Frum Spend Day Talking Business

Nearly 1,000 frum Jewish businesspeople gathered at The Rockleigh of New Jersey on Wednesday for a once-a-year, historic summit that’s been hailed as the Jewish community’s premier business education and career growth event.

Dubbed LTB 2015 – the LTB terminology is an acronym for “Let’s Talk Business” – the event offered a robust platform of keynote lectures, breakout sessions and networking opportunities, all designed to further educate the greater Jewish business community and help motivated businesspeople cultivate their entrepreneurial skills.

Highlighting the event was The Launch Pad, a reality show-style program featuring a group of daring entrepreneurs pitching to four seasoned Wall Street investors sitting on-stage, in an attempt to land a $1 million investment.

The Launch Pad was moderated by Professor Sean Wise, a leading expert on startups and venture capital, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Toronto’s Ryerson University, and author of five bestselling books on finance.

The Launch Pad introduction and closing remarks were given by Lubavitch businessman Duddi Farkash of Brooklyn Financial Group.

Two out of the four pitches got handshakes and commitments, totaling $750,000 in on-the-spot investments.

Now in its third year, this event has impacted so many lives and helped countless entrepreneurs flourish, by creating an unrivaled platform to help businesspeople learn, grow and lead. While the majority of the attendees traveled in from the Tri-State area, some participants at LTB 2015 flew in from places as far away as Los Angeles, Canada, Switzerland and Eretz Yisroel.

According to the founder of LTB 2015, Meny Hoffman – who is also the CEO of Brooklyn-based marketing agency Ptex Group – this event is boldly reshaping the Jewish business landscape.

“This is a game-changing movement that has impacted so many lives and helped countless entrepreneurs from our community flourish,” he says. “We’ve created an unrivaled platform which fuses knowledge, tools and resources into a mind-opening experience that inspires the Jewish business community to think bigger and achieve more.”

The big-name speakers at LTB 2015 included: Brian Scudamore, the globally-renowned CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?; John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame, whose blog was selected as a Forbes Magazine favorite; and New York Times bestselling business author Michael Port.

“When you spend a whole day discovering new things about marketing or customer service or finance, it forces you to stop and think about the way you run your own business,” commented Mordechai Rosen, owner of Fame, a trendy clothing store in Cedarhurst, NY.

“I’m already working on applying some of the brilliant concepts I picked up from Brian Scudamore. He was very insightful. This is my third year as an LTB attendee and, in some way, I believe the skills I’ve developed here helped me grow my own retail business and take the Fame brand to the next level. I definitely plan on coming back next year.”

An ambitious all-day agenda of multiple keynote addresses, focus sessions and discussion panels – delivered by 15 accomplished business speakers – provided the overflow audience of over 900 Jewish businesspeople with content-driven information relating to critical topics like leadership, marketing, sales, productivity, and e-commerce.

“Throughout the day, hundreds of attendees kept coming over to me,” says Charlie Harary, legendary motivational speaker, Founder of H3 & Co., and the LTB 2015 emcee.

“They were thrilled to have a professional business conference to call their own, where they could hear corporate America’s biggest names dish out real-world business advice in a heimishe environment. From a fully-catered kosher lunch, to mincha minyanim between speeches, to an enthusiastic crowd of like-minded yidden who are uniting to grow in both business and life, LTB 2015 was designed from the ground-up for the contemporary Jewish businessperson.”

Ultimately, the Jewish community clearly has a strong work ethic and a passion for achieving new milestones. LTB 2015 is helping them lead and succeed, one entrepreneur at a time.