Mendel Erlenwein // CareCo and Previva

I was born in Seattle, Washington. My parents are from California and Georgia. Both of them became baalei teshuvah in their teens and later met in Israel. When I was six years old, we moved to Postville, Iowa, where we lived for four years, and then we relocated to Toronto. I lived there throughout my teens and learned in Yeshivas Lubavitch Toronto. The rosh yeshivah, Rav Akiva Wagner (who unfortunately passed away recently) had a profound impact on me. He really believed in me. Not that I didn’t believe in myself, but he had a way of bringing out my full potential.
“For example, knowing that I wasn’t the most studious bachur, Rav Wagner hired me to teach Gemara to some younger bachurim in the afternoon. He might reprimand me for not showing up on time in the morning, but then we’d both flip a switch and I was a rebbi and he was my employer, and we’d talk about test scores. It was a very interesting experience, and it was exactly what I needed.
“Being financially independent was always important to me. There’s a two-volume book by the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe called The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Memoirs. There are generations of history in it, going back to the ancestors of the founders of chasidus. It describes one figure named Reb Baruch who was extremely self-reliant and never took a penny from anyone. For some reason, his character resonated with me, and over the years I’ve tried to model myself after him and figure things out for myself. I’ve done random things to earn money, from selling Starbucks coffee mugs to making sushi at home and selling it in yeshivah.
“One summer, I was a waiter for the staff in Camp Gan Israel Montreal. I learned very quickly exactly what each person needed, wanted or liked. For those who spent a long time davening on Shabbos and would come late to the seudah, I’d put aside challahs and wine for them. And if they were busy building things for plays or productions, I’d take the food and walk around serving them. I made an effort to really go out of my way, and it paid off. I made $3,500 in tips, smashing a 50-year record, and I got almost as much as the head staff that summer. It was the most money I’d ever seen in my life. I guess it was my first customer service success.
“I left yeshivah a little early at 20 and went to seek Rav Wagner’s advice. He asked me, ‘What’s important to you? Do you want to change the world? Do you want a strong legacy?’ These things were not at all on my mind at the time; all I was thinking about was my next step. But the fact that he was even asking me such questions seriously made an impression.
“That Sukkos, I went with my friend Menachem Wagner to Los Angeles to help out a shliach. I already had a return flight booked, but it hit me that I shouldn’t go back. I felt that I needed to be fully independent. So I made a deal with the shliach that I’d help him out for Shabbos and with general programs in exchange for staying at the Chabad House. I didn’t end up getting on that plane, and it was probably the most consequential flight that I didn’t take in my life.
“While I was in LA, I started a drop-shipping business. I taught myself Facebook ads, product sourcing and how to set up a Shopify store. I launched in the military niche, and I had a bag that sold really well. I also caught the attention of a local businessman who had a boutique skincare company, and I started working for him. He paid me close to nothing, but I created a new brand for him. I came up with the designs, printed the labels and put them on the bottles. I remember setting up lights, chopping up some fruit and putting it behind the glass bottles for a photo shoot. I then took a supply of bottles and some doughnuts to a college campus and gave them out in exchange for taking videos of people using the products and posting them on social media. That was a good couple of months. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.
“Soon afterward, I came in contact with a successful businessman in the healthcare industry. He asked me what my plans were, and when I told him I’d like to start a marketing company, he suggested that I do that to support his companies. So that was how I got into healthcare, kind of accidentally through the back door of marketing.
“But it turned out that I didn’t really know what I was selling. Doing things in an unstructured way without fully understanding your users or target audience can only take you so far, and I definitely learned that lesson. These days, I don’t feel a need to “sell” anything. All I need to do is talk to people, and because I understand my customers so well, we can just have a genuine discussion where the value is obvious. The sale happens on its own.