Nir Zavaro 5:58
Yeah, I’ve had a very interesting journey. I think when I started them, when I was in the fourth grade, my teacher said them is nice, he talks too much. But the show can tell a good story. And my dad always said, I hope you manage to make money out of this. By speak. And I would sit for years and coffee shops, and I love telling stories. And I was a party promoter when I was 13, 14 15. And this was why I liked telling stories. And I loved meeting people. I love hearing their stories and you go to the army, you go traveling, you meet more people from around the world. And I fell in love with this idea. And I think almost everything I’ve done, including meeting people and telling good stories. And I don’t know if you know this. When I came back to Israel, I went to study communications and marketing. I sold snowboards in the desert. And sales is all about the story we can and selling a snowboard it has nothing to do with the actual act of snowboarding. When a shop in Tel Aviv, it’s 40 degrees, everybody’s wearing the flip flops. But it was a story about how it would feel on the mound, sailing that feeling. And then from there, I went to do a lot of different things. And we open the website for extreme sports. And I will write about sports cards and Formula One on the news because always about the story. And then I’ve done quite a lot of things all had some sort of storytelling type of marketing and branding to them. In 2010, I did the mistake I always tell people not to do. So there’s two things you need to avoid in life, you have a happy life. Or too important. Never write a book and never open a bar. So this is my third book, I’m starting to work on my fourth next month. And I’ve had no five or six bars. I’ve been a partner in. When we opened the bar, it was amazing. We had celebrities coming in, everything was amazing. And then suddenly, there was no. And by the time we finished that bar, I lost everything I had, I had to leave my job. And I would sneak up on friends couches. But if he asked me how I was, I would say I’m completely broken. What an amazing time it is. Because when I was in the army, I read this novel. And I said one day when I’ll have nothing to do, sit and write the book. So penniless, no place, no obligations. I said, Yeah, why not stopped writing a book about the nightlife of Tel Aviv, the city, and the clubs and the people and the stories I’ve collected over the years. And the same time I said, I think I need to also think about work. And I said, let’s figure out what’s the best thing for me. And I made the list. And the list said no. Inventory, no rent, no employees. And you can do it from any place on the planet. Guess what this is consulting. And I started to help businesses tell a better story and to market in food and beverage retail where I was very good at. And slowly, year after year, I learned that the problem was not necessarily only the story, but the story didn’t match the product. So you can tell them that you have the best restaurant. The food sucks. Yes, love. It doesn’t work. At the end you will lose. So I started to fix I did about 70 businesses and food and beverage and retail a few years I started to hire an employee. And I think I had the domain streetwise since 2006. I used it for different things. Every time we had a side hustle project and use frequency oil. And then I said Okay, so I have that domain. It’s been there for years probably got a good ranking and use that. And then a good friend of mine invited me to open a club. And I said never again I’m not gonna do it. And he said, it’s gonna be the most successful club in Tel Aviv. I said, I trust you, me, I’m out. And they opened the most successful club most. And every time I would go there, I’m bringing my friends and you’d say, why did you join? I said, I have no form, I’m happy, I have a different journey that I need to go on. And a year passes he invites me to lunch was sitting in a very famous meat restaurant, and he said, How’d you like this place and said, I love to see, this is a place of open a bar. And he said, Welcome, Mazel Tov, we’re going to open a bar here, we just took the place. So, and we opened in January of 2013, a place called Taylor me, it was unbelievable, 700 people, every night, celebrities, people from all over the world, I met actors and actresses from the US. And it was amazing. And it was a reminder that can be done different. I had to fail, epic fail in a bar. Now we can do it differently. And at the same time, I even use the money instead of paying debt and use the money to build a hostess platform for restaurants. And I built I ended up selling that, but I never got the debt covered. I always had a different way. And straightway started to grow. And I launched my second book, which was, again, a novel. And I started to work with startups. And I noticed that it was very interesting, because most of them, do the same process have the same outcome. And guess what, most of them are very boring, not inspiring, not interesting. But if they will explain what they actually do you love it. From a marketing standpoint, and a storytelling standpoint, it didn’t fit. So I started to focus on working with startups on fixing matters, their marketing. But what do they actually how they do it? And how could they convey a good message, and it didn’t take long, we started to see some results. And I realized that I am doing the same process. In my mind, I’m running the same process. And I thought, as someone who teaches at college and universities, by then I was teaching for a few years already about marketing and branding in the universities. And I said, What if I could turn this into a method because I can’t meet all these companies, they don’t have enough time. So maybe I could turn a methodology to a book. And that took me on a journey, November 2021, I left everything flew to London for a month, I would run on the River Thames, and write and walk the streets and take notes and ideas, and started to work on a methodology that is today. BF*ck the slides. And it is the understanding that we use this buzzword storytelling. But it doesn’t mean anything we don’t understand how to actually do something. So this is how the book came to life.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 13:06
What were some of the mistakes you’ve seen people make? And I saw that? And also your TechStars mentor? What are some of the mistakes and we’re looking if you’re if you’re listening the audio only, you can see we are on Nir’s blog here, and he’s got a bunch of great information as you can check it out. Why is my pitch failing? It’s the slides. Shorter is better. What are you see some of the most common mistakes when people are telling their story?
Nir Zavaro 13:37
So let’s start with the idea. Are you actually a storyteller? Everything we do in life, the way we communicate? Is we convey a story. What happened was people say, Ah, I’m not a good storyteller. Now I have a business idea. What are we to say I want to improve something, I want to convince my spouse to take a vacation out, we tell the story. The problem is we believe that we are not good at it. So you might not be the best storyteller. But guess what, I run five times a week and yet I will not win any method or any competition. But from the point where I started to train the now the improvement was exponential. People today go into a meeting and have their prep for an hour to hour they have 10 slides and guess what that will be amazing. It doesn’t work like we need to understand that soft skill. Storytelling is not a soft skill, it is a must skill. It is the thing you need to practice the most. And you need to understand that you will be improving exponentially if you decide to do it. And in the book, I explain a few techniques that you can do once a day or once a week and how to do it. The second thing we need to understand is we are treating our audience the wrong way. If I want you to sell me something, I don’t need you to give me all the information. I don’t need a 20 minute pitch. Now when we You meet startups and you say the demo day is three minutes. And they complain three minutes is not enough. I can’t do anything. I’ll say, okay, great. Can you write a 500 word article? And an article? Is a full page. It’s a lot. 500 points. And they say yes. 500 words is enough. Guess what? The almost the same. When we speak on this beat, I’m sticking it’s about 130 140 150 words a minute. So there’s enough time, great. What happens is the three minutes I don’t need to sell, I only need to open the door. I only have to be interesting enough. And you know what? That works really well. In movies. You go to a movie, what do you see a trailer which trailer. And at the end of the trailer and say, I love this genre. And I love that actor and actress. And it seems interesting, the video looks, you know what I might go, I didn’t buy them purchase. I didn’t commit, I didn’t do anything. In fact, I said is I’m interested, I want to know more. What I’m teaching us how to create the trailer pitch, three minutes. Now, the three minutes of based on the way that you and I communicate, which is the emotions, the experience, the ability to fill the gaps when what I’m not saying, and I’ll explain that in a second. And only Lastly, we will we discuss the actual data, the actual information. And the reason is we communicate your emotions, which are universal. People around the world, on this planet are all the same. This is how we communicate the ability to complete through the experiences and the gaps. That means that I can tell you what’s your favorite restaurant, you can explain. So if I tell you, I went to my favorite restaurant, you know how your favorite restaurant looks like. So you’re there. And Filling in the gap means I don’t need to tell you everything, you’re smart enough, you’ve had enough life experience to be able to fill the gap. Now, what’s interesting is everything. If everything I’m saying now fits, and you need that, you will sell it to yourself. You will use everything I said and use the last piece the information to say Hmm, it makes sense and $5,000 for this tab, it’s very good value. So it is very important that we understand that we are good storytellers, we also need to understand how to interact in the book, then I will explain how to create how to measure the story. Because this is the most important KPI so storytelling. If we cannot measure if the story is good, how can we keep improving, and that has three different things. And then we need to understand this is an ongoing work. The more I pitch, the more I practice, I’ll get better.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 18:03
You’re mentioning some techniques to practice. What was one of those as an example?
Nir Zavaro 18:08
So I think one of them, the one I like most is what we call intuitive, right? If you’ve ever practiced that, but intuitive writing is what I teach in every workshop we do, for example. So pick a paint pen and paper, it’s very important not to do it on a laptop or desktop. Because the keyboard creates or uses a different type of praise. And take a pen and a paper and you think about some anything, and you time yourself for three minutes. And you write now while writing. Forget about everything. punctuations that irrelevant mistakes, random is doesn’t matter. No delete, no, nothing keep going. I might start by saying I don’t know what to write about today. Or I might focus on a problem with act. So now I need to do the marketing plan for the book launch. And I’ll say, okay, the marketing plan should start with this and keep going for three minutes. The beginning is hard because we’re not used to writing it. And that’s why we ask people to do it on for three minutes. But if you do it for five, and at the end, you read everything. You’ll be amazed how many things would pop out. And this is by the way, when we are stuck at 9pm We ordered food and we’re stuck with creative at the office. We’ll all do three minutes, and then brainstorm together what we found. And that will always help now, about two minutes mo what the magic is you will start tapping into your subconscious. You stop thinking about what you’re writing, you will just flow.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 19:51
You know Nirr you talk about you know, I know you do workshops all over the world. Can you talk about I think it was Industry 4.0.
Nir Zavaro 20:03
Yeah, I was introduced to Industry 4.0. So everything to do with supply chains, right? factories, shipping, stuff that are not the normal day to day things I do in the company. And I did some workshops with iPhone Valley, which is an amazing hub in Israel, around Korea. And they work only 4.0. And we met amazing people with amazing stories of companies. One of them speaker, the CEO, you called me about a year later, he says, Hey, so we’ve been invited to a competition, but we can’t seem to tell the story. And I said, Okay, you said, it’s next week in Hong Kong, and we need your help. So okay, and we had agreed on 10 hour work, we did everything in eight hours, because he didn’t have enough time. They ended up going from an idea that’s very complicated, and very hard to explain, or do it in a second, to winning a competition number one of the 50 getting the check, then getting the EU to sign a contract with them for the test. And then getting the next round ad. I remember, by the way, he’s, he’s a great guy called me afterwards, and he said, I know we had an invoice, but change it to any any number you want. It took me an eight hours for nothing to accompany. By the way, I didn’t do anything. He was amazing. He was distorted, I only helped him understand that he’s able to create that store. And what we did is talk less about the complexity of the robot to the machine and how the stray words. Okay, but we focused on the hook. And within the three minute pitch, the first 30 seconds are very, very important to explain, and help people understand what we actually do. And it was interesting, because the product that they created is very complicated. But in fact, and I don’t know if you know this, in factories, in order to clean the products when it comes to food factories, cosmetics, it means they need to stop the machines for 1000s of hours every year. So they’re able to clean them. The cleaning detergents are very expensive. And in terms of ecosystem, they’re proud of the worst. And costing not only a lot of money, but between 150 and 2000 100 people worldwide will die every year from the clean materials. And basically what we understand is in factories clean isn’t really clean. And we use that three times in terms of repetition. And then we explain what they actually but if I tell you if you have a factory, I can save you 1000s of hours, less employees. It’s we all agree he knows cleaners. He can save money in churches. Plus there’s less taxes and stuff because they’re polluting less. So what happens in the book is people say well, how can you do that? And if you think when I want to sell you something your first immediate reaction well now on a video but I’ll put my hands up and sell me. People are closed off. Exactly. But if the first book made them understand that there’s something here they say, how can you do that? The moment a person has to be in we sold you know in the snowboard shop when people would come into the shop and say I’m not buying I just came here to look it’s a snowboard shop in Israel. You have to drive an hour find parking pay for the parking walk the shop was behind this building. But you only can tell look now in the back of your mind, you know, and I know that if you see something you like you’ll die. Now what I need to do is not interrupt. So we would say you’re not buying that’s the budget you know, no matter what you’re asking for me I will not say and we’ll do it in this very fun kind of way. So you joke when they ended up paying $1,500 They would say I can’t believe you made me buy and say I didn’t do anything I just had the best sale is a no sale I’m not pushing, I’m helping. If it fits and you like it, you buy. And I think this is very important in the book to explain.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 24:54
Nir when you took that company in person through the industry 4.0 What were some of the key? Like you said it can’t, you know, you give them the person’s like they did it all. I mean, but you lead them through the process? What’s an example of a question or two that you prompted them to start to uncover these emotions? The most important pieces?
Nir Zavaro 25:19
Yes. So the emotions are part of the KPIs. And the last piece where we want to measure the beginning is to understand what are the buckets of information, because you believe that everything is important, and reality audience does. So the main thing was to define the few say, we need to show them the competition, right? Every startup has a slide about the competition. Usually, these slides are so complicated, that you tend to talk about them for 15% of the agreement with so basically, instead of putting so much emphasis on all the information, and all the visuals, what we do is we start buckets, a market buckets, competition product, and we started adding all the pieces of information there. And then we define the two or three most important pieces of information, everything else is not relevant for him. And what happens is, we can then focus on the most important things. And then what you need is less, not more. And remember, I only need some nuggets to get the trailer pitch for you to ask for. That’s all. And I think once that clatter disappears, and they can think clearly, and then a three minute pitch, we’ll have another 16, 18 pieces of information, suddenly the structure feels different. Then we can also understand what is the hook that we want to stop? What happens now, everything makes sense. This is the hook. But so and whatever you want to have, but we’re unfolding the scene after scene, only when that’s done, we insert the text. So now, like a story, like in my novels, there’s an unfolding, we create the scenes. And we are changing the paradigm of slide after slide here. We’re going to talk about the competition. Here we’re going to talk about the product. Here’s the solution. Why. There’s no it’s not interesting. And once we are able to create the story. Now what is interesting is when you ask people these guiding questions like in the book, they know more than I do about their product, they know more about their journey. So it means that most of the time they will be able to create a better story than others. They know. So you’re helping them build kind of like, we have the same that. When a client says I want you to come up with marketing that’s out of the box, right? So you say okay, can you explain the box? If your brand doesn’t explain the box, I can think outside of the box. Which is by the way 90% of brands don’t kno them.w how to explain the box so we need to define
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 28:18
Nir, the Patron Tequila World Championship.
Nir Zavaro 28:22
Yeah, I got a call from a former bartender of mine Vita amazing woman. And she says this F*ck the slides, it works for everything? I said, Yeah, can work for tequila? And she’s in charge of patron tequila in Israel. Distribution of a thing and she does a lot of the learning events and stuff like that, than we did in the Seoul house of Jaffa. And we hosted the 10 finalists for the tequila patron of 2022. And I taught them F*ck the slides very similar to how I will do to the startup. It was very, very interesting. They were an amazing group of people. By the way, I think that’s a big part of doing these workshops. I get to meet amazing people and he had different ways of thinking, you know, always inspires you to say, Ah, this could be improved, I can do this different. And competition day was great. People had great sessions. Now what’s interesting about the tequila Patron competition the final is 40% of the Cocktail Competition is about the story you tell. That is more points for the story than it is for the drink the making on the Gosh. So the story is what makes the taste flavor the feeling. Now, once the competition was done on amazing girl named more she won the competition and I told her listen, I think you’re amazing. I’d be happy to work with He, for a few hours in prepping for the world championship. She was excited, I was excited. And I said, Nabil, I know you’re excited. In two weeks, I’d be able to say I trained the world champion. And we worked. And she came up with the story. And I said, that’s great. There’s 19 other contestants, and all of them will start the story by saying, the challenge you gave us. But when I started working, we need a story. And she had this amazing story about a woman who was the muse for many artists in the 1930s, end of the 1930s. And she traveled the world. And she always wanted to be the artist. And at the Muse. She found her home in Mexico. And we picked the whole story around that. And she won. Both of her story was were amazing. And now she does a lot of things here. She has an ability, she can have a presence show, enabling her to understand that she fixes a few things about how you start, what’s a good hook, how to structure the scenes, she became, in my opinion, invincible. And now when she does her bartending workshops, they’re amazing.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 31:21
What was she in the end pitching?
Nir Zavaro 31:25
Cocktails, so she had to do two cocktails that we prepared for, by the way, they also had one that was unplanned. Okay, so you can implement the same structure. So if the slides means that the team will prepare for raising capital, but tomorrow, they will use the same concept to run the meetings. Now, when you want to raise money, you go in with one ask, if you like this, I need a million dollars easy. When you go into a meeting, everything’s confusing, right? There’s a lot of things we need, we don’t your product manager. Great. What’s your one ask he can three minutes. And it’s important to stay the trailer pitch must have slides, I cannot go into a meeting with investors without slides. But the slides will play a supporting role, which is either a supporting role or a scenery. What people tend to forget this, they use the same slides for everything. The pitch deck they send before the slides they present when they speak, what they’ll send after this upgrade. This is where we fail every type of supporting role that something has needs to be relevant for that piece of the puzzle. So the trader pitch will have supporting slides mean that you will have very little text and they need to help you. It means also there from takeaway your slides your stories. And then we have what in the book is called the toilet deck. What is it? I learned there’s a TD and I call it the toilet deck because there’s two things we need to remember. One is the slides I sent for the meeting one pager, the page, the deck whatever you want to call it, I will not sit next to you when you read it. I need to remember you need to have more text than the trailer pitch because you will need to understand by yourself. Okay. And the second thing about it that I learned is many investors read the decks we send the minimum of the point so we call that the toilet. Now, this is a standalone, I am not telling you, you need to be able on your own to understand what we’re doing. What’s the offering, what’s the asking price. Then when we meet i in the presentation. The slides if they’re supported by the way, we had the story about a guy that that investors made the work with. You don’t want to work. We started writing the story he didn’t want to write it didn’t want to do this was complaining all the time. And then he went he had this very, very important call. There’s three investors all of the very well known in Israel. Starting the pitch, Midway about a minute and a half one of the investors says hey, so it’s very interesting just to make sure I can hear you clicking but you didn’t share the slides. And he said this is the first time I understood why I was just story was well enough to carry the pitch without the slides and he kept going and in that later he said to them, okay, so I think once you understand that the ability and if you write, you know how it sounds, how you need to present it. That creates some sort of confidence. And most of us will go pitching when we have bullet points. So That means we are unprepared. we’re improvising the most important thing. Okay.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 35:07
You’re you’re supposed to launch your book, October 8,.
Nir Zavaro 35:14
We are supposed to start the marketing plan October 8, in November 5 to actually launch the book. But there was a whole dozens of interviews and other stuff and about 100 pieces of content that was supposed to go live. And getting a lot of support from all of the work that I feel like, you know.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 35:38
I don’t I can’t speak for other countries. But in the US, when the planes hit the World Trade Center, I knew exactly where I was. I know a lot of people I know knew exactly where they were. What, Where were you October 7?
Nir Zavaro 35:59
I woke up to the second alarm. I didn’t hear the first one. There was siren. So it didn’t hit the first round. This happens here every few years. It’s not good. But it happens. And I went to the staircase, the apartment, I was waiting, I wasn’t supposed to be here. So I was subletting an apartment close to my own apartment. And it was very strange because it was an apartment I used to rent many years ago, a lot of my staff was still there. And it felt really felt like I was stuck in the past. My I’m looking at my previous apartment, why that might I’m sitting on the sofa, to my coffee machine and stuff, sirens are going off. I opened the TV, and I realized that the world would never be the same. By 8:30am Here, I understood the word why? I think I believe the sum some way. For some reason, this place is important. I don’t know why. And displace this land, for some reason came the gate. When this place falls, we will not understand what evil is. It will be so out of this world. And October 7 was the first time that that head was unleashed. And I will explain. We were talking earlier and they said experiences and feelings and emotions are a big part of why you believe what I say. It’s because you can comprehend through your experiences. Your mind can understand what some of the atrocities that went on things that if you will believe what I said. You will not know how to keep on living. If I would tell anyone on this planet that we know for certainty than 60 days the word is going to end. People don’t have anything to hold on to believe. It is easier to say no didn’t happen. We didn’t see facts. Oh, this wasn’t real. Because if it was, what does it mean? And I think that one of my biggest ask was the first two weeks of talking to a lot of companies, a lot of business owners vana stuff was pleased, don’t fight. Try and remain calm, try and discuss try and talk. And I posted on the eighth, October 8 I posted I think a video and I said the word would never be the same. This is a new reality was supposed to launch a book called fact the slides. But now it gives a fuck. And I think if I didn’t have many years of travel, in many friends around the world that I always had what they needed, and I never had never asked him in turn. I would never launch this book. And the fact that you have friends all over the world, and they’re coming together to help me with the book is amazing. It’s unbelievable. It shows you that people are people. People are the same. They have the same wants and the same needs. True some people have a very different concept of life. And with some we might not agree. But if we take out the extreme on every side. We need to hold on to something. We need to understand that if we don’t have positivity or hope, then there’s no point then that evil will win. And I’m not at the point where I’m willing to let it go and So I’m going to push on with the book and keep traveling. You know, at the end, I want to teach as many people as we can how to become better storytellers. And sometimes in order to hear, give the best stories need to be very present, and you need to listen.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 40:16
And Nir, I’m wondering your perception, you know, of the world’s reaction. And you know, before we hit record on here, there were sirens going off, you had to go into the basement, you mean, for everyone listening or watching and you’re like, super calm. But the beginning of this, sirens were going off, we may not have been able to do the interview, you had to go in the basement when sirens going off, just to give people an idea, because we’re in the US, right? What does that actually mean? What’s actually happening when the sirens are going off?
Nir Zavaro 40:56
I think we need to remember that. We are very, very lucky. Ingenuity means that 96% of missiles are be intercepted midair. So far, they have been, I think, six or 7000 missiles fired. When a missile does hit imagine you took out a building two apartments, cars, driving and so on. So imagine there’s two injured, someone dies, you know, Middle East, right? So what if we had six or 7000, you’re talking about 1000s of them. So we have been lucky that we find the problem and we find a solution. Remember that, by the way, many of the things that you and I are now using, there was a problem, we found the solution. So once that is solved, this becomes sadly, a practical thing. There’s a siren, I have about 90 seconds to go down to the shelter. Three floors down. It is what it is, we’re not happy about. We feel it’s bothering us. But remember, this is happening to a nation. This kids who won’t stay alone. Those people women that are pregnant, are suffering from anxiety. And imagine how dangerous that is for the babies. Those people actually get injured. The shrapnel that sometimes hits and that happens. So we’re lucky in the sense that we’re able to maintain some sort of a life. But most of the restaurants are closed, most of the businesses are closed, most of the shops in the mall are closed. So the economy is starting to get. On the other side, we’re finding new ways of adapting. So if you look at startups, they’re finding ways of working. If you look at companies that need to export will find ways. Remember, every time we face adversity, we improve. It’s not happy. We don’t like loss of life, not on this side on the other side, but we become better. And one thing that people will not understand is a distinct Jewish religion that every person has a word. It has a story, it has connections, it has heritage, every person, we mourn the life of one or two or three, like us, the whole world. What happened on October 7, is in a map the magnitude as we became a bit numb to numbers. Now, if you have us go from one is a word to 1400, we’ll figure it out. You have a problem. Because we are now numb to loss. And that is a profound thing for them to understand. You know, we all went to funerals. We all have this form when you do stuff. I’m doing this interview to keep my mind occupied on something. Because if not, what am I supposed to hold on to? And if we’ll fight, fight, and if we win, we will win. And if we need to be better, we’ll be better. But all of this could be done so different. It shouldn’t in no way hear the other side? No. It doesn’t serve it. What was your perception of the world reaction? I’ll take it from a storytelling perspective. Their stories suck. If you think about it, everybody’s allowed to open a camera and talk right now what happens is everyone hears someone else say, Well, I like this message. I’ll amplify. I think finally after many years, politically correct, which is an American thing, initially, which will As in Israel, we say, we don’t care about this politically correct is not the right, right way to move forward. Right? It’s like lying all the time. Now we understand, we are learning who likes us? And who doesn’t, by the way, why does it matter? My religion or my gender? Or my sets? Or my sexual preference? Why does it matter to people? People are people. But people need something to hate as much as they need something to hope for. That’s how people are the DNA as well. This is how it is. Now, what is interesting, I think, suddenly, a lot of people woke up. And there’s a lot of the scare has become very tangible for a lot of people on the planet, not just Jewish communities, we’re getting that from a lot of people who are non Jewish, and people are suddenly saying, what’s happened? Where’s this Go? Now? I urge people that are listening or watching this, the fact that you have an opinion is amazing. Not relevant, it’s not relevant, it is your opinion. Now, when your opinion and my fact that the same then the world will go back, I urge people to have a discussion, a discussion means I would state what is an opinion? I will state what is the fact? And then I will listen to what you have to say. I will understand what we can discuss. If two people are and the volume is what defines it. Nothing is moving forward. It’s like politics. You know, when two people argue about politics, how many of you ever seen a Republican and a Democrat argue in a coffee shop? Suddenly someone says, wow, you know what, I will change my opinion. Never. Never. It’s your opinion. And it’s fine that your opinion. But the fact that people are amplifying This is dangerous. Dangerous. And by the way, I’m getting a lot of videos from people are not Jewish about hey, look, but this Jewish guy from Texas says that, so probably my friends, but fuck you guys from Texas. I’ve never met you. I don’t know who you are. But remember, there were a lot of Jews in the early 1940s That thought that if they’ll help the Germans, nothing will happen to them. They went to office. So don’t be a smartass on social media. By the way, I made the post last week, I think there’s nothing socially important about this meeting. I think the responsibility that people have I think Elon Musk lost it anyway. So it’s not relevant anymore to the story. But the other people were still thinking about the money, especially Zuckerberg and stuff like that. They have a responsibility. People are dying, because they’re making money. And I think that’s horrible. Horrible. We also now are seeing the people have an extreme side or extreme side. But the 90% that are silent, are scared.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 48:13
You know, Nir, what some of those things that you hear in the media, that you know, when we talk about fact versus fiction, like you hear people coming out and saying, ceasefire? What does that mean to Israel? What does that mean to you as an Israeli?
Nir Zavaro 48:43
Let’s start with the fact that no one likes war. I’m not. In no way. Am I happy about the fact that we’re at war, not on my side and not on that. We are not happy when we learn. And we’re close to the people on the ground, sadly. And we also learn that there’s a situation now when Hamas is pushing civilians to stay in in fire zones, because then they can scream that people die, guess what? The die, which is unbelievable. And the fact that the discussion is still there, instead of hey, wait, what is really happening? By the way, Ukraine is fighting Russia. You don’t have media the same as here. When the Americans are fighting in Afghanistan or used to fight in Iraq, media wasn’t exactly there. So I think once everybody became enlightened, and the woke movement and everything Why not come and say, Hey, what is really happening? Egypt is not opening the border. Okay, why? Why they’re threatening? What is really happening. In business sometimes when things happen, there’s a concept was we say and sit down and say, what is really happening? It’s not what I think it’s not about losing the client or there’s a problem or why are things happening? But no one is asking. And by the way, I assume you assume and some other people who would listen have kids as you if someone came in at 7am on a Sunday you picked your kids shot your wife took your kids and you don’t know where they are in the Capitol. What would you do to get them back? Anything now, let’s start the discussion. What happened before now for that parents not relevant now, you shook a nation to the core I would even argue that you shook it too much. To the point where people now saying hey, we can never let this happen again. We have you know, how many I had a call a few days ago and I apologize to 60 people on a call and they said I apologize if you feel that we failing because of what’s happening in Israel. We cannot ensure your safety and other places. Now I do not represent my country. Sometimes I do because I go to a lot of events sometimes I carry a flag and I have a tag that says Israel but I do not say to any Council I’m not a politician. I’m not this is how we feel now. So in the end, if we want to talk about politically correct I think forget about it. Now people are saying what they actually think why is different discussion for us is very scary. Now if we understand that we are not leaving and we understand that the side only wants to kill us now we can start having a different session. And if we’re talking about a ceasefire Okay, give us back the kids give us back the bait give us back to work give us back the young guys then we can talk Why isn’t nobody asked that while the French offering for example, Floating Hospital and the Arabs alright that’s interesting now so there’s a lot of different discussions by the way I think when we look at the story this is a very very small chapter. I believe that there are bigger things happen and you can look at the global world.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 52:51
Why is that you brought this up, Nir, you know when the you know on the plane hit the trade hit New York in the buildings that Twin Towers compared to this terrorist attack massacre in Israel. I feel like the world that a much different reaction, like you said, you said something about the media wasn’t in Afghanistan like it is now in Israel and Gaza.
Nir Zavaro 53:31
Just not the same. Manhattan’s not the same currency as Israel, it’s not the same currency as Tel Aviv. It is what it is. By the way, a lot of places on the planet don’t carry the same way as Manhattan. At the end did the one of the last empires is the US. So when you heard them, different story, the massacre here is 15 times bigger when you calculate the population size. The 911 every person knows someone. Okay, we just had an EO member suddenly lost four members of their family. Not only was that big, this was a calculated person by person. This is not a plane hitting and suddenly the buildings collapse. There wasn’t bad. Alright. This is a calculated massacre of a one by one person. So I think also, I don’t know if you’ve seen or heard. They’re now showing some of the video clips that I’m editing video clips to reporters. We heard the reporter last week, he said I will never be able to unsee what I’ve seen some people threw up some people left in the middle. Some people said it can’t To be that it’s been recorded on their GoPros on full kit, the horrific things. Okay, some of the things that are now shown to people from the embassies here. Okay, to explain what happened. So I think it doesn’t carry the same weight, it’s far away for most places. Okay. And by the way, why should people in Australia or in the US or staff care? This is the other side of the word, you know. And yet everybody has an opinion on it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 55:42
Yeah, I mean, Nir as far as that goes. What are some of the resources people should check out? Like you said, you know, those people across the US, you know, obviously are posting the kidnapped signs, right. And there’s people all over the US, ripping them down. Right. And, you know, I’ve watched a number of the videos, like, you know, people are denying it happened. I mean, they probably rip them down for all sorts of reasons, but one of them is, you know, this is false. It’s not happening, right. And, or it didn’t happen, or whatever the reason is, and now they’re starting release videos on this.
Nir Zavaro 56:31
How, uh, how do they know, in New York, when they’re ripping it off? That it didn’t happen? They don’t. Right. So let’s say out of respect, I don’t know. Out of respect, I’m not telling you suspect I don’t there’s a lot of things by the way, I don’t own a lot of atrocities. I don’t know. Now, when I have an opinion about Russia, Ukraine, which a lot of people were referring to the first week, okay. And I read a lot and have opinions and I don’t post them on social media. I’m not an expert about the subject. Okay. Plus, I’m far away, I can only hope from I have friends on both sides, they will find a way that will resolve I hate the fact that I hate the fact that people get pain. And I don’t use hate very light. But why doesn’t a person from Manhattan buy a flight ticket with this camera, and come here, meet the families. They’re here. By the way, every evening on the street not far from where I sit. Meet the families is 200. I think 50. Now in today’s world, if you want to fact check by an $800 ticket. And by the way, I was talking to some someone that was cursing me, which I’ve never met, I don’t know who he is. I don’t know how he found my account. He was cursing, to do buy a ticket, go to Egypt go to the border, it tells them you want to go and you want to see what type. You don’t. It’s very important, if you have an opinion doesn’t matter what it is. If that creates a positive or negative at the moment, we’re posting mainly homicides because we know for a fact that the true. We know we’re seeing what’s happening to the civilians. We’re talking to the civilians by the way, I can share with you the stories I heard from people who have friends on the other side, that the court will skip there. Okay. Which is a horrible situation in the same kingdom get Hamas out there Hamas out.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 58:42
Okay, we aren’t hearing those stories here. I haven’t heard a lot of those stories.
Nir Zavaro 58:47
Great. You want me to buy you the flight ticket?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 58:49
No, I’m saying what’s the sentiment of the the people in Gaza that you and your friends are talking to and in Israel?
Nir Zavaro 59:00
But listen, it’s very important, we are only talking to certain people. Same way as someone in Jordan is talking certain. Do not assume because you’ve met two people that you can elaborate on or calculate for the whole population. It doesn’t work like that. If you have an opinion, keep it to yourself. If you have a fact you can mention it. By the way, the fact means that we can agree on it outside now, this evening. If we cannot agree on evening, and you will say it’s daylight, you and I have a problem. And the only way to resolve it is not verbally and that is when the problem starts. I can share that we know certain things but again, my own experience. I cannot talk for any personal. Sadly, I can’t talk to every person in Israel. I cannot talk every person that I don’t know. I can aspire and hope that one day we’re going to have peace I can only do Do you know what I can’t even begin to imagine what a mother is going through? Okay, let alone the women and the mothers whose kids are kidnapped. I would not wish that on my worst enemies. And I believe these are the things if an LGBTQ person believes that they’re supporting an organization that would love to throw them off the roof, that is weird to me. Why don’t you have an opinion about this? What is your knowledge about this subject? And then I’m asking, Hey, wait, before you post. And remember that these actions of posting because it’s easy and fun, have some sort of a consequence on the other side. And if because you posted about this. And by the way, what we’re seeing is LGBTQ is posting Black Lives Matters of boasting. Hatred is spawning everywhere. And then the next thing we saw is Black Lives Matter groups are getting beat. So that’s sort of the purpose it didn’t, no one should be hit, or injured or attacked. So and we need to remember, there’s a famous quote, you know that first they came from the communist. I didn’t say anything, they didn’t, they came from the fascist chain, then they came for the Jews. And then same thing, then they came from this or that. And then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for. Remember that the next time you decide to post or pick a side that you have no understanding of. And I want to make it very clear, I’m not saying that silo or the other side is right. In terms of humanity, things that happen should never happen to anyone. And this, then we need to understand this as a whole new war. We’re kidnapping kids, it’s fine. So if your walk movement or progressive in telling me that kidnapping a pregnant woman, let alone executing, murdering, beheading, and so on, that’s fine. I would argue that maybe you’re not so progressive.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:02:16
We’re sitting here, first of all, thank you, thanks for having this conversation, especially during this crazy, different difficult time. I really appreciate your time and your journey. And my last question is we’re we’re, what are some of the sources or experts that you encourage people to check out who are talking facts, and they’re living it. And I do want to point people to your website, nirzavaro.com, and to check out and buy F*ck the slides, you know, no matter what you do, we always needs to be a better storyteller. It doesn’t matter if it’s for our company, or our personal life. What are some resources people should check out?
Nir Zavaro 1:03:06
I think, first of all, history is a pretty good place to start. I think. I’ve heard a lot of different variations, I would encourage people to read some of the histories of not only the region, but the understanding of what marketing of media is, and a lot of the things of the hatred we’re seeing. Now, by the way, if you go back and you read the biography of Gibbons, okay, he was the Nazi guy in charge of how to create mass marketing, and how to create that separation, that hatred, it has been used today in many, many places. I suggest reading The Spin Dictators, a great book for 2018 that talks about why today, you don’t need to kill millions in order to become a dictator, and what’s happening in some of the countries around the world. I think, go back, first of all, read the history. And again, I think once we have that, it’s amazing to see that the history will repeat itself. Make sure you’re on the right side of history. That’s all and you will know which facts are right.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:03:24
Nir one of my one of my favorite resources that someone pointed out to me, I don’t know if you’ve seen this one. It’s a site called stopantisemitism.org. And you were talking about it’s very easy for people to post on social media and do things but this site, you know, holds people accountable for doing some of these things. And so whether they someone to faces a high school with swastikas, right, whether they Um, there’s, you know, all this stuff that’s happening across universities. And so this is a site that someone pointed out to me that has some, you know, up to date information on what’s happening around the, the US itself.
Nir Zavaro 1:05:19
I hope that we will find a way to go back without being politically correct. And without using hatred as a form of helping ourselves achieve or become better or larger than someone else. This is not the witch, we are all the same. People are people.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:05:41
Everyone, check out nirzavaro.com and check out more episodes of the podcast. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Nir.
Outro 1:05:49
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