Shuey Wyne // RVW Wealth LLC

I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. My father is from Edmonton, Canada, and my mother is from New York. When my father was 17, he went to Eretz Yisrael for a bit before attending university with his friends from Edmonton. Around Pesach time, my father and his friends went to visit Aish HaTorah, and they were hooked. He became a close student of Rav Noach Weinberg, zt”l. After being in yeshivah there for eight years, he met my mother, who was in Neve.
“My father was going to become a rabbi, and Rav Yitzchak Berkowitz was running the smichah program at Aish at the time. My father moved to Miami for a year to be a rabbi giving Aish seminars, and my oldest brother was born there. After that, they moved back to Edmonton for two years. He was an assistant rabbi of a shul where his grandparents were among the founders. He wasn’t looking to move back there long term; it was more to gain experience.
“My mother has always been a stay-at-home mom. She supported my father in all of his rabbinic endeavors and kiruv adventures.
“In 1995, Rabbi Nate Segal, head of Torah Umesorah’s Division of Community Development, was sending rabbanim to out-of-town communities. One of the opportunities he offered my father was Las Vegas. At the time, Vegas was a wasteland for Yiddishkeit. There was one Chabad rabbi there, as well as a bunch of elderly octogenarians in a shul that never had a rabbi.
“My father accepted the offer and was there for about a year, and then he moved across town and started a shul from scratch. It’s called Young Israel Aish HaTorah. It’s affiliated with both Young Israel and Aish. He was also very instrumental in starting the Yeshiva Day School of Las Vegas. He brought out the first two rabbis to be the principals. He then raised the money to bring in the first four rabbis to start learning in the Las Vegas kollel. Fast forward many years, another couple of shuls grew from that, and ultimately, the girls’ high school and boys’ mesivta/beis midrash came about.
“My father has been a huge cornerstone of the Jewish infrastructure in Las Vegas. So much has come out of his shul and broader efforts. For example, several years ago, he realized there were a lot of assimilated Israelis in Vegas, but there was a culture gap and a language barrier. He hired Rabbi Moshe Orloweck to start doing kiruv with the Israelis, and that ended up turning into an Israeli Sephardic minyan and many learning programs.
“My family never spoke about money. There was never an emphasis on our family’s financial situation or others’ situation, and money was never something that was pursued.
“I loved learning from when I was close to high school age. I remember that my family would go on vacations, and I would just be learning the entire time. That attitude continued throughout high school and beis midrash.
“I had the ambition and drive to do everything to the utmost. In high school, my goal was to finish Shas, and I almost did. I wanted to be the top bachur. I wanted to go to the best yeshivah. I think that’s why it translated so well to my work ethic. I have the ability to sit and learn for hours on end without taking a break. That discipline and work ethic ended up transitioning to my business life.
“Growing up, I went to Chabad up until sixth grade. That was when my father helped start the Yeshiva Day School, and I went there for seventh and eighth grade. For high school, I went to the Mesivta of Greater Los Angeles in Calabasas. It’s a Lakewood-style yeshivah. After that, I went to Philadelphia for beis midrash, not necessarily because I felt it was a good fit for me, but more because it was a top caliber yeshivah. I wanted the best. When I got there, I realized that most of the bachurim were out of my league; it was a different level of learning from what I had been used to. I wanted to learn by Rav Shmuel Rav Shalom Kamenetsky, so I worked really hard to get in.
“After Philly, I went to the Mir in Eretz Yisrael for a year. I learned by Rav Asher Arielli for some of the time, and then I learned in different chaburas and with various chavrusas. After that, I went to BMG and was in a chaburah there. I got married six months later at 22 years old, and we moved to Eretz Yisrael. I learned in the Mir for a bit and then got smichah from Rav Yitzchak Berkowitz. I was in the kollel for about two years. When our daughter was around eight months old, my wife and I separated and then divorced. Baruch Hashem, everything was amicable, and I have a very close relationship with our daughter.
“Initially, my plan was to learn in kollel for a few years. Following the divorce, I knew I needed to earn a living, so I started to work. At the time, I was doing a lot of things for my father’s shul in Las Vegas. I wasn’t on the path to becoming a ‘business guy’; I had just received smichah and was still thinking about rabbanus.
“I became the assistant rabbi, technically. Ever since I was young, my father had always involved me in the shul by having me speak publicly during shalosh seudos or Shabbos morning, so it was natural for me to assume this position. We always discussed what was going on while he was building the broader community. I would speak with members of the congregation, and I was fascinated by what they told me about their various businesses. I would learn with people individually, and we’d talk about their lives—they weren’t really interested in talking about kiruv or ruchniyus; they were more interested in talking about their finances and tangible fears. Rav Berkowitz used to say that money is people’s biggest daagah.
“I transitioned into the world of wealth management through being an assistant rav, as I was introduced to my first job by one of our congregants. Jonathan Gerber had a very successful client, a serial entrepreneur who moved from LA to Las Vegas and knew me and my father. He was like a mentor to me. At this point, I really wanted to chase success and pursue a very lucrative career, which is exactly what this man had achieved for himself. Jonathan and his father, Selwyn, were interested in raising additional capital for a particular fund, so their client introduced us to each other. As a trial period, I and a handful of other people worked in a call center. Although it was essentially raising money for a fund, they wouldn’t take small amounts. The trial period lasted about six weeks.
“The job was raising money for the Jerusalem Portfolio, a fund that invested in publicly traded companies based out of Israel. By putting money into the fund, clients were purchasing Israeli stocks, and in essence owning fractional shares of interest in them. I would present the portfolio of the diverse select group of excellent Israeli businesses that we were investing in. Part of the pitch was telling people that this was their opportunity to have a stake in the Israeli economy. That’s what spoke to people.
“People have their more traditional brokerage and retirement accounts, but this was a new concept. It was a win-win, from an investment standpoint as well as having the opportunity to have something in Eretz Yisrael.