048: The Profound Pursuit of Problem-Solving with Pinny Gniwisch

C: Podcast

In today’s episode, hear Pinny’s extraordinary journey from Montreal to Harvard, shaped by mentorship, global ventures, and entrepreneurship. Discover the transformative power of an unconventional Rabbi, lessons from a father who survived the Holocaust, and the innovative era of early digital marketing with Ice.com. Join us for a conversation on life’s variety of experiences, business adventures, and the joy of being a “Zadie.”

Key Points + Topics:

[01:35] Pinny’s education journey started in Montreal, Canada. Then he went to Los Angeles, California, to attend the Yeshiva (a sort of Jewish “College”). He was transferred to the Yeshiva in London, England. Then, he went to New York to finalize his degree. His Rabbi sent him to Australia on shlichus (a traditional Jewish mission to support local Jewish life). After completing rabbinical school, he pursued a career in digital marketing. He now has two Masters degrees and is currently in a program for another degree in business from Harvard.
[02:40] His Rabbi brought him and his fellow students up to become entrepreneurs who forged their own paths. He gave them the confidence to go against the grain. While in Australia as an emissary, he was placed on the street each Friday morning. He had to ask people who passed if they were Jewish and, if so, if they wanted to put on tefillin with him. It was very impactful on his approach to life and business.
[05:35] A mentor is someone who guides you. Pinny is currently working with a new mentor, a coach assigned to him by Harvard when he started his program. They’ve become close, and it’s already been a year since they started their current arrangement. Weekly, they meet for an hour. For the first half hour, they study Chassidus; the second half hour, Pinny gets coaching on all things business. When Pinny presented a problem recently, he and his coach worked through it together. He didn’t give Pinny the answer or tell him what to do. He guided the decision. To Pinny, a mentor is someone who can give you the glasses to see yourself with clarity, without your ego.
[07:45] Pinny’s father is a remarkable man and mentor. He’s a Holocaust survivor who grew up as an orphan and took a ship to America with little but the clothes on his back. When Pinny’s father began dating his mother, he came on a date in a shirt with monogrammed sleeves. She noted the initials were not his own and asked him about it. In his humility, he explained that one of his jobs was to clean the bodies of those who had recently passed away. The widows would often donate their late husbands’ clothing. Pinny, having no money, would often get the first review of the donations. So, every shirt had was someone else’s. At last year’s Passover meal with his father and all the rest of his family, Pinny recalls seeing his father starting to cry. They weren’t tears of sadness, his father noted. His father remembered walking on the plank to board the ship to come to America and thinking how completely alone in the world he was. Now, he sits at a table surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and it’s the best feeling in the world. He’s constantly learning. Just last week, he came to Pinny to lament how no one was using the ChatGPT subscription they’d purchased. An 84-year-old man asking about ChatGPT is quite a remarkable thing.
[11:00] Growing up (and even still), his family always welcomed guests. Today, his parents have built a new house. It’s a few bedrooms upstairs, but the downstairs is all dining room. That’s the whole house. The dining room can seat 250 people. The house’s whole purpose is to have and invite guests. They truly believe, and have passed down to Pinny, that the purpose of having whatever wealth you have is to share it with others.
[12:53] These days, Pinny mentors a few people, some officially, others unofficially. The key, he says, is to let them have their own realizations and not give them the answers. That work of coming to the answer is important. He tries to give examples from his own life. Many times, mentors will use the experiences of others in their stories, and that’s super important. But Pinny has lived so much life and had so many experiences that he has many of his own stories to share with his mentees. Throughout daily life, he’s always thinking about what is happening and how he can use it in a mentoring session.
[17:34] Pinny founded the Postmaster Corporation in 1993. They primarily worked with countries and organizations in the Caribbean and West Africa. It opened his eyes to many of the world’s cultures. He had to deal with each country, learn its customs and etiquette, and work through language and religious barriers. In Africa, there were often political coups. This was a big challenge for the Postmaster Corp, as they would build a relationship with one postmaster, only to learn a week later he’d unfortunately been killed and had been replaced overnight.
[21:10] In 1999, the internet was just a few years old (to the general public). It was an exciting time because the rules were unwritten. He was there at the beginning of digital marketing. His Yeshiva schooling meant his brain was seasoned for a challenge. He could look at the same data and take the same tests as someone else starting in digital marketing and come out with a better result, thanks to his innovative mind.
[23:05] The initial setup of Ice.com in 1999 was insane. Today, if you want to start an online business, you go to Shopify, start a company, and set up your website all for a nominal fee. In those days, starting a website cost millions of dollars. After already launching the original Ice.com brand, they wanted to rebrand and rebuild their website. It cost half a million dollars. Everything was managed in spreadsheets. Idea Lab invested in them and started the first PPC ads.
[24:45] One of the early goals of Ice.com was to brand itself as “everyday jewelry.” As branding and marketing decisions were made at the time, they went to Chicago and held focus groups. They sat with a group of 100 women and asked them questions and got more and more granular with the questions. They crunched all the info and responses and rebranded themselves around what those women told them they wanted out of a jewelry brand.
[28:55] One of Pinny’s (many) jobs these days is helping other jewelry brands optimize their online presence. His first step, when faced with a new client, is to optimize their website. Many come to him with archaic platforms, stale pictures, and navigation, and just a general out-of-date feel. When selling jewelry online, you need to give an aura of “aspirational life.” The second step is to insist they have tracking on their website, be it Google Analytics or another platform of their choice. Often, his customers will say, “We have too many items; we want to pare down our inventory!” This is great! Pinny will respond by asking how many views and clicks a product on the chopping block has gotten. They’ll say it hasn’t gotten a single sale in six months. That’s not one of the KPIs. Just because no one bought it doesn’t mean no one saw it. You need to know many things before the actual purchase before you can make an informed decision about which products to list.
[35:35] As you might have guessed, Pinny has had (and currently has) MANY titles. When asked his favorite, he responded “If you’d asked me this when I was still teaching, I would have said ‘teacher’.” Teaching was extremely powerful for him. Today, though, his favorite title is “grandfather.” Just hearing the word “Zadie” from a little squeaky voice dwarfs everything else he’s ever done.
[38:52] Pinny was “armchair diagnosed” with ADHD by a woman seated next to him on a long flight once. Upon returning from that trip, he went to his hospital and signed up for an adult ADHD testing program. It took three months to get through the first step of the process – diagnosis. He remembers the day he got the letter saying he did, in fact, have ADHD. For some people, that would be horrific, but Pinny only thought, “YES! I finally understand the ‘why’ behind so many things.” He then started doing a lot of reading and research on ADHD and how to work with it. He learned he had many tools at his disposal he’d not known about before. He’s learned to surround himself with people who are good at finishing projects because he’s very good at starting them. He’s often the most creative person in the room.

Guest + Episode Links

Full Episode Transcript

Danny Gavin Host 00:05

Hello everyone, I’m Danny Gavin, founder of Optige, marketing professor and the Host of the Digital Marketing Mentor. I’m really excited to have Pinny Gniwisch with us here today. Pinny is actually one of my mentors and we’ll talk about that in a few, but he’s the president of Delmar Jewelry. He’s a globally recognized thought leader in social media and online marketing. Under his leadership as founder and executive vice president for ICEcom, he revolutionized the way consumers bought jewelry, modernizing industry in an increasingly web-focused landscape. In 2012, Pinny began consulting. He’s worked with world-renowned Cirque du Soleil on their e-commerce strategy. Currently, he’s working with Delmar International to implement their B2B marketing and merchandising strategy. Today, we’re going to talk about digital marketing through the years. How are you doing, Pinny?

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 01:08

I’m doing well. Thank you for having me.

Danny Gavin Host 01:11

So just to give people background, so obviously me, 2010,. Finishing Shiva going into the industry in sort of the orthodox global world. Pinny was definitely the guru of marketing growing up speaking at all the different e-commerce conferences, and definitely someone who paved the way for a lot of us who came afterwards. So it’s really exciting to have you on the podcast and be able to talk and share your wisdom with everyone.

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 01:33

Thank you for having me. This is great.

Danny Gavin Host 01:35

All right, so let’s talk about your background. Where did you go to school and what?

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 01:38

you studied. So I started out in Montreal, Montreal, Canada, a small little place on the map. After that I studied in Los Angeles in Yeshiva, then I transferred to the Yeshiva in London and then I went to New York to get my degree and I was sent by the rabbit to Sydney, Australia, on Shluchas, where I went, and then, after I graduated from rabbinical school, I pursued my career in digital marketing and marketing and education. So I have an MBA and I have my master’s degree in Jewish education and Israel education, and now I’m getting a degree from Harvard University in business.

Danny Gavin Host 02:30

Some people collect baseball cards, I guess you collect degrees, but obviously that drive for education is amazing. So let’s talk about, when you look back, whether it’s through Yeshiva or maybe some of the more recent things that you’ve done. Are there any experiences both inside and outside of the classroom that you feel like were impactful in directing your path in marketing?

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 02:52

Yeah, I think the first thing I would like to talk about when you talk about impact is the Rebbe’s leadership in how he brought us up to become entrepreneurs. He didn’t want us to be chsidim or disciples and just follow. He wanted us all to sort of plow through and create our own path. I remember when Waze started the app many, many years ago, whenever they designed their app, that a lot of the maps were created by the users, and whenever a user would go down a street that wasn’t on the map, there would be this little tractor that would follow you as you pave that road and create a new road, and I thought that was like the coolest thing you know Israeli thinking, and I believe that’s the beauty. The beauty is that they ever gave us the confidence to go up against the grain.

03:50

So I remember one very impactful thing was when I was sent to Australia as an emissary.

03:58

I was placed on the street and I would have to ask people every Friday if they were Jewish and if they would like to put on the film, and that in itself gave me an amazing amount of confidence and innovation because, as I tested different marketing tactics to get people to say, yes, you know, and every week I would have all these different lines that I would try.

04:24

You know I look at them today as email headlines, right, you know, openers to get people to say yes or to get people not to just openly reject me for my look. And I think that was my challenge and that was the foundation that gave me the future confidence to do things. That, and I believe you know, digital marketing was. You know, in its infancy, when I started, it wasn’t even, you know, we created it, and I think the only reason why we were so successful was because it was going up against the grain. And that all started from, you know, being in the street, being in front of people, challenging people, and then, you know, reworking it the next week and trying different tactics.

Danny Gavin Host 05:10

Yeah, and I know from my own experiences, like we don’t realize the gift of, like you know, going to a law office and knocking on the door and people think you’re crazy, and you know, and you asked you want to put on to fill in today? Like no, I don’t have time, but then coming back again the next week and trying again and maybe the third week and then, yeah, maybe after 12 times they actually listened. But just that determination and that training, I mean I don’t think you get it anywhere else. Moving down to mentorship so, Pinny, how would you define a mentor?

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 05:41

Someone who guides you. And I’ll tell you, last night I had an experience my new mentor, he’s my coach. Actually, harvard sort of gives you a coach while you’re in Harvard during the three weeks at the program. But I became very close to my coach. It’s already a year that we study a half an hour of Hasidus, for we study Tanya, and the other half hour he coaches me, and this is the arrangement that we created right after I left Harvard.

06:14

And last night I had a question that we worked through and he didn’t tell me what to do, but he guided me to my decision. And I think the key to a mentor, a true mentor, is for them to give you the glasses to see the clarity that’s out there that you in your own bubble cannot see, because we’re all full of our ego and we don’t always see what’s right in front of us. So I think a mentor, a true mentor, is bringing out the best and challenging you to uncover the best in you, even though sometimes it’s painful and sometimes the decisions are not just much important where you wanted to go initially.

Danny Gavin Host 06:55

And I’m sure that relationship with that coach slash mentor like the first half hour in some ways you’re mentoring him and then the second half hour 100% and he’s so thankful to me for giving him the half hour.

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 07:12

You know, like he charges like 8.50 an hour and I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m getting like this great coach because I’m giving him chassidus and I feel kind of, you know, like normally when we teach chassidus, where we feel, you know, empowered, that we’re sharing, you know, this great wisdom, but we feel great that we have the ability to influence somebody else with chassidus, and here I’m getting this reward. It’s kind of a little weird, but it’s great.

Danny Gavin Host 07:42

Yeah, it’s amazing. So let’s talk about your father. So you’ve mentioned that he is one of your most influential mentors. Obviously, he is just a remarkable man with so much wisdom, so much youthfulness. Let’s talk about him.

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 07:56

So my father is a Holocaust survivor. He grew up as an orphan, came to America, had nothing. I love this story, which I tell over all the time, where when he was dating my mom my mother came to the date with a shirt that had an insignia on it with initials that were engraved in the shirt and my mom was super impressed with the fact that he had a shirt. But when she looked closely she saw that it wasn’t his initials. So she questioned him and you know, in his boldness and his humility, he said well, I’m so poor that I have no clothing. So when one of my jobs I do is I work. I clean dead bodies after it’s a little morbid, but I clean the bodies and the wives of the people that have passed away. They leave the shirts of the clothing as a donation to the Yashiva, so I get first dibs. So therefore I’m wearing somebody else’s shirt and all my shirts are that. So I think that humility that my father had, having come from such poverty into the success that he has, and to stay grounded in his humility and wisdom, that I think is the greatest quality that I try to instill in myself, where, you know, whatever successes that I have had or will have, that I try to stay grounded and remind myself of my father’s growth and where he is today.

09:35

And I remember that Passover last year we were sitting together at the Seder with the whole family and he just started to cry. And he was just sitting there looking at the table and I’m like Ta, what’s going on? Why are you crying? And he says this is not tears of sadness, this is tears of joy. He says I came to this country.

09:54

I remember walking on the plank to go on the boat and I thought I was, you know, I was the most lonely person, the only person in the world. No one, no one there I had nobody. And I was coming to a new world. And look at what I’ve created, you know children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, all surrounding me at the Seder and for me that was like a moment. It was a moment to see true, deep joy that led to, you know, led to the crying, that tears of joy. So for me he is the greatest person in the world. He’s humble, smart, he has a great sense of humor and he’s always, always learning. He never stops. You know, last week he came over to me and he’s like. You know we bought the membership for ChatGPT. Why isn’t everybody using it at the year? An 84 year old man talk about ChatGPT. It’s inspirational, it’s exciting.

Danny Gavin Host 10:55

So I’ve spoken to your children before and I know a big part of their education is the fact that you making such an effort, like by your Shabbos table, inviting Guest s and for bringing and like interacting with people, and I know that well. I don’t know, but I can envision growing up in your house. That was amazing. How is it growing up at your parents’ Shabbos table? Was it similar? Is it something that you gained from your mother and father?

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 11:20

There’s no question, and we had always had Guest s and have Guest s. You know this. My parents built a home most recently. That is a bedroom and a dining room. That’s the whole house. The bedroom is upstairs and the house seats 250 people. The dining room, wow. And that’s the home.

11:44

So you can get an idea of what kind of hachnas, usurkhim or what kind of guest I mean. The whole purpose of their existence is to give and to have guest and to invite guests and to make them feel at home. And just three weeks ago we had a guest in their home that came to sleep. But the beauty of it was that he felt comfortable enough to bring another guest.

12:09

And the other Guest was surprised when he arrived because he felt so weird that the Guest was inviting him and he didn’t even anticipate how they, how my parents, would receive him as being some bit one of the Guest s Guest s and he was nervous. The whole eight hour drive he was coming Like, okay, the Guest invited me what is, what is, what is it gonna be? And he had the most beautiful Shabbos. So, yes, seeing it in my parents’ home inspired me and hopefully my children are gonna be inspired to be the same, where you know where the whole purpose of having whatever wealth you have is to share it and and make somebody else feel as comfortable as you and your own home.

Danny Gavin Host 12:48

Love it so pivoting to how you mentor others. So obviously you you’ve mentored a lot of people, whether that’s directly, indirectly, people in in your company, youth that you’ve also been involved in. So what are your keys to mentoring success and how you mentor others?

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 13:03

I have a few people that I mentor, and it’s some of them officially, some of them unofficially. I think the key metric, as I mentioned before, is for them to have their own realization not to give them the answers, because the work is important and that they realize the direction they need to go or the decision they need to make needs to come from them. I think that’s number one in mentoring. It’s the art of the pause. There’s a book out there I’m coaching. I can’t remember the name now, but it’s a fantastic book where the whole book is based on the pause. It’s not jumping to the answer, but allowing them to find the answer. Another thing is trying to give them examples of my own life. I think a lot of times, mentors use stories from other people and that’s super important, but I’ve had many experiences in life and those experiences have given me the ability to wade through dark times and difficult decisions, and using my own experiences to guide them is super important because they can relate to the. It’s not a story, it’s not one step removed, it’s for me. So I always try to find something in my own life that they can relate to. That has happened to me, and I’m always thinking when things are happening how I can use that in my mentoring sessions. So just the other day I was. I always look at opportunities that happen and see how I can take that opportunity to the next level. So a lot of people have opportunities where they see the opportunity and they don’t look at it, they don’t see it as an opportunity and they just walk straight by. So the other day I saw this. I was in Miami yesterday at a jewelry show.

14:57

There was an elderly gentleman who saw me and I walked by him and I said hello and I saw that he wouldn’t because I was wearing a Yamaha. He wanted to tell me something. Right, I saw that. So normally, if you don’t see that, you would have walked by hello, goodbye, nothing. And that stopped and that pause of me asking him how he’s doing, what’s his experience in the industry, and then he went on to tell me this extraordinary story that happened to him. That was so mind-boggling and he was so excited to tell me and he just came back to me later and every morning after that he stopped by my booth.

15:34

But the point is that when we walk by that situation and we don’t see the person’s eyes and we don’t see and we don’t read the situation, we don’t see the opportunity, we lose the opportunity to have a great experience, and I think that’s, in general, that’s been my motto in life. And people say, how do you have so many stories or how do you? For me, it’s all about seizing the opportunity and not walking away. And the funny thing is that I was working all day and I went to a wedding and I came back. I walked by a table at the bar towards my room and there were four guys sitting there.

16:12

One of them saw me walk by and they said happy New Year. And I said happy New Year and I gave them a blessing, but I was so zonked that I went to sleep and then I realized that’s what happens to the average person, right, the average person did what I did and went to bed and I felt more the next morning. I felt so terrible because it could have been another story, right? And I was thinking at that moment, you know, in the morning I woke up and I said that’s what happens to everybody else and for me that was a perfect moment, you know, to catch myself.

Danny Gavin Host 16:49

No, no, no, don’t ever do that again right and you know it’s kind of the story of Zusha, but like Pinny, you got to be Pinny, right, you can’t lose, don’t lose who you are. I mean, I don’t know if you remember this story, but we were at IRC in Chicago once. I think you were going for dinner with Steven Spencer and like with another guy, and I think I was just around, like Danny, come with me and like we hop into the uber, we go. It was like the most wonderful experience and naturally I would have just gone to my room, maybe ordered some food, but like it’s just so cool how you grab those opportunities and I’ve been a part of it it’s very magical. Yeah, it is so cool. Don’t, yeah, don’t lose that.

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 17:23

I guess, I guess, as you get older, you got it.

Danny Gavin Host 17:27

Pace yourself right. There you go. So let’s move into all things digital marketing. So kind of turning the clock back. You founded postmaster corp in 1993 and the next 10 years you helped build this business that worked with developing countries postal organizations. How is it working with so many different countries, regions and cultures around the world?

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 17:47

Oh my gosh, we work primarily with the Caribbean and Western Africa, and I tell you one thing first of all, culturally, it was the most eye-opening Education I ever got, dealing with each country individually and learning the customs of what is proper and what isn’t, etiquette. And then and then there was just stuff like, you know, language barriers and religious barriers. You know, like a lot of these countries in the Caribbean, the people are Extremely religious and very respectful of your religion. I remember, you know, the postmaster general of Barbados was so respectful and made sure I had kosher food and always asked me if I, you know, if I needed anything and that was in trend of that as well. So the culture sort of Clash, coming from the ghetto, coming from, you know, my small Orthodox community, and being open and was right after I got married. So being open to this whole World, world actually world, I mean the world, it was, it was, it was amazing and traveling to all these countries and and and dealing and, and and I think one of the biggest challenges was that as you build relationships with the postmaster general, there would be a coup and and a new government would come in and and you would call up and you’d be like like where is you know? You know Where’s the basil Reese? Oh, he was killed in the last administration. Oh my god, so, so, so for me that was so mind-boggling that you know the changeovers and and the violence in some of these countries, and then also, you know just it was. It was very weird and it was before the internet, so Communication was difficult.

19:47

Having to travel to third world countries, I remember one time I went to Kotobar, which is a country in Western Africa. We get to the airport and I’m about to leave and the security guard, you know two guys with machine guns, stopped me and they’re like, you know, do you have any currency to To declare? And I’m like, yeah, and and his eyes lit, you know, light up, and he says, show me, and. And he’s talking in French and my French is not great, but so I take out the money, he starts counting it and the plane is leaving and I’m stressed and everything.

20:26

And then you know like he takes my passport and I’m getting nervous and I’m starting to get agitated and the guy next behind me says, hey, you better relax. You know, don’t get so agitated because they’ll keep you here. After a while he says you know, you have to pay whatever excess. And I pay. And then he says poor moi, what about me? And so I give him, you know, one, two, three, and, and after I finish, you know, I give him $500. He gives me my password back, he smiles and lets me go. So there were these, all these different experiences that were insane.

Danny Gavin Host 21:05

So your time span there bridged the gap from regular snail mail, commerce and communications to the world of email and e-commerce. How is it watching the evolution of global communication in such a way?

Pinny Gniwisch Guest 21:15

well, the beauty was that we were in. We were on the cusp of. You know, in 1999, the internet was maybe three years old and e-commerce was just starting To pick up. It was super, super exciting because the rules weren’t written. Everybody was starting at the same point.