Why Money is a Spiritual Activity | Business Secrets From the Bible with Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Linh Podetti: The Bible is the world's best selling book of all time, outselling any books out there every single year. And yet it took me 37 years to lay my hand on the first Bible, something I truly regret and wish I started reading earlier. Luckily though, I sped up my learning because I got to meet people like Rabbi Daniel Lapin who you will meet in this video.

Now Rabbi Daniel is a rabbinic scholar, popular international speaker, best selling author, and he's passionate about the Bible, but also making money. So he blends Bible teachings with specific business principles to improve people's finances and family life. Hi, it's Linh Podetti.

And in this video, you will learn some of the best business secrets from the Bible to help you grow a successful business while making God proud. Yeah, thank you so much Rabbi for being back on my show. Unknown: A great pleasure.

It's always fun talking with you. And it's as if the gap of 1000s of miles of geography and hours and hours of time difference just melt away. And it's almost just like sitting in a room and having fun talking.

Linh Podetti: I know 100%, right. Like you're in New York, I'm in Sydney and yeah, our times very different. But I'd be really clear.

Unknown: I'm just telling you, by the way that I love Australian television. The quality is so much better than American television. Really?

Some of the Australian shows that are produced are so good. Linh Podetti: Oh, maybe you just love our accent because I'm yeah, I'm kinda more of a fan of Americans shows. Anyhow, today, I really want to talk about something that really opened my eyes up when I met you.

Especially I'm so new to the spiritual God world. The fact that in your book, The Business Secrets Of The Bible. Now that is such a crazy book.

Like 30 secrets that you shared in there that just made me go, Wow, I can't believe the Bible has taught us so much about business and making money. That I wish that I got that Bible, you know, a long time ago. But let's deep dive into even the one secret that you mentioned in the book, which is, "money is actually a spiritual activity.

" So can you tell us more about that? Unknown: Yeah, you don't make this easy for me. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a very smart guy called Albert Einstein, who really turned the world of Mathematics and Physics on its head.

And he came up with a theory of relativity, which led indirectly it actually ended up leading to nuclear energy. So let's imagine that somebody, you know, have the chance to sit down with Albert Einstein. And you know, you win a competition, the prize is an hour over dinner with Albert Einstein.

And you sit down with Albert Einstein, and you say to him, what is the formula for relativity, Dr Einstein? and he says E quals, MC squared. And then you say, okay, great, Waiter, bring the bell.

That's it. That's how you're going to use your time with Albert Einstein? E quals MC Squared, it's true energy is equal to the mass times the square the speed of light.

That's absolutely true. But it's meaningless. What what does that got to do with anything?

There is so much more that can be explained. And there's so much more that Dr Einstein could unpack for you about the reality of the world and about, even if you weren't particularly interested in physics or mathematics. But still, it would be fascinating, but you're not delving into it, you're just touching on the surface.

The same thing is true with the Bible. There is a reason that Jews have been disproportionately good with money everywhere in every era. And it's not because they're circumcised because if that was the secret, many men would prefer poverty.

You know, it's not because we eat chicken soup. You know, it's, it's not for a whole variety of stupid, silly, bogus explanations that are all easy to debunk. It's because embedded within and within Jewish culture, and passed down from parent to child, over meals at dinner, and over education and over family get togethers is a vast body of information extracted from the original Hebrew.

These are secrets. And as you say, I present a whole lot of them in Business Secrets From The Bible. I show people a whole bunch of these, but these are all embedded within the original Hebrew text of scripture.

And so if you just read the English translation, and you don't have a rabbi and I recommend that everybody needs a rabbi. And I humbly submit myself as a candidate. But if you don't do any of that, all you do is just read the English translation.

All you end up with is a bunch of anachronistic Bible stories that don't mean anything at all, just been wasting your time. You really got to delve into it. So with that, as an introduction, I can tell you about money making and the spirituality of money making and why it is that if you block yourself off entirely, you block yourself away from faith and spirituality, you are actually handicapping yourself.

Well, aren't there a whole lot of people who make money who have no spirituality at all? Sure there are. And a wonderful actor by the name of George Burns, live to over 100 years old, smoking two cigars a day.

But don't try this at home kids. It's not going to work for everybody. And so why not make things easier on yourself?

Why not make sure that all the tools that are at your disposal are working for you, including the power of spirituality. Now, let me give you a very practical insight into this. When I say spiritual, I am speaking from the perspective of my background as an electrical engineer.

I'm not speaking about it from the perspective as my background as a rabbi. In other words, spiritual and I know this is something you know, from your own experience in life, Linh. Spiritual doesn't mean virtuous or holy.

There's good spiritual spirituality, there's also pretty evil spirituality out there. Spiritual is simply those aspects of life that cannot be measured in a laboratory. That's all.

And so from a good point of view, let's not worry about bad spirituality today. But from a good point of view, a really important part of succeeding financially is growing your organization. Start not trying to do everything yourself.

If you fix your car, when it's broken, and you do your income taxes yourself, and you do all your cooking and food preparation. And you do everything else in your life, you sew your own clothes to get ridiculous, you discover there's no more time left for doing what your business is all about. If I got a choice, and I can either mow my lawn myself, or I can give $20 to the kid down the block to mow my lawn for me.

He mows my lawn, he goes away with $20, he's as happy as could be. And me, I take the hour and a half, it would have taken me it took me longer than it would take him because he's good at it. I take that hour and a hal and I finish writing up a business plan for a client of mine.

And I handed in to him and I get paid $6,000. So my hour and a half could have saved me $20 that I wouldn't have had to pay the kid down the block. Or I could have used the better and made six.

Yeah, I think I know which way to go on that. Hring other people is a really important part of building your wealth, increasing your revenue. And when you hire people, you got to know what you're hiring for.

Now, if you're hiring somebody as a swimsuit model, you know, then you do need to know their height and weight and proportionality and beauty and good looks. You need all those things. But most of us are not hiring people to be swimsuit models.

And for almost every other business area, the things we need have nothing to do with your gender, nothing to do with your weight, nothing to do with your hair color, or how much or how little hair you have. They have nothing to do with any of those things because you don't really care about those things. Let me tell you what you do care about.

Integrity, persistence, optimism, articulateness, the ability to speak fluently. These are all the things you care about. Every one of those is spiritual, Linh Podetti: not physical.

It's not tangible, it's the Unknown: and cannot be measured. If I could come up with a test that would measure the integrity and the persistence and the optimism and the fluency of a candidate, I would never have to lift a finger and work again, I would just sell it. Because there's not a single employer who wouldn't want to use my test.

But there is no such test. Because I just finished telling you that spiritual qualities cannot be measured scientifically. They don't you cannot do it.

It's just it's a law of the world just like E equals MC squared. The law is spiritual characteristics cannot be measured scientifically. So all the things that can be measured scientifically I'm not interested in.

And all the things I'm really interested in cannot be measured scientifically. So now how do you hire people with those spiritual qualities? You make yourself a person who is spiritually aware and spiritually sensitive.

And then, you're much better off picking up on those things from a candidate than somebody who has no spiritual awareness would ever be. So that's just one of the reasons why faith and spirituality are an important aspect. Now, when it comes to making money, that's part of it.

You got to know how to hire people. Another part of it is knowing that money itself is spiritual. Wow, really?

Linh Podetti: That's wild. For me. Yep.

Unknown: Yeah, gee, I thought money was those discs of metal tin can your pocket or maybe it's the orientation of iron oxide molecules on the back of your credit card on that strip? says what? Oh, maybe money is what I write your check.

Or maybe money is when we shake hands and our cell pay you $10 on Friday? Yeah, all those things are money, but it's not tangible. Money is spiritual.

Linh Podetti: Well, that thing itself isn't worth anything unless we put the value to it, like Unknown: That'sexactly right. It's a piece of. The proof of it is if every other human being on the planet vanished, and all you were left was just you, plus a whole pile of $100 bills, you know what you'd probably do make a file with them.

Because there's nothing more Linh Podetti: you can do with your bandwidth. Yes, Unknown: there's nothing else to be done. Because money is only our value in the context of other human beings.

And another rule about money about spirit, anything spiritual is that it violates a physical rule. A physical rule is any physical object can only be in one place at one time. And so if at this moment, you're in Sydney, then I can guarantee it that you are not in New York.

Yes, I am right here. At this moment. Now, you might be in New York tomorrow.

And then tomorrow, you won't be in Sydney. Our bodies are physical, they can only be in one place at a time. Now, our spirits and our souls are completely different.

They can be anywhere and everywhere. So you think now about the difference. If money is physical, which is wrong, the fact that so many people think that helps to explain a frightening phenomenon that is spreading around the world.

And that is many, many, many people are buying into the principles, I should say the religion, the belief system of socialism. Socialism hates successful people. Socialism hates people with money regards them as the enemy.

And socialism says things like, well, the rich must pay their fair share, being very careful not to define who the rich are. And being very careful not to define what fair means. That remains the prerogative of politicians to decide what the tax rate will be, and for whom.

But the enemy, the the person that is vilified, and the attempt is made to turn the mob against them is always the rich. So how can this be? And the answer is that if you believe that money is physical, not spiritual in then it can only be in one place at a time.

And therefore, if there's a bunch of money that I had today, and tomorrow I look at I see you've got it. Well, then you took it from me, obviously. And therefore what has to happen is there must be redistribution.

But you see, that's not really how it works. The fact is, you have money from me, because I gave it to you voluntarily, you know why? Because you provided me with something, you know, a book, a car, a violin, that I valued more than the money I paid you otherwise, I wouldn't have done the deal.

So therefore, my wealth status is improved by having done a transaction with you. But the socialist looks at what's happened, and he sees you took my money. So we have to tax you to get it back so I can get some more of it.

Yeah, so this is a little bit of the background as to why it's so important to understand that money is spiritual, and the entire process of business is spiritual. Linh Podetti: Yeah, I love that. And I think we need to relate this to the next secret that you shared, which is that "to make money also is that you have to be obsessively preoccupied with the needs of his other children, his other children, meaning the other human beings.

" And what I love is that in business, I was taught to, you know, think about how you can serve your customers that are that, but now I really get it. It's like, well, you know, God loves all His children. And if you could really find ways to add value to their life, you're not just taking care of his children.

They're gonna pay you for it. And of course, you're going to be wealthy because you've got all the money from helping people. Cawe talke a bit of that?

Unknown: It's really very interesting and worthwhile getting oneself wrapped around. Because, again, anybody who really grasps what we're talking about here, and obviously, we only have a few minutes to discuss it. Whereas in the book, Business Secrets From The Bible, I lay it out and I unpack it, and you can absorb it, and you can read it again and again.

But if you were to be able to really grasp this idea that it's pleasing other human beings, you are well on your way. You know, how often do I go into a business and I know that the owner is not there, but an assistant is serving me. And the assistant is surly and resentful, makes me feel bad for disturbing him from all the important things he was doing.

And you said, this is this is not a business, that's gonna work. As long as that untrained employee is behaving that way. That employee will be shocked to get fired and you won't know why.

Because most business owners don't have time to educate people. So you know, whether you are in job search mode, or whether you are in hiring mode, or whether you're expanding your multimillion dollar company into a multi billion dollar company, it always is crucial to have deeply implanted within your reality this idea that monetary success follows the principle of pleasing other human beings. And I'm going to give you a really important substantiation of this.

Because it's not enough for us to just tell people the truth. What we have to do is help them believe it. We got to help them be able to absorb it into their bodies with conviction, so that they can then bring about a transformation in how they behave and how they interact with other people.

So you'll pardon me, it's not my intention to be provocative or anything here. But this is part of how the world really works. And it's part of what God put in the Bible for us to understand.

But that is making money is very similar to making a baby. It's very, very similar. Why it's important to understand this.

And the reason is because the most creative thing that a human being can do is partner with another human being and create a baby. Right? I don't know who Adolf Hitler's parents were, but I will tell you that the name wasn't Hitler.

The family name was Schickel Gruber. Wow. And so yeah, whether they were married or not, I just I don't remember.

But when Mr. and Mr. Schickel Gruber conceived a little baby and they call him aid off.

They obviously could know that he would change the world in a horrible way. I mean, nothing good there at all, but undeniably changed the world. Now, it was pretty smart of him to change his name from Schickel Gruber to Hitler, right?

Because there's no way ever, that 100,000 People would have risen to their feet in the Nuremberg auditorium and held out their arms and shattered out hail Schickel Gruber. That would not have happened. But the most creative thing that people can do, you create a baby, you have no idea what impact that child will have on the world, there's literally nothing more powerful you can do.

Now, the next most powerful thing you can do is bring about a financial transaction. Because you are literally creating something out of nothing. In the sense that two strangers interact, and one person buys something from the other person.

The seller goes away happier because he's now sold his merchandise and he's got the money he wanted. The customer walks away happier because he now has something that he values more than the merchandise. And if you actually do a financial statement analysis, you find that the simple act of two strangers engaging in a financial transaction that is actually added to the store of money in that community and in that society and in that country.

So this is one of the reasons that every growth in technological ability to communicate resulted in a massive increase in financial creativit. The arrival of the steamship that made people in Europe able to trade with people in North America. A huge blow up of economic creativity, the development of the Telegraph in 1844, the development of the telephone in early 20th century, the spread of television in 1950, early 1950s.

Each one of these things brought about an explosion of economic productivity because they let people communicate better and connect better. Now one of the things is when it comes to conceiving a baby, yes, it takes two people. And yes, they shouldn't be the same as one another because then nothing will happen.

And all of these things are true with transactions, right? I can't do a transaction by myself, I need somebody else. And it's got to be somebody who has a need, where I have something to sell.

And thirdly, it always works better when I focus on the other person's pleasure. And that's why it is. If you'll pardon me, but in the bedroom, one of the craziest questions that men keep asking is, was that good for you?

And the answer should be, who cares? You know, you got your jollies go home. But somehow or another, there is a deep awareness, that part of the success of this encounter is conveying joy to the other person.

And that's why there are many, many, many women and many, many circumstances. And I'm not saying they're wrong, who will, as it were, quote, fake it. Because they realize that so doing will add to the pleasure of the guy.

So we see how spiritual this interaction is. It's not just a spasm in the spinal column, it's not just a little friction. But it's something hugely profound that involves how what I've done for another person, and the economic transaction is exactly the same.

Linh Podetti: It's eye opening. To be honest, you really just got me to understand so much deeper, you know, whereas I think, without this knowledge, you kind of don't even get why you are in business, you just selling some products, and you're not understanding the depth of it. And I guess we can go on and on.

But my other cool thing, the other topic that I love was "everything important and joyful you have achieved, has been in the participating with at least one other person", which is you're saying there, and I think there was just this 27 more other business secrets that I think people should grab the book, read it, to really see that how God designed all this to make you wealthy. If you understand the rules, so that you know at the other day, we want people to achieve success so that they could help. Unknown: It's not about just praying for money.

It really isn't. And when you pray for a Ferrari, and you don't get one, it's not that God didn't hear your prayers. He did.

He just said no. Linh Podetti: Because you haven't read the Bible, you haven't applied it, you don't understand what are you doing? Unknown: What are you done for me lately?

Linh Podetti: Yeah. So where can people grab a copy of that book? As well as I think you're giving away a free ebook as well?

Unknown: Yes, well, all they got to do is go to my website, which is rabbidaniellapin. com. And you will put it down there once you Yeah.

And people will be able to see that. And you go there, and you will look for Business Secrets From The Bible, the book, you can do that. Needless to say, you can also get it from anywhere else where good books are sold.

I won't mention the name of a famous, large online bookseller because they don't advertise on your show yet do they Linh? Well, then I'm not giving them free publicity here, that's for sure. But you can get it anywhere.

And if you would like to get a free ebook, you can download it like as soon as we finish the show, you can then go to Rabbi Daniel lapin. com. And look for an ebook called, "The Holistic You", which is explaining the five different parts of your life that you have to develop in order to succeed financially.

And you can have that for absolutely free. It doesn't cost us anything, it's just a download. It's just some electrons.

And we're happy for you to have them. Because we make absolutely sure that there are no carbon emissions into the environment from our production of good solid material. Linh Podetti: Yeah.

And then finally, you've got a course that people can take action with. Unknown: If you people are ready to say, you know what, enough of the reading enough of the talking. I'm ready to actually start doing the specific things that will change the financial outcome of this year for me, then you'll want to simply buy the online video course where I do 10 hours of direct instruction on the very specific things you need to do.

It's called the Financial Prosperity Collection. It's at my website, rabbidaniellapin. com.

And here's the best part when you order it, there'll be a place where you can enter a promo code if you are lucky enough to have one. Well, for a terrific discount that will actually put it within financial reach of anybody. All you got to do is enter four letters.

Now these letters are not that hard to memorize, but you're gonna have to work on it a little bit. So get ready. The four letters are L I N H.

Linh Podetti: Yes. Thank you so much Rabbi for your generosity. even I think I should look into this financial freedom.

Because I feel like this is where I've been able to achieve my success is that I've never stop learning. I just want to learn more because maybe there's something else that I don't know. Or maybe just listening again makes me do something.

So I just believe in the power of learning. So, thank you so much. And I'll put all the links below and I look forward to having another chat with you soon.

Unknown: That'll be wonderful then it's always fun as you can tell, right? This doesn't look like hard work for me. I enjoy working with you and talking with you.

It's so much more pleasurable than some interviews I do which are like having a root canal. Linh Podetti: Thank you so much, Rabbi. I have a good day.

Unknown: You too Linh. Bye for now. Linh Podetti: Well, thank you so much for watching guys.

If you have any questions for myself or Rabbi Daniel, please put in the comments below because he and I will be answering your comments. Now if you enjoyed this video. There's more videos like this over here.