But he has remained remarkably focused on the problem he promised to address.

And there are already tangible results. His administration has begun rolling out free childcare for two-year-olds, expanded 3-K, and eliminated out-of-pocket childcare costs for approximately 22,000 low-income families already receiving subsidized care. His administration financed more than 12,000 affordable homes during its first six months and has committed $22 billion in capital spending over five years toward affordable housing. Those are not slogans. They are actions. Whether they ultimately produce everything he hopes they will is something time will tell, and voters should hold him accountable for the results.

But there is another part of his leadership I admire, and perhaps this is where conviction becomes most meaningful. He has remained steadfast in speaking up for Palestinian human rights despite enormous political pressure to soften or abandon that position. You don’t have to agree with everything he has said about Israel and Palestine to recognize the political risk involved. He has chosen to continue saying what he believes rather than recalibrating simply because doing so might be politically easier. That matters to me.

So does the way he has responded to anti-Muslim racism and attacks directed at him. What strikes me isn’t simply that he endures them. It’s the attitude with which he does it. He remains remarkably positive, upbeat, engaged, and seemingly determined not to allow other people’s hatred to define how he shows up. Anger is easy to understand when someone is attacked for who they are. Bitterness would be understandable too. But refusing to allow that ugliness to steal your optimism is its own form of strength.

And perhaps that’s what I find most compelling about Mamdani. I don’t need my leaders to agree with me about everything. I don’t need them to be perfect. And I certainly don’t believe any elected official deserves blind loyalty. They should be questioned, challenged, scrutinized, and held accountable.

But I do want leaders who believe in something. I want leaders willing to tell us where they stand before checking whether that position is politically convenient. Leaders willing to challenge powerful interests. Leaders who can take criticism without allowing it to consume them. Leaders who can disagree without losing their humanity. And leaders who remain optimistic enough to believe government can actually improve people’s lives.

That kind of leadership has become increasingly rare. You can disagree with Zohran Mamdani’s politics and still recognize something worth paying attention to in the way he leads. I certainly do. Because ultimately, what I admire isn’t agreement. It’s conviction without bitterness, optimism without naïveté, and a willingness to stand for something even when standing there gets uncomfortable.

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We all appreciate the people who cheer us on… we need encouragement, we need people who celebrate our wins, remind us of our strengths, and stand beside us when things get difficult. But some of the most valuable people in our lives do something more… they don’t just cheer us on, they call us up. 

They care enough to tell us what we may not want to hear. They question the narrative we’ve constructed when it is protecting us more than serving us. They recognize when frustration is becoming an excuse, when confidence is slipping into complacency, or when doubt is making us smaller than we need to be. And because the relationship is built on trust, we listen differently when it comes from them.

That distinction matters. There is a difference between someone who makes us feel good about ourselves and someone who helps us see ourselves more clearly. The best relationships can do both.

I’ve spent a lot of years talking about Return on Relationship, and the older I get, the more convinced I am that some of its greatest returns are impossible to measure. They don’t show up in likes, clicks, followers, connections, referrals, or revenue… sometimes the return is a conversation that changes the way you see something, sometimes it’s someone asking the question you’ve been avoiding, sometimes it’s a friend reminding you of something about yourself that you temporarily forgot.

AND sometimes it is simply having someone in your life who knows you well enough to recognize when you are drifting from your own center… and cares enough to say so.

That requires something from both sides of the relationship. It takes courage to hold up the mirror, but it also takes humility to look into it. If we surround ourselves only with people who reinforce what we already believe, applaud every decision, and confirm every story we tell ourselves, we may have plenty of support… but very little growth.

The people who call us up aren’t trying to remake us in their image. They aren’t keeping score, demonstrating their wisdom, or waiting for the opportunity to say, “I told you so.” They see something in us worth protecting, sometimes even when we are having trouble seeing it ourselves.

Because the real return isn’t in likes, clicks, or connections… it’s in clarity, it’s in belief, it’s in the quiet confidence that comes when someone who truly knows you holds up a mirror and says, “You’ve still got this.”

Here’s to those people. And perhaps just as importantly… here’s to being that person for someone else.

RETURN ON RELATIONSHIP is the real ROI.

The post They Don’t Just Cheer You On… They Call You Up appeared first on Ted Rubin… Straight Talk.

Yes, antisemitism existed… I experienced the occasional slur or joke growing up, like many Jews of my generation did. There were moments when someone made it clear they didn’t like Jews. But it never made me feel unsafe. I’ve spent my life traveling extensively, meeting people from every culture and background imaginable. I’m not a “tough guy,” I’m simply someone who was raised to believe fear shouldn’t define how we live.

Which is why I struggle so much with what I’m seeing now.

It feels as though an entire generation of Jews, and to some degree the generation raising them, is being taught something very different. They are constantly being warned that the world is hostile to Jews, that disagreement is danger, that criticism is hatred, and that discomfort is antisemitism. I hear repeatedly how unsafe Jews are, especially Jewish students on college campuses, and while there have absolutely been real incidents of antisemitism that deserve condemnation, I question how much of the broader feeling of being unsafe comes from actual danger and how much comes from being told, over and over again, that we are unsafe… especially our college students. Being uncomfortable is not the same as being unsafe, being challenged is not the same as being threatened, and hearing ideas you strongly disagree with is not necessarily hatred.

And when everything is called antisemitism, nothing is antisemitism.

That does not mean antisemitism isn’t real, of course it is. It has existed for centuries, it exists today, and when it appears we should confront it directly and without hesitation. But expanding the definition to include every uncomfortable interaction, political disagreement, campus protest, or criticism of Israel doesn’t protect Jews… it weakens the meaning of the word, makes it harder to distinguish genuine hatred from legitimate criticism, and ultimately makes us less safe. AND when every one of these supposed transgressions is counted in the statistics used to demonstrate the explosive growth of antisemitism, regardless of context or severity, I believe that too becomes sadly self-defeating.

There is another part of this conversation that I believe we need to be willing to confront, and I know it makes some people uncomfortable. Israel has spent decades presenting itself not simply as a homeland for Jews, but as the ultimate guarantor of Jewish safety everywhere. Embedded in that idea is an increasingly powerful message… Jews will never truly be safe without a strong, heavily militarized Israel capable of protecting us.

That can very easily lead to another conclusion… if Israel is what keeps Jews safe, then attacking Israel politically becomes an attack on Jewish safety. Criticizing Israeli policy becomes hostility toward Jews… questioning the actions of the Israeli government becomes a threat to Jewish survival. AND, god-forbid, questioning the billions of dollars a year in U.S. military support, even when those weapons are being used not simply to defend Israel but to inflict enormous harm on others, becomes almost sacrilege. And eventually, supporting Israel becomes less a political choice than a test of Jewish loyalty.

I REJECT THAT WHOLEHEARTEDLY.

Being Jewish has never meant blind loyalty to any government, including the government of Israel. And criticizing a government is not the same thing as being hostile to its people. I can believe Israelis deserve safety and security while also believing Palestinians deserve freedom, dignity, rights, security, and a viable political future. Those ideas are not mutually exclusive unless we decide to make them so… OR we blindly accept a narrative that treats Palestinians collectively as an enemy rather than millions of individual human beings with the same right to dignity and security that we claim for ourselves.

This is also why I am troubled by the familiar argument that Palestinians have repeatedly proven they don’t want peace because they have rejected every two-state solution offered to them. There is truth buried inside that history, Palestinian leaders have rejected proposals and unquestionably made consequential mistakes. But simply listing rejected offers while ignoring what those offers actually contained tells only half the story.

An offer is not inherently fair simply because someone calls it an offer.

From the Palestinian perspective, many proposed solutions involved fragmented territory, continued Israeli control over critical elements of sovereignty and security, settlement blocs remaining in place, and unresolved fundamental questions involving Jerusalem, refugees, borders, and freedom of movement. We can debate whether Palestinian leaders should nevertheless have accepted particular proposals or negotiated differently. But saying, “We offered them a state and they said no, therefore they never wanted peace,” strips away nearly everything that made those negotiations difficult in the first place.

Every negotiation looks different depending on which side of the table you’re sitting on.

And when someone asks me, “Fine, then what is your plan?” my answer is that I don’t need to possess a detailed blueprint for resolving one of the world’s most complicated conflicts to recognize that the current situation is morally and politically unsustainable. Millions of Palestinians cannot indefinitely live without meaningful political rights and self-determination while settlements continue expanding and then be told that questioning that reality represents a threat to Jews.

Israelis deserve security. Palestinians deserve dignity, rights, and a future. Both truths have to matter.

Fear makes acknowledging both truths more difficult. Fear has always been politically useful because frightened communities are much more willing to grant power to those who promise to protect them. When people become convinced that their survival depends upon a particular government, military, leader, or political ideology, questioning that source of protection can begin to feel dangerous in itself.

That is exactly why I worry about raising generations of Jews to believe they are perpetually surrounded by enemies. Jewish history certainly gives us reason to remain vigilant… but vigilance and fear are not the same thing. Remembering the Holocaust should teach us to recognize genuine hatred and confront it… it should not require us to interpret every criticism or disagreement as another step toward 1930s Germany.

And there is an irony here that I think too often gets overlooked. While enormous attention is directed toward Palestinian protesters, critics of Israel, and college campuses, some of the most dangerous antisemitism historically, and still today, comes from white nationalist movements rooted in Europe and the United States. Those are the ideological traditions that produced the Holocaust, and they have not disappeared. We are even seeing elements of that rhetoric re-emerge in American politics, including from people and movements welcomed into the political mainstream.

Supporting Israel does not automatically make someone an ally of Jews. A person can strongly support the Israeli state for political, religious, strategic, or ideological reasons and still hold deeply antisemitic beliefs about Jewish people. Conflating support for Israel with opposition to antisemitism only makes that contradiction easier to ignore.

There is another uncomfortable reality. When the Israeli government commits acts that much of the world sees as oppressive, destructive, or morally indefensible, those actions can become ammunition for people who already hate Jews. That never excuses antisemitism… antisemitism is the responsibility of antisemites, full stop. But when Israel repeatedly presents itself as acting on behalf of Jews everywhere, when a large and very vocal part of the Jewish community supports that premise, or at least doesn’t challenge it, and when Jews are simultaneously told that defending Israel is part of defending Judaism, we should not be surprised when others begin making the same dangerous conflation.

That makes separating Judaism from the actions of the Israeli government even more important, not less.

And this brings me back to where I started…

The Judaism I grew up with was rooted in pride, resilience, curiosity, relationships, and engagement with the broader world. We were taught to stand up for ourselves, yes, but also to stand alongside others. We were taught to participate in society, not retreat from it. We knew antisemitism existed, but we weren’t taught to search for it around every corner. Our history contains more than enough real fear. I don’t believe we need to manufacture more of it.

I want us to recognize antisemitism when it is actually there, call it what it is, and confront it forcefully. But I also want us to have enough confidence in ourselves to distinguish hatred from criticism, danger from discomfort, and Judaism from the policies of a government. Because if everything becomes antisemitism, eventually the word stops telling us where the real danger is.

Fear was never the Jewish identity I was taught… pride was. Pride in who we are, pride in our resilience, and pride in our ability to engage openly with a world that will sometimes challenge us, sometimes disappoint us, and yes, occasionally hate us. I refuse to let that possibility make me afraid of everyone else.

The post When Everything Is Antisemitism, Nothing Is Antisemitism appeared first on Ted Rubin… Straight Talk.

Doug Zarkin recently posed a great question on LinkedIn… “What’s the best job that isn’t on your résumé?”

My answer isn’t one job… it’s most of what I did before my post-college career even began. Looking back, those jobs probably taught me more about work ethic, ingenuity, selling, relationships, and the need to always be learning than I realized at the time.

It started with my newspaper route, back when delivering the paper meant much more than tossing it onto someone’s driveway. Every week, I had to knock on doors and collect payment from my customers. I kept the portion that represented my tips and turned the rest over to the district manager. Without knowing it, I was learning about responsibility, customer service, consistency, and the connection between how you treat people and whether they want to reward you for the effort.

Then came shoveling snow. There was no app connecting me with customers and no neighborhood group where I could advertise my availability… I went door-to-door, found my own customers, negotiated what I would be paid, and did the work. If I wanted to make money, I had to recognize an opportunity, put myself out there, hear “no” without being discouraged, and keep moving until someone said “yes.”

My first official “real” job was working in a clothing store… dealing with people one-on-one, their likes and dislikes, and representing the store on a manor that suited the owner. Later, I bartended, which may be one of the best crash courses in human behavior and relationship-building anyone can receive. You learn to listen, remember people, read the room, manage competing demands, and understand that the experience you create matters just as much as the product you serve.

From junior high through college, I also bought and sold various products person-to-person. I learned that selling wasn’t about pushing something on someone… it was about understanding what people wanted, communicating value, earning trust, and recognizing that every transaction carried the possibility of a future relationship.

And then there was painting houses.. I started by myself, eventually took on a partner, and later had employees working for me. What began as a way to earn money became an education in estimating, pricing, managing expenses, finding customers, meeting expectations, supervising others, and most importantly… being accountable when something didn’t go as planned. Long before I had a business title, I was learning what it meant to run a business.

None of those jobs made my professional resume. There was never a section describing the papers I delivered before school, the sidewalks I shoveled after a snowstorm, the drinks I served behind a bar, the products I sold face-to-face, or the houses my crews and I painted. But the lessons traveled with me.

Those jobs taught me that opportunity doesn’t always arrive with an invitation… sometimes you have to knock on the door. They taught me that relationships matter, trust is earned one interaction at a time, and how you make people feel often determines whether they choose to do business with you again. They taught me that selling is something we all do, whether we’re selling a product, an idea, our capabilities, or simply the belief that we will do what we said we would do.

Most importantly, they taught me to keep learning… every unfamiliar job required me to observe, adapt, ask questions, make mistakes, and figure things out. Ingenuity wasn’t something discussed in a meeting or included in a job description… it was what you relied on when there was work to be done and no one standing nearby to tell you exactly how to do it.

We tend to think a resume tells the story of how someone became qualified. But a resume captures only the most visible part of that story… it lists the positions, companies, accomplishments, and titles that came later, while leaving out many of the experiences that shaped the character, resourcefulness, and resilience behind them.

Perhaps that’s the real value of those early jobs. Long before we’re building a career, we’re building ourselves… and sometimes the work that never makes the resume is the work that prepared us most for everything that did.

The post The Jobs That Never Made My Resume appeared first on Ted Rubin… Straight Talk.

This quote has been sitting with me because it names something many of us feel but rarely stop to examine. Tribalism doesn’t just divide us into camps… it quietly erodes our willingness to wonder. It replaces questions with conclusions and curiosity with certainty. Over time, that changes how we see one another… not as people with stories, but as symbols of positions we’ve already judged.

When curiosity disappears, relationships begin to break down (I have sadly experienced this recently with some dear friends)… tribalism trains us to reduce human beings to labels, opinions, and affiliations. Once we do that, curiosity can feel unnecessary, even threatening. Why ask questions when we’re convinced we already know the answer? Why listen when our side feels morally or intellectually certain?

Yet the moment we stop asking why, how, and tell me more, we stop creating space for understanding.

Certainty can feel powerful, it offers clarity and comfort in a complicated world… but certainty without curiosity can quickly become a trap. Curiosity requires humility, it asks us to consider that we might not have the full picture, it invites discomfort and even the possibility that we could be changed by what we learn.

CURIOSITY KEEPS CONVICTION FROM BECOMING A CAGE.     

Being curious doesn’t mean abandoning our values, excusing harm, or pretending every position deserves equal weight. We can hold strong convictions while still wanting to understand what experiences shaped someone, where their fear or pain comes from, and how they arrived where they are… understanding someone is not the same as agreeing with them.

What struck me most in Rabbi Brous’ words is her warning about the narrowing of the heart. A narrowed heart struggles to hold empathy and conviction at the same time. It listens to respond rather than understand, and leaves little room for nuance, complexity, or grace. When enough hearts narrow… families strain, friendships fracture, workplaces polarize, and communities lose their ability to care for one another across differences.

I’ve long believed that the strongest returns in life come from relationships. Curiosity is one of the most important investments we can make in them. Relationships don’t require agreement, but they do require a willingness to see the full human being behind the opinion. Maybe the next time certainty tightens its grip, especially with a friend, colleague or neighbor, instead of making another statement, we ask a question…

Help me understand.

We may walk away believing exactly what we believed before, but perhaps we’ll understand another human being a little better. And perhaps that is how we keep our convictions strong… without allowing them to become cages.

The post Tribalism and Curiosity… What We Lose When We Stop Asking appeared first on Ted Rubin… Straight Talk.