With today being
the first day of 2020, I am reflecting back on the year that just completed
last night. Although 2019 was my first full calendrical year residing in Cincinnati, the theme that seems to run through my experience was a year of
unexpected changes.
Disappearing
Job
While I came
into 2019 working for an experimental Jewish non-profit start-up, only a month
and a half into 2019, my job went away, which was really tough for both my
family and me. It came out of the blue and was really challenging to deal with
that financial situation.
Getting into
Real Estate
However, a week
or two before I discovered that my job had been erased, I had already begun
studying for my real estate license, since I believed that it would help me in
that job. Now that the job was non-existent, I figured I should continue
pursuing real estate, since it was something I had begun pursuing, so I
finished my coursework, took the
licensing exam, passed,
and received
my Ohio real estate license!
It should be
noted that, before starting that job, real estate was never an interest
of mine. Moreover, whenever anyone mentioned real estate, my eyes would glaze
over out of disinterest over buildings: how is it intellectually interesting to
discuss bricks and mortar?
Boosting Beer
Blogging
In
the middle of Passover, I thought to myself, having cleared out all of my beers
prior to Passover, “I don’t need to spend money on beer; I can simply get it
for free by blogging.” While I had begun writing for BierBuzz more than two years prior, the
beers I received were ones I had accepted to receive from PR/marketing folks
reaching out. I realized that, instead of being reactive, I could be proactive
and begin reaching out for beer.
And
beer I received, with beer coming in, and then even more beer arriving. A funny
thing happened: I had to strive to keep up with my beer writing with what was
coming in. I began to publish a post a day, Monday through Friday, and
sometimes struggling to even keep up with all the beer arriving. It’s been very
interesting these last 7+ months with reaching out to PR/marketing folks and
been surprisingly going well, as breweries are happy to send out beer for
marketing purposes.
Publishing
BBYO Book
A
couple of ideas had permeated my thinking, including not
succumbing to “analysis paralysis”, which led me to not be afraid to pull
the trigger on publishing
a book of essays on BBYO history. I had actually spent a bunch of time in
the summer of 2013 (prior to the birth of
my third child) working on them and getting them ready for publication,
but, for whichever reasons, I never published it at the time. This summer
caused me to realize it’s now or never with the project. Moreover, it came at
the 95th year of BBYO, so it should hopefully be helpful for those
researching BBYO leading up to its 100th year.
Starting
up JewishDrinking
Upon
the return to school in the fall for my children, I was able to devote myself
to real estate again and, through it, was exposed to the thinking/speaking of
Gary Vaynerchuk and was inspired
by him in many, many ways, including developing a niche and becoming an
expert in a particular area.
While
I had been thinking
in November 2018 about doing new stuff with my rabbinic website, in January
2019, I decided
to go ahead and created Textual
Insights, where I posted writings on rabbinic literature, Biblical
literature, and post-Talmudic halakhic literature. However, I realized I was mainly
posting about a few topics, most of which were drinking-related. When I heard
the Gary Vaynerchuk material, I knew I had to focus and create a
separate website for Jewish texts related to drinking.
So,
in September, I did it: I created JewishDrinking.com,
intending it as the #1 English-speaking resource for Jewish drinking texts,
wisdom, history, and more. However, after starting it, where I thought it would
mostly be blog posts I would write up, along with source sheets, I quickly
realized I would also need to do podcast and video content (even though the
idea of podcasting did pop up for me earlier in the year).
Then
another unexpected turn occurred: in an early discussion about target
demographics, someone had mentioned targeting kiddush clubs. When I mentioned
this demographic a few weeks later to someone else, they suggested creating a
parashah sheet for kiddush clubs. So…that’s what I did: do something I had never
imagined doing, creating parashah sheets.
I
am excited to see how this new venture continues to develop!
Growing in Real
Estate Career
A real estate intensive
seminar in which I took part in the fall, Keller Williams’ BOLD, was helpful
for me in my real estate career for numerous aspects, but the most fascinating
thing occurred: I got more comfortable with reaching out to people. I became
less scared/afraid of what would people say when I reached out to them, no
matter how long it had been since last being in-touch with them. One instance
was crossing paths with a local property manager who needed help with buying
and selling multi-unit properties for out-of-state investors, which yielded me
my first closings, which was great. I also realized that I have contacts out of
state who are curious/considering investing in Cincinnati! I hope to continue
reaching out to people whom I could help with real estate.
Looking Forward
With an
unexpected set of developments and changes in my life in 2019, I am very curious
as to what will happen in 2020 – I could never have guessed what would have
happened in 2019, and am excited about how 2020 will turn out.
