The Ultimate Shul Surprise

One time, one time, one time, one time. I recently spent Shabas in Detroit with a very special family, the Togo family. There's a boy over there, the Nakam Togo, who listens a lot to my stories. I actually tested him on the stories. And his grandfather is Gary Togo, and he told me a fascinating story. He said when he had a real estate business, before he could make his business public, give a chance for everyone to invest in it, he had to find investors to get it started. So he had 3 weeks that he was traveling around the country, a different city every day where he was going to meet with investors, with hedge funds who wanted to invest in his business. He went with his son, Yonyi, who made his schedule. Every morning they would dive in. They would have a driver then that would take him to his meeting starts the day early. One day he's in a specific city and Shakis is at 6:00. It's on a Monday. His meeting was called for 7:30 and he tells the guy he'll be there probably around 7:20. I mean because how long is Shakra going to take already? Now this meeting was perhaps the most important from the whole 3 weeks of meeting. It was a very big hedge fund, very important meeting. And obviously he was the main person of the meeting, Gary Togo. He gets to Shul at 6:00 and there's two people in Shul. He says, "Okay, oh my goodness, is it going to be one of those that it's going to take a long time till everybody comes in and slowly people are trickling in?" But he's thinking to himself, "Okay, is there only going to be 10 guys exactly in this in this minion? If there's only exactly 10 guys, it's going to take so long. And the time is just moving and and he's going crazy. The guy next to him is like, "Calm down. It's going to work out. We're going to have a minion. It's going to work out." It's already 6:30 and didn't even have a minion yet. And doesn't know what to do. The guy sitting next to him just says, "Calm down. It's going to work out." He doesn't get out of sh. His meeting was supposed to start already. His driver picks him up. He hands him some extra money. He says, "Please just drive me as fast as you could." He gets to the office building. He goes inside and the secretary says, "You got to go to the 12th floor." He's all embarrassed. He gets to the 12th floor and he starts running down the hallway to the meeting. He comes inside. Gary's non-Jewish partner is there, but the one that he's supposed to meet, the CEO of the hedge fund, is not there yet. He breathes a sigh of relief and then a minute later the door opens up and the CEO of this big hedge fund walks in. Gary Togo's stomach drops. It was the guy sitting next to him by Shakris that said, "Calm down. It's going to work out." And immediately this guy goes over to Gary Togo's partner, shakes his hand and says, "The deal is on." And that was a very big deal for them. Boom. The guy that was sitting next to him that said, "Calm down. It's going to work out." That was the guy that was in charge of the meeting. That taught me such a powerful lesson. So much so that the next day I heard the story on Chavez. The next day I was in shul of the seeking minion and I had a plane to catch and I had another job that day. If I missed the plane I got to miss that big job and it was during shock and my mind is going back and forth. There's so many details. My flight was 918 shock was over maybe 620 and my mind I'm thinking okay there's so many details. I have to return the rental car and then the shuttle has to take me to the airport. I didn't check in my bags yet. There's so many details. But then I stopped and I said, "One second, Gary Togo just told me the story that the guy that was sitting next to him was the guy in charge. We all have the same thing. The guy sitting next to me, Hashem is in charge of the shuttle bus. He's in charge of the check-in. He's in charge of the airplane, of the pilot, of the job that I'm going to. He's in charge of everything. And at that I said, "One second, I'm spending time talking to Hashem. Why should I lose out? Why would I lose out? I mean, he runs everything. He runs the airplane. He runs everything. If Gary Togo would know right away that the guy sitting next to him was the guy in charge of the meeting. I mean, as long as Shakas takes, the guy I'm meeting is right here. I'm not going to lose out." Same thing with all of us. Hashem is running everything in our lives. We don't have to be stressed about anything as long as we're doing the right thing. Taking time in shul, learning, doing mitzvah, it's all for Hashem and Hashem runs the world. You won't lose out by doing those things. Thank you so much, Gary Togo, for that lesson. [Music]